How Do Math with Confidence Students Perform on Standardized Tests?

Worried about whether Math with Confidence is rigorous enough? Learn how Fifth Grade MWC pilot test students performed on the CAT standardized test. Math lessons don’t have to involve stress, frustration, tears for children to achieve at a high level!

When I first started writing Math with Confidence, I immediately faced an important question: How would I know whether or not the program worked? I could spend hours carefully sequencing concepts and writing engaging activities, but how would I know whether or not the curriculum actually taught kids math?

My solution: pilot testing. Each year, approximately 150 parents sign up to pilot-test the newest level of Math with Confidence with their kids. I send them each unit as I write it, and the parents give me feedback on what worked (and what didn’t!) Collaborating with these engaged and committed moms is a joy, and I’m extremely grateful for their generous support and help. Their thoughtful and thorough feedback assures me that their children are learning math well, and that Math with Confidence works.

Pilot testing continues to be an essential part of my writing process. But, thousands of families now use Math with Confidence to educate their children, and I don’t take that responsibility lightly. So, this year, I asked parents in the Fifth Grade MWC pilot test to have their children take a standardized math test to provide some objective data on the program’s effectiveness.

How Testing Worked

The students took the math section of the California Achievement Test (CAT) in late March/early April of 2024. They took the test online and untimed, at my expense. (Typically, the CAT is a timed test. I chose the untimed test since many homeschoolers aren’t used to timed tests, and I didn’t want to add unnecessary stress to the process.)

77 pilot students participated in testing. Most of the children were 10 or 11, with a few 9-year-olds and 12-year-olds. To ensure the results were as valid as possible, I required that all students had been part of the pilot test since at least fourth grade and that they had completed at least half of the fifth grade pilot program. The average length of time in the pilot program was 3.2 years, with a few families participating since first grade or even kindergarten. Some students were experienced test-takers, while others had never taken a standardized test before.  

The Results

The CAT has two sub-scores: Computation and Problem-Solving. The two scores are combined to create a Composite score that measures overall math achievement. These scores are very different than the way you might normally grade a math test. Instead of measuring how many questions the student got right, the scores compare the student to other students. They do this in two different ways.

• “Grade Equivalent” compares the student to an “average” student at a different grade level. For example, if your child gets a 7.2 grade equivalent, it means that a seventh-grader (in the second month of seventh grade) at the 50^th-percentile would perform at the same level as your child. It does NOT mean that your child is ready to do work at that grade level.
• “Percentile Rank” compares the student to other students at the same grade level. It does NOT tell what percent of the problems the child got correct on the test. For example, if your child tests at the 80^th percentile, it means they performed better than or equal to 80% of children who take the test. (The CAT developers give the test to a sample group of students every two years to “re-norm” the test, so these percentiles are up-to-date.)

I expected the pilot-test students’ scores to be pretty high…but I was completely shocked by the final results. For all three tests, the mean percentile rank was 95 or 96, and the mean grade level equivalent was in the eighth-grade range. Every single student tested above the 50^th percentile for all scores. Most stunning, 75% of students scored at the 98^th or 99^th percentile for their Composite score!

What the Results Mean…and What They Don’t

I can’t make any promises about how your individual child will do with Math with Confidence, and I certainly can’t promise that your child will score in the 98^th or 99^th percentile on standardized tests. These results are an informal survey, not a peer-reviewed scientific study. There are several reasons why you should take them with a large grain of salt.

1. Pilot testing involves a lot of extra hassle—completing feedback forms, downloading the program unit-by-unit, being patient when there are delays. The moms in the Math with Confidence pilot group are highly committed to providing an excellent math education to their children, and that is likely reflected in the test scores.
2. Pilot testing provides extra support and accountability, which generally leads to higher achievement and test scores.
3. These data don’t provide comparisons to any other homeschool math programs. Students who use other programs may perform equally well.
4. The students who took the test were self-selected, not randomly chosen. Parents who were concerned about how their children would do may have opted not to participate, and this may have driven up the average scores. The requirement that students be halfway through Fifth Grade MWC also prevented some students from participating.

With those caveats, there are some important take-aways, too.

First, no matter what program you use, your homeschooled child probably compares to public-school students much more favorably than you realize. As parents, it’s often tempting to focus on our kids’ areas of struggle rather than all of the skills they have mastered. You may feel keenly aware of your child’s difficulties in math or your own weaknesses as a math teacher—but there are no guarantees your child would have an awesome math teacher if he went to school, either. Many children who attend school struggle in math, and they don’t get the one-on-one attention and remediation that a committed homeschool parent can provide.

Second, your math curriculum doesn’t have to be frustrating or super-challenging to give your child a thorough and rigorous math education. In the Math with Confidence Facebook Community, I sometimes read posts from parents who worry whether Math with Confidence is too easy for their child. They see their child enjoying the games, grasping the concepts, and zooming through their worksheets and feel anxious that the program isn’t rigorous enough.

I understand where these parents are coming from. Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of media coverage of the important of building “grit” in kids and providing “productive struggle” in math. While there are good intentions behind these movements, they’re not supported by the actual science of math education.

If your child enjoys challenging math puzzles or difficult multi-step word problems, great! There are plenty of programs out there that provide those. But, if your child finds these types of questions frustrating or anxiety-inducing, she doesn’t have to do them. Your child can become capable and confident at math without crying every day or feeling like she’s banging her head against the wall. (And, without you needing to spoon-feed her the answers or coach her through every problem—which is often what happens when you use a math program that’s too hard for your child.)

Third, Math with Confidence may be a “middle-of-the-road” program in terms of its difficulty level, but it does not produce “middle-of-the-road” results. Learning math well doesn’t require heroic efforts on the part of the student or teacher, and I’ve purposely designed Math with Confidence to be both incremental and gentle as well as rigorous and comprehensive. These scores show that Math with Confidence thoroughly covers grade-level math content and equips children to perform at a high level in math—with a minimum of stress, frustration, or tears.

As one pilot-test mom emailed when she discovered her child had scored at the 99^th percentile:

I’m so pleasantly surprised because in the past two years with your pilot program, math has been a BREEZE! …I mean NO fights, NO tears, NO reluctance to get the work done!…I’ve been worried that maybe we had significant gaps. But, all looks well! Thank you for ALL you do!

Happy Math!