After the world was hit with the coronavirus pandemic, American students have fallen behind many developed countries, with test scores sinking to their lowest point in the last two decades.
According to recent census data, roughly one in three U.S. students lacks basic math proficiency, ranking the United States as 33rd out of 35 developed countries. Even predating the pandemic, math scores among 12th-grade students had been on a downward trend.
AP Precalculus teacher Tony Smith discusses the importance of mathematical literacy. “In the long term, math illiteracy can restrict your education in college and therefore restrict your career opportunities,” Smith said. “You don’t need to make a bunch of equations and solve them. You need to be able to think ahead and think about potential problems and be able to ask questions of how to avoid these problems.”
The learning recession began around 2013, with factors including early access to smartphones, social media, teacher shortages and pandemic learning loss contributing to the decline. These gaps in education have led to detrimental effects on students’ learning environment.
Education policy student Nat Malkus from the American Enterprise Institute comments on the major academic downfall. “I cannot be more empathetic: this is an enormous problem that is not getting enough attention,” Malkus said. “But in many places, addressing the ‘academic, generation-long decline’ doesn’t seem to be a priority.”
When students lose the ability to perform practical math skills, they also lose other critical abilities. This widespread decline in foundational numeracy has resulted in college students struggling with middle-school level concepts.
The worst part of it all, however, is not the inability to perform math, but the failure of some teachers and school districts to fully address these rapid downfalls. This is the largest average score decline in mathematics in decades, yet the issue continues to struggle to be addressed.
Students from Pleasant Valley High School also addressed this ignorance among students. “Math literacy is a very important issue; it connects to much larger issues like problem solving and critical thinking,” said junior Nathaniel Pielak. “A decline in students’ ability to do math reflects a very negative shift towards society’s inability to do these things.”
Smith, however, approaches learning from a different perspective. “I first try to help students during class time. If I have time in class, I talk to them while they are working and see where they are making errors. If class time does not allow, I suggest students come in before school or 8th period so we can see where the gap in learning is occurring.”
Even with the rapid decline of meeting educational standards in mathematics, these harms can still be reversed through active participation and involvement with struggling students. Ignoring struggling students is unreasonable, and it is in the best interest of teachers and school faculty to recognize and address these factors.
