Ben Hiromura

EE 333
Assignment #1
Mathematics education in the United States is a topic being widely discussed at present
by researchers, politicians, parents, and school officials alike. The rhetoric surrounding the
philosophy and methodology of teaching math to American students is heightened and polarized
in a manner wrought with desperation and anger. Since the 1980s, The National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has been pleading that Americans can teach mathematics
more effectively by changing the focus of instruction toward more in-depth learning processes.
More recently, the NCTM published Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for
All (2014), which outlined the major challenges and possible improvements to mathematics
education as a national system. Unlike the NCTM, which has been weighing in on math
education issues for over thirty years, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) was
assembled in 2006 by order of President George W. Bush. This collection of prominent
researchers, education specialists, and politicians issued their own report on the state of math
education in 2008 calling it The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. This
document cited concerns about current math teaching and offered pertinent, research-based
suggestions to improve the system. The two published documents mentioned above provide the
most authoritative contemporary volumes of the trends and issues within math education
available in the country.
In their report, the National Math Advisory Panel (2008) substantiate that mathematics
education should be a top national interest because of the growing need for competent workers in
science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) jobs, the quantitative nature of most
modern-day vocations, and the fact that young students must be prepared mathematically for
college (p. xii). Thus, math education from pre-kindergarten through college distinctly impacts
the national economy as well as the individual citizen. The panel cited some troubling statistics
gathered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which determined 32%
of our students are at or above the proficient level in Grade 8, but only 23% are proficient at
Grade 12 (NMAP, 2008, p. xii). In addition to the poor test performance cited by NAEP, the
NCTM (2014) described the surprisingly meager ranking of American children in the 2012
Programme for International Assessment (PISA), in which they struggled with tasks involving
creating, using, and interpreting models of real-world situations and using mathematical
reasoning (p. 2). These, and more, disturbing test results pointed the NMAP and NCTM to

further investigate the systematic deficiencies within American math education and to construct
possible remedies to the dire trends.
Overall, both the NMAP and NCTM claimed mathematical deficiencies existed in
minority communities (racially and socioeconomically marginalized) and in the general
population with algebraic thinking. The NMAP (2008) suggested six elements for improvement
of math education in the US including the production of a simpler math curriculum that stresses a
set of critical topics, the need for research on how children learn math effectively, a push toward
high-achieving, highly-knowledgeable educators that are well-prepared, the use of researchbased practices in the classroom, the altering of national and state assessments to be more
algebra-based, and overall a greater push toward math education research to inform policy (p.
xii-xiv). Though the panel outlined a more detailed view of changes needed within curricular
content, learning processes, teachers and teacher education, instructional practices,
instructional materials, assessment, research policies and mechanisms, their major message
surrounded the improvement of core progressional standards with aligned assessments, rigorous
teacher preparation, and continued research on what is working in the classroom. Similarly, the
NCTM (2014) took aim at the low-level math instruction and emaciated teacher professionalism
by suggesting six categorical changes to teaching and learning, access and equity, curriculum,
tools and technology, assessment, and professionalism. Such suggestions included effective
teaching that encourages higher-order thinking, bridging the achievement gap through access, a
progressional curriculum that makes connections to the real world, integrating technology,
utilizing assessment data for better teaching, and ensuring educator quality through non-coercive
accountability systems (NCTM, 2014, p. 5). The common threads amongst the NMAP and
NCTM include the setting of a streamlined progessional benchmarks (much like the current
Common Core State Standards), utilizing research-based practices during instruction, and
aligning assessments with algebraically focused concepts. Such findings are fueling national
policy towards math education and thus contributing to one side of the national discourse. From
the NMAP and NCTM findings one thing is clear: mathematics education in the United States is
currently ineffective to the extent we need it to be functional, but whether these two reports lead
to positive change is up to the nations people to actually implement the suggestions.

Works Cited
National Mathematics Advisory Panel. Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the
National Mathematics Advisory Panel, U.S. Department of Education: Washington, DC, 2008.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2014). Principles to actions: Ensuring
mathematical success for all.