Announcing Project R³: A New Opportunity for OST System Leaders to Strengthen Math Confidence

Earlier this year, STEM Next published Factoring in Afterschool: A Critical Variable in America’s Math Strategy, a call to funders, policymakers, and field leaders to rethink how and where young people build mathematical confidence. The brief highlighted research demonstrating that afterschool and summer programs are one of the most powerful levers we have to change how youth engage with math.

Today, STEM Next is excited to share the next step to put this strategy into practice at scale. We are launching R³ (pronounced “R Cubed”), a new project designed to strengthen math relationships, relevance, and real-world application across the out-of-school-time (OST) field. 

This effort operationalizes the recommendations from our issue brief by partnering with OST system leaders who are ready to expand math confidence-building across their states or regions, and we are now inviting system-level organizations to apply to join this work.

Why R³ Matters Now

Math is more than a school subject. It’s a life skill that unlocks educational pathways, career options, economic mobility, and problem-solving abilities that young people need in their everyday lives. Yet with national math score declines accelerating, many youth are losing confidence long before they lose interest.

While in-school supports like tutoring and curriculum reform are critical, afterschool and summer programs offer something different and desperately needed: hands-on, real-world learning where young people can build confidence, try new approaches without fear of failure, and see math as relevant and useful.

What R³ Aims to Accomplish

Drawing from research from the Math Narrative Project and Stanford University, R³ is designed to shift how adults, youth, and communities experience math. The project focuses on five core goals:

1. Develop Positive Math Relationships: Strengthen the confidence and capacity of OST educators to facilitate productive math experiences with youth.
2. Increase Relevant Applications: Bring real-world, hands-on math into existing STEM and enrichment activities.
3. Disseminate Research-Based Toolkits: Equip practitioners with evidence-based strategies that make math approachable and meaningful.
4. Activate Peer Mentoring: Support youth-led models that build collaboration, identity, and confidence in math.
5. Build a Positive Narrative: Help communities see math as accessible, useful, and deeply connected to young people’s lives.

These goals mirror the recommendations in Factoring in Afterschool, and R³ creates the infrastructure to help afterschool learning systems deliver on them.

How R³ Works

R³ follows a multi-phase approach to scale math confidence-building across an entire ecosystem. Year 1 focuses on strengthening adult capacity through research-based toolkits, targeted professional development and coaching, site-level action planning, and data collection to track shifts in confidence and practice. In Years 2 and 3, partners extend this work to families and communities by piloting youth peer mentoring, sharing accessible family engagement resources, hosting math-centered events and workshops, building real-world math partnerships, and continuing data collection to understand broader outcomes. Together, these phases create a clear pathway to shift math mindsets at scale.