Wednesday, April 22, 2009

TIMSS 2007: Where are we? MAA newsletter


http://www.maa.org/pubs/febmar09pg4-7.pdf


Nice little piece (4 pages) from Mathematical Association of America
Feb/March 2009 Newsletter.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The MAA is part of the problem - they attribute low test scores to student and teacher apathy. I wonder why? Culture?

In the latest test results, US student scores went up because more lower performing (third world countries) were added to the study. Its ridiculous, US students compared to third world countries, as if its going to change public opinion about education.

Fernando Q. Gouea said...

Thanks for the link to MAA FOCUS! I thought that was a useful article.

To respond to Anonymous, "the MAA" has no position on this. Many members of MAA do, and that includes the (elected!) officials, of course. But there is no official position. The MAA's job is to focus on collegiate mathematics, so it has avoided taking a stand on mathematics teaching in the schools.

Anonymous said...

Supposing that you were the editor of MAA Focus - has it ever dawned on the MAA Leadership that not having a position on reform curriculum is in fact taking a position.

If MAA members are sufficiently alarmed that the quality of their students had been substantially diminishing over time, than hadn't they better do something!? If you and your staff are even entertaining the notion that "calculus didactic" will help educate US students, then I think we should continue our lampooning.

The MAA is conveniently overlooking a serious problem - the elementary and secondary programs are using terrible textbooks.