Based on those answers, the researchers created a “math teaching anxiety” score for over 3,000 educators who taught math in grades three through eight. Students with disabilities, low-achieving students, and students from lower-income families were more likely to have such teachers. Then the researchers asked the next obvious question: Do students learn less when they’re taught by anxious math teachers? The harm could grow if students had multiple anxious math teachers in a row, the study speculated. Teachers who lacked confidence teaching math had correctly self-diagnosed their own weakness.