College Ready Blog

Kudos to NCTM for rocking the boat with its September report calling for states to trim down “mile wide and inch deep” math standards. Schmidt, Wang and McKnight (2002) have been talking about this problem for over five years. See NYT and WaPo’s coverage.

While the number of standards is important, so is the sequencing (order) of them. Schmidt believes that coherent sequencing leads to greater student understanding, but this issue may be too esoteric for policy discussions. Hopefully the issue will gain traction as states take the next pass at their standards. Otherwise states will rewrite them again in another 5-10 years.

From a college readiness standpoint, calculus is the minimum math requirement for most colleges and universities. Yet, the K-12 system is geared toward supporting students through Algebra II/Trig at the most.

Calculus is about slope and area, concepts students are exposed to as early as elementary school. Why isn’t there a more seamless transition - especially when any middle schooler could take a derivative? I like Richard Sisley’s approach where the lesson on the first day of 9th grade math is about differentiation.