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An international study shows American students falling behind. Nancy R. Bunt examines what is being done regionally to boost learning in these vital subjects
Sunday, December 10, 2000
We know mastery of mathematics and science is important. Today's high-wage workers use spreadsheets and develop formulas linking one spreadsheet column to others. They answer questions like, "How can this information be sorted, organized, grouped, and visualized? Does it follow? Can things get better? Or worse? What's best?" To answer these questions, our students need the concepts and skills conveyed in mathematics and science.
Our region has mobilized to ensure that our students are prepared. A regional congress established the Math and Science Collaborative in 1994 to coordinate efforts and focus resources on strengthening math and science education.
It took an international study done in 1995 to understand how best to strengthen the teaching and learning of mathematics and science. The Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) provides a lens to look at what we are doing, to question our assumptions, and to start the discussion about what we might do differently to strengthen student learning.
The results of a new international study done in 1999, known as the TIMSS-R, were released last week to offer another look at math and science at the eighth-grade level in 38 countries.
So what does TIMSS teach us? The TIMSS "horse race" comparison of how each country's students perform draws our attention. In the 1995 study, we heard that U.S students do well at fourth grade, are mediocre at eighth grade and fall to the bottom by 12th grade. That upsets us because it looks like the longer students are in school, the worse they do!
The horse-race part of the 1999 study released last week showed that the fourth-graders, who four years ago were doing well according to TIMSS, by eighth grade once again are only mediocre internationally. But the value of these particular international studies are that they also note what conditions are present where students are learning well.
Three major lessons from TIMSS guide our efforts in southwestern Pennsylvania.
How do we end up with a "mile wide and inch deep" approach? While the United States does not have an official "national" curriculum, our textbooks, available across the nation, create an unofficial one. Most teachers, students and parents assume that what students are to learn each year is captured in the textbook for that grade level. So we believe that it is important to "cover the text." We assume that most of what is included has not been presented in previous years, and will not be repeated in subsequent years. Only by comparing ourselves to others in the international setting did we learn that our assumptions were wrong.
Why does that happen here? Textbook publishers naturally respond to large markets. The content of mathematics and science textbooks is designed to meet the demands of the large states of California and Texas, which authorize textbooks at the state level. But Texas and California don't always agree on what grade a topic is presented, and neither do the other 48 states, whose topics are added at different levels in order to sell the books in those states too. The results are the most expensive, thickest, least focused textbooks in the world. "Covering" such texts makes it difficult, if not impossible, for teachers or students to have enough time to truly teach or master a concept.
However, what most eighth-graders are learning is arithmetic. Of particular surprise, in the rest of the world, the concepts of algebra and geometry are routinely taught to all students by the time they are completing the equivalent of eighth grade - as are the concepts of calculus by the end of 12th!
Seemingly simple solutions like pushing high school algebra down to seventh and eighth grade are not the answer. The high performing countries are teaching algebra and geometry in very different ways.
From statistics shared by the U.S. Department of Education, we know that by graduation about 62 percent of students have enrolled in algebra. In southwestern Pennsylvania, the Math and Science Collaborative did its own research. Not being satisfied with knowing just who enrolled, MSC asked districts to indicate what percentage of graduating seniors completed algebra with at least a C. The regional average was 63 percent - with a range among districts from 37 percent to 97 percent.
A new MSC initiative supports access to a tool with documented success of helping all students learn algebra: the Cognitive Tutor. All high schools in the region are eligible for support to use this tool to replicate the documented success in algebra learning
With the opportunity to participate in the 1999 administration of TIMSS-R (which repeats TIMSS at the eighth-grade level), MSC mobilized to participate as a work force region. With support from local foundations, southwestern Pennsylvania joined 27 other jurisdictions around the country to compare ourselves against the international results of TIMSS-R - as though we were a country. Our own findings will be released in April 2001.
TIMSS broadened our conversation - by identifying problems we had not recognized without the international comparison. TIMSS gives good news because it connects what students learn with what we teach and how we teach it. Those areas can be strengthened with good information about what works. It is much better than finding that student learning is more directly related to television viewing or a limited national gene pool.
When you only talk to yourself, the conversation is understandably short. With all that we've learned from TIMSS, we look forward to continuing our learning from TIMSS-R -with the world as our conversation partner.
Nancy R. Bunt is executive director of Collaboratives for Learning. Her e-mail address is buntn@collaboratives.org. 
U.S schools make learning difficult, by trying to teach too many topics each year, and repeating the same topics year after year. In countries where students are learning well, the schools organize their topics. Over the K-12 span, schools in those countries teach all the major concepts that the United States does - but they plan the entry and exit of major topics to allow time to develop understanding of fewer big ideas each year. In other words, these schools teach fewer topics in more depth each year. The United States limits opportunities for students to learn mathematics. In the rest of the participating countries, what is offered to eighth-graders is defined as "mathematics" and the content is the same for all students - regardless of what school, class or "track" they are in. In America, it is given multiple names, more than 20 - including, for advanced students, pre-algebra, algebra or geometry. High performing countries bring educators together on a regular basis to share what works. The MSC advocates bringing teachers together to refine lessons, which they implement, while observing each other, in order to improve the teaching in every classroom. There are several initiatives under way in southwestern Pennsylvania that foster that approach. In particular, the regional middle level science approach, Focus on Conceptual Understanding in Science, includes study groups organized around exemplary materials as its central concept.