Panel Issues Plan to Change Way Math Is Taught

The nation’s math teachers on Tuesday released standards designed to make sure pupils learn to explore and reason as well as add, subtract, multiply and divide.

“Our children are internationally competitive in ... arithmetical skills,” said John Dossey, chairman of the standards commission of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “It is in the application of mathematics in geometry, measurement and data analysis where our students are falling short.”

Dossey, a math professor at Illinois State University, cited studies showing basic skills have improved over the past 20 years. “Yet today only about one-half of American 17-year-olds can say whether 87 percent of 10 is less than 10, greater than 10 or equal to 10,” or figure out how much carpet is needed to cover a floor, he said.

The council’s curriculum and evaluation standards, a collection of 54 guidelines for kindergarten through high school, were three years in the making and aim to raise the level of applied math skills.

“Applied mathematics is not just for a couple of geniuses in the country,” said Sally Ride, a Stanford University physicist and former astronaut who appeared at a news conference with the math teachers.

She said the new standards should make applied math accessible to all students but teachers, parents and students “will have more work to do. The country is going to have to make it a higher priority.”

Generally, the standards seek to ensure that students value math, become confident in their abilities, solve problems, and learn to communicate and to reason mathematically.