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The Nation's Pulse
Bad Math
American students are getting worse in math at a time when science and math skills are essential even in blue-collar jobs.
America’s 15-year-olds ranked 25th in among nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on the 2009 PISA test of international student achievement. That ranking, however, is being kind. The score for the average American high school freshmen was 117 points behind the average for their peers in Shanghai and 75 points behind 15-year-olds in Singapore, the top-rated nation outside of China in math.
Sadly, this isn’t surprising. Thirty-six percent of high school seniors in 11 states scored Below Basic in math on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s exam of student achievement; one out of every three students couldn’t answer such questions as “Which of the following expressions is NOT equivalent to (a + b) (x + y) ?” or perform Boolean Algebra. One out of every four eighth-graders in the entire country is mathematically illiterate.
If you wonder why American companies spend billions to buy H1-B visas for foreign talent, why India is now the leading outsourcing destination, or why the percentage of U.S. doctorates in engineering awarded to foreign students has increased from 47 percent to 57 percent between 1989 and 2009, the blame lies largely with the woeful math proficiency of American students. Far too many kids, no matter their racial or economic background, are flunking math in an age in which strong math and science skills are critical in even high-paying blue-collar jobs.
The low quality of math instruction in the nation’s public schools, a decades-long battle over how math should be taught, and the general belief among educators that math is only important for some to learn are partly to blame for this problem. The biggest culprit of all lies with the leading symptom of the nation’s educational crisis: Illiteracy. The inability to read becomes even more problematic for students in higher-level math work, which includes word problems and the ability to think through abstract concepts, as well as handle basic computations and spatial concepts.
Prompting the angst this time around are the latest PISA scores released this past November; the results came a month after Harvard University released a report that showed that just six percent of American 8th-graders would have performed math at advanced levels of proficiency on PISA and the Trends in International Math and Science Study. The woeful performances have once again sparked the battle between the nation’s school reform movement and defenders of traditional public education — as well as given birth to a string of inane articles over whether Chinese mothers (both in America and overseas) and their kids are more driven than their native American counterparts.
But the data — along with news released this week by the U.S. Department of Education that two out of every five American high school seniors scored Below Basic on the science portion of NAEP— is a sobering reminder that the nation’s education problems are deeper than debates over “Tiger Moms.”
Foreign-born scientists account for over 40 percent of all science and technology staffers on university campuses — the leading centers for training future physicists and engineers — double the percentage three decades ago, according to the National Science Foundation. Foreign-born engineers and scientists also account for a quarter of all college-educated employees in the tech field (based on 2003 data, the last period available). Half of all of America’s foreign-born scientists and engineers are from India, China, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, nations that are now major competitors with the United States in the global economy.
This dependence on foreign scientists — an example of sorts of comparative advantage — has proven to be beneficial to the world (including America) in terms of stemming wars and in bolstering global economic growth that stems poverty. But it is also a problem for America at a time when its national debt and high corporate tax rates hinder its competitive advantage.
Math is a critical element in even high-skilled blue-collar jobs; welders, for example, need trigonometry skills for sophisticated metal work. Young men and women with strong math skills will likely end up in jobs that have average annual salaries of $70,600 (or greater than the nation’s median household income of $51,425). More importantly, math plays a critical role in understanding abstract concepts that often come up in business and economics. A student with a working understanding of, say, algebra, will also be able to understand why the Laffer Curve matters in discussions about tax cuts.
As with so much of America’s education crisis, the problem lies with teaching and curriculum. The highly skilled math students who could become teachers aren’t likely to join a profession in which performance-based pay is eschewed for degree- and seniority-based compensation; with prized skills, they earn more and gain greater job satisfaction in the tech sector. This leaves the nation’s classrooms to be staffed by aspiring teachers who are not as likely to have strong competency in math and even less likely to be well trained to do so. Two out of 63 university school of education elementary math programs surveyed by the National Council of Teacher Quality met or exceeded standards for training math teachers; just 13 percent of 77 education schools surveyed by NCTQ two years ago had high quality math programs.
The fact that many teachers and principals think of math as something that only some kids can learn — even though the rigors of reading instruction are just as difficult to master — also hampers efforts at math instruction. Kindergarten teachers, for example, ignore the need to show kids that numbers represents quantities. As a result, kids fall behind early and often. As teaching guru Steve Peha points out in a recent piece on reforming math instruction, teachers seem to think that “reading… is an aptitude” while “math is an attitude.”
Decades of battles over how math should be taught in school has also exacerbated the problem. During the 1960s, states embraced New Math — which emphasized introducing kids to abstract concepts such as set theory (or collection of objects) — forgetting that kids must first learn basic computations in order to achieve mastery. Since then, math traditionalists and more experimental teachers have battled over whether to move away from traditional arithmetic to such novel ideas as using real-life examples (like using marshmallows in instruction) in math instruction. Not even the effort to enact Common Core State Standards (and replace the wide array of math standards that exist across all 50 states with one nationalized curriculum) has fully avoided the math wars.
Even today, school districts use math textbooks and curricula of dubious quality. Only one out of 63 elementary math programs surveyed by the U.S. Department of Education has been rated as having “potentially positive” effects on student achievement; even that rating is based on just one study that met the agency’s stringent research standards.
But solving the nation’s math problem may require tackling the leading symptom of the nation’s education crisis: Low levels of literacy and reading comprehension. The very skills involved in reading (including understanding abstract concepts) are also involved in more-complex mathematics including word problems and algebra. Poor readers tend to do poorly in math. But America’s public schools are struggling as mightily in teaching kids reading as they are in arithmetic. One out of every three American fourth-graders read Below Basic proficiency on the 2009 NAEP.
As with reading, it will be up to parents, relatives and other adults to start their own math classes and teach kids multiplication and algebra themselves. And ask some tough questions of their schools about what they are being taught.
About the Author
RiShawn Biddle the editor of Dropout Nation , is co-author of A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. He can be followed at Twitter.com/dropoutnation.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (84) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 1.26.11 @ 6:51AM
People you don't know even the half of it. I work for a company that puts in commercial steam and cooling systems in whole buildings.
I would have never believed this if I had not seen it with my own eyes.
Our project superintendents were complaining that many of the young new hires couldn't read a ruler, or read the analog clock that each job site has.
I knew schools have cut the trades out of the curriculum, but it appears that they have cut math as well.
USSAlabama| 1.26.11 @ 10:23AM
They *cannot* read analog clocks, or cursive writing. Nor can they write in cursive.
My own children.
I took the oldest out of our highly ranked school system for home schooling.
Tina B| 1.26.11 @ 7:06AM
As a middle school math teacher I agree with Mr. Biddle, who can fault his data? I encountered an 8th grade boy from Gyana yeaterday, no times tables memorized. He had no formal schooling and came here in 6th. Got in with the wrong crowd and got expelled. Learned how to be a thug in alternative school, and returned to traditional school as a wanna be thug. I am supposed to help diagnose his math "problem". No multiplicative understanding at all. Therefore I/we cannot teach him our textbook curriculum, which I avoid most of the time and relace with my 25 years of experience and some great technology to keep it moving and fresh. And interactive as possible with 11 to 15 year-olds who generally don't want to learn. I am nearing retirement so I won't be around to clean up this mess but God bless those who will. Semper Fi. And I'll stick around as long as I feel I am helping this wonderful country to get ahead.
Vern Crisler | 1.26.11 @ 8:35PM
That's very sad Tina. My experience is that I was never interested in math until I took a course in symbolic logic. Perhaps, if children started with word-logic and symbolic-logic, they might find math more interesting in later grades.
LaToniya A Jones | 2.5.11 @ 11:33AM
@Vern The patterns in word-logic and symbolic-logic matter! Children make meaningful math connections when their interests and content are woven into engaging activities.
Stuart Koehl| 1.26.11 @ 7:14AM
I keep reading that higher math skills are now required for blue collar jobs, but I just don't see it. In most industries, manufacturing is being roboticized and trouble-shooting and repair rely heavily on computerized diagonostics and Built-In Test Equipment (BITE). What this means in practice is the equipment tells the technician what to do. My example (hands on) from military equipment is a switch to two-level maintenance: field level and depot level. In the field, the technician either puts the system in diagnostic mode with BITE, or plugs in an external diagnostic computer. The computer then runs a full battery of tests and isolates the fault to a particular "Line Replaceable Unit" (LRU), normally either a circuit board or discrete black box. The technician then pulls the LRU and puts in a new one, boxes up the broken one and sends it back to the depot, where a small number of skilled technicians either fix it or break it up for components).
On the production line, workers increasingly are robot tenders: they make sure sufficient raw materials go into the system, check to make sure the robots are working properly, and check the output at the end of the line. Some say this requires greater knowledge of statistical processes and other forms of math, but again, I don't see that. Put simply, a handful of engineers set up the line, input the tolerances and the norms and then the line worker just watches his computer monitor to make sure everything is running as programmed. And when they don't, those robots are just as chock full of BITE as any car, truck, airplane or other piece of complex machinery.
And since one robot, on the average, replaces four assembly line workers (a ratio that keeps increasing), we will need far fewer workers even with increased output in the future. So there really isn't much need for highly skilled, mathematically savvy workers in the manufacturing sector.
What we do need is more skilled craftsmen--people who work with their hands in basic basic trades: plumbers, carpenters, woodworkers, electricians--and the host of people doing those "Dirty Jobs" that Mike Rowe highlights so well. These people make far more than any of the assembly line workers in the modern robotic factory. And they have to be a lot smarter and more versatile, too.
What they don't have to be is "mathematically sophisticated". Certainly they need to have mastery of basic arithmetic, but higher math hardly comes into the picture, and when it does, they'll have all sorts of electronic aids to help them along.
So, rather than trying to cram advanced algebra, trigonometry, statistics and calculus into minds that have neither the ability nor inclination to master them, work on training those people in a craft that will always be in demand, that provides a physical and mental challenge, pays well, but does not have pretensions of turning every blue collar job into a white collar surrogate.
Appleby| 1.26.11 @ 7:31AM
When I was in my mid-twenties I could diagnose the problems with my own car and fix them myself; when I was a kid, anybody could diagnose a problem with their teevee and a trip to the grocery store for new tubes could fix it.
Today even the *mechanics* cannot diagnose with certainty what is wrong with the car, and we just dump the teevee in a landfill and buy another one.
How is this an improvement?
John - TMF| 1.26.11 @ 10:47AM
The truth is that advanced mathematics is not necessary for most people. It often presents a tragic waste of time and energy. That effort and opportunity could be better spent learning a more relevant subject.
1. Most human beings have a decent capability to understand basic Mathematics (probably Algebra 1 and Geometry) beyond that level time and effort is a fundamental waste for them. They might be able to produce some form of passing grade upon immediate testing after intensive study, but the need for the discipline wanes, and the knowledge fades. It just is not important to know beyond the immediate demand to satisfy someone's standards.
2. Very few job functions, professions, skills, or activities require much math at all. Most people can operate quite nicely with basic arithmetic. Computer Operations, database management, hardware and even software development do not require much in the way of math skills. Carpenters use basic arithmetic functions. Plumbers are often trained with templates, real world associations, and rules instead of mathematical and algebraic formulas. (Yes you might be talking about slopes, and even derivative calculus for flows in various pipe diameters and lengths, but most of those concepts were worked out by the trade long before Leibnitz was ever applied.
3. Stuart points out some other interesting facts. Yes there needs to be a certain mathematical skill in making the tools and designing the components, but the technician doesn’t build, and certainly doesn’t design. He/She will leverage that knowledge and apply their own set of skills to implement the technology. There is no need to know how to build it to use it.
The fundamental changes in education need to be:
STOP trying to make everyone a degreed engineer. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, machinists, computer operators, programmers, and many other jobs have almost no need for the wasted time, money, and effort in getting a college degree. Their secondary educations not need to prepare them to go to college. They should be prepared to work in whatever trade their talents allow.
STOP trying to teach EVERTHING. Our schools deluge students with ever more bewildering and energy sapping extraneous information. No one should advance a level unless the current level of knowledge is reasonably understood (Mastery is not going to happen… most people are functional, not brilliant.)
STOP educating children who no longer have neither the need nor desire to be further educated. My grandfather ran moderately successful businesses throughout most of his ninety years on this planet. He stopped formal schooling, as did most of his peers, in the 6th grade. He showed some aptitude, and was sent to 7th and 8th grade in the City’s business school where he learned to run a ledger, handle accounts payable and receivable… purchase ordering, cash management, etc., all the things necessary to run a business except experience. He was actually brilliant at math, my father taught his father-in-law basic Algebra, then some advanced math. My grandfather eventually learned how to work partial integration problems. He just never needed it to run his ice cream and burger business. He was never ashamed and never unhappy with his choices. He was not atypical.
If we want to fix education, we need to correct who we educate. We need to address what we teach, the volume at which we teach, and the time we take to teach. We need to stop pigeonholing. Above all we need to stop elevating one type of knowledge or intellect over another type. Mathematics is but one intellectual discipline. Science is but another. Neither holds a more or less important place over a Literature, History, or any other “Liberal Art”.
Of course, we actually already knew that. It is the way people were taught in eons past. Only now do our hubris ridden intellectual elites think that they can change basic human nature. It just goes with everything else they think that they can “change” I suppose.
Regards,
TMF
John - TMF| 1.26.11 @ 11:00AM
"...who no longer have neither the need nor desire to be further educated.."
Maybe reteach proofreading... ;-)
Should be "...who have neither the need nor desire to be further educated.."
Rob| 1.26.11 @ 7:44PM
I agree with what you are saying. I am a 43 year old third generation American who is really good at math. I love mathematics. I have a bachelors degree in Business / Information Systems.
When I got out of high school in 1986, I went to work on the assembly line at Chrysler instead of going to party college. I continued to learn on my own like college prep schools teach one to do. I taught myself computer programming, among other things, just so I could apply my favorite subject, math, in a useful way. I made my own financial reporting program. I never could advance my career working for Chrysler. There just did not seem to be any demand for anyone with my kind of skills or passion. But there did seem to be a need for degreed people. Took me almost 5 years to get a bachelor of science degree with duel majors of business / information systems. Chrysler went under and I gave up on Chrysler. Now I'm a janitor.
I read all about how bad American students are at math and science. I read all about how the situation grows worse each decade. I read about how populations from other countries are so much better at Math and Science. I read about all the idiotic decisions made in finance and politics concerning finance (like the Chicago mayor telling the aldermen how they need to lease the parking meters out for 75 years and do it ASAP while interest rates are low. If they were going to use the interest on the money they got for leasing the parking meters, wouldn't they want to wait until interest rates were higher?) So here I am, living in a country run and managed largely by "mathematically challenged" people on the behalf of thieves of all levels, reading all about how my skills are so badly needed in the country and the best I can do for a career is be a toilet scrubber while a bunch of foreigners are handed control of America. I see it first hand and it isn't just some isolated case of someone falling through the cracks. It's blatantly obvious what is going on. So how can anyone expect American children to have any incentive at all to do well in any subject in school when the values in American society clearly demonstrate that doing well in academics gets one nowhere?
Cro-Magnon| 1.28.11 @ 10:54AM
Rob. Your story is very sad. No way a guy with your professed love of math should be scrubbing toilets. I think you need to get the heck out of Detroit/Flint or whatever Michigan hell hole you reside in.
For me, math was a nice meal ticket....engineering degree...MBA...bond trading...the American dream. That same route is available more than ever to whatever home grown math talent can survive our mediocre educational system.
LaToniya A Jones | 2.5.11 @ 11:41AM
Hi Rob! We need individuals like you in the classroom and out-of-school learning programs to help prepare our young people. Most of them want to learn but haven't experienced or been given "real-world" examples of math in action. BTW we are in the same state and alums in the same year!
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 7:51PM
Yes. See Deb below.
Vern Crisler | 1.26.11 @ 8:48PM
John, I agree that most people don't need advanced mathematics to do their jobs.
However, you are missing an important point. Failure to teach mathematics to children places severe limits on the type of work they can do in the future. IOW, it kills their opportunities.
There should be a healthy balance in all subjects during K-12, but math and science need to be emphasized. Children will do a lot to avoid hard subjects, but this is precisely why such subjects should be emphasized.
We are all born slackers, and if we had our choice, we'd quit school in first grade the moment it gets hard -- and go out and play all day.
Language instruction is very similar to mathematics, in that it's hard, which is another reason it should be emphasized.
Why do we need to teach all these seemingly irrelevant subjects? Because you open up the future for each child who learns them, and you close the future for those children who never learn them.
Education is always for the future, but what sort of future are we providing for our children?
Deb| 1.26.11 @ 8:34AM
The problem with this line of thinking is not that the kids do not know the higher level math, it is the fact that they do not know BASIC math well. I've seen kids in 6th grade counting on their fingers because they have not yet memorized the basic math facts.
AndaO| 1.26.11 @ 11:10AM
Deb-
you are so right. It isn't the advanced math that is lacking. It is BASIC math: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Without these four basics, a student can NOT advance.
Wayne | 1.26.11 @ 12:21PM
The skill is lacking because it is lacking in the teacher. Math skills need diagnosis. I was tutoring a boy who could not add and carry and or course multiply. I saw him using his fingers to "count up", so I had him sit on his hands. He was off constantly when adding two numbers, not just once in a while, so I had him verbalize his "counting up". He would start counting from 0 rather than 1. Yet he was always 1 off. So I fixed this, had him memorize addition up to 9 + 9, and in a few weeks taught him multiplication and addition.
There was NOTHING wrong with him. One of his skills was wrong, and since arithmetic builds upon itself, it threw everything off.
So, here was a 10 year old, who had the capacity to do math, yet he was at a 6 year old level and labeled a "slow learner". The slow learners were his teachers. They were too incompetent or too lazy to diagnose his problems and used a label to excuse their own laziness.
LaToniya A Jones | 2.5.11 @ 11:47AM
Wayne you are so on it! As noted in this article, teacher preparation institutions must re-think/re-order their programs for better teaching and learning experiences. My friends who are elementary teachers with a passion for math or minor in mathematics education share far better achievement levels in math. I am excited about the reports of states, districts, and schools around the country to improve preparation and continuing education opportunities for elementary teachers.
Sean| 1.26.11 @ 12:33PM
You are right. Schools have gone away from rote memory of math facts, or any facts at all really. They emphasize critical thinking, which is really uninformed opinion without any basic knowledge of facts. So you will see high school students in Algebra and Geometry struggle with simple multiplication and division.
I think the problem stems from those in charge of education in America. Teachers on average were some of the worst performing students themselves. They have the lowest test scores of all college students. They have no love of memorizing dates, events, times tables, phonetics, ect.
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 7:57PM
Yes. Kids do not need to go to school at three and they do not need calculus at seven. The great twentieth century inventions and advancements were made by people who didn't go to kindergarten and the country advanced mightily on the backs of people who didn't get past eighth grade but could read and write, sometimes beautifully, and cipher. Parents should threaten to burn down schools that teach diversity, environmental whackoism and multiculturalism. College should be for rich people and the gifted.
Dan Hirsch| 1.26.11 @ 10:30AM
Stuart;
It is disappointing to read that because some people cannot easily or readily grasp a complicated concept they should be given up on.
I remember many times in my education when I had to struggle to grasp complicated concepts. A lot of physics and engineering escaped me. I battled hard to understand fluid mechanics and never fully convinced my professor that I did finally get it. But years later, when I was applying those lessons in the real world, I understood that stuff better than the former A students around me.
What's missing is the desire to learn. Educators all talk about competing with video games and media for students' attention. Forget about it. Make school hard and those who figure out that they need to learn will do so. They will build the robotic systems and maintain them when the diagnostics algorithms fail. The students who'd rather take it easy can serve the machines. Please school teachers, stop making the smarter kids teach the slower ones! Teach them more, harder stuff. Oh yea, unions don't permit that.
Voila that's your education problem - soft hearted, liberal, unionized teachers...
Negro X | 1.26.11 @ 5:35PM
Mr. Koehl,
You are quite wrong, a carpenter or machinist needs trigonometry. Electricans need to be well versed in electrically oriented math, it's all fun and games till your house burns because someone couldn't figure the electrical load requirements.
Plumbers need math in order to figure pressure and volume criteria. You need to actually get out and see what really goes on in industry.
I know people who have engineering calculators but have no clue as to what the those "little weird sign thingys" on the button mean.
Wayne | 1.28.11 @ 6:16PM
You know, my father was a sheet metal worker with an 8th grade education. After he died I looked at one of his papers. It was a list of proportions and angles. He had constructed on his own a Trig Table. More important for most people is not so much knowing math but thinking like a mathematician.
Bob K.| 1.26.11 @ 7:09PM
Good points.
How much math do you need to work at Wal-Mart and what else is left of what passes for American business if you aren't at the checkout counter?
Cro-Magnon| 1.28.11 @ 10:44AM
If you don't know basic math facts, why would you expect to be working anywhere other than Wal-Mart?
j| 1.27.11 @ 3:34AM
Mr. Koehl,
I'm afraid you are being far to sensible.
That was the way of the past. That was the way American schools were run forty years ago when we led the world in academics.
Today, many, if not most school systems have removed shop and general education diplomas. That is somehow perceived as an inferior education and now all children are placed on the college tract and thrown into curricula with calculus and such when, as you said, they have neither the inclination nor the ability to master.
They are bored. They become disruptive or despondent , and are lost.
And they are being cheated out of the ability to develope their talents in an academic climate suited to their natural inclinations and abilities.
Policy makers need to consider men such as Carnegie and Ford and Edison. None of these men had college degrees. They were tinkerers and doers. I'd say they did pretty damn good, too.
Appleby| 1.26.11 @ 7:14AM
Around here, parents are shrieking that homework interferes with *family time* (that is, with tweeting, updating their facebook pages, and watching Jersey Shore) and should be ELIMINATED. And anybody who thinks tweeting is improving reading skills has not tried to talk with someone whose head is buried in a two inch screen, day and night, winter and summer, waking and sleeping.
The last generation that reads is now grandparents. It is up to us old folks to try to teach our grandkids and great-grandkids the joy of literacy, including shutting off Baby TV and Dora the Explorer -- and picking up good books ourselves and buying them for the home. Not trying to find modern trash that *the kids will read* -- this from the generation that hits the barricades if someone suggests feeding their kids what THEY WANT to eat --but buying books that are GOOD for them to read, and reading those books to them. Then talking about what they read and thereby teaching them critical thinking.
I am disnumeric, that is I have the same problems with numbers that dyslexics have with letters -- and I have discovered that calculators are only of limited value in overcoming this problem; that is, if I recognize that the answer I got is not within the realm of possibility, which is fairly frequently, I can go back and punch the buttons more slowly and see if I can get the right answer the next time. I have no problem with algebra -- it is arithmetic I cannot do. In the same way I have a quiet laugh as I read the increasingly frequent gaffes in newspapers and magazines as people increasingly rely on spell-check, which does not tell you that your spelling is fine, but you have used the wrong word.
There are at least two generations of ignorance between the Sputnik Generation and the Tweetheads. That is a substantial bridge to cross, and its only the grandparents and great-grandparents who can help. Rally the Boomers and see what happens. Good luck.
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 8:00PM
Set fire to the US Department of Education.
Sean| 1.26.11 @ 8:17AM
Break the math scores down by race and then compare American's racial counterparts to the rest of the world. Blacks to Africans, whites to Europeans, and Latin Americans to Latin America. Read Pat's article below.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40846
PJ| 1.26.11 @ 10:49AM
I have heard of this type of analysis before & it makes plenty of sense.
My school district's scores were going up every yr until there was a huge influx of poor, immigrant Hispanic children entering the public schools. (Mexico & other Central & South American countries have class-centered societies & do not educate their poor.) Standardized scores immediately went down in language arts & math. Recently, it dawned on my district's teachers & administrators that the bilingual immigrant children were not using English at home for reinforcement. They were able to conclude this with some help from those standardized tests that were forced upon them by The No Child Left Behind Act.
Happily to write the teachers are going back to some of the basics: reading stories out loud to the children up to middle school age, teaching grammar & phonics & forcing the kids to memorize math tables.
As a society, as long as we are able to assimilate the immigrants, we'll be fine in the long run.
Deb| 1.26.11 @ 8:24AM
A good textbook for math: Saxon.
Teach phonics, read aloud great literature to students, and drill basic math facts.
Understanding math requires thinking. Thinking is hard work.
Daniel| 1.26.11 @ 8:38AM
Saxon Math is a GREAT method of math instruction. It boggles the mind that such a simple, common-sense and effective method of teaching the most important of skills is only taught to home schoolers and a few parochial schools in this country. Here in the People's Republic of New Jersey, our children are still being subjected to the child abuse known as "Everyday Math" which accomplishes little except leaving the children confused, angry and unable to complete even the simplest computational tasks. Every night at our kitchen table, I have to tell my kids to ignore the absurd methods that their teachers are doling out and to do their math problems using the methods that I teach instead. And unlike Everyday Math, I don't ask my kids to write an essay explaining "how I solved the problem" but rather I teach them to solve problems in the first place.
Vern Crisler | 1.26.11 @ 8:56PM
I've read various reviews of the Saxon books. Not everyone seems to agree that they are that good at teaching math.
SeattleBred| 1.26.11 @ 2:17PM
Miss Deb;
I think you've touched on the crux of the matter. PubEd has been trying for too long to make learning fun. Our late father (aero eng, Boeing Co., 35 yrs) use to tell us, "Learning is hard work, and not necessarily fun. Let's do it." My siblings and I still chuckle about it.
SeattleBred| 1.26.11 @ 2:27PM
I'm a poor editor; mea culpa.
Occam's Tool| 1.26.11 @ 8:25AM
Dear Sean:
Yes, the problem is cultural. What are we going to do about it in the face of the Dhimmicrats?
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 8:02PM
Burn down the US Department of Education.
WRTolkas| 1.26.11 @ 8:36AM
Dear Readers,
I am an electrical engineer with four children and five grandchildren. I can tell you exactly why, beyond a doubt in my mind, today's children are horrid in mathematics and science:
1. Too much technology wasting their time.
2. Hollywood and MSM infecting their brains.
(The last movie illustrating the work of engineering which made engineers heroes was Apollo 13.)
3. Their parents are not much smarter than they are.
4. Parents not taking the time to teach at home or even try.
Let me tell you the secret of learning Mathematics:
DO MATHEMATICS. The brain is like a muscle - it needs exercise.
By G_d, by the time my kids left the high school, they could dabble in calculus. Daughter #1 is an elementary school teacher, Daughter #2 is a civil engineer working in a nuclear power plant, Son #1 is at Michigan Tech sophomore learning geological engineering, and Daughter #3 is a freshman in college to be a ER nurse. What the high school didn't teach I did. I don't fault the school. Remember that boondoggle that George the incompetent and Kennedy the Hero of Chappaquiddick teamed together to force on the States: No Child Left Behind? That I blame.
So my advise, is turn off the TV, turn off the laptop, turn off the IPhone, close the latest Twilight book, and get out the math book. And finally, get the federal government out of our local schools.
Sorry for the early morning rant. This is a sore spot that makes me see red.
USSAlabama| 1.26.11 @ 10:26AM
Hear, hear!
Beer (f.m.h.)| 1.26.11 @ 11:46AM
This makes sense to me. I think you're on to something if we really do intend to improve the situation.
JLRLEE| 1.27.11 @ 11:17AM
I agree with WR. We need to get rid of the FEDERAL department of education. They add nothing of value to educating our children.
The Big E| 1.26.11 @ 9:12AM
My daughter, who is currently in the fifth grade, is very good at math. However, her talent in the subject has come in spite of the public school system more than because of it.
Every year, we've had to push her teachers to challenge her in math. Some, because they've had the attitude that she was a girl, and therefore would be better at reading. But most of the time, we have had to ride her teachers because they spend their time focusing on the kids who are struggling so that they can get as many as possible to pass the mandated EOG test. The result is that my daughter, and any other child who excels in math, spends most of their time in class reviewing things they already know, rather than being taught things that are new. It's as if the minimum has become the standard, get past that point, and you're on your own.
I know that, to some, my complaint may sound selfish, or even mean. Please understand, I have no problem with school systems devoting resources to students who are struggling. Certainly if my child fell into that category, I would be fighting tooth and nail for that help as well. But it seems to me that we should also devote resources to insuring that those who can excel are given the opportunity to do so.
In my daughter's case, she is fortunate that her father grew up loving numbers as much as she does, and I have taken over a large part of her math education - simply because I was willing to answer the questions her teachers would not. She learned long division, fractions, decimals, and basic algebra from me years before it was taught in her class, along with the concept that understanding the relationships between numbers can be more important than the numbers themselves. I know other students in her class who are not so fortunate - they are good at math, but their parents, or more often then not, their parent, was not. They're left to the whims of a system which seems to make every effort to insure that every student achieves mediocrity - and nothing more.
WRTolkas| 1.26.11 @ 9:40AM
Dear The Big E,
That mediocrity is one result of No Child Left Behind.
The Big E| 1.26.11 @ 12:33PM
Absolutely. NCLB is an utter disaster. Had GWB been as conservative as he claimed he never, and I mean NEVER, gone along with that piece of crap.
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 8:03PM
If no child can be left behind, then no child will get very far.
Ned| 1.26.11 @ 10:46AM
Big E - pull your child out of public school, or if you can't handle that, get her additional outside math instruction. Our oldest completed all of his high school math after school at a private tutoring agency - the event that finally triggered that was when his new math "teacher" (the third in that class in six weeks) admitted that she didn't understand anything she was doing, and when challenged in class about it by a student, threw a stapler at him!
Once you get the child out of the clutches of the idiots at the Teacher's Union, push her hard. You should have her doing calculus by her Junior year in high school - not a lot, but getting started, and she should be conversant with it by graduation. When she gets to college, if the degree she selects doesn't include calculus, you can pretty well bet that that program isn't worth taking.
The Big E| 1.26.11 @ 12:27PM
Pulling a child out of public school is not such a palatable option where I live. We have no private or parochial schools in our area. The last one shut down after the 2008 school year because no one could afford the tuition. If we put her in private school, we would have to send her away to board, and we're not going to do that.
Likewise, for personal reasons which I will not go into here, homeschooling is not really an option for us.
What we are doing is viewing the public school "education" as a base upon which we build. Our daughter has learned not only a lot of math from me, but she has also learned history, reading comprehension, and basic logic from either myself or her mother. Fortunately, the combination has worked well for her.
WRTolkas| 1.26.11 @ 5:32PM
Dear The Big E,
You are helping your child the same way I helped my children. I still had them in the public school system and I filled in the gaps in history, science, English, and math. Sounds like you are accomplishing the same. My daughter had a math/science homework assignment that would have consumed about an hour of her time. I taught her a way to find the exact answer in minutes then explained in about a half-an-hour the physics behind what I taught. As she left I told her that by the way, you just had your first calculus lesson. She was the only student in the math class to find the exact answer and explained to the class how she derived the equation. The teacher asked how did you learn this. Simple, my father is an engineer. And I've gone head to head with teachers before on answers to questions on homework and tests. I've NEVER lost.
Be safe and keep the Faith,
WRTolkas
Groad | 1.26.11 @ 10:05AM
These new methods of math instruction are akin to teaching auto mechanics when the kid doesn't know the difference between a righthand and a lefthand thread.
LMajito| 1.26.11 @ 10:05AM
Well parents got a lot to do with kids performance but it is the current environment in the public school system that's the main culprit...pump self-esteem but ignore that personal achievement is the main source for self-esteem...
what they have created is an army of bart simpsons that are proud to be underachievers...that bell curve grading system was designed in hell and that everybody gets to the next level no matter what is its brother...
in my boy's middle school you can't have electronic social gadgets during school days but in my daughter's high school, they could text the entire class with no problems.
on math, what aberration is that to force children to use calculators from middle school...are you kidding me? how are they going to know when the machine is broken (anybody remembers the pentium fiasco with its alu? it took a hs math teacher to uncover it)
so, if you can, home school the kids. i heard many talk about the socialization skills kids miss at home...really what skills, in public school system there are none.
Raoul Bloodworth| 1.26.11 @ 10:49AM
Yes, and all those math illiterates get non-aptitude based admission to teacher's colleges and go on to perpetuate the problem.
Hillel| 1.26.11 @ 11:03AM
I still say "Righty Tighty Lefty Loosey." When I was a boy even the math challeged could do batting averages. Students need "Math Facts" and then drill. "Drill Baby Drill. Another problem is the use of prepositions "from" etc. Afro Americans have trouble with "word problems because they're not used to the prepositions in standard english.
Appleby| 1.26.11 @ 4:55PM
I worked at an Education Board for a Black man who was approaching retirement age, and he used to fume about the Ebonics nonsense for this very reason. "A Black child," he would say, "cannot look at I ASK and understand it when what he says is AH AX!"
As long as saying "I ask" is considered "Acting White", it's no use talking about teaching them anything.
Oldefarte| 1.26.11 @ 11:39AM
Public education is ineffective because of it unions, which protect inept teachers/administrators from being replaced. Unions need to be eliminated, capable teachers need to be retained and their salaries seriously increased, incapable teachers need to be terminated, social promotion of failing students need to be prevented, the governmental assistance of responsible relatives of students needs to be eliminated if their cooperation in the educational process is not forthcoming, school tuition support payments from responsible relatives [when possible] should be instituted, etc need to be established if this country's educational system is ever to adequately compete with those of China, India, etc. Education of this nation's children is a dire necessity that should be demanded by the taxpaying-voting public!!!!!!!!!!
Dantesque| 1.26.11 @ 11:51AM
I like what the author implies (I think) at the end: it is not always the case that homeschooling is the answer; sometimes the situation can be remedied by supplementing with math education at home. We could not have homeschooled our kids, but we have managed to tutor them regularly in math.
PolishKnight| 1.26.11 @ 12:00PM
I call BS on the H1-B justification. The primary reason why most H1-B's come from India has little to do with educational and skill levels required by high tech companies but rather race politics. Companies want to fill their diversity quotas with people who have a reputation for being well qualified. Eastern Europeans with PhD's need not apply!
Money is also an indirect factor. It's typically more expensive to do all the paperwork and retain an H1-B Indian than a resident American. However, bringing them in demoralizes the workforce and helps to drive down wages and working conditions. The H1-B can't pick up and move to another company if they are asked to work 30 hours more overtime.
So... it is not uncommon for me to receive phone calls at 8PM on Saturday from H1-B Indians asking me questions about how to do their job or to work overtime to support them.
As others have pointed out above, we're seeing the results of leftist anti-white male racism and sexism in the workplace and educational system. These companies do not want to hire the native born recipients of affirmative action and lowered academic standards so they want more H1-Bs and they are too cowardly to say anything publicly against racist-sexist affirmative action policies.
Because of this cowardice and selfishness on their part, I don't feel sorry for bank CEO's who were threatened by Obama with cutting their multi-million dollar salaries for borrowing taxpayer money. For some reason, I don't think that a Harvard MBA that teaches them how to write mission statements and play with org charts is that significant a skill. How about H1b-ing THOSE jobs out?
Wayne | 1.26.11 @ 12:38PM
I will surprise some people with this comment. You will find a negative correlation with the advent of the computer and the math ability of students. I guarantee it.
I got my teaching degree in 1973. There were about 85 students in math education being student teachers at the same time I was. I was at EIU, the primary school for teachers in Illinois. I came back to EIU in 1983 (just 10 years later) and there was only 1 student in math education that year.
That's right the number of students learning to be math teachers fell 99% in 10 years. Now you think this would be a national emergency, but the politicians and the educators ignored it.
My department chairmen asked me for advice. I asked him if students who went to a summer internship in computer science got paid. He said yes, about 1500 dollars a month at that time. I asked him how much a student teacher got paid, and he laughed, "nothing of course." I said well, there is your problem. The average student can not afford to be a teacher. Even if he can he will certainly choose the computer science option. I suggested that instead they should have a pool in which all students got paid.
He said that would not be FAIR to teachers of other subjects.
There you have it, we have had a SEVERE shortage of math and science teachers for some 30+ years. So who has been teaching the math and science classes. Yep, those history, music and art teachers.
Where did those Math majors go? They went into computer science. That is where I went also.
It is too late to solve the problem now unless you are willing to bring us old computer scientist back to teach the math and science classes.
Paul Streitz| 1.26.11 @ 12:40PM
If you omitted Blacks and Hispanics, the scores would rank up there with the top nations.
New York City once had the finest high school system in the world. It have five Nobel prize winners from one high school. When the population changed to be Black and Hispanic, the scores went down. Liberals and Conservatives alike decry the failing schools. Schools don't fail. Students do.
paul streitz
Paul Streitz| 1.26.11 @ 12:40PM
If you omitted Blacks and Hispanics, the scores would rank up there with the top nations.
New York City once had the finest high school system in the world. It have five Nobel prize winners from one high school. When the population changed to be Black and Hispanic, the scores went down. Liberals and Conservatives alike decry the failing schools. Schools don't fail. Students do.
paul streitz
Paul Streitz| 1.26.11 @ 12:41PM
If you omitted Blacks and Hispanics, the scores would rank up there with the top nations.
New York City once had the finest high school system in the world. It have five Nobel prize winners from one high school. When the population changed to be Black and Hispanic, the scores went down. Liberals and Conservatives alike decry the failing schools. Schools don't fail. Students do.
paul streitz
Who Knows?| 1.26.11 @ 12:42PM
Here you go--- writing in 2008, from the heart, as one who earned a Masters in math in 1966:
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Obama ADDS UP---"Yours"!
Here’s another “fresh” try at how time---the past, present, and future---are at once useful and a unity. That is, each apparent part of the threesome flow is really identical to the others.
As Heidegger claimed, in our eternal present, we are always looking ahead to the future. On the other hand, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it---in the future. Let’s keep both those ideas in the eternal present.
For me, residing on the ever changing dimensionless cut between the dead zones---the past and the future---which is the eternal present, it hit my awareness this way: every instant we live we are in the thrall of the future.
Therefore, recently, say after reading this or that article about the ongoing human comedy, this query has been arising---“And then what?”
Indeed.
We might, in an enlightening mode, right NOW, encapsulate the just-ended presidential primary LONG season with that question, AND realize that the whole time span of it was an infinite series of “And then what?”
Well, THIS is ever the “And then what?!!!
Allow me to flow some more about the whole taco, er, enchilada, with pointed focus on the unbelievable Obama train-wreck-a-coming.
By NOW, way too many elitist leftists are so blinded by their irrational love of this Chicago mulatto, with absolutely extreme attention on his half black DNA, that I believe they are, themselves, fools-in-action.
Here’s the key thought---consider any of your very mundane forays into the economic realm. When you shop, the person who rings up your purchases merely needs to use a technological marvel and scan the price. (Of course, you’ve probably noticed a lot of self-checkout lanes, which will likely put checkers out of a job, eventually.)
NOW, I’m old enough---66 years---to recall my own first days as a clerk in a butcher shop. In those days, there were two types of us. Old uneducated Red, well, he couldn’t add, so he’d weigh up the item and write the prices on a package, and end the transactions by entering each cost into the cash register, which added it up for him. Then, most of the rest of us would also write down each price, and THEN add up the total, ourselves. Only THEN would we put the total in the cash register, and make change.
So, flash forward almost fifty years, and the past is prologue---cashiers don’t even have to make change: the MACHINE tells them how much to give back! Thus, who needs to even learn how to ADD? NOBODY!
Thus, whenever you SCAN a boob tube moving picture of the very uneducated “humans” who are so gaga over Obama, I think it would be wise to drop and give me twenty----that is, they are the end results of “And then what?”, after all the past years of faux schooling.
Obama’s “Yes I can!” is truly the nefarious use of “Yes I SCAN”---you, you stupid voters, and boy I CAN ride your empty heads to become your leader!
What goes around comes around----in 1960, close to half a century ago, Kennedy used a phony issue to help make Nixon look weak on defense: the missile GAP.
Maybe ten or so years ago there was media concern with the computer-availability GAP.
And, of course, in the economics dimension, the earnings and/or wealth GAP is always lurking in the consciousness of so many elite “minds”.
Therefore, I posit the following: the GAP between those who can ADD = think and know the real facts and have the correct survival instincts, and those who cannot, is expressing the dire end of “And then what?”, approaching the point where the majority of deluded people are so full of a self-esteem that is completely at odds with their truth, that disaster looms---LARGE.
Just think, that a “criminal” like Hillary and a con man like Obama were able to fool so many dummies, and the latter is FAVORED to become president of the STILL-free world.
It doesn’t ADD UP!!!
Oh, wait, it does ADD UP, because the people who support those two “flawed” individuals can’t---ADD!!!
That’s how I ADD it all up, as of NOW!
Harrison | 1.26.11 @ 12:54PM
They're too busy trying to calculate how jobs "created or saved" works.
Derek Leaberry| 1.26.11 @ 1:28PM
With the tens of millions of Third Worlders that America has allowed to invade our borders over the past thirty years it is no surprise that math skills are down on the average. Thank the Democratic Party, the Wall Street Journal and the Bush-McCain wing of the Republican Party.
Richard Hilson| 1.26.11 @ 2:00PM
This is all a red herring. In most Asia and European countries, every student takes a test to determine if they will go to a university, trade school or whatever. The math test in other countries are which we are comparing American students is taken by the top 10% of the Asia and European students. You are comparing apples and slugs.
Pat| 1.26.11 @ 2:23PM
Along with us exploited taxpayers wandering in to H. & R. Block this season, many American corporations will be paying federal and state taxes on healthy profits for the first time in the last two years. But our American industries are also paying for private tutoring in simple mathematics for their employees. Facility and equipment maintenance workers who can’t read a tape measure, who don’t understand fractions, who can’t do simple division. Are there really private firms who market to corporations by touting their skill in teaching arithmetic to dummies? You betcha there are – and we might ask why in the world America would need such private firms. Aren’t we supposed to have the best education system in the world – or, at least, the most expensive?
If you work in America’s business segment, it’s easy to understand why manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced overseas and we have a high unemployment rate stubbornly refusing to decrease. Hire a foreigner and get their country’s education system thrown in for free. And the big multi-nationals pay their foreign workers less and their foreign workers complain far less than our math impaired American workers. So, Ford and GE also receive fewer math savvy employees for their tax dollars, but somehow that shouldn’t make us H & R Block customers feel any less exploited.
PolishKnight| 1.27.11 @ 7:05PM
Other things "thrown in for free" by outsourcing firms and manufacturers: Massive pollution of their environment, sub-human working conditions, and perhaps the best bonus of all: The (typically liberal) CEO of the firm doesn't actually have to see a worker with a title less than project manager at corporate headquarters.
Keep in mind, Pat, that the strongest support for "economic conservative" values today comes from the working class in private industry. You know, the same schlubs that the blueblood Republicans don't mind seeing their jobs outsourced or handed off to an illegal.
In the meantime, have you checked out the houses built during the housing boom by mostly illegal immigrants? Check out that Chinese sulfuric acid drywall! Yep, "Globalization" at it's best!
I don't buy (literally) the notion that "American" workers are really all that bad. As others have pointed out, the low test scores are due to illegals being welcomed with open arms by Cato and other groups thinking we'll have a great economy because of cheap hotel and restaurant labor (using that thinking, South American economies should be doing great!)
oldfart| 1.26.11 @ 2:41PM
When my three boys finally got out of the public school system they all said what they were taught was a pile of bovine excrement. I think the best thing we can do to help eductation in this country is to put more money into the local schools - funded by the elimination of DOPE - Department of Purblic Education (opps - DOE - Department of Education). What has that organization done?
oldfart| 1.26.11 @ 2:43PM
P.S. there is an incorrectly spelled word - on purpose. Did you find it? Did you know that correct spelling is High Schools is no longer a requirement - just so the general thought is OK. YUK!!!!
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 8:07PM
Well, I educed it, but yes we need to burn down the US Department of Education.
Jeff| 1.26.11 @ 3:03PM
It is my understanding that when you correct for ethnicity, by comparing Americans of European descent with Europeans, the difference in the PISA scores between the United States and Europe disappears.
We do not need improved math education so much as we need improved humanities education. The focus on utility above all else is more dangerous to our culture than the supposed deficiency in math scores.
Sly Fox| 1.26.11 @ 3:48PM
I run a bookstore and have in the past had sales with 25% off or one-third off, etc. You'd be surprised how few kid or adults can figure that on a $9.99 book they would save $2.50 or $3.33. It has proven easier to say you save $5 on any purhcase of $25 or more or something like that.
I tried helping my secnd grade grand niece with her math homework once. It boggled my mind how they are teaching them to subtract, etc.--seemed twice as complicated as they way I learned it back in the 1950s.
bobmontgomery| 1.26.11 @ 8:10PM
I think they call it the New Math and they have been teaching it for forty years. Burn it down, to the ground.
PolishKnight| 1.27.11 @ 7:09PM
Sly Fox, great point. I see those signs at the stores too and find them redundant. I don't need a sign to tell me that a 10% discount means a price marked at $10 will ring up as $9 at the checkout.
Then again, it's also worth considering that even before the dumbing down of educational standards, marketers in the states came up with the $9.99 and $0.99 prices which fooled people into thinking that if something was a penny less, then it really didn't cost a full $10.00. When I go to stores and they quote me a price such as $39.99, I do a comparison and say something like: This one is 40 and that one is 60... and they say "Actually, it's just $39.99" and I just laugh.
Richard Baker| 1.26.11 @ 6:22PM
Taught High School mathematics in Florida a few years ago and told my students that the reason that you study mathematics is to discipline and train your mind. If your mind is disciplined then there's nothing you can't do. If your mind isn't disciplined then there won't be much that you can do. Mathematics forces you to focus, think, and logically reason out problems, math or otherwise. Regarding computers, I rarely allowed my students to use them in class as they were utterly dependent on them for even the simplest operations. I wanted to teach them to think their way through a problem.
Wayne | 1.28.11 @ 6:19PM
I commend you, you are obviously a good teacher.
Jane_Tarzan| 1.26.11 @ 6:34PM
The math teachers at the high school where I teach admit that many of their students do not know the math facts, multiplication or addition/subtraction. But they don't feel they can take time from their curriculum to teach these.
Seems to me the school math situation became very bad once we started using calculators in elementary school and the kids naturally stopped learning the math facts.
Montessori, properly taught, gives three to five year olds a marvelous foundation in math and in reading for that matter. Elementary Montessori has very good math approaches also.
fsilber| 1.27.11 @ 4:56AM
I wonder how much of the decline is simply a result of children who fail to learn dropping out later. Also, most descendants of of Latino peasants and black sharecroppers never did learn much math in the past; it's just that they constitute a much higher percentage of the school age population in this generation.
Dallas| 1.28.11 @ 12:35PM
Fixing our schools is more important than anything except national security.
http://www.dallasmovingcompanies.net/
Wayne | 1.28.11 @ 6:18PM
They are not fixable.
LaToniya A Jones | 2.5.11 @ 12:06PM
Rishawn! Hi5 on this article. You are on point with the concerns, challenges, and need for immediate action to help our children. Thanks for highlighting the statistics and credible sources. Literacy is a very important tenet of learning! If we can read, we can achieve. There is a wealth of free information on the internet (articles, interactive websites, and videos) that can help develop a basic understanding of math! I encourage parents (and teachers) to use tools and strategies to help fill gaps in understanding. Regardless to what happened in the past, the time is now to move forward. A little boost of motivation helps. If we all reach out and share our skills with another person--that transfer of information will propel us into a top performing country once again.
Children shouldn't need to depend on only one source of information--schools. As a former middle school principal, I can tell you that egos often get in the way of creating sustainable education learning communities (for teachers and children). The federal, state, and local mandates have proven to be more harmful than helpful in too many situations.
I'm looking forward to reading about more engaging learning communities (in-school and out-of-school) when children are at the center of learning and the narrow experiences of their teachers (at no fault of their own--mostly) does not become a barrier to what children can really do!
I believe that all children can learn both basic and higher level math! I see it everyday!
Adidas | 8.11.11 @ 4:44AM
is good
العاب | 4.11.12 @ 3:39PM
I like what the author implies (I think) at the end: it is not always the case that homeschooling is the answer; sometimes the situation can be remedied by supplementing with math education at home. We could not have homeschooled our kids, but we have managed to tutor them regularly in math.