Winning the Math Wars: No Teacher Left Behind

2. The American Dilemma

49 2 The American Dilemma Now that we have a sense of the larger issues in the world of mathematics education, we turn to a discussion of the influences that contribute to or distract from our national capacity to improve mathematics education and, as a result, improve student learning of mathematics. You can hardly pick up a newspaper or news magazine, let alone professional journals or articles offered by scholarly commentators,without finding rallying cries for schools to improve student achievement in dynamic ways. Many policy makers, educators, and members of the public see our country’s current status—often referred to as a crisis with respect to international comparisons of student performance in mathematics—as unacceptable and a precursor of certain economic doom. This perception has characterized the collective view of mathematics education in this country for many years. In 1981, Secretary of Education T. H. Bell created the National Commission on Excellence in Education in response to “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system” (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983). The commission’s report, titled A Nation at Risk, summarized the evidence for concern and proposed improvements. Reforms since 1983 have been led by government agencies and have focused on raising standards and improving teaching to enhance student performance (Martin and Crowell 2000). President GeorgeW. The American Dilemma 50 Bush’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001, also known as the No Child Left BehindAct (NCLB), was passed in 2002 and has four principles:“accountability for results; local control and flexibility; enhanced parental choice; and effective and successful programs.” These principles do not selfevidently mandate what constitutes success or effectiveness, so it is fair to ask, successful for whom and as measured by what standards? Since the 1880s, one of the goals ofAmerican education has been to prepare people for different career paths. The NCLB was designed to secure high levels of achievement for all students . From the standpoint of many educational researchers, the mandate to serve all students opened an opportunity to apply the latest theories about human learning, such as described in various government reports and educational research literature, including How People Learn:Brain,Mind,Experience ,and School (National Research Council 1999a) and How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice (National Research Council 1999b), and supported by cognitive research, such as Caine and Caine’s Making Connections:Teaching the Human Brian (1991). These documents describe principles of “powerful teaching and learning” that have been adopted throughout the nation and also in Washington State, and the principles are sometimes called reform-based education or constructivism. On this model the teacher attends to the individual learning needs of eachstudentandcreatesalearner-centeredenvironmentwhere students learn through hands-on involvement and real-life situations (Sutherland 1992). Hyerle (1996) called this shift in thinking about the classroom a “cognitive revolution” (p. 13) that takes education away from rote behaviorism. Newmann and Wehlage (1993) divided this “authentic” approach to education into five components: 1) higher-order thinking, 2) depth of knowledge, 3) connectedness to the world, 4) substantive conversation, and 5) social support for student The American Dilemma 51 achievement. All of these require alternative assessments. Although the theoretical model of education and the assessment strategies changed, instructional practices did not necessarily change (Baker, Gratama, and Bachtler 2002; Baker, Gratama, and Bachtler 2003). Nor did many citizens’ expectations for the content of math education or their opinions about how math ought to be taught, according to a research study (Davis, 2007) quoted in EducationWeek, entitled “Parents Less WorriedThan Experts Over Math, Science.” What Is the Problem? In the United States,many people say that they“just aren’t good at math.” Moreover, they feel no embarrassment about this selfanalysis . While these same people may not be good readers, they are unlikely to admit it, because illiteracy is equated with ignorance, lack of education, and even stupidity. Why is it acceptable to do poorly at math but not at reading? Based on our review of the national literature on mathematics and math education, we offer four explanations. First, people think mathematics is something you are good at because you were born that way. In a public opinion survey conducted in Washington and Massachusetts (Mass Insight Education and Research Institute , April 2004), over a third of the adults surveyed agreed that “even many smart people don’t have the ability to learn math.” Unfortunately, many teachers also believe that a large proportion of the student population cannot...