Throw Out Your Calculators and Memorize

This from Business Week:

A Clarion Call for

Real Mathematics

I have spent more years than I care to remember reading reports of government advisory committees, but I have never encountered anything like “The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel” (PDF) released yesterday by the Education Dept.

In uncharacteristically blunt language, the report offers an action plan for a radical reconstruction of math education, especially in kindergarten through 8th grade. The overhaul is needed, the panelist argue, because the U.S. is failing produce the technically literate workforce it needs and can no longer count on making up for the shortfall through immigration because “the dramatic success of economies overseas in the age of the Internet cast doubt on the viability of such a strategy in the future.”

It may come as a surprise to anyone who finished their middle school education before the mid-1980s, but [perhaps the [panel's most controversial recommendation is that elementary school students should memorize their addition and multiplications tables and develop proficiency in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. Educators who felt that calculators had rendered manual calculation obsolete have been denigrating these skills for two decades.

But the National Mathematics Advisory Panel was focused on the readiness of student to learn algebra and found that algebra depends heavily on the computational skills that were being lost. (The panel ended up neutral on the controversial question of whether the use of calculators, particularly in early grades, helps or hurts the development of the ability to do mathematics. The quality of existing research, it found, simply is not good enough to come to a conclusion on the subject.)

The sad thing about the report that despite the unanimity on a panel that represents a broad spectrum of the mathematics and math education communities, it will take a decade or more for its recommendations to be implemented. It simply takes that long for curriculum guidelines to be recast, textbooks to be rewritten, and teachers to be trained or retrained. And in that time, a lot more damage can be done.

Throw the Book at College Rankings

Business Week debates the college rankings.

The rankings U.S. News & World Report gives to

colleges and universities

count too much toward these institutions’ esteem.

Pro or con?

Pro: Stop Fueling the Admissions Frenzy

by Douglas MacMillan
Over-selectivity is plaguing our college system. Each year, for roughly the past decade, the top 20 schools in the U.S., as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, set new records for the percentage of applicants they reject. In a BusinessWeek commentary published Apr. 17, Duke’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, Christoph Guttentag, says his school received 19,170 applications for only 1,665 spaces this year. Among the many exceptional candidates Duke had no choice but to reject, according to Guttentag, were nearly 800 valedictorians.

No one can deny the prestige a diploma from Duke (ranked eight last year), or other consistent top-10 schools like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton, bestows on a graduate’s résumé. But in order to foster an admissions environment that rewards all of our country’s best and brightest—not just those who scored above 1500 on the SAT and can afford Ivy League tuition—we need to do away with the antiquated notion of an institution’s esteem. U.S. News rankings should be first to go.

Initiated in 1983, the rankings weigh seven factors: peer assessment, retention, student selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, graduation rate performance, and alumni giving rate.

While U.S. News maintains that measurement of these standards is consistent from school to school and from year to year, a 1997 study done by the Chicago-based National Opinion Research Center found the weight given to each category is slightly modified each year—sometimes producing drastic changes in rankings. If the magazine didn’t tinker with weighting, it would have a fairly static list that wouldn’t sell many copies at newsstands.

The magazine isn’t the only party profiting from the rankings. Test prep materials and private college consultants have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, thanks to a horde of students who will do anything to get into a top-ranked school. And to universities, a solid position on the list leads to a greater number of applicants, higher selectivity, and ultimately, higher tuition.

Competition among schools inevitably results in more merit-based scholarships and fewer need-based scholarships, as universities attempt to buy those students who will help bolster their ranking.

The U.S. boasts hundreds of excellent schools, but teachers, parents, and potential employers have left today’s students with the impression that these paths are less than sufficient unless they have the right number next to them in a magazine.

We need to start educating youth about the diversity of opportunities available, not holding up the few wealthiest institutions in the land as a standard for all.


Con: Rankings Are a Valuable Tool

by Diane Brady
There’s a fundamental truth about rankings: Top-ranked players love them, while the ones at the bottom of the pile don’t. And yet consumers continue to gravitate toward these lists, whether they’re buying cars or picking a college.

The reason? Rankings give people added tools to make informed decisions, with data on factors they care about, from average admission grades to the caliber of teachers on staff.

Is it hard to get into a good college these days? Yes. But that’s because of demographics, not magazine features. The larger population of college-age people has created extra competition for coveted spots. That, plus the growing awareness that a college degree is a necessity for anyone who aspires to earn a decent wage, is what really fuels the popularity of SAT test prep courses and the flood of college applications.

Moreover, rankings help ensure an institution’s esteem is based on merit rather than a veneer of prestige blindly handed down from one generation to the next. Schools like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and MIT have longstanding reputations for excellence, but they continue to earn those high marks by consistently investing heavily in top faculty and cutting-edge programs.

The educational community held those institutions in high esteem long before U.S. News & World Report began to publish rankings. But vigorous public rankings have allowed newer, more nimble competitors to emerge, letting students get a glimpse of lesser-known places that offer innovative programs, world-class faculty, and a terrific undergraduate experience. The rankings allow people to quantify some factors that many universities would rather keep to themselves—such as student-teacher ratios and outside assessments on the caliber of graduates. They expose who is delivering the goods and who might be coasting on a reputation not backed by the numbers.

Smart students recognize that rankings are just one tool in the box. The last time I checked, students were still visiting campuses, talking to guidance counselors, and pulling information off the Internet.

And don’t knock the value of competition. I would like to see data proving higher-ranked colleges give out fewer need-based scholarships because they use aid money to "buy those students who will help bolster their ranking." If anything, top-performing colleges can afford to give more scholarships to everyone, because grateful alumni are likely to give back.

The U.S. has hundreds of excellent schools, but that doesn’t mean they’re all equal. Rankings ensure colleges are held accountable—to the people they admit, the staff they hire, and the constituencies they claim to serve. Ill-conceived or poorly executed rankings aren’t likely to hold up in the age of instant communication and transparency. And colleges that try to fudge the numbers are just as likely to be called out by knowledgeable students or competitors.

People who find no value in rankings can simply choose to ignore them. Others can use them to supplement their research. But don’t just dismiss a tool that helps students make smarter decisions about which college is right for them.

Scholarships: Not Just for the Needy Anymore

A growing number of top-notch schools have begun handing out thick wads of cash to households that may not appear to need it. Why? "Wealthier families, who have students who excel, are desirable because they prop up the school's profile in the college rankings, and they can also pay a significant portion of their education," says Deborah Fox, president of Fox College Funding in San Diego, a firm that advises higher-income families on strategies to apply for college funding.

A recent study by the nonprofit Education Trust found that at 50 state flagship institutions, the amount of grant aid pocketed by families making at least $100,000 jumped 406% from 1995 to 2003, while money earmarked for those with household incomes of less than $20,000 dropped 13%. "Many of these flagship institutions have become more and more enclaves for the most privileged of their state's young people," the study noted.

See the BusinessWeek Online article.