It has been my privilege and honor to serve as a member of this Panel. My comments are reflections on the significance of our report based on my professional interests in the K-12 curriculum and teacher quality. From my perspective, a basic goal of this report is to promote equity in the K-8 mathematics curriculum. We haven't stated this particular goal explicitly, but it is clearly implicit in our recommendations.
From this perspective, one might point to the two landmark reports by James B. Conant, The American High School Today, published in 1957, and The Comprehensive High School, published in 1967, as relevant historical predecessors to our document. He and the other members of a committee he chaired to study the American high school were also seeking to promote equity. At that time the question was how to academically strengthen public high schools in order to broaden access for their students to our institutions of higher education, especially elite ones whose student body then came largely from a longstanding network of private secondary schools. Conant, a president of a major university (Harvard), a scientist by training, and a former chemistry professor, was especially interested in increasing the opportunity to study advanced mathematics and science in our public high schools. Among the criteria his committee used for judging the quality of a high school was the availability of a calculus course and a strong course in physics. Capable students couldn't prepare adequately for some of our most demanding higher education institutions if these mathematics and science courses weren't even offered in the tiny public high schools that dotted our country. The focus of those two studies was on the specific content of the curriculum. That is also the major focus of our report, in large part because concerns about the specific content of the mathematics curriculum have received much less attention than matters of pedagogy in the past two decades.
The scope of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel's report is narrower than the scope of those two Conant reports a half century ago only in the sense that we focus on mathematics education in the schools. But the goal of our report is actually broader--how to strengthen both the elementary and the middle school mathematics curriculum in all our schools in order to democratize access to Algebra I, the gateway course to advanced mathematics and science in our high schools. I want to highlight what I see as five major interconnecting recommendations to accomplish this. First, we spell out what the specific components of Algebra I and Algebra II should be. Second, we describe what components of K-7 mathematics all students should master in order to do well in an authentic Algebra I course. Third, we outline what should be included in mathematics coursework for prospective elementary, special education, and middle school teachers of mathematics and what they should be tested on for licensure so that they are qualified to teach the foundations for an authentic Algebra I course or the course itself. Fourth, we urge that all school districts provide an authentic Algebra I course in grade 8. And, fifth, we recommend that schools prepare an increasing number of students for success in an authentic Algebra I course in Grade 8, if not earlier.
This is the equity issue: a regularly increasing number of American students should be prepared to take an authentic Algebra I course in grade 8 (or earlier), just as are large percentages of students in the highest-achieving countries on TIMSS. More of our high school students can then take the advanced mathematics and science courses in their junior and senior years that qualify them for admission to the most demanding institutions of higher education in this country.
Published March 16, 2008
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