Yesterday, CEP’s YouthTruth Initiative released a new report, Making Sense of Learning Math: Insights from the Student Experience. This report is the culmination of a 15-month project, the Math Learning and Identity Project, funded by the Gates Foundation. The insights from nearly 90,000 high school students shared in this report, detailed below, bring much-needed first-person perspectives to bear in considering how public education — and those that fund in this area and related areas — must grapple with mathematics teaching and learning in a changing economy and society.  

In addition to the specific insights from students about math learning and identity, the process behind generating these insights holds important considerations for philanthropy about feedback and listening practices that apply much more broadly, including: 

  • How can perceptual feedback from the people funders seek to serve inform decision-making for strategy improvement over time? 
  • How does listening play out in the funder-grantee relationship and how can it strengthen funder-grantee collaborations? 
  • How might AI enhance philanthropy’s ability to listen more rapidly to those it seeks to serve, and what cautions should we keep in mind? 

Feedback for Strategy Improvement  

Through the Math Learning and Identity Project, CEP’s YouthTruth Initiative partnered with the Gates Foundation to bring student perceptions about learning math front and center as the foundation iterated on its new K-12 education strategy. The project stemmed from the foundation’s desire to learn from and incorporate direct feedback from those they seek to serve into strategy development — and YouthTruth’s expertise in gathering and making meaning of such student feedback. In particular, as part of its measurement, learning, and evaluation plan, the Foundation was interested in understanding students’ math experiences in terms of their sense of belonging, care and support from teachers, and relevance to their interests and real-world contexts.  

As part of the project, YouthTruth presented summary data and statistical analysis showing both overall student feedback and statistically significant differences in student experiences by demographic group to the Gates K-12 team at a staff retreat. Program officer Adam Goldfarb reflected that “some of the data confirmed our working hypotheses.” He cited seeing a positive relationship between student experiences in math and when students took Algebra I as an example that validated the team’s expectations. “We value being able to incorporate student perspectives into our discussions and will continue to do so as a result of this work.” The student feedback gathered in this project, in combination with inputs from other projects and grantees “will help ensure that the K-12 team, leadership, and partners have access to relevant information about the strategy and its context to inform decision-making for strategy improvement over time,” said Goldfarb.

Read the full article about student feedback and foundation strategy by
Jen Vorse Wilka at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.