Can't Do the Math

Yet another commission concludes that American kids suck at math. This one sounds more sensible than most:

The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. “Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”

The report, adopted unanimously by the panel on Thursday and presented to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, said that prekindergarten-to-eighth-grade math curriculums should be streamlined and put focused attention on skills like the handling of whole numbers and fractions and certain aspects of geometry and measurement.

They seem to be trying to steer a middle ground between the currently popular "discovery" math ideas and old fashioned computation:

The report tries to put to rest the long, heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers have fought passionately in school districts around the country over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to do problems and then drilled on them, versus reform or child-centered instruction, emphasizing student exploration and conceptual understanding. It said both methods had a role.

I like the following:

For example, the report found it is important for students to master their basic math facts well enough that their recall becomes automatic, stored in their long-term memory, leaving room in their working memory to take in new math processes.

“For all content areas, practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills — the fast, accurate and effortless processing of content information — which frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving,” the report said.

They recommend concentration on fewer topics, and on mastery of those. I'm not terribly impressed with the suggested pace, though:

It offers specific goals for students in different grades. For example, it said that by the end of the third grade, students should be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers. Two years later, they should be proficient in multiplying and dividing them. By the end of the sixth grade, the report said, students should have mastered the multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.

I can't think of any reason kids shouldn't know at least the multiplication tables by the end of second grade. Japanese pre-schoolers learn that, I thought.

I also believe that most aspects of curriculum should be taken out of the hands of publishers and State and local school boards. Mississipi doesn't need different mathematics than North Dakota or New Jersey. There ought to be a common core national curriculum, which would permit real national testing.

The commission also called for the scientific study of the effectiveness of various teaching programs. About time that education stops being a blankety-blank fashion industry.

Most of math is putting funny little marks on paper and translating those marks into other funny marks on the paper. Kids need to learn that. They also need to know the secrets of translating thoughts and questions into those funny little marks.