State and local efforts in the 1980s to improve precollegiate mathematics and science instructional outcomes focused largely on graduation requirements, with little attention to curriculum content and instructional methods. High school graduates at the end of the 1980s had completed more courses in mathematics and science than at the beginning of the decade. The chapter addresses this question in two ways. The first involves an assessment of the relationship between high school coursework and postsecondary outcomes. The second approach entails an examination of responses from college teachers to questions soliciting their subjective assessment of how well the students are prepared.
Teachers contribute to and are directly affected by the reform efforts.
The third section of this chapter presents indicators on whether teachers are aware of the new standards, whether they have adopted them for their own classroom instruction, and whether they have been trained sufficiently to teach students in the manner recommended by the national standards. While the typical science or mathematics class is taught by one teacher, the worklife of teachers usually involves a variety of contacts with other teachers and school administrators. Reform proposals emphasize the importance of building strong colleague support systems to improve the dissemination of new ideas and critical feedback. Data from recent surveys of teachers suggest that high schools differ greatly in the levels of cooperation and coordination within their departments. These data also illustrate the extent to which teachers understand and try to implement reform measures and whether their understanding and efforts are associated with whether they maintain contacts with colleagues in their subject-area departments.