American Students behind the World in Math

Today's Washington Post reports that American students rank 24 out of 29 countries in their math skills. The post says:

"U.S. students continue to lag behind students elsewhere in basic math skills, despite recent gains in standardized tests at the national level."

There are many reasons for this, but let me cite two. One is that we've made passing standardized tests the standard instead of teaching students. I have an 8th grader and her math text is filled with pages and problems on taking tests. This kind of material pushes out the mathematics itself. When students are taught to tests they aren't being taught mathematics.

Second, and I couldn't find a link to this in the Washington Post online but it is in the print edition, is that the National Science Foundation has had its budget cut, again. We are starving science and while much of science is NOT funded via the NSF, they do provide seed funding for risky projects. It's a disgrace that we're at this point but we have only ourselves (and our values) to blame.