Bad News About Math

By Ezra Bowen

In the third of the three Rs, American students would seem to have turned around in recent years. Since 1980, standardized math test scores have been tilting upward. The best mathematicians among U.S. collegians have performed strongly. Says University of Michigan Psychologist Harold Stevenson: "Teachers, parents and children all think they are doing just fine."

Not so, say three new studies carried out by Stevenson and by University of Illinois Education Professor Kenneth Travers -- at least in comparison with other countries. U.S. school youngsters, the studies found, rank low among 20-odd nations in mathematical skills from Grades 1 through 12. Among the key points of the three studies, which were the focus of a symposium convened in Washington last week by the National Research Council:

-- In one test involving four school systems, no Chicago school studied had an average score as high as that of the school with the lowest average score in three cities in China and Japan. Moreover, the best individual Americans were not even close to the best Asians: of 8,000 elementary schoolers, only two Americans scored in the top 5%.

-- Compared with foreign students, U.S. middle schoolers did fairly well. But their geometry rated among the bottom 25% of all countries studied by the Illinois team.

-- In the majority of nations surveyed in the Illinois study, virtually all college-bound upper-school students take calculus. In the U.S. only about one- fifth do so.

The researchers suggest a daunting list of causes for such a poor showing. First, Americans tend to see math ability as innate. That, says Stevenson, gives youngsters a tailor-made excuse for not pushing hard, since the results are presumably preordained. Second, while U.S. schools tend to stress the broader creative skills of reading and writing, other countries, particularly in Asia, emphasize math burned in by persistent instruction and exercises.

Also at fault is the U.S. curriculum, which "spirals" students through subjects, with a light introduction in the early years and subsequent returns to concepts at increasingly sophisticated levels. But spiraling, as implemented in the U.S., observes Travers, "fails miserably. . .We keep on retreading and revisiting the same ideas." Finally, American schools often channel students and their assignments into separate "tracks," or ability levels, which may reinforce the performance of top students but imbues slower youngsters with the self-fulfilling notion that little is expected of them.

University of Chicago Professor of Education Zalman Usiskin directs part of a reform project to attack failings that the studies point out. Among his proposed first steps: development of well-trained math specialists to supplement the typical all-purpose teacher in the early grades. Usiskin will study translations of a number of foreign texts. "We can use them for ideas," he says. Further, he would move geometry and algebra preparation down into the seventh grade, leaving the later years free for advanced studies, including statistics and computers. Says Travers: "The demands of a high-tech society require that we upgrade the quality of mathematical education our children are getting. Maybe we could get by with a mediocre performance in math 20 and 30 years ago, but I'm not sure we can afford this any longer."

With reporting by Alessandra Stanley/Washington