Florida has a big problem in K-12 math education, but it can’t be solved by purging math textbooks of social and emotional learning and other content that you’ve been reading about.
Our state’s high school students have been struggling on the math section of the SAT exam, indicating that they have not learned math as well as students from other states.
The College Board — which runs the SAT — reports that 100 percent of Florida’s high school graduating classes of 2019 and 2020 took the SAT. In 2019, Florida was one of eight states in which the College Board says that 100 percent of the high school graduating class took the exam. In 2020, Florida was one of seven such states. While it would not be fair to compare Florida’s statistics on the math SAT to those in a state in which only 50 percent of the high school graduates took the exam — because perhaps only the highest achieving 50 percent took it in such a state — it is certainly fair to compare Florida to the other states in which 100 percent of students took the exam.
Florida’s 2019 high school graduates placed last among the eight states in which 100 percent of graduates had taken the exam in mean math score. Florida’s mean score (483 on the 800-point scale) trailed Connecticut (516), Colorado (506), Illinois (504), Michigan (496), Rhode Island (492), Idaho (488) and Delaware (486).
Among the seven states in which 100 percent of the 2020 high school graduates had taken the SAT, Florida placed last again with a mean score of 479, trailing Connecticut (512), Colorado (501), Michigan (495), Rhode Island (489), Idaho (484) and Delaware (481).
The rates at which members of the high school graduating class of 2021 took the SAT were affected by the pandemic, but 81 percent of the members of the Florida Class of 2021 took the exam. Members of the high school graduating classes of three other states and the District of Columbia took the exam at rates comparable to or higher than Florida’s. Those jurisdictions — Illinois (498), District of Columbia (487), Delaware (485) and Idaho (483) — all had higher mean scores on the SAT math section than Florida (480) did.
Every time the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP — also called “The Nation’s Report Card”) are released — most recently from the exams given in 2019 — Florida’s educational leaders boast about the math achievement demonstrated by our fourth-graders. And indeed, Florida’s fourth-graders are consistently among the best in the nation. But what matters most is what students can do when they graduate from high school. Being the nation’s best in fourth-grade but lagging badly in high school is like leading a marathon at the five-mile mark but being beaten badly by the end of the race. Indeed, the decline of math achievement as Florida’s students age is evident in the state’s eighth-grade NAEP results, which are only average. Given the eighth-grade result, it should be no surprise that the state’s students decline further by the time they graduate from high school.
The weak math understanding revealed by the SAT is the real problem in Florida’s K-12 math program. And sanitizing the state’s math textbooks will not solve it.
Teachers — not textbooks — are the key to improving the math understanding of Florida’s high school graduates. Florida must attract more individuals who are strong in math to the teaching profession and retain the strong math teachers who are already in our classrooms.
Math is one of the seven critical teacher shortage areas identified by the State Board of Education earlier this year. The Florida Department of Education staff who prepared the report on critical teacher shortage areas for the State Board estimated that there would be 537 vacancies for math teachers at Florida’s schools during the present school year. In contrast, only 98 individuals completed math teacher preparation programs in the state during the most recent academic year for which data were available (2019-20). In Florida’s public schools, 3,395 math courses were taught by teachers without the appropriate certification during the 2020-21 school year.
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Explore all your optionsThe present controversy about the inclusion of social and emotional learning and related materials in math textbooks shouldn’t distract parents and voters from the importance of improving the math learning of Florida’s K-12 students — and the importance of recruiting and retaining strong math teachers. The future of our state and its students depends on it.
Paul Cottle, a physics professor at Florida State, was on the committee that wrote Florida’s K–12 science standards in 2007–2008 and was chair of the American Physical Society’s Committee on Education in 2013–2014.