Problems in Mathematics Education

I believe there are several problems in mathematics education today including the emphasis on standardized tests and the way we push students onto the next mathematics course.

In the article, “How Mathematics Counts,” the author states, “So long as procedures predominate high-stakes tests, procedures will preoccupy both teachers and students.” I agree with the author that our education system’s focus on high-stakes testing leads to some negative consequences with regards to mathematics education. I see the effects of this at the high school where I’m student teaching. Approximately 200 out of 900 students fail the HSPA exam each year at this high school. I teach two sections of the SRA class for those seniors who failed the exam during their junior year. Even now that all the students have passed either the make-up HSPA or passed the SRA process, the students still think of themselves as failures in math and many of them think they need to continue to learn math through the drill and memorize method. A couple weeks ago, I taught a new unit on Strategy and Logic games to help them improve their analytical/critical thinking skills. This was a topic that they told me they were interested in, earlier in the marking period, however, I was met with a great deal of resistance throughout the unit. When I asked the students about their resistance, they said that they think they need more traditional math practice since that’s what they failed. Our education system has brainwashed students into thinking that there is only one way to learn math (which is the high-stakes test way) and that if you don’t succeed in learning that way, then you’re a math failure and always will be.

At times, our education system seems more intent on pushing students through to the next math class and graduation rather than ensuring that the students understand what they are learning. In “How Mathematics Counts,” the author noted that the increase in the number of students taking Algebra II is not being met with a decrease in the number of students taking remedial math courses at the collegiate level. This means that while we are pushing more students to take Algebra II in high school, we are not necessarily seeing the benefits of this push at the collegiate level. I see the affects of this everyday. One of the Algebra II classes I teach has 10 students. 8 out of the 10 students are failing (or nearly failing) the course and have been all year. When my cooperating teaching and I looked into their previous math grades, they all barely passed and some of them failed during the regular school year and then passed the course during summer school. While I think that some student’s failure is partially due to a lack of effort, I think that many of them don’t have the foundational Algebra skills to succeed in more advance Algebra courses because they never understood the basic concepts to begin with. But our system just pushes them along because teachers are pushed to get through the entire curriculum. I think the students are the ones who lose with all this pushing because we’re setting them up for failure in future, more advanced math courses. Perhaps if we could slow down a bit and allow students more time to interpret and understand the calculations that we teach them (as stated in the “How Mathematics Counts” article), students could gain more mathematical and critical thinking skills than they could if they just barely get through the procedures of Algebra II.

I feel like one potential underlying driver of some of these problems is the ambiguity regarding the overall purpose of education in general. After reflecting on issues such as those discussed above, I’m often left wondering if the point of education is to prepare young people for the workforce or if education should be a purely academic experience. Perhaps it’s a combination of both, but I’m not sure that many problems in mathematics education can be addressed if we’re trying to work in both directions.