Student Math Scores

Cal State math instructor Martha Schwartz laments the state of math achievement in the U.S. and California (“Raise the Teaching, and the Expectations,” Commentary, June 27), but it is the good professor’s analysis that doesn’t add up. Students in the U.S. score about average on math tests compared to their age peers in other countries, not “near the bottom of the world,” as claimed.

While it’s true that California’s students do poorly in comparison to students in other states, there is no evidence of any great decline in school achievement over the past two decades, as Schwartz implies. The existence of a “Golden Age” in education--in the U.S. or California--is a myth, unsupported by any reliable data.

JEFF McQUILLAN PhD

Assistant Professor of Education

Cal State Fullerton

*

Like Schwartz, I am an official senior citizen. I began teaching secondary mathematics in 1964. When I taught junior high school, my students also did very well on standardized tests in algebra. However, Schwartz leaves out an important difference between those times and the present. Twenty years ago, only a small percentage of students enrolled in algebra. Two classes out of 18 was the norm for my junior high, and those students passed. For at least 15 years more students have taken algebra, and even the best teachers struggle to keep the failure rate below 50%. The eighth-grade California Academic Standards in mathematics are nothing new. They look like a typical algebra book of the last 30 years.

Schwartz claims that new state tests given this year will not be held against students. That is true. But students and parents need to know that the tests given before the end of the 1999-2000 school year will count. They may be a determining factor in whether students advance from one grade level to the next. At the eighth-grade level, the test will be an algebra test for all eighth-graders. By this time next year, will a miracle make all eighth-graders algebra proficient? The textbooks that may soon become available are woefully inadequate.

SARA MUNSHIN

Mathematics Resource Teacher

LAUSD

*

Bill Clinton and Congress are going to spend over a billion dollars to hire 30,000 new teachers. Granted, more teachers may reduce class sizes, but how about using the money to help out the teachers who are already there? The money could be used for deserved pay increases for teachers, many of whom have second jobs to make ends meet. Give teachers enough pay to make a living so that they can devote all their time to teaching and I almost guarantee far better results than flooding the schools with more teachers. Also, where are these 30,000 new teachers coming from?

SHAWN WALKER

Venice