Knowledge of fractions and long division predicts long-term math success

I guess it's my turn to be the guy who says `correlation does not imply causation'. It's clear that something in math education is broken, but I feel like the more important point lies in the next sentence:

> At present, many teachers lack this understanding [of rudimentary mathematics].

I feel like this is much more important than a renewed emphasis on fractions/long division.

Full quote for context:

> "The clear message is that we need to improve instruction in long division and fractions, which will require helping teachers to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts that underlie these mathematical operations. At present, many teachers lack this understanding. Because mastery of fractions, ratios and proportions is necessary in a high percentage of contemporary occupations, we need to start making these improvements now."

The last time I saw a comment of this nature in a thread on the subject of mathematics education in the United States and east Asia (both places I have lived), someone advised me not to feed the troll. But that was a different troll, and taking your comment, even where you incorrectly say "highly misleading" about my comment, as an attempt to advance the discussion, I'll invite onlookers to look at the evidence.

I backed up my statement with a link

http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf

and anyone who takes a look at Exhibit 1.1 of that link (on pages 34 and 35 of the .PDF document), which is a good example of a comparative data distribution display, can see how the national median level of performance in the United States compares to the bottom quartile level for Singapore, and on the other hand where the top quartile line for the United States appears compared to the median line for Singapore. Q.E.D.

Unfortunately, once upon a time a blogger ignorant of the large body of research on textbook content and classroom practice in different countries for elementary mathematics in different countries of the world

http://www.amazon.com/The-Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...

took the lazy way out and said that if "race" is taken into account, then the United States is second to none in provision of public education, which is simply a lie. That meme has spread through some politically tendentious blog networks, but every serious professional researcher on comparative education policy can, and does, point to more meaningful differences between the United States and other countries. It would have helped that blogger also to be more familiar with the huge literature on "race" issues in countries all over the world,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...

but let me just disagree with the suggestion in your comment by pointing that nobody who makes the suggestion made by the blogger has actually gathered the data to show all the steps to prove that "race" as such makes any difference at all in educational attainment. Meanwhile I have taken care, in links already shown in my first comment above to document both the known inferiority of provision of primary education to some "race"-defined groups in the United States

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

and the degree to which other countries outperform the United States in providing primary education to the most disadvantaged groups in each of those countries.

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/26/48165173.pdf

Moreover, and this link is new to this thread, but not newly posted to Hacker News,

http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/

the United States is conspicuous in how little it meets the educational needs of its strongest students in mathematics.

in the big picture it's hard to conclude that our education is failing

There is certainly room for semantic disagreement about how bad performance has to be before it is regarded as "failing" performance, but I note for the record that the United States has abundant resources devoted to K-12 schooling

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/9/49685503.pdf

but underperforms compared to what other countries do with less abundant resources. I didn't use the word "fail" or "failing" or "failure" in my comment, but I did suggest, and I think I suggested this with warrant, that United States schools could do a better job of teaching fraction arithmetic to the young people in their care.