Math Education in U.S. Schools

Paper Summary:

The paper brings statistics to support the claim that children are not being given sufficient math skills in their elementary education. The writer illustrates this argument with a history of the problem, then compares different strategies that have been formulated to reconcile the insufficient teaching methods that have previously been employed. The paper concludes with activities that can also aid learning at the elementary level.

From the Paper:

"More recent data shows that math and science teaching still fails to reach the students at the elementary level. There have been some improvements, and fourth graders today actually do quite well in science compared with their peers around the world, scoring significantly better than 19 of the 26 countries that participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which is much better than U.S. fourth graders did in the previous study, conducted four years before. However, the performance of U.S. students sags drastically by the eighth grade, dropping to 12th place. The picture is even worse by the end of high school, for American high school seniors are among the industrial nations' poorest performers in both science and math, coming in ahead of only Cyprus and South Africa. Even the brightest U.S. students, meaning those taking advanced math and physics, did poorly against top students from other nations--they beat only Austria in advanced math while ranking dead last in physics (Fischer & Loughran, 1998, 92)."

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