The Nation : Changes in Math Education Proposed

A group of leading mathematics organizations, warning that American students are dangerously unprepared in math, outlined an ambitious plan to revise math education that calls for less rote learning and a stronger emphasis on problem solving and fundamental concepts and more use of calculators and computers. The plan incorporates a number of ideas proposed by math educators in recent years, but it is the first coordinated effort to lay out a specific blueprint for implementing them. The organizations, working under the auspices of the National Research Council, said they would establish teaching standards for every grade, rewrite curricula and reconsider the current division of the subject into arithmetic, algebra, geometry and other distinct courses.