RUTHFULLY YOURS

The United States needs mathematicians and scientists who can, among other things, learn about the natural world, discover new technologies, and help the country maintain its military advantage over China. As presently operating, American public K-12 schools aren’t up to the job. Far too many of our children graduate from high school without enough knowledge of mathematics and science to prepare them for college, much less for a career. They aren’t even educated sufficiently to judge news reports and public policy proposals that require mathematical and scientific knowledge.

State education departments need first to ensure that mathematics standards correctly sequence mathematics instruction in order to provide sufficient classroom time for rigorous education. Education reformers should make sure that K-12 schools teach Algebra I in the eighth grade as the foundation for four years of high school mathematics education. All K-7 mathematics standards should be aligned to prepare students to take and pass Algebra I in the eighth grade. High school mathematics standards should include Algebra II, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and either Introductory Calculus or Introductory Statistics.

Statistics is an intrinsically important subject and an extraordinarily useful one for scientific careers. State education standards should allow local school districts to choose whether to cap the mathematics sequence with Introductory Calculus, Introductory Statistics, or both. Earlier K-12 mathematics standards should incorporate the suggestions of the American Statistical Association to make sure that students are as ready at the end of the eleventh grade to take a course in Introductory Statistics as they are to take a course in Introductory Calculus.

Of course, not every K-12 student will go on to a scientific career. But all K-12 students should learn basic statistical and scientific literacy, and especially how to detect specious arguments presented in the guise of scientific authority. Every high school student should take a course in science literacy, which should teach students to understand, evaluate, and apply basic statistical and scientific concepts when they appear in media and public policy. This course should be organized around four sequences devoted to statistics literacy, risk analysis, experimental design, and the irreproducibility crisis of modern science. Students should learn to use these skills both as citizens judging journalism and policy and as businessmen and administrators making professional decisions.

A science literacy course should not replace core science instruction. But it would be reasonable to establish standards for such a course as a terminal twelfth-grade science course for students who don’t plan to pursue scientific careers. The science literacy course should be cross listed, in the appropriate states, as a dual-credit or dual-enrollment course that can be used for college credit, and that also qualifies as a course for higher-education core transfer curricula and for public university general education requirements.

Most states, unfortunately, have signed on either to Common Core or to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics delay Algebra I to high school, rendering impossible a rigorous education in math and science. NGSS teaches science appreciation more than it teaches actual science and has been heavily degraded by its commitment to radical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology. Education reformers should detach their state science standards from Common Core and NGSS.

Education reformers also should remove from state science standards all DEI commitments, as well as agendas such as citizen science, climate change activism, or sustainability. Political activism does not belong in science education.

Finally, education reformers should reform licensure requirements and professional development for K-12 STEM teachers. K-12 STEM instruction varies inversely in effectiveness with the exposure of STEM teachers to undergraduate or graduate courses in education. K-12 STEM teachers should receive substantial subject-matter training; they should have minimal education-school course requirements, and enjoy no professional advantage from receiving an education degree. K-12 science teachers also should have a rigorous mathematics education, including statistics, to provide a proper underpinning to the science instruction they will give to students.

State standards and regulations are only half the battle—science and mathematics still need to be taught effectively in the classroom. But reformers in state boards of education, and in other positions in state departments of education, will improve K-12 science and mathematics education substantially if they pursue these changes.