The direction of math education in America is very much on the mind of Cal State Northridge Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Harry Hellenbrand. From his perspective, how our K-12 population learns math today will affect how our country competes tomorrow.

Q. Among industrialized nations, the U.S. is not stacking up well in mathematics performance. How do you see that manifested in our daily life?

A. The housing loan crisis is one example. It indicates to me that, on some level, there’s a basic problem with understanding statistics and mathematics that plagues our society as a whole.

Q. Where are we going off track?

A. If you take a look at how American kids do in math, and compare them nationally and internationally, you’ll see that up to the end of the third grade they do well, comparatively speaking. Then in the fourth grade they begin a free fall. What’s in the U.S. water that’s making them do that? There’s something we’re failing to convey at the early elementary school level.

Whatever’s going on isn’t working in English or in math. I suspect by thinking of these two problem areas separately, we’re missing something really big. I think there’s something people are not getting about symbols systems generally that pertains both to math and to English. It’s just too weird that the scores flip over in math and English at that level. We need an answer to that.

Q. So what’s the road map?

A. For one thing, we have to do a better job of helping to deliver the prerequisite math coursework for college while students are still in high school, because the schools themselves are just overwhelmed with getting students prepared to graduate and to attain college freshman competency in math… The great problem with the American system is that it’s not a system; it’s tiers of a cake placed one layer on top of the other. In Singapore, it’s a national system, a national curriculum with national standards.

— Brenda Roberts

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