Taylor Spreads Word on New Math Policy From: University Currents Date: May 26, 2000 Story and photo by: Dawn Fuller Phone: (513) 556-1823 Archive: Campus News, General News A professor from UC's College of Education will play a prominent role in a state kickoff to promote new national standards for improving student math performance. Linda Taylor, head of the College of Education's Division of Teacher Education, is also president of the Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics (OCTM), an organization with more than 5,000 members. Taylor will be one of the featured speakers June 1 at a state event held at the Columbus Atheneum to publicize the new math guidelines released by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in April. The NCTM was the first professional organization to create standards to improve math performance. The standards were developed on a strong base of research but were still met with controversy when released in 1989. Taylor, along with UC associate education professor Bob Drake and UC associate education professor Regina Sapona, were at the Chicago conference last April when the NCTM released new guidelines based on the last 10 years of research in a report titled Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. Taylor, a math educator for 30 years, points to the dismal numbers as math scores of U.S. students are compared with the scores of students from other industrialized nations. U.S. students remain at the bottom. "We have a breadth of things we teach kids, but we never go in depth with anything. Our students do well in computation - we've drilled that into our kids - but they can't do any problem-solving. They can't look at different pieces of the puzzle and pull it all together," says Taylor. When the idea of coupling curriculum standards with a constructivist and inquiry approach to teaching arose 10 years ago, Taylor says the standards focused on processing math, including problem-solving, communication, reasoning and connecting math to what students do in everyday life. Math became more of an action process instead of solutions memorized for a page of math exercises. "What some people don't understand is that a kid can memorize an algorithm of how to do something and not have a clue of what they're doing. This is more about making the connections of why we're learning this," says Taylor. The new Principles and Standards for School Mathematics update curriculum even more, adding an emphasis on technology, a strong foundation in algebra and geometry by the end of eighth grade, and math courses for all four years of high school. Taylor is serving a key role in math education statewide, as the development of new standards gets under way on the state level. She will recommend educators to serve on committees to develop new state guidelines, and she will represent the OCTM around the state. Members of the OCTM are organizing outreach programs to bring the new national standards to teachers across the state. UC associate education professor Janet Bobango will be one of the educators involved in the outreach programs.