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Posted on 10/30/2025 8:23:09 AM PDT by DallasBiff
American students are experiencing a math crisis marked by a decline in scores that began over a decade ago and rapidly accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report shows
Almost 4 in 10 eighth-graders scored below basic in math on the Nation’s Report Card, leading to the lowest scores since the test began in the early 2000s. The gap between high- and low-performing students is higher than ever. Students who saw strong gains in math since the early 2000s — girls, low-income students, Black and Latino students, students with disabilities, and English learners — have seen their stunning progress erased.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
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Where I taught, every student was given a Texas Instruments calculator. And there were always classroom sets.
And I do remember slide rules. The first time I saw a calculator I was in college. A chemistry professor bought an early one, and bolted it to his desk in the lecture hall.
Anyone could use it after class. Just get in line.
“ Goes back much further; back to when “new math” was rolled out in the early 70s.”
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Because “YOU GET MORE OF WHAT YOU SUBSIDIZE” the average IQ of Americans is going down as the ‘LOWER IQ’ERS’ outbreed those with higher IQs. Migration of millions with lower IQs hasn’t helped.
So average Math scores are going down along with average IQ scores. Of course low expectations and minimal demands from the education conglomerate hasn’t helped.
Jaime Escalante was an educator who was born in Bolivia and came to the United States in the 1960s to seek a better life. He began teaching math to troubled students in a violent Los Angeles school and became famous for leading many of them to pass the advanced placement calculus test.
Most of today’s teachers only care that the students know the exact number of stripes on a pride flag.
The teachers associations are fully into indoctrination into leftist ignorance and NOT EDUCATION! ....imho
Covid had nothing to do with it.
Back 30 years ago, Intel identified a lack of math skills for their justification to begin H1b.
They simply couldn’t find qualified engineers.
Colleges continued to pump out useless grads.
And here we are 30 years later.
Yes, he was all the rage for a year or two. Did you see the movie they made about him? I think the star was Edward James Olmos. Another educational folk hero was Marva Collins, the black teacher who did something similar for her inner-city elementary-school kids. I think she even created a number of very affordable private schools that used her methods. I wonder whatever happened to her and her schools . . .
I remember my daughter was in 4th grade when they began teaching this new math. I met with the superintendent of instruction when my daughter failed the math test, her answers were correct, but she didn’t arrive at the answer correctly. I pulled out of traditional public school and moved her to a charter school and later we opted to homeschool our youngest daughter. 1+1=2, stick to math.
Taking that test would require reading skills. Perhaps it should be a video with thumbs up or down as the possible answers.
“Here’s one more: over-reliance on calculators.”
Specifically, the calculator in phones. That is a huge reason. If you have a phone, you don’t need to carry much between your ears.
That is a good point. Go back home and look at the mix of students when you attended versus now.
Back in the late 1990s, I was teaching electronics in a community college. They needed algebra, trig and a little calculus. NY high schools at the time changed the traditional ALG I &II, Geometry and Trig to Math course I,II,III & IV. They took topics from ALG I &II, Geometry and Trig to Math mixed them in a “bowl” and haphazardly put them into Math course I,II,III & IV. It confused the students. Eventually they went back to the traditional math courses.
They can’t even spell it. Cf. a thread a few threads above this one.
Differential equations was difficult.
I don’t know why the don’t teach compound interest. Very useful.
Definitely new math. Every sane teacher that I know said 10 or 20 years ago that new math was going to cause problems. Now the evidence is piling up.
Yes.
This generates huge problem.
If you learn to calculate by hand, you can actually estimate the result and correct yourself, if you make calculator typo.
If you just use the calculator, any crap which the calculator shows, looks reasonable to you.
That goes along with what I’ve always said, that the purpose of education is to develop a good “BS Meter”.
Now the left wants to claim that expecting one “correct” answer to a math problem is racist. I kid you not!
It began more than a decade ago.
I remember when *new math* came out in the 60’s. My parents were beside themselves trying to understand it, and they were smart. I never did and didn’t get math until I finally went back to more old school methods like Saxon Math.
This looks like a joke, but there are really schools teaching that!
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