➗ Math apps and platforms · 🏫 Classroom tools
Math in Focus: Singapore Math
By HMH (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), with Marshall Cavendish Education. Visit Math in Focus: Singapore Math
Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.
Math in Focus is the U.S. edition of a Singapore math curriculum for kindergarten through grade 8, sold to schools by HMH. Children move from hands-on objects to pictures to numbers, with bar models for word problems. Schools get print books, manipulatives, assessments and digital lessons on HMH's Ed platform, and can pair it with HMH's adaptive Waggle practice. Families usually meet it as their school's math program and see the homework and online practice.
Our take: Good news if your school uses it; parents helping at home should learn the bar-model approach, and families shopping on their own will find it hard to buy.
| Ages it suits | grades K-8 (about 5-14) |
|---|---|
| What its terms say about age | HMH's terms set no age. Its PreK-12 products privacy policy says students reach the platform through a school, and the school gives the COPPA consent for students under 13 when it subscribes. (terms) |
| Price | Through schools. School pricing, not public (Oct 2026). |
| Works on | Web |
| Account | A school account |
| Ads | None |
| In-app purchases | None |
| The AI in it | HMH offers AI tools for teachers on its Ed platform; the core curriculum is not an AI tutor. |
What's good
- Clear concrete-to-abstract method with bar models
- Coherent K-8 sequence
- Randomized trial behind it
- Student data limited to school purposes
Watch for
- Only through schools; price not public
- Parents may find bar-model methods unfamiliar
- Online pieces depend on HMH's platform and school login
- Main trial was publisher-funded
Data and privacy
HMH's PreK-12 policy says it uses student data only for school purposes, does not use it for targeted advertising, and does not use personal information to train generalized AI models; de-identified data may go to third-party AI tools for scoring and feedback. It states COPPA and FERPA compliance. Read the privacy policy.
Does it work?
A one-year randomized trial in 22 grade 3-5 classrooms in Clark County, Nevada (2011-12), run by Empirical Education for the publisher, reported gains in problem solving and conceptual understanding. It is third-party but publisher-commissioned and over a decade old.
In the Big Index
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Where these facts come from
- https://www.hmhco.com/programs/math-in-focus
- https://www.hmhco.com/research/math-in-focus-rct-grades-35
- https://www.hmhco.com/policy/terms
- https://www.hmhco.com/policy/privacy-policy
- https://www.hmhco.com/policy/prek-12-products-privacy-policy
Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.