What Educators Should Know About Dyscalculia, a Math Learning Disability

Dyscalculia is a severe and persistent learning disability in math that affects about 5 to 8 percent of school-age children. Due to its impact on students’ ability to learn and retain basic math facts, it can be spotted in the early grades if educators know what to look for. In this interview series, an educator, a researcher, and two students with dyscalculia share their insights, perspective, and knowledge to help teachers better understand and teach students with the disability.

How to Spot Dyscalculia in Students

From students who struggle with basic math facts and calculations, to students who can’t seem to remember what they’ve learned from day-to-day, here’s what teachers can look out for.

Tips for Teaching Students With Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia impacts a student’s ability to learn their basic math facts and calculations, knowledge that continues to build throughout their math studies. Here are some methods for teaching students with dyscalculia.

The Relationship Between Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Math Anxiety

Students can have dyslexia and dyscalculia, dyscalculia and math anxiety, or some other combination entirely. A researcher explains how they’re all related.

Diagnosed at 14, One Student’s Experience With Dyscalculia

Jacquelyn Taylor was diagnosed in elementary school with dyslexia. But it wasn’t until she was 14, entering high school, and struggling with basic math, that a combination of her own research, and a professional assessment, provided a dyscalculia diagnosis. She walks through what it was like to go through elementary and middle school with undiagnosed dyscalculia, and offers tips for educators to help students like her.

How Early Intervention and Tutoring Helped One Student With Dyscalculia

For Tessa Marshall, those things that often come easy to kids—numbers, colors, shapes, tying shoes—were always a challenge. In 3rd grade, she was diagnosed with dyscalculia and transferred to a Montessori school where the opportunity to learn individually with a teacher, and in a group of students in 1st through 3rd grades, helped her catch up. Now a freshman in high school, she shares what she wishes teachers knew not only about dyscalculia, but also about teaching students like her.