The Future of Math

There has been considerable concern over education in Ontario in recent years, with a particular emphasis on students struggling with mathematics.  I can remember doing provincial testing as a student in grade 9, and teachers congratulating us on our scores, which compared favourably to the rest of the province that year (thank you Mrs. Belanger and Ms. Thornton).  I also remember teachers telling us how lucky we were because our education system was widely regarded as one of the best. At that time I wasn't all that concerned with student math scores across the province, or any score for that matter, so I'm not sure if what they were saying was true.

Now a teacher, what I do know is that one of the subjects parents care a great deal about is math.  I've been at parent teacher interviews having taught geography, phys-ed, and history at the secondary level, and very seldom does a parent bother to drop in. I've also been at parent teacher interviews in for a grade 8 class. After the generic question "How is my child doing?", often parents want to know about math and english. The same is true at the secondary level, as everyone can see by the long line of parents waiting to see the math and english teachers.

I also know that a lot of times parents are concerned about math because their kids struggle with it.  In this article, Martin Regg Kohn documents Ontario's math scores, which have fallen from 11th place in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) rankings in 2003, to 19th place in 2012. To make matters worse, EQAO scores for grade 6 students meeting the provincial standard saw a drop from 62% to 56% in 2009. So it doesn't look like the recent trend is going to change in the immediate future.  Although not everyone agrees that these scores are accurate predictors for future success, you have to think that parental concerns, and the ensuing political pressure that comes with it, will lead to changes in curricula, teaching methods, and professional development.

School boards wouldn't be offering extensive professional development sessions, invest significantly in technology in the classroom (macbooks, smartboard, graphing calculators), or be obsessing over EQAO scores (and the funding associated with it) if these scores didn't matter or students weren't struggling.  The province also wouldn't have launched a $4 million dollar incentive budget to encourage existing teachers with degrees in humanities to take math courses, presumably to increase the level of math literacy in its schools.

What I don't know and can't predict is what changes are going to be made. But I know they're coming.