The Five Misconceptions About Teaching Math and Science

• Posted by Community News and Resources June 19, 2012 - Filed in Education - #science  #math  #Education  #Teaching STEM  - 303 views

  American education has not declined and other surprising truths.

  By David E. Drew|Posted Tuesday, June 19, 2012, at 7:15 AM ET

  Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education is critical in the high-tech global marketplace that has replaced the industrial economy. Unfortunately, American students perform poorly on international assessments of math and science knowledge. In 2005, Bill Gates said, “When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow.”

  One challenge to reforming our educational system is that politicians and voters think they know what’s wrong with American schools—after all, they went through the system themselves. But some of those common-sense opinions are simply wrong, and these false assumptions undermine much of the public debate about how to improve education.

  Here are five of the myths that are making it difficult for us to fix science education.

  1. American schools have deteriorated in the past 30 or 40 years, as demonstrated by our poor performance on international assessments of math and science achievement. We need to restore American elementary and secondary education to their previous glory.

  FACT: The mantra from many educators and policy-makers for a quarter-century has been to lament the decline of American schools. Even the classic 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” which sounded the alarm about the American education system, says, “What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.” But this is a flawed assessment of our past.

  The fact that we score poorly now does not mean that our educational system has deteriorated. In fact, it was always bad. Our high school students have always scored at or near the bottom, even as our college and university system was, and is, the best in the world. In a 1965 mathematics assessment, 18 years prior to “A Nation at Risk,” the United States placed last among all nations tested. The other nations achieved mean scores from 36.4 to 21.6. The U.S. score: 13.8.

  Incorrectly believing that American students used to excel hampers our reform efforts. It makes the challenge of improving STEM education seem easier than it is.

   

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  Slate.com