Over the past two decades, other countries–particularly Japan and Germany–have developed curricula emphasizing advanced math and science in order to give their students the skills necessary to compete in an increasingly technological global economy. During the same period, American schools have swung from one extreme to another, from the open classrooms of the ’70s to the back-to-basics movement of the 1980s. Says the University of Wisconsin’s Thomas Romberg, an expert in worldwide math education, “We’re acting as if America is still an agricultural society, and that all the mothers are home with their children.” Now, many educators say, the highly politicized debate over the best way to teach has meant that American kids have been running in place while other countries trained for a marathon. “The world has changed, and what we expect and what the workplace expects is a much higher level of skills, " says Diane Ravitch, assistant secretary of education and coauthor of “What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?”
The situation is especially alarming in math, a subject in which American students rank way below their counterparts in most industrialized countries. According to the Education Department, only one in five eighth graders has achieved competence for his or her age level. That news will probably come as a shock to many parents, who figure that as long as their kids can add up a bill or balance a checkbook, they’re doing fine. But Iris Carle, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, says that without more sophisticated skills, “we’ll be a nation of people completely out of contention for jobs. We’ll be a nation of unemployed people because most entry-level positions today require some proficiency in algebra and high-level mathematics.” Only 2.6 percent of high-school seniors were capable of doing advanced 12th-grade work such as calculus or sophisticated problem solving.
While minority students made some gains over the 20 years covered in the NAEP report, they still have a long way to go. Although the gap in achievement has narrowed at all ages tested, the average performance of blacks on the math and science tests was still significantly below that of white students tested in 1990.
Educators say parents should push their children-and the schools-to do more advanced work in technical subjects. Illiteracy is socially unacceptable, but lots of people still shrug their shoulders at math incompetence. “Too many parents feel that what counts in math is not effort, but natural ability,” says Ravitch. There is a feeling that “my Jane is not good at math, so why should she work at it?” The answer, Ravitch and others say, is that if Jane doesn’t “work at it” now, she may not be working at anything in 20 years.
More than a third of 12th graders couldn’t master grade-level basics; only a few could do advanced work.
