American schools are falling behind in math

According to a recent article in The Atlantic (“Your Child Left Behind,” the Atlantic Monthly, December 2010), America’s schools are doing worse than we thought. If you look at a measure of student performance – the percentage of high school students who rate as highly proficient in math – America is falling behind some of our biggest competitors in the world. And if you look at a state-by-state breakdown, the picture is even worse.

Only 6 percent of U.S. students perform at the advanced-proficiency level in math, a lower percentage than 30 other countries, including the U.K. and Taiwan.

Math scores are important for several reasons:

• Math is universal – it doesn’t matter what language you speak, all people on Earth should be able to learn math. This makes math scores a reasonably good measure of student performance when comparing different countries’ education systems.

• Math scores are a better predictor of future earnings than other skills taught in high school. Kids who are better at math will be more likely to go on to higher-paying jobs.

• Math is linked to innovation. The next Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Apple are likely to be created by engineers and technologically-savvy creative types – and math skills are one of the best stepping stones to high-tech innovation.

• Math is crucial for America’s global competitiveness. As President Obama has said, “the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” Our kids are growing up in an ever-more competitive global marketplace, and they need math skills to be able to compete for the highest-value, highest-paying jobs of the future.

Many parents in the U.S. have a false sense of security about their children’s education. Even if “other schools” have high dropout rates and low test scores, many parents believe that “their schools” are still doing a good job of educating students. But this Atlantic article found that if you break down the math test score results state-by-state, most American states are doing even worse that the national average. When it comes to teaching math, apparently American schools are worse than the sum or our parts.


Stanford economist Eric Hanushek and two colleagues did a study, ranking American states side-by-side with foreign countries to compare math proficiency. How does California compare to Sweden, say – or Germany compare to Ohio? Do any U.S. states come out on top?


The results were disturbing. As the article says, “The best performer is Massachusetts, ringing in at No. 17. Minnesota also makes it into the upper-middle tier, followed by Vermont, New Jersey, and Washington. And down it goes from there, all the way to Mississippi, whose students—by this measure at least—might as well be attending school in Thailand or Serbia.”


This article suggests that America can improve its math scores by improving its teaching. The author suggests that one reason why Massachusetts ranks so highly in math (as it does in other subjects) is that the state has higher standards for new teachers (they are required to pass a basic literacy test – the first year, 1/3 of new teachers failed it) and they have a high school exit exam that students have to pass before receiving their diplomas. To help the kids (and schools) that were struggling, Massachusetts then analyzed the test results and allocated money to the places where it was needed most.


Another step to improve students’ math skills is to improve the math skills of our math teachers. The article also cites a 2010 study of teacher-prep programs in 16 countries that showed a strong correlation between student test scores and how well their future teachers performed on a math test. American middle school math teachers tested, on average, at about the same level as teachers in Thailand and Oman – not at the same high level as world-leaders like Taiwan, where 28% of students are at the advanced level.


There are no easy answers or fast solutions to America’s ongoing math challenges, but perhaps we can start by following Massachusetts’ lead in implementing stricter standards, and make sure more of our math teachers can “practice what they teach.”
 

Note: A full chart of the math proficiency ratings of America’s 50 states, compared with 57 other countries from around the world, is available here: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/your-child-left-behind/66069/




Ben Gran is a former teacher, freelance writer and marketing consultant based in Des Moines, Iowa. He is an award-winning blogger who loves to write about careers and the future of work.
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