A national megastudy shows that email nudges to elementary school teachers boost student math achievement, particularly when personalized

In response to the alarming recent decline in US math achievement, we conducted a national megastudy in which 140,461 elementary school teachers who collectively taught 2,992,027 students were randomly assigned to receive a variety of behaviorally informed email nudges aimed at improving students' progress in math. Specifically, we partnered with the nonprofit educational platform Zearn Math to compare the impact of 15 different interventions with a reminder-only megastudy control condition. All 16 conditions entailed weekly emails delivered to teachers over 4-wk in the fall of 2021. The best-performing intervention, which encouraged teachers to log into Zearn Math for an updated report on how their students were doing that week, produced a 5.06% increase in students' math progress (3.30% after accounting for the winner's curse). In exploratory analyses, teachers who received any behaviorally informed email nudge (vs. a reminder-only megastudy control) saw their students' math progress boosted by an average of 1.89% during the 4-wk intervention period; emails referencing personalized data (i.e., classroom-specific statistics) outperformed emails that did not by 2.26%. While small in size, these intervention effects were consistent across school socioeconomic status and school type (public, private, etc.) and, further, persisted in the 8-wk post-intervention period. Collectively, these findings underscore both how difficult it is to change behavior and the need for large-scale, rigorous, empirical research of the sort undertaken in this megastudy.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2025-03-24
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2418616122
Citations
5
Primary Topic
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
7.36
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article

A national megastudy shows that email nudges to elementary school teachers boost student math achievement, particularly when personalized

Youngwoo Jung, Allan C. Halpern, Eugen Dimant, A J Lyon et al.
5 citations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
7.36
article

A national megastudy shows that email nudges to elementary school teachers boost student math achievement, particularly when personalized

Youngwoo Jung, Allan C. Halpern, Eugen Dimant, A J Lyon, Hengchen Dai, Ron Berman, Colin F. Camerer, Matthew D. Hilchey, Hal E. Hershfield, Joseph Kay, Kathryn M. Kroeper, Katherine L. Milkman, Dena M. Gromet, Dilip Soman, Angela Duckworth, Ahra Ko, Christophe Van den Bulte, Marcos Gallo, Susan E. Mayer, Elizabeth A. Canning, Ariel Kalil, Mary C Murphy, Philip Oreopoulos, Renante Rondina, Michelle Park Michelini, Nina Mažar, Ilana Brody, Benjamin S. Manning, Madeline K. Paxson, Ramon A. Silvera Zumaran, S. Chester Parker
article en
5 citations

Abstract

In response to the alarming recent decline in US math achievement, we conducted a national megastudy in which 140,461 elementary school teachers who collectively taught 2,992,027 students were randomly assigned to receive a variety of behaviorally informed email nudges aimed at improving students' progress in math. Specifically, we partnered with the nonprofit educational platform Zearn Math to compare the impact of 15 different interventions with a reminder-only megastudy control condition. All 16 conditions entailed weekly emails delivered to teachers over 4-wk in the fall of 2021. The best-performing intervention, which encouraged teachers to log into Zearn Math for an updated report on how their students were doing that week, produced a 5.06% increase in students' math progress (3.30% after accounting for the winner's curse). In exploratory analyses, teachers who received any behaviorally informed email nudge (vs. a reminder-only megastudy control) saw their students' math progress boosted by an average of 1.89% during the 4-wk intervention period; emails referencing personalized data (i.e., classroom-specific statistics) outperformed emails that did not by 2.26%. While small in size, these intervention effects were consistent across school socioeconomic status and school type (public, private, etc.) and, further, persisted in the 8-wk post-intervention period. Collectively, these findings underscore both how difficult it is to change behavior and the need for large-scale, rigorous, empirical research of the sort undertaken in this megastudy.

Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesVol. 122(13)
Boston University (US), California Institute of Technology (US), Sacred Heart University (US), University of California, Los Angeles (US), University of Pittsburgh (US), University of Toronto (CA), Quest University Canada (CA), Colby–Sawyer College (US), Indiana University Bloomington (US), Marymount University (US), Indiana University (US), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Anderson University - South Carolina (US), Washington State University (US), University of Pennsylvania (US), Philadelphia University (US)
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 3%
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
7.36
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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