We are in the midst of a paradox in math education. As more states strive to improve math curricula and raise standardized test scores, more students show up to college unprepared for college-level math. In Maryland, 49 percent of high school graduates take noncredit remedial math courses in college, before they can take math courses for credit. In many cases, incoming college students cannot do basic arithmetic, even after passing all high school math tests. Recently, it was reported that student math achievement actually grew faster in the years before the No Child Left Behind law.
Much of the problem arises from a blind focus on raising test scores instead of teaching students to understand math. As a college physics professor and parent of three school-age children, I've seen how little understanding is conveyed by the grade-school math curricula. For example, the problems assigned to my children have become progressively more difficult through the years, to the point of absurdity. My eighth-grade daughter asked me one evening how to perform matrix inversions, a technique I teach in my sophomore-level college course on mathematical methods for physics majors.
