Math council sums it up: Go back to basics

Mathematics teaching in kindergarten through the eighth grade needs to stress the basics so students learn how to solve problems and develop critical thinking and reasoning skills, according to a study released Tuesday.

The report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics said students in kindergarten should begin learning how to count groups of objects and about the fundamentals of geometry. By the eighth grade, students should be introduced to algebra and linear functions and learn how to use math to analyze two- and three-dimensional objects, the report said.

The council's advice is striking because in 1989 it touched off the so-called math wars by promoting open-ended problem solving over drilling. Back then, it recommended that students as young as those in kindergarten use calculators in class.

Nearly 80 teachers and other experts spent 18 months writing and reviewing grade-by-grade guidelines, which cover preschool through eighth grade. The panel aims to give a roadmap to instructors, schools systems and states about exactly what children should be learning — and to start a debate that could put the math wars to rest.

According to their report, "Curriculum Focal Points," which is subtitled "A Quest for Coherence," students, by second grade, should "develop quick recall of basic addition facts and related subtraction facts." By fourth grade, the report says, students should be fluent with "multiplication and division facts" and should start working with decimals and fractions. By fifth, they should know the "standard algorithm" for division — in other words, long division — and should start adding and subtracting decimals and fractions. By sixth grade, students should be moving on to multiplication and division of fractions and decimals. By seventh and eighth grades, they should use algebra to solve linear equations.

The council's finding also represents a fundamental shift in its policy about teaching math. In 2000, the organization said school systems should decide on their own how soon they would introduce basic math principles to students.

That policy has made math teaching inconsistent in the U.S. from grade-to-grade, and there are no uniform standards on when a student is expected to learn arithmetic or algebra, the report said. A survey of 47 state educational agencies showed that 85 percent believed "national leadership is needed" to guide schools on math learning expectations, the study said.

Unlike many countries, the U.S. has no nationally mandated curriculum, so the math council's guidance has significant influence. The council, based in Reston, Va., is an advocacy group of math teachers and educators that monitors math teaching standards.

The study, released on its Web site, found U.S. school systems revealed an "inconsistency in the grade placement of mathematics topics as well as in how they are defined and what students are expected to learn."

U.S. educators and the government have called for schools to improve their math courses in the past decade to boost student proficiency in basic math and stay competitive with foreign countries.

The percentage of eighth-graders able to do basic math rose to 69 percent in 2005 from 52 percent in 1990, while the percentage scoring at a better than proficient level rose to 30 percent from 15 percent during that period, according to The Nation's Report Card, a U.S. Education Department study of student math ability.