NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A new report from the Tennessee Comptroller's office shows the status of math education in the state isn't adding up.
The study released Tuesday found that few of the state's students are posting high scores on a national math test. It also states that gaps in performance mean the state's black, poor or immigrant students are not matching the math scores of their white, middle class peers.
The report's findings were not unexpected by most state educational experts.
"We're probably not that surprised, given what we had been reading about nationally in terms of math," said Kim Potts, chief researcher for the study. "The U.S. is not doing well when compared with many other countries."
Tennessee's educational infrastructure, including the funding that comes from the state's Basic Education Program, is part of the problem, she said.
"Look at the whole system and how our teachers are prepared, and what we do and don't expect of them, and given their lack of adequate support once they become teachers," Potts said. "The state does not fund professional development through the BEP. That's one of the suggestions we make in the report, that it really needs to be something that's considered very important."
Among the conclusions in the report issued by the Tennessee Comptroller's Office of Education Accountability:
- Many students with good math grades still need remedial classes in college. With the lottery-funded scholarships, that means the state pays for math education twice, in K-12 schools and in college.
- Tennessee doesn't set high standards for potential teachers, including a low cutoff score on the math test required for a teacher license.
- Despite new national recommendations on how to teach math, many Tennessee teachers still use other, ineffective methods.
The report matches what Taft Davis sees on the educational front lines every day. Teacher preparation is one of the main problems, the Nashville School of the Arts instructor said, illustrated by a college class he took on teaching math.
"The (college) students in the class could not work the problems in the fourth-grade math book," he said. "The teacher told me, after we had our first test, that he was actually going to have to teach them the math."
And if teachers don't know it, they can't teach it.
"I've taught in a middle school where the teachers, when they didn't know how to work the concepts on their own, they just didn't teach it," Davis said. "They would skip the more difficult areas."
Another problem is limiting the scope of instruction, he said.
"A lot of teachers want to teach to the test, which sounds like that's going to make the test scores higher," Davis said. "If you teach above what's needed, then the test seems easy. I think the (state) curriculum is good for the most part. We're just not teaching it."
A recent national report called Expectations Gap, A 50-State review of High School Graduation Requirements, showed Tennessee is failing to adequately prepare high school graduates to succeed in higher education or work along with other states.
The review by Achieve Inc., a nonprofit group created by the nation's governors and business leaders, studied the math and English requirements in all states.
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On the Net:
Tennessee Comptroller of Treasury: comptroller.state.tn.us/
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Information from: The Tennessean, tennessean.com
