More Than Math
We don’t often comment on math, even though it is among the liberal arts and sciences, but David Driscoll’s comments yesterday on the new math NAEP scores were insightful and worth talking about. Driscoll, who chairs the National Assessment Governing Board, argued that stronger content knowledge is needed among math teachers in the lower grades. We agree, and we’d take the argument further than Driscoll does. Providing our students with teachers with strong content knowledge across the entire range of subjects needs to be a top priority for PreK-4 education.
It’s long been assumed that students in the early grades aren’t ready for real content and should only learn about community helpers and other features of their immediate world rather than serious content. But young learners can do more. If only it is offered to them by teachers who have been given the opportunity to become knowledgeable about the subject they are teaching.
Lynne Munson