Tom Loveless- Misplaced Students in Algebra

Here is the full report with charts and data. Tom Loveless is a member of the National Advisory Math Panel.

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2008/0922_education_loveless/0922_education_loveless.pdf

Favorite lines from this report:

In eighth grade they are now expected to learn, in a single year, the six years of math that they have not yet learned along with a full year of algebra.

No one—no teacher, no researcher, no governor, no school board member, no philanthropist— knows how to teach in one year what has not been learned in six and then how to teach algebra on top of that. Algebra teachers are being asked to do the impossible.

The greatest teachers in the world do not know how to teach algebra to students who do not know basic arithmetic.