A report released this past week by Achieve, an independent, non-profit, educational reform organization, shows that very few U.S. high school students gain proficiency in algebra. These results are especially troubling because success in algebra is known to be a gateway to higher levels of math. As stated last year’s report of the National Math Advisory Panel:
Algebra is a demonstrable gateway to later achievement. Students need it for any form of higher mathematics later in high school; moreover, research shows that completion of Algebra II correlates significantly with success in college and earnings from employment.
This is very different from the view of algebra expressed by a constructivist math proponent in an interview featured on the Mathematically Sane web site:
Algebraic manipulation, of and by itself, is a limited goal in our day and age. The TI-92 graphing calculator can do all of the algebraic manipulation found in traditional high school algebra texts. No one gets paid for sitting all day at a cubicle doing factoring problems. People get paid for thinking about meaningful real-world problems and how to solve them.
My own view of the need for algebra is in line with NMAP’s. Despite the availability of the TI-92, I frequently have to use algebra to solve real-world problems.
