Reconsidering Our Role in PK-12 Mathematics

By Michael Pearson and Deirdre Longacher Smeltzer

Our society relies on an educated population, yet higher education fails to meet the expectations and needs of broad sectors of society. We aim to prepare our fellow citizens for productive and successful careers, but we are part of a system that bars far too many students from these goals.

It is long past time for us to take responsibility to engage as partners in PreK through twelfth grade (PK-12) education who share our interest in improving the lives of our students. Such partnerships, with a view towards creating coherent PK-12 models, must extend beyond making pronouncements regarding the shortcomings of the systems we both inhabit and will require us to reimagine our work.

The recent release of scores in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), paired with reports of “learning loss” during the pandemic (e.g., The Pandemic Generation Goes to College. It Has Not Been Easy from The NY Times; see also Jo Boaler’s take in the Hechinger Report), have raised these longstanding concerns to a broader audience, and call on us to think carefully about how to respond in both the short and long term.

Since I (Michael) first stepped into a college classroom as an instructor in the fall of 1980, I have listened to faculty criticize the PK-12 mathematical preparation of entering students. As Darryl Yong observed in his 2012 Notices article on his year of teaching high school, the impulse to attribute students’ perceived shortcomings to their earlier teachers is not unique to post-secondary faculty. I’ve certainly had my misgivings and failures at empathizing with students who weren’t performing to my expectations, even as I now realize how my expectations were based on my own experiences rather than my students’.

In the short term, we should be sensitive to the challenges students face due to pandemic-related factors beyond the control of the students, schools, teachers, and parents. The last three years can be accurately described as traumatic. A recent TPSE-Math (Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics) webinar, Student Disconnect in Classes Since the Pandemic, explored mechanisms that particular institutions are using to help students bridge the gap between their high school and post-secondary mathematics experiences in ways that reflect this empathetic approach.

Beyond the short-term response to pandemic-related challenges, our nation’s public schools face ideological challenges, as addressed in a February 2022 post, Math Education and “Divisive Concepts.” The implications for educators were examined in more detail by a recent report, Educating for a Diverse Democracy: The Chilling Role of Political Conflict in Blue, Purple, and Red Communities, by the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at UCLA and the Civic Engagement Research Group at UC Riverside. This documents the stress, demoralizing, and politically-motivated attacks on educators. This is likely to exacerbate what is already a national shortage of teachers, including mathematics teachers.

A recent letter published jointly by National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and other professional education associations about creating systems to support quality educational systems argues:

We must create a sustainable system that prepares, retains, and supports teachers through accessible, high-quality teacher preparation, competitive compensation, ample resources, and ongoing professional learning and mentoring opportunities. These commitments demonstrate that educators are professionals and are critical to our social infrastructure and progress as a nation. Their positive impact on their students helps to ensure that we have a vibrant society and skilled workforce in the future.

We support this argument. This letter echoes themes raised by NCTM, MAA, and others in the past. Comparable support should be part of the experience of the many VITAL (Visitors, Instructors, TAs, Adjuncts, and Lecturers) faculty who now teach two-thirds of all credit hours in postsecondary mathematics. A hands-off approach to these critical needs is a dereliction of our responsibilities.

These challenges are occurring simultaneously with declining confidence in the value of higher education. This conclusion is supported by the substantial decrease in public funding of state institutions. According to a recent report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, students now pay for approximately 40% of the cost of public higher education, compared to about 20% in 1980, the first year the organization collected this data. During a time of increasing costs more broadly, this has led to significant increases in student debt over the same period.

At a recent launch of College is Worth It, a project of the National Association of System Heads, Tristan Denley, a mathematician and Deputy Commissioner for Academic Affairs and Innovation at the Louisiana Board of Regents, said, “The story of higher ed in the past few decades is the movement of debt from states to families.” Denley noted, “The reality is that costs will increase, and as they do, we need to find ways to be more efficient and effective and not just pass that cost on to the student.”

The MAA is not new to this conversation. And yet, meeting the present challenges will require renewed community-wide efforts, as outlined in the Common Vision project. This project brought together thought leaders from AMATYC, AMS, ASA, MAA, and SIAM to demonstrate the consistency of our goals for core undergraduate mathematics. How can we build on these efforts to better coordinate our interests, efforts, and existing structures to advance our goals more effectively?

Since the early 1950s, MAA American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) programs have served as a key component of our outreach to PK-12 mathematics students, enlisting middle and high school teachers as partners to engage students in high-quality mathematical problem-solving. The MAA Committee on the Mathematical Education of Teachers promotes improvement in teacher education and professional development, as well as advocacy for the status of mathematics education in mathematics departments. The Special Interest Groups of the MAA (SIGMAAs) on Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, Teaching of Advanced High School Mathematics, and Math Circles for Students and Teachers all bring together MAA members who share an interest in improving pre-college or PK-12 mathematical instruction. The recent Mathematical Education of Teachers as an Application of Undergraduate Math (META Math) project developed instructional materials and mechanisms to enrich new teachers’ mathematical experiences. This is just a part of the historical and ongoing initiatives that can serve as a basis for expanding our partnership with our PK-12 partners.

Clinging only to perspectives shaped by our own educational (and mathematical) experiences ignores the reality that our students will eventually be in positions to make policy decisions on which our institutions' futures depend. The rich, pluralistic society that we want to live in depends on a continuing dialogue open to compromise and accepting that others’ values are as valid as our own, even when we don’t share those values.

Its an untenable path to continue to expect the public to support our higher ed institutions without our engagement and demonstration of commitment to a robust PK-12 system. Viewing our educational system as divided into distinct segments (largely determined by the age of our students) ignores the opportunities we have to build understanding and collaboration that benefits our students while also enriching and advancing our profession.

Michael Pearson is Executive Director of the MAA. Deirdre L. Smeltzer is MAA Senior Director for Programs.