Built on Standards & Experience
Greg Tang Sr. has spent over a decade helping teachers bring the Common Core Standards to life. That real-world experience shaped our curriculum, which connects big ideas across domains and develops key habits of mind. With seamless links between standards and lessons, teachers can deliver focused, effective instruction that builds deep understanding and strong problem-solving skills. By combining proven content with classroom-tested strategies, we make it easier to teach well-and help students succeed at every level. Teachers gain structure and clarity, and students benefit from lessons that are meaningful, connected, and thoughtfully sequenced.
Essential Math Content
Our curriculum is designed to make teaching easier and learning more effective. We focus on essential skills and time-tested strategies that build logically from year to year. Each lesson fits into a larger plan, helping students progress step by step with a clear purpose. The result is deeper understanding, stronger retention, and a coherent math journey from one grade to the next.
Equity Through Access
We believe every student deserves access to great teaching and tools that make math clear and doable. That means models and methods that meet students where they are-regardless of background or skill level. Our program supports personalized instruction and helps teachers guide each student toward growth, confidence, and lasting understanding using a thoughtful, flexible approach.
Common Core Alignment
Tang Math aligns seamlessly with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Teachers can instantly view all lessons tied to each grade-level standard and, through reverse links, identify which standards are addressed in any given lesson. This two-way alignment makes it easy to deliver focused, effective instruction-and gives teachers the confidence that every lesson is helping students meet key learning goals. Whether starting with a skill or a standard, our system ensures instruction is intentional, relevant, and easy to plan. It removes the guesswork, supports instructional coherence, and helps teachers use their time more efficiently and effectively.
Theoretical Foundations
Tang Math is built on the ideas of influential educators and researchers like Bruner, Piaget, Vygotsky, Dienes, Skemp, Dweck, and Polya. Their work on cognitive development, motivation, reasoning, and effective instruction informs our curriculum at every level. We combine these deep theoretical foundations with real-world teaching experience to create a program that truly works.
Concrete Pictorial Abstract
Our CPA model helps students connect concrete understanding to abstract thinking. We begin with hands-on tools like five frames, Base 10 blocks, and tangrams, then move to visual models and abstract problems. We've extended this approach with CP and PA stages to support critical transitions and deepen learning. It's a progression that builds meaning-not just memorization.
Exploration with a Growth Mindset
We start with curiosity. Tang Math lessons are built around exploration and discovery, encouraging students to make sense of problems before procedures are introduced. This structure supports a growth mindset by giving all students a way to enter the problem and persist through challenges. We believe in every child’s potential to grow-and we support that growth by designing lessons that promote curiosity, collaboration, and confidence. Students aren't just solving problems-they're developing perseverance, ownership, and a love for thinking deeply. When students are allowed to explore, they engage more fully, think more creatively, and build skills that last a lifetime.
Fluency with Purpose
We define fluency as the ability to solve problems accurately, efficiently, and flexibly-not just quickly. Automaticity comes from consistent, meaningful practice rooted in understanding. Drawing on the research of Baroody and Skemp, our CPA-based materials build number sense first, then reinforce it with targeted practice. Students don't just recall facts-they truly get them.
Support that Sticks
Even the best curriculum needs strong implementation. We support teachers with live PD, step-by-step guides, and an extensive library of on-demand videos. Greg Sr. also teaches live student lessons that model high-quality instruction. These sessions have reached over 2.5 million students-and the recordings continue to help teachers deliver powerful lessons every day.
The Future Is Bright
In 2024-25, Professor Brent Davis-Distinguished Research Chair in Mathematics Education at the University of Calgary-led an independent study of the Tang Math curriculum. His conclusion?
"Without qualification, Tang Math is the most thoughtfully developed and seamlessly integrated teaching-and-learning tool I have encountered in my 40-year career in mathematics education."