What Math Skills Should College-Bound Students Have? High School and College Teachers Disagree

May 9, 2000

Editor's Summary: More than 6,500 high school and college teachers responding to an ACT, Inc., survey of their curriculums have indicated that the two groups differ about what students need to know to be prepared for college. ACT periodically conducts extensive studies like this to reaffirm the curriculum on which the ACT college-entrance and placement exams are based. This latest study reveals that, to better prepare students for college, the nation needs more dialogue between high school and college educators. Complete results can be found in the report Content Validity Evidence in Support of ACT's Educational Achievement Tests. You may download an excerpt from the report (PDF; 23 pages, 183KB; for downloading assistance, see these tips.) Please call 319/337-1041 to obtain the complete bound report.

IOWA CITY, Iowa—What's the probability of high school and college teachers agreeing on how to prepare students for college math? Not too great, at least when it comes to some higher level math skills.

There's wide disagreement among teachers regarding some math skills in areas such as statistics, trigonometry and probability. High school teachers say skills in these areas are very important, while college professors say they're not.

These are just a few findings from a comprehensive study by ACT, Inc., the nation's largest provider of tests for students making the transition to postsecondary education. ACT periodically surveys teachers at middle schools, junior highs, high schools and colleges across the country to determine the curriculum on which the ACT tests are based. Since the ACT Assessment is used to help students make the transition from high school to college, it's important that it reflect what's taught in high school and what colleges expect of entering students.

Overall, the college professors rated most skills lower in importance than high school teachers did. For example, nearly 65 percent of college professors responded that college freshmen don't need to know how to find the mean and median of a group of numbers for entry-level courses, while 47 percent of high school teachers thought it is very important to teach those skills.

A similar pattern followed in teaching students to compute probability. Seventy-two percent of college teachers thought it not important while 41 percent of high school teachers thought it very important.

The disagreement also showed up in even higher level skills, such as solving equations in trigonometry. Of college teachers, 61 percent believed this is not important vs. 40 percent of high school teachers who thought it is very important.

The educators were in agreement, however, about teaching the basics: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, ratios and percentages. College faculty chose addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as the most important skills to have, while high school teachers chose them as second most important, behind performing very simple algebraic equations.

Charts (text version appears below)

High School and College Teachers' Ratings* of Selected Skills in Mathematics

Skill	Percent of Group Awarding Each Rating					Mean Rating
	1	2	3	4	5
Finding mean and median of a group of numbers
High school teachers	2%	2%	20%	29%	47%	4.2
College teachers	64%	13%	10%	3%	10%	1.8
Computing the probability of an event
High school teachers	1%	6%	23%	30%	41%	4.0
College teachers	72%	11%	6%	3%	8%	1.7
Solving equations in trigonometry
High school teachers	1%	6%	23%	31%	40%	4.0
College teachers	61%	10%	11%	9%	10%	2.0

* Scale: 1 = not important, 3 = moderately important, 5 = very important

 

 

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