Too many being left behind

Perhaps comparisons to the rapture are inappropriate, but recent news about math scores in the U.S. do not look good for future students. Once again a report about the progress of students in math gets every pundit wagging their finger at someone.

It is worth reading the blog entry posted by the New York Times because I found it was way better than any of the news articles that just summarized the test score results.

Here is my summary of the opinions that they highlighted on this blog post

* the education policy professor says: "The culture of standardized testing ... has served to de-skill and demoralize our best teachers." But he offers no real suggestions about what to do.

The other 4 seem to fall into two main groups. The first says improve the skills of teachers:

* the education studies director says: "Teaching methods, curriculum, lack of adequate subject matter knowledge among math teachers and lack of real consequences in school accountability systems, rather than tests and standards, could be the real culprits for low scores." He highlights research that says that eighth graders taught by math majors did better than eighth graders taught by teachers without a math major.

* the mathematician says: "Many elementary teachers have strong backgrounds in reading and writing, but will readily admit their discomfort with math." This is yet another call for ensuring that math teachers have a strong math background. This pundit also falls into the second group and has comments about the math curriculum.

The second group says improve the curriculum:

* the parent says: "If we want to improve mathematics education, we should banish nonsensical curricula like Trail Blazers, Everyday Math and Investigations and make sure that our teachers are properly educated and proficient in math content." To paraphrase, this 'fuzzy math' is a joke and it is not preparing students to succeed in math (what is the color of infinity?).

* the policy analyst says: "What is needed is not another test, but sound mathematics instruction that stresses content over process." He says that content is very important and we are not doing students any favors by not teaching concepts and just teaching problem solving.

My opinion is that both of these are correct. Just saying 'no child left behind' three times, clicking your heels together, and waving a bunch of money around isn't going to solve any problems. A real solution is improving teacher training and getting a content rich curriculum in place.