New math results on the most important nationwide math test show only 39 percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eight graders scored at or above the proficient level. Most students do not have the knowledge and skills commensurate with their grade level.
These results aren’t surprising considering the fact that many U.S. schools are teaching reform math instead of traditional math.
The Washington Post published an article this week about reform math being taught in a Virginia high school:
The teenagers in Stephanie Nichols’s algebra class have nothing on her blank stare. And they can’t even come close to her best confused expression: eyebrows furrowed, mouth frowning, a flash of ditziness framed by a blond bob.
“Sorry if I’m the slow kid,” she said, slowly, during a lesson on slope. “I don’t get it.” As students calculated problems on the board, she interrupted, “I’m really lost. . . . How did you do that?” Occasionally, she was more blunt: “Huh?”
Nichols’s vacant looks and incessant questions put the students at Arlington County’s Washington-Lee High School in the uncomfortable position of being the math teacher, explaining how the numbers on the white board relate to each other, how algebra actually works.
Like encouraging men to elaborate about their feelings or getting couples to come clean about their money habits, engaging teenagers in open-ended conversations about math is an uncomfortable challenge.
It’s no wonder we’re falling behing the world in math; we place more value on the thinking process that leads to any answer than on basic computation skills and algorithms that lead to the correct answer. I wrote about this in a recent post.
Here’s what’s needed to raise U.S. math scores:
- Replace reform math with traditional math.
- Replace textbooks that use the “spiral” approach with textbooks that teach for mastery.
- Improve teachers’ knowledge of math.