Making math matter to America's high school students
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(Texas News Service) Of all the classes taught in school, many students say math is the hardest and their least favorite subject, but many jobs require math and experts are evaluating recent survey results to determine what could help change the paradigm.
Elisha Arillaga Smith, math education and research fellow at Just Equations, a nonprofit working to ensure educational equity, said a recent survey found only 57 percent of students consider learning math "important," which is a challenge, in a society valuing science and technology.
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"One of the things that the findings point to is, there are some creative ways where we could combine math with other subjects to show students how math can really come alive," Arillaga Smith explained. "But right now, we just don't do a really great job of doing that."
Of the 90,000 high school students surveyed, she reported 70 percent said they believe in their ability to learn math through hard work, and 61 percent agreed they keep trying to solve a problem when the math gets hard.
The survey was created and distributed by the national nonprofit YouthTruth.
Jennifer de Forest, director of organizational learning for YouthTruth, said a student's relationship with their math teacher can make all the difference, because fewer than half of those surveyed said they were comfortable asking questions in their math class.
"Those students would describe, for example, that their teachers set up classroom routines that require them to ask questions," de Forest noted. "Those teachers also created classrooms that recognize that learning, and even learning math, is a social process."
To change minds about the importance of math, Arillaga Smith emphasized students at all levels need to understand every current and future job requires some level of math.
"Because so many things involve computers and data, you need math for so many things, even if it's playing sports and figuring out the statistics and how you want to get better," Arillaga Smith stressed. "Math is really integrated into everything that we do."
