Teaching Math to the Talented

Hoover Institution. Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Tel: 800-935-2882; Fax: 650-723-8626; e-mail: educationnext@hoover.stanford.edu; Web site: http://educationnext.org/journal/

Y

9

Graduation; High School Graduates; Comparative Analysis; Foreign Countries; Cross Cultural Studies; Mathematics Achievement; Mathematics Tests; Scoring; Mathematics Skills; Mathematics Instruction; Academically Gifted; High Achievement; Federal Legislation

National Assessment of Educational Progress; Program for International Student Assessment

1539-9664

Maintaining America's productivity as a nation depends importantly on developing a highly qualified cadre of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals. To realize that objective requires a system of schooling that produces students with advanced math and science skills. To see how well schools in the United States do at producing high-achieving math students, the authors compare the percentage of U.S. students in the high-school graduating Class of 2009 with advanced skills in mathematics to percentages of similarly high achievers in other countries. Unfortunately, they find that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world's industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests. Moreover, while the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP varies considerably among the 50 states, not even the best state does well in international comparison. (Contains 1 figure.)

ERIC

2011

EJ910573