Who's Afraid of Math and Science?
America’s kids are stumbling in math and science skills. A U of L center seeks to change that.
The United States may be a superpower, but when it comes to math and science skills its children score worse than those in many developing countries.
In fact, students from places you might not expect—such as Latvia, Slovakia, Malaysia and 15 other nations—score higher than American eighth graders in math. Furthermore, 17 nationalities do better in science at the eighth-grade level than their American counterparts.
And by the 12th grade, American students’ math and science scores plummet even more.
That’s according to a 1999 study issued by the U.S. government’s National Center for Education Statistics. Every four years since 1995 the agency has tested thousands of American students in various grades to see how they fare compared to children worldwide.
![[Image]](/advancement/pub/impact/spring2004/images/education2.jpg)
American students and teachers in general lack math and science skills. William Bush directs U of L's Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Teacher Development to help teachers boost their skills in these knowledge areas.
The 1999 study, which focused on the test scores of eighth graders, includes the last available statistics on how well, or how poorly, America’s students are retaining and understanding math and science knowledge.
If the results of the 2003 survey—to be released in late 2004—follow the trends, the numbers may again be discouraging.
The 1999 survey also contained this eye opener: 71 percent of students internationally learned math from teachers who majored in mathematics in college, but only 41 percent of American students did.
In his 1999 State of the Union address, then-President Bill Clinton zeroed in on that fact in his call for educational reforms.
“In too many schools,” he said, “teachers don’t have college majors, or even minors, in the subjects they teach.”
Former National Science Foundation (NSF) director Rita Colwell reiterated the problem in a story published in the Washington Post in 2000.
“We know kids can’t learn what their teachers don’t really understand,” she said.
While teachers are not the only factor that affects student performance, they are a major influence, says Bill Bush, a U of L professor of mathematics education.
A new U of L center directed by Bush will help educators improve their math and science knowledge and teaching skills.
![[Image]](/advancement/pub/impact/spring2004/images/education1.jpg)
Amanda Davis, a doctoral student in math education, pored through international literature to help devise new assessment tests to glean the scope of teachers' math and science knowledge.
The U of L Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Teacher Development, in the College of Education and Human Development, was created in 2001 to conduct research and build model programs on mathematics and science teacher development and to offer a doctoral program in math and science education at U of L.
Since Bush’s arrival from the University of Kentucky in 2001, the center has garnered $4.3 million in funding. Included in that amount is a $1 million share of a $10 million NSF grant for the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM). ACCLAIM is helping find ways to improve math education in the Appalachian areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia.
The array of projects at U of L’s center, many still in the early development stages, all have a common thread, Bush says.
“One problem,” he notes, “is that the mathematics and science preparation teachers receive in college does not always align with what they have to teach their students, whether at the elementary, middle school or high school levels. Teachers need to go through the same exploration of mathematics and science that they put their students through, only at much deeper levels.”
So what exactly do teachers need to know when it comes to the math and science they’re teaching? Bush says no one is really sure.
“There are lots of opinions, but no reliable or valid measures of teachers’ knowledge of mathematics and science are available,” he says.
One of the center’s research projects seeks to change that.
Bush and his U of L colleagues are developing sets of “diagnostic assessments” for middle school math and science teachers that will help identify strengths and weaknesses in their content knowledge. The assessments were created with $750,000 of $1.5 million in federal funds secured for the center by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and U.S. Rep. Anne Northup.
“This will be the first assessment tool that measures the scope of teachers’ knowledge in mathematics and science in reliable and valid ways,” Bush says.
The assessments will be available to teachers, the education professors, and math and science professors and others nationwide possibly as soon as this fall.
The tests will measure four areas of subject proficiency:
- rote knowledge of facts and procedures
- understanding of key ideas
- problem solving and application of knowledge to real-world situations
- knowledge specific to teaching mathematics and science
To create the tests, researchers explored the math and science teaching literature and identified knowledge necessary to teach. This knowledge came from national teaching and learning standards, research and international test objectives.
In one section on life sciences, for instance, researchers cited nine to 10 different sets of testing standards that apply to 23 major areas of knowledge, including cells, animal and plant organ systems, the immune system and disease fighting, homeostasis, adaptations, genetics, reproduction, fitness and survival, evolution, extinction and photosynthesis.
Bringing this information together to create the assessments is unprecedented, Bush says, calling the results “the first cumulative set of standards for teachers’ knowledge of math and science.”
Once math and science standards were identified, researchers conferred with teams of teachers, mathematicians and scientists to build a consensus of items.
Graduate assistant Amanda Davis, a doctoral student in math education, helped Bush assemble and analyze much of the material used for the assessments.
“As I gathered and coordinated this information,” Davis says, “I realized that teachers not only need to know the subject matter they teach, but also how to get that knowledge across in ways students understand.”
After 18 months of work, the assessments for middle school teachers are expected to be finished late this summer. Meanwhile, they will be fieldtested by groups of math and science educators across the nation.
A second round of apportionment funding ($600,000) will be used to create assessments for elementary school teachers, perhaps as soon as this fall, Bush adds.
Bush also envisions the center creating assessments for high school math and science teachers once the elementary level assessment tests are complete.
So what happens if the assessments find that teachers have knowledge gaps?
“If any weaknesses are found, our center will offer professional development programs or college courses to address them,” Bush says.
“Our assessments also will help mathematicians, scientists and teacher-educators design more focused courses for mathematics and science teachers.”
For more information on where America ranks in math and science education, go to http://nces.ed.gov/timss/.
For more information about the ACCLAIM project, go to http://www.acclaim-math.org.
