What Leaders Look For vs. What Actually Matters in Math Classrooms

Most school leaders I know want the same thing.

You want students to leave your building prepared for life. You want them to be able to think, adapt, make good decisions, and contribute to their communities. You want graduates who can handle what comes next—even when what comes next isn’t clearly defined.

But when we walk into math classrooms, the things we’re trained to look for don’t always line up with those hopes.

We look for order.

We look for correct answers.

We look for students who are on task, moving quickly, and “getting it.”

Those signals feel reassuring. They suggest things are under control. But they don’t always tell us what we think they tell us.

Across decades of studies, people who score high on traditional measures of intelligence are not meaningfully happier—and in some cases, they’re a little less happy. That’s worth sitting with for a moment.

I came across an article by social psychologist Adam Mastroianni that reframed a conversation we need to be having in schools. He asks a simple but unsettling question: If being smart is so valuable, why aren’t “smart” people any happier?

The article also made me think about how our math programs often prioritize performance on standardized tests—well-defined problems that don’t require the kinds of thinking students need beyond school.

These problems have clear rules. There’s one right answer. The information is complete. The process is repeatable. Many math tasks fit neatly into this category. And to be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with well-defined problems. They have their place.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Mastroianni reminds us that the problems that shape our lives are rarely tidy. They ask us to make decisions with incomplete information, to revise our thinking, to learn from missteps, and to exercise judgment when there is no clear right answer.

Here’s the hard truth we don’t say out loud often enough: many students move through years of math instruction without ever being asked to solve problems that resemble real life.

They learn to follow steps—but not to make sense.

They learn to avoid mistakes—but not to learn from them.

They learn that speed matters—but not that struggle can be productive.

So when leaders say, “Our students can’t think critically,” or “They shut down when things get hard,” or “They’re unprepared for what comes next,” I gently ask: Where were they supposed to learn those skills?

If math classrooms only reward tidy thinking, fast recall, and compliance, we shouldn’t be surprised when students struggle with ambiguity later on.

This is also why conversations about the future—especially conversations about artificial intelligence—matter right now. As Mastroianni points out, machines are getting very good at solving well-defined problems. Faster than us. Better than us. That’s not a threat; it’s a signal.

If math instruction is designed to train students to compete with machines, we’ve missed the point.

But if math classrooms are places where students learn to reason, question, revise, and persist—where their thinking matters more than their speed—then we’re doing something far more important. We’re helping them develop the kinds of skills machines can’t replace.

I’ve worked with too many leaders who feel the quiet frustration of doing everything they were told to do and still not seeing the outcomes they hoped for. This isn’t about working harder. It’s about looking differently.

So here are a few questions worth sitting with:

• What kinds of problems do students mostly encounter in your math classrooms?

• What kinds of thinking are being rewarded?

• Who is seen as capable—and who is quietly being overlooked?

• What would change if we valued sense-making as much as correctness?

The good news is this: classrooms can change. And when they do, students don’t just learn more math. They learn how to think, how to persist, and how to make sense of a world that doesn’t come with answer keys.

That kind of learning matters—long after the test is over.

If you’re curious what this looks like in your own building, the Math Leader Mini Diagnostic is a simple place to start—it helps you see what kinds of thinking your math classrooms are actually designed to develop.

Reference

Mastroianni, A. (2022, August 8). Why Aren’t Smart People Happier? Experimental History.

Portions of this content were drafted with the help of ChatGPT (OpenAI).