I teach elementary mathematics to 98% of Black and Latino students, many of whom come from underprivileged areas of Memphis, Tennessee, where academic achievement varies. At the beginning of the year, many of my students have a love–hate relationship with mathematics, where their understanding of the subject is simply rules or procedures to memorize for an end-of-year assessment. As a result, I’m often left wondering why this happens and how we, as a community, could work to provide equitable outcomes for all students in not just math, but science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
References
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National Center for Education Statistics
(2022
), https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge/racial-ethnic-enrollment#:∼:text=Of%20the%2049.4%20million%20students,Native%2C%20and%20180%2C000%20were%20Pacific.2.
Tennessee educators established scale score cuts for performance levels. Level 3 (“On Track”) students are proficient and have met the content standards’ expectations, whereas Level 4 (“Mastered”) students have mastered the content standards and are fully prepared for the next grade level. Levels 1 (“Below”) and 2 (“Approaching”) indicate that a student is not meeting content area expectations and requires additional assistance to prepare for the next grade level.
3.
The 2020 assessment was not given due to COVID.
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The Standards for Mathematical Practice describe the “processes and proficiencies” that all students should develop and are the foundation for mathematical thinking and practice. Crosscutting Concepts help students connect ideas from seemingly unrelated fields or contexts, relate what they are learning to previous experiences, and interact with the information in the other dimensions more fully.
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Methods that center the practical or day-to-day connections to peoples’ experiences and the questions they ask in mathematics education are often termed “ethnomathematics,” with a goal to inculcate a critical and deliberate use of mathematics. See https://www.radicalmath.org for more.
© 2022 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by American Association of Physics Teachers.
2022
Author(s)
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