Aspiring Teachers Fall Short on Math

– Almost 75 percent fail licensing test in Massachusetts

– And, Massachusetts has one of the best education programs in the country!

The Boston Globe reports that nearly three out of four aspiring elementary school teachers failed the new math section of the Massachusetts teacher licensing examination.

Says the Globe, “Education leaders said the high failure rate reflects what they feared, that too many elementary classroom and special education teachers do not have a strong background in math and are in many ways responsible for poor student achievement in the subject, even in middle and high schools.”

Well, if Massachusetts is worried, we should be petrified. Look at how our kids’ math performance stacks up to the Bay State’s kids on the latest federal math tests.



In Kentucky it is possible for elementary school teachers to be certified after taking only one college math course, something called “elementary math,” which is taught below the level of college algebra. I doubt that is adequate preparation, and the results in the graph above seem to verify that.