Prepared for College-Level Math Courses?
July 6th, 2009
There has been a long debate about the best way to teach math, and very recent discussion about high schools preparing college-ready students. Both issues were raised by a recent article in the American Educational Research Journal.
In the early 1990’s the National Science Foundation funded the creation of 13 mathematics programs that were mostly problem centered, with problems presented in real-world scenarios and taking multiple days to explore and resolve. These curricula stood in contrast to most commercially developed (CD) curricula that stress more traditional algorithm and procedure practice. Since the development of the NSF funded (NSFF) curricula, researchers have conducted various comparisons between the two.
The most recent study examined whether students taking the NSFF and CD curricula enrolled in different college math courses during their first year of college. They identified a group of students who had completed at least three years of NSF curricula and another who completed at least three years of a CD high school math curriculum. The math courses taken by these students in their first year of college were coded on a 4 point scale from 1= courses that should be completed in high school, 2= college algebra and precalculus, 3 = calculus, and 4 = extension of beginning calculus. The authors nicely used hierarchical linear modeling to account for both student-level and high-school level effects on student course taking.
The results indicate that students in NSF curricula were significantly less likely to take more difficult courses. The authors write:
Specifically, for an average student who completed a CD curriculum in high school, the model-implied probabilities of enrolling in a university mathematics course of Difficulty 1, 2, 3, or 4 are .03, .72, .24, and .01, respective; for an average student who completed an NDF curriculum in high school, these probabilities are .05, .81, .13, and .01 respectively.
The methodology for this paper is solid, but the authors acknowledge a few limitations. One in particular caught my eye. Students at the university where the research takes place take a math placement exam that they and their advisors then use to decide which math course to take. 88% of the students take the class that their placement results suggest. What does the placement test look like? If it is more inline with the CD curricula, it is not a surprise that those students would do better on it, and therefore be more likely to take the more advanced courses.
This raises an interesting research questions for those interested in college-level math preparedness. What do these placement tests look like? How well do they predict outcomes? How did that 12% who didn’t follow the recommendations fare? Did they take harder or easier classes? I don’t know that much attention has been paid to these assessments that play a big role in what college-level math courses students take.
Harwell, M., Post, T., Cutler, A., Maeda, Y., Anderson, E., Norman, K., & Medhanie, A. (2008). The Preparation of Students From National Science Foundation-Funded and Commercially Developed High School Mathematics Curricula for Their First University Mathematics Course American Educational Research Journal, 46 (1), 203-231 DOI: 10.3102/0002831208323368
Tags: Assessment, college-ready, math, Students
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December 14th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Wow some great research here. Now that I think about it… No hahahaha