Kentucky’s Math Swamp – About to Get Flood Control

It’s been a hot topic here in Kentucky and around the entire country – the public school math standards tend to be “a mile wide and an inch deep,” covering far too much material in far too superficial a manner. Now, at least one bill aims to drain our shallow math swamp and remake our math program into something powerful and free-flowing.

It’s been too long in coming, although answers to fix Kentucky’s math woes have been available for some time.

Following years of very sharp criticism, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics changed their curriculum guidelines around the turn of this century and then about two years ago clarified what they really meant with a supplemental document called “Focal Points.”

The Focal Points document makes it clear that what a lot of us call “the basics” really are important and must be taught to mastery.

Then, early last year, the final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) came out. Interestingly, one of its key members was Skip Fennel, the past president of the NCTM, but there were also many other key math experts on board.

The upshot of all this new guidance is that we now know the KERA math fanatics were wrong about a lot of things.

First, kids need to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide to the point where they can do it automatically. Calculators did not make those skills obsolete – instead these skills are a critical foundation for higher level math courses. Kids then need to really master fractions and some items from geometry.

Those earlier skills form the essential underpinning for the next step – learning algebra. The best, scientific research now makes it clear that algebra needs to be a major focal point, and other areas of math like statistics need to be deemphasized until algebra is mastered. Once kids understand the art and logic of algebra, they are then well-prepared to tackle some of the other important areas in math like trigonometry, advanced geometry, and statistics. Another KERA favored item called “spiraling,” where the same math topics were revisited year after year without kids ever gaining mastery of any topic is also discredited. When you try to cover too much material, spiraling is inevitable – but it doesn’t really teach kids enough math.

Anyway, the background research is done, and between the NCTM documents and the extensive and rather detailed information in the NMAP report, it shouldn’t take long to rework Kentucky’s math curriculum into something that will really work for kids. And, our continued high levels of math remediation in our colleges show this can’t come too soon.