Response to an article on math teacher bashing, published at the Hechinger report and carried ON YAHOO NEWS!! "We’d be better at math if the U.S. borrowed these four ideas for training teachers from Finland, Japan and China."
Mr. Tucker and author Mr. Felton need to look at the research. When we control for the effects of poverty, American students do quite well on international tests of math. Our overall scores are unspectacular because there is so much child poverty in the US. Countries and areas with high math scores have much lower rates of poverty. Poverty means food deprivation, poor health care, and lack of access to books. The best teaching in the world has little effect with students are ill or hungry.
I will be happy to post the research citations if Mr.Tucker and Mr. Felton think they can understand the math.
Posted at: http://hechingerreport.org/wed-be-better-at-math-if-the-u-s-borrowed-these-four-ideas-for-training-teachers-from-finland-japan-and-china/
This story produced by the Hechinger Report leads off with the rhetorical "Why don’t American students really get math?" Two days before this item containing a Marc Tucker solution appeared, USA Today pointed out that "U.S. students win prestigious International Math Olympiad." This competition is billed as "the world’s most prestigious problem-solving competition for high school students," and this was the second US win in a row. But such triumphs just don't get much press. The Washington Post published an item about the victory last year in its print edition. This year Valerie Strauss noted it in her WaPo blog as did the NY Times Word Play blog.
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