American public school students have broadened their math knowledge in the past decade, but the trade-off has been a decline in basic math computations, a national education expert told local leaders Tuesday.
Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C., presented the math research to the Economic Roundtable of the Ohio Valley in Marietta.
Loveless said that a decade ago, schools began to follow new National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards that de-emphasized rudimentary arithmetic (such as learning multiplication tables and long division) in favor of more word problems, geometry and data analysis. The new standards, supporters believed, would allow students to learn basic math skills while solving more interesting and contextual math problems.
Loveless and his testing data from the past decade disagree.
"I think mathematics is a hierarchical subject with basic skills that have to be learned before you go on to higher levels," Loveless said.
He said although national testing data showed students improving in areas such as geometry and data analysis, their scores in basic math computations declined.
Overall, Loveless says, math has been overlooked in the United States.
"It's almost as if learning math has become an option," Loveless said. "You always hear people saying: 'Oh I was never good at math, I can't solve that.' But you never hear people say: 'Oh I was never good at reading, I'm illiterate.'"
A mixture of about 75 area educators and business leaders attended the economic roundtable session at the Marietta Country Club.
Marietta College Education Chair Dottie Erb said she can recall having to change the college's education curriculum to fit the new math standards. Not only were students being taught the new math, so were future teachers. Erb said Loveless' data suggests a return to basic math skills may be needed, but the progress in other areas of math should not be ignored.
Ohio Valley Economic Roundtable Chairman Bert Glaze invited Loveless and put together Tuesday's gathering.
Loveless, 48, began his education career as a sixth-grade teacher in California. He later became a professor at Harvard University and earned his Ph.D. in education from The University of Chicago.