Going Backwards: How First Grade Erased My Daughter's Math Skills
Before first grade started, my daughter could multiply multi-digit numbers accurately and independently. She’d worked through Channie’s Double Digit Multiplication workbook and lattice multiplication worksheets, mastering both methods. Before that, she’d completed Channie’s addition and subtraction worksheets with regrouping. She’d worked through SAI’s Soroban Abacus Mind Math Book 1, learning to visualize place value as physical beads on rods and mentally add sequences of two-digit numbers.
When school ended in June, I gave her a multiplication worksheet—the same kind she’d done confidently the previous summer.
She stared at it. She had absolutely no idea what to do.
This is the story of how that happened.
Fall: “We Do Not Do Multiplication Here”
At the first parent-teacher conference in the fall, I brought lattice multiplication worksheets. I had completed work samples showing she could multiply using both the lattice method and the standard algorithm.
I wasn’t asking the teacher to teach multiplication in first grade. I just wanted my daughter to be able to use these worksheets after finishing her regular classroom math, to keep those skills sharp.
The response was immediate: “Multiplication is for third graders and this is a first grade classroom. We do not do multiplication here.”
She wouldn’t even accept the worksheets. She wouldn’t look at the work my daughter had already completed.
December: Asking for Help
By December, I could see what was happening. At home, we’d moved on to new skills—progressing through abacus levels 2 and 3, mastering long division. Her MAP scores jumped from the 94th percentile to the 98th percentile nationally.
But there wasn’t time to review multiplication AND learn new content. I’d assumed first grade would be where she could practice those multiplication skills she’d already mastered. Instead, the teacher had refused the worksheets back in September.
Multiplication review was being squeezed out.
I attached 13 PDFs of her advanced work to an email to her teacher and asked for two things: access to more challenging math content, and advocacy to support an upcoming acceleration application.
The response came weeks later. It described existing iPad apps. It said the enrichment specialist wasn’t available for first graders. Nothing would change.
Winter: “We’re Working on It”
So I went directly to the enrichment specialist. I explained my daughter’s readiness. I asked if he’d consider testing her for his enrichment group—the same pre-test process used for second graders.
“I’ll touch base with the team this week,” he said in January.
Weeks passed.
When I followed up in February, he said they’d “identified some specific ways” to support first-grade enrichment but that my daughter’s teacher would have “more details” at our upcoming conference.
At every step, the message was the same: we’re working on it. We’re figuring it out. Talk to this other person at that future meeting.
February: Tested and Denied
Nine weeks after my initial request, my daughter’s teacher sent an email with an update.
Buried in the message: My daughter had been tested on a Module 4 assessment. The threshold for enrichment was 95%. She scored 83%. She didn’t qualify.
She would “continue” using the same iPad apps she’d been using all year.
At no point during that school year did anyone ask my daughter to demonstrate what she could actually do with multi-digit multiplication. We’d focused on computational skills over vocabulary—she might not have been able to name the number 12,345 as “twelve thousand, three hundred forty-five,” but she could multiply it by 45,678 and get the right answer.
Her understanding of place value was actually deeper than most adults’. The abacus training taught her to visualize numbers as physical beads on rods, each rod representing ones, tens, hundreds, thousands. She could see and feel where each digit belongs. That’s not vocabulary. That’s mathematical structure internalized.
Nobody checked.
May: The Irony
In May—with four weeks left in the school year—I finally learned what had been happening.
My daughter’s teacher’s email began: “I wanted to follow up to your enrichment question.”
The enrichment she’d said “was not currently an option” for first graders in January? It had been happening. The first grade team, the enrichment specialist, and Principal Ali had created it: “more rigorous instruction using the same module that is being taught in the classroom.”
When I’d asked her for details about what enrichment looked like, she never responded. Now, in May, she was finally explaining it.
This was grade-level enrichment. Not the acceleration I’d been asking for—I’d wanted access to above-grade-level content—but at least it was harder problems on the same topics for kids ready for more challenge.
Here’s the irony: I got the first grade team talking about enrichment for the sole purpose of challenging my daughter. My advocacy led them to create something. They set it up.
And they set the threshold at 95% on grade-level content—without ever asking her to demonstrate the multi-digit multiplication, lattice methods, and place value understanding she’d already mastered.
The enrichment pathway I’d spent months requesting, that my daughter was tested for and denied in February, now existed. It just didn’t exist for her.
By May, with four weeks left in the year, it was too late.
I sent one more email asking if there was still an opportunity for my daughter to join the enrichment group. I CC’d the enrichment specialist and her classroom aide to streamline logistics.
I’m still waiting for a response. We’re midway through second grade now.
June: The Test
Throughout the school year, we’d focused on new content at home—abacus progression, long division. Our time after school was limited. Her energy after a full school day was limited. Multiplication review got squeezed out.
I’d assumed she could practice those skills at school. But the teacher had refused the worksheets in September, and nothing had changed.
When school ended in June, I gave her that multiplication worksheet.
She stared at it. She had absolutely no idea what to do.
Skills she’d mastered before first grade had regressed during first grade. While she was in school.
That broke my heart in a way that’s hard to explain. My daughter went backwards academically while attending an elementary school in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Illinois.
What Happened
Here’s what I know:
I had evidence of what my daughter could do. Completed worksheets. Work samples from advanced curriculum. MAP scores at the 98th percentile nationally. Proof that she’d mastered skills well beyond first grade.
The teacher wouldn’t look at the worksheets in the fall.
The enrichment specialist never asked to see them in the winter.
Nobody asked my daughter to demonstrate her skills all year.
Instead, they tested her on grade-level content in February, found she didn’t meet a 95% threshold I’d never heard of, and decided nothing would change.
By May, I learned the enrichment pathway had been created—but my daughter couldn’t access it.
By June, she’d forgotten much of what she’d mastered the summer before. We had to re-learn lattice multiplication and the standard algorithm.
What This Reveals
This isn’t a story about one denied enrichment request.
It’s about what happens when a system is designed to maintain the status quo—not through explicit denial, but through process. Through “we’re working on it.” Through deferring to other people at future meetings. Through consuming time until there’s none left.
It’s about what happens when schools won’t look at evidence parents provide.
It’s about what happens when bureaucracy takes nine weeks to deliver an answer that could have been given in nine days—or better yet, when the teacher could have simply accepted the worksheets back in September and let a child keep skills she’d already learned.
The irony: there genuinely wasn’t an enrichment pathway for first graders when I first asked. My daughter’s teacher was right about that.
But when I pushed, they created something. My advocacy got the first grade team talking about enrichment. They set up grade-level enrichment—more rigorous instruction for kids ready for harder problems.
And they set the threshold at 95% on grade-level assessments—never once asking my daughter to demonstrate the multiplication, lattice methods, abacus skills, and place value understanding I’d documented in 13 PDFs back in December.
A pathway now existed. It just didn’t exist for my daughter.
That’s mind-boggling. I pushed for enrichment to challenge my child, and in response, they created enrichment my child couldn’t access.
By the time I understood what had happened, she’d forgotten much of the multiplication she’d mastered. We had to re-learn lattice multiplication and the standard algorithm that summer.
Related Posts:
- The Authority Vacuum: How Superintendent Churn Creates Risk-Averse Principals
- The Acceleration Gap: 276 to 26
- The Glitch: When the Math Test Fails at Math
This is part of an ongoing series documenting one family’s experience with gifted education in Oak Park Elementary School District 97. All facts are based on emails, rubric documents, and official communications obtained through public records requests and direct correspondence with district officials.
Names of district administrators and principals are used as they are public officials performing official duties. Teacher and staff names have been removed to protect privacy. Student names are withheld to protect privacy.