The Utah State Board of Education (USBE) has recommended Zearn Math for all grades K–5 in Utah, labeling it as a "Recommended Primary" curriculum—the highest possible distinction. The top rating indicates that Zearn Math aligns with Utah state standards and meets all high-quality indicators, including focus, coherence, rigor, and balance. The USBE also highlights that Zearn Math makes grade-level math accessible to all learners by providing embedded remediation, concrete and pictorial representations, precise feedback, and other supportive features.
Zearn Math builds deep understanding of concepts and flexible problem-solving skills through an emphasis on visualization, drawing to solve, and concrete representations of abstract concepts. The curriculum's focus on inclusivity and accessibility aims to create a sense of belonging in the math classroom for all students and foster the development of tenacious, lifelong learners. Each day, students learn in flexible and feedback-rich environments and are supported in accessing grade-level math with on-ramps and personalized feedback embedded throughout the curriculum.
Utah's decision to recommend Zearn Math for all grades K–5 corroborates findings from other state agencies. For example, the Louisiana Department of Education labeled Zearn Math a Tier 1 curricular resource that "exemplifies quality" across all review dimensions. Similarly, teacher reviewers for the New Mexico Public Education Department determined that Zearn Math is the only math curriculum recommended for all grades K–5 in New Mexico. These findings are further corroborated by third-party reviewers like EdReports, an independent nonprofit that reviews instructional materials. EdReports gave Zearn Math a top rating across all review gateways.
Utah's recommendation of Zearn Math coincides with a major milestone in the top-rated curriculum's viral growth journey: the comprehensive math program is now used in over 50% of districts nationwide to support daily differentiated instruction. Additionally, Zearn recently announced the launch of new features and resources for the coming school year to give teachers even more flexibility when using Zearn Math to support student learning. Shalinee Sharma, Zearn's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We began building Zearn Math seven years ago as a nonprofit to support teachers with helping all kids deeply learn and love math. We are so grateful to all those educators, from Utah and across the country, who have partnered with us and provided us feedback on this journey. We're honored to continue to support Utah teachers in further personalizing our top-rated materials to meet the needs of each student."
