Led by researchers at the Boston College Graduate School of Education, and sponsored by the Amsterdam-based International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, the study attributes math achievement to many factors. Some form of universal standard, such as a national curriculum, helps. So does teacher training. That confirms what many teachers have been saying for years. One sunny autumn morning in Cambridge, part of the Boston area, a school administrator is standing with her hands on her hips in the hallways of the city's only public high school, tackling students who are late, or who have come inside without removing their baseball hats.
Some students graduate without mastering simple mental calculations.
Nick Snow, of the class of '98, is a step from the top of the heap. Son of a onetime Harvard scholar and a mother who teaches in this school, he scored A's last year in every subject but math and physics. A lanky teenager with neatly combed brown hair, he has stopped in the administrator's office to chat. No, he doesn't think people who are good at math are born that way. Yes, it might help if he resorts more to old-fashioned memorization, but the idea turns him off.