Franklin Lakes, a suburb about 30 miles northwest of New York City, is one of dozens of districts, from Scarsdale, N.Y., to Lexington, Ky., that in recent years have adopted Singapore math, as it is called, amid growing concerns that too many U.S. students lack the higher-order math skills called for in a global economy. For decades, efforts to improve math skills have driven schools to embrace one math program after another, abandoning a program when it does not work and moving on to something purportedly better. Singapore math might be a fad, too, but supporters say it seems to address one of the difficulties in teaching math: All children learn differently. In contrast to the most common math programs in the United States, Singapore math devotes more time to fewer topics to ensure that children master the material through detailed instruction, questions, problem solving, and visual and hands-on aids like blocks, cards and bar charts. Ideally, they do not move on until they have learned a topic thoroughly. Singapore math was developed by the country's Ministry of Education nearly 30 years ago, and the textbooks have been imported to the United States for more than a decade. The earliest adopters were home-school parents and a small number of schools that had heard about it through word of mouth. Today, it can be found in neighborhood schools like Public School 132 in Brooklyn, which serves mostly poor and minority children, and elite schools, including Hunter College Elementary School -- a public school for gifted children in Manhattan -- and the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, a private school attended by President Barack Obama's daughters. The books and materials cost an average of $40 to $52 per student. As with other math programs, workbooks might be replaced from year to year. Training teachers can be expensive, though. When the Scarsdale district switched to Singapore math at its elementary schools in 2008, it spent $121,000 on the 'Primary Mathematics' books and $24,632 for teachers' materials. Bill Jackson, one of Scarsdale's new math coaches, scribbled notes the other day as he watched a fourth-grade math class. For nearly an hour, the students pored over a single number: 82,566 (the seats in New Meadowlands Stadium, where the New York Giants and New York Jets play football). The class built a mini-version of the stadium with chips on a laminated mat, diagramed it on a smart board and, finally, solved written questions. Jackson said that students moved through a three-step learning process: concrete, pictorial, abstract. U.S. math programs, he said, typically skip the middle step and lose students when making the jump from concrete (chips) to abstract (questions). Jackson began experimenting with Singapore math while teaching at School 2 in Paterson, N.J., in 2000. Test scores were mixed, and the school replaced it four years later. Despite the replacement, Jackson continued to use it when he could. 'I learned more math from Singapore math than I ever did in high school or college,' he said. 