Tom Loveless on student performance in the 90s

Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, told a U.S. Department of Education "summit meeting" on math education in February that only in a couple instances - the ability of 13- and 17-year-olds to compute percentages - did students nationwide register gains in the 1990s.

Discussing the performance of 9-year-olds in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers, he said: "All four areas reversed direction in the 1990s, turning solid gains that were made in the 1980s into losses. Not only that, but the declines came from levels that weren't very high at the beginning of the 1990s - certainly not at a level that is acceptable for such fundamental material."

source:
Division flares up over math by Alan J. Borsuk SENTINEL JOURNAL 10-4-02

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