Summary of “Since 1990s, U.S. Students’ Math Has Sharpened, but Reading Lags” By Sam Dilllon
According to Sam Dillon’s article ”Since 1990s, U.S. Students’ Math Has Sharpened, but Reading Lags” in the New york times (November 1, 2011), federal officials said that elementary and middle school students showed significant progress in math while they have no progress in reading over last two decades. In addition to this fact, Mr.Driscoll who is the chair man of the department of education and experts offered some assumption. There has been improvements of the math in the United States, since children study most of math in school, although math education in the United States is below than some high math education countries. However, many students don’t spend much time on reading.
The score on recent test of reading and math in the 4th and 8th grade students all over the country brought out only insignificant transitions. The average fourth and eighth students increased only one point from tests scores of 2009 in math and reading but average math score was higher than reading.
In contrast to fourth grade students’ score in math which was 13 percent in 1990, fourth graders gained 40 percent points in this year. However, fourth grade students score in reading gained only 5 percent points in this year. Sharon Darling who is founder of the National Center for family was despaired of this facts but not astonished because he think that students spend same amount of time outside as they spend in school and since there are 30 million parents and caregivers who are not good at reading in the U.S., they might can’t teach their children well.
New York’s score of tests showed the national tendency which students are gaining high scores faster in math than reading because, in reading, they increased 4 percentage points in this year from 1992, while they increased 14 percentage points in math in this year from 1992. However, in this year, fourth grade scores in New York remarkably decreased and New York became the only state where math scores decreased.
Response
In general, i thought, many American students wasn’t good at math (Paragraph 40 in chapter 9). However, after i read this article, i totally changed my mind because, many of them are good at math than reading. When i was in Norwood High school in the city of Cincinati and state of Ohio, i realized that many students are trying to work on their math more than reading because, some of them thought reading is too hard. In addition to my experience in America, i also found out that many students in America might like math than reading because as this article showed, average students are gaining higher score in math than reading. Therefore, i suggest that teachers should give students more interesting readings as assignments in order to make them more interested in reading. Then it will naturally leads to gaining high score in reading. However, they should not lose focus on math.
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