The Nation’s Report Card makes one thing painfully clear: American kids are failing in math, and the education system has been failing them for decades.
New research from the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducted a nationwide assessment of 15,000 9-year-old students in reading and math, found that average math scores fell 7 points since 2020 – the first-ever decline since the 1970s.
More serious still, the drop was even more profound for the lowest-performing students.
The pandemic is to blame for this latest slide, but kids were already in a deep hole before COVID-19 struck. Only 24% of 12th graders are at or above proficiency in math, according to the latest data.
And one-third of American adults report feeling uncomfortable with fourth grade math concepts, such as fractions and percentages, and two-step problems with whole numbers.
In other words, many adults barely have the math skills of a 9-year-old.
Why is math literacy critical?
How can we halt and reverse this nationwide slide?
It will take a collective effort from parents, educators, school boards and voters to pressure the system and foster a cultural mind shift. The conversation around skills gaps often focuses on literacy, with numeracy a distant second. We need to insist that math is just as important as reading, and make it an equal priority in our kids’ education.
Here’s why it’s critical: The real-world repercussions of the math shortfall go beyond our inability to figure out whether a warranty is a rip-off (almost all are) or whether the Netflix annual subscription is a good deal. What’s at stake is the loss of our safety, security and quality of life.
Everything from syringes to elevator sensors and air traffic control systems rely on someone using math correctly. Fifteen years from now, today’s students will be the ones adjusting planes’ wing flaps and giving shots.
At the moment, that’s hardly an attractive prospect.
Our old-school methods of instruction are partly to blame. We batch-process students, pushing them into the next chapter together, whether they are ready or not. We can also point to the teacher shortage, as low pay and tough conditions fail to attract and retain strong candidates.
Our challenges are compounded by confusing curricula from big-name publishers who often have no research proving repeated effectiveness.
How do we fix math scores?
Untangling this crisis starts outside the classroom. We need to rethink our outdated and sterilized curricula. Any parent will tell you that kids won’t learn if they don’t want to. Going beyond worksheets and homework can make math resonate and feel relevant.
We need to be better about spotting and fixing “faked proficiency.” Kids learn skills in silos and often memorize steps instead of internalizing what they’re learning. Rote memorization of actions like “carrying the 1” and doing long division demonstrates that students are learning dance steps while losing sight of the whole performance.
It’s also time to hold our local school boards accountable. Find out when elections are held, then look for candidates who are asking hard questions about whether the current math curriculum gets the job done. We also need candidates who support assessments so we can effectively measure our children’s gaps and fix them.
Be a math parent
Parents, in partnership with school and teachers, need to play a critical role. For some, this could mean confronting their own math hesitance and diving in alongside their kids. Parents often complain that the newer methods of teaching math are unrecognizable (“It’s not how I did it!”). Meanwhile, their kids protest that their parents are “doing it wrong.”
But math is a journey to the right answer, often by different routes. It’s not necessary to be a math whiz to be a math parent.
No matter how dire the math crisis in our country, we can turn it around. Making math a priority in our kids’ education will not only develop skills they need to succeed but also prepare them for real life. That’s exactly what we need to keep our country – and our elevators and airplanes – on an upward trajectory.
Laura Overdeck is the founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation.
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Laura Overdeck
Guest columnist
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When we allowed the woke Democrats to take charge and turn our schools into woke indoctrination centers like not failing students for not having passing grades. Democrats passed then anyways because they participated. Like in sports, they want to not have winners and losers, Democrats want to give everybody a trophy just because they participated. Democrats don’t want to restrict genders as boys and girls, Democrats want their indoctrinated student to be free to be whatever the feel like they are, a boy or a girl, a turtle, a hippopotamus or whatever they feel like they are.
ALSO, when parents LET the wokists decry math as being racist, and 2+2 is not 4, just because some ‘POC” may be too stupid to understand it, that is why our schools are so DUMB in math.
Maybe if schools taught something besides Critical Race Theory, and that boys can be girls if they feel like it that day (and vice-versa), the kids might actually LEARN something useful they will have for life.
I saw a video clip yesterday where a guy was asking college-age people real tough questions like, “What country is the Panama Canal in?”, and “how much is 77 plus 23 ?” and “What 2 countries border the U.S.”? He asked about 10 people these questions, and not 1 of them could answer ANY of the questions. But they’re all experts in LGBTQ+ and CRT, that ALL whites are racists, that they’re born that way.
Absolute hogwash. No wonder kids graduate high school as dumb as a pile of rocks. Not all kids, but certainly an extremely high percentage.
THe ones i laugh at is when they ask simple questions like “What state is Seattle in”?
Or, who is buried in Grant’s tomb?
But we can’t go on teaching math as we know it because it’s racist! It was devised by white people the way it is to make certain minority children would be unable to master it; the oppressors to control the oppressed. A new system that’s accessible to minorities must be developed. Of course this will render thousands of years of science, engineering, commerce, economics and computers obsolete but people will feel good about themselves!
AND of course ONLy POC/minorities get graded ON that new math.. WHITES (and asians) still will be graded on regular math..
Take away the Smart Phones and the grades will plummet further!
“California students score at bottom of nation in reading, math!-By Sharon Noguchi
California students continue to score near the bottom among states in math and reading, according to results of a national test released Thursday.The Golden State’s fourth-graders ranked 47th in the nation in both math and reading. Eighth-graders ranked 45th in math and 42nd in reading. And the scores show that the gap separating white students from their black and Latino peers in English and math is bigger in California than it is nationwide.”
Allysia Finley with the Wall Street Journal explains: “UCs this year needed to spend an additional $73 million on pensions, $30 million on faculty bonuses, $24 million on health benefits and $16 million on collectively bargained pay increases. The regents project that they will require $250 million more next year to finance increased compensation and benefit costs.”
Maybe at first. BUT IF THEY start getting back to using their NOGGINS, maybe that would push grades UP after a while.