This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

These student-constructed problems foster collaboration, communication, and a sense of ownership over learning.

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Claire Madden, a math education specialist for Milwaukee schools, shows teachers different methods of subtracting two-digit numbers. Credit: Abby J. McFarland for The Hechinger Report The Hechinger ...

A controversial new movement promoting the "science of math" has come into the math establishment's crosshairs.