at NYC HOLD: Decline in Student Performance in Math by JHU math professor Steve Wilson

Stephen Wilson, a math professor at Johns Hopkins, has written a paper on the decline of students in their math abilities based on a statistical analysis that he conducted. He gave a group of students in his Calculus I class in fall of 06 the same final exam that he gave for the same course in 1989. He then compared the SAT Math scores for each of the classes and found that while the SATM scores were the same on average, the average final exam scores were lower by a statistically significant amount for the 06 class. Among his astute conclusions are the following:

Nineteen eighty-nine is, in mathematics education, indelibly tied to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ publication, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989), which downplayed pencil and paper computations and strongly suggested that calculators play an important role in K-12 mathematics education. My 2006 students would have been about two years old at the time of this very influential publication, and it could easily have affected the mathematical education many of them received. Certainly, one possibility is that mathematics preparation is down across the country, thus limiting the pool of well prepared college applicants.

There is nothing that universities can do to correct the lack of preparation of their applicants. However, it is difficult to believe that there are not enough students to fill our classes with 1989 quality students. One of the major gate-keepers, the SATM test, is oblivious to this significant shift in preparation. Universities can certainly demand a more effective SATM test.

To misquote Bob Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man: "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is; do you, Mr. Fennell?"