High school math failing to make the college grade

Valley professors say skipped basics are forcing remedial work.

By Genevieve Marshall Of The Morning Call

Students are heading to college less prepared for math than they were a decade or two ago, forcing colleges and universities to rewrite textbooks and add more review work and remedial courses. Math professors in the Lehigh Valley laid the blame on integrated math programs that don't emphasize basic skills, high-stakes testing and the push to give students higher-level math courses at increasingly younger ages. "Many bright students are hurried through algebra and trigonometry courses on their way toward statistics and calculus," said Marie Wilde, chairwoman of the mathematical and information sciences program at Cedar Crest College in Allentown. "They arrive at college without the critical skills they should have spent much more time developing, rather than jumping prematurely into what has traditionally been considered college-level work." Experts say the problem can be found at all levels of higher education -- from students going to community college for associate degrees to those studying to be engineers. Northampton Community College, finding that students were struggling with pre-algebra courses, added a low-level basic mathematics course and arithmetic course to its offerings for the fall 2007 semester. "We had to," said Mardi McGuire-Closson, dean of students. "Students who struggle in math are more likely to drop out. Math pushes their panic button." Oftentimes, students face the repercussions of a weak foundation in math when they sign up for a college math course. That's what happened to Zac Camburn, who graduated last month with a 3.25 grade-point average from Palisades High School in upper Bucks County. Camburn took a placement test last month at Alvernia College in Reading, which he'll attend in August. It uncovered a lack of algebra and geometry skills. As a result, he'll have to pay to take a semester-long, noncredit math course to boost his skills. Camburn, 18, blamed his weakness in math on the integrated math program, which Palisades adopted in the late 1990s over the traditional high school sequence of algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. The curriculum, which gained ground in Pennsylvania in the era of high-stakes standardized testing, combines elements of algebra and geometry but grazes higher math concepts, critics say. It also requires vast amounts of reading and writing to identify the math problems, solve them and explain the solutions. Camburn said he dropped out of his integrated math class in the second semester of his senior year. He didn't need the course to graduate, so he figured he didn't need the aggravation of going to class every day. "It's really not a good program," Camburn said. "I didn't like it at all. We didn't really learn math. We just figured out problems on our own." Camburn isn't alone in his opinion. Earlier this year, parents complained to Palisades officials that their children were floundering in college calculus. They even got Wilde, the Cedar Crest professor, to write a letter supporting their contention that integrated math was hurting students. As a result, the district will offer a parallel traditional math program in the fall, said Assistant Superintendent Marilyn Miller. As they add remedial classes to help students with weak math skills, colleges also are finding that students who breezed through calculus in high school aren't adequately prepared either. Decades ago at Cedar Crest, a typical calculus class might have two students out of 30 who were not up to speed, Wilde said. Since the late 1990s, it seems half the students are not ready. Rather than shift the burden to tutoring centers to help the students pass the course, Cedar Crest altered its math curriculum. Cedar Crest started using a textbook called "A Companion to Calculus," written by a team of professors at Moravian College in Bethlehem. It includes a review of algebra and trigonometry, giving students a chance to brush up on those skills at the start of the semester. "The change is astounding," Wilde said of the calculus curriculum at many colleges. "It's become calculus lite. We have no time for Delta Epsilon proofs. Students have never thought at that level." Wilde and others blame the problem on the push to add higher-level math courses that look good on high school transcripts, and a prevalence of "teaching to the test" in the era of No Child Left Behind, with students working diligently through their junior year in high school on standardized tests given by the state. The problem is probably no worse in Pennsylvania than anywhere else, Wilde said. A weak foundation in algebra and trigonometry is more damaging to science and engineering students who pass an Advanced Placement exam in calculus and place into a higher-level calculus course in college. "They could founder," Wilde said. "They need a strong base." While taking calculus in high school looks impressive to admissions officers, not everyone does well on the Advanced Placement test -- or even bothers to take the exam, said Randy Schaeffer, an associate professor of mathematics at Kutztown University. "Students who have not taken the AP exam tend to have an overinflated opinion of how good they are," Schaeffer said. "If they had taken the test, they probably would not have done well on it. It's a hard test." Bill Bateman, former chairman of Kutztown's math department, said taking calculus in high school and doing well on the AP test does not ensure that the student will do well in calculus at a university. "They teach to the test in high school rather than worrying about the concepts," Bateman said. "They miss the big picture." But Bateman said he also has seen positive change in the way high schools have prepared students for college-level math: Most students are familiar with graphing calculators, he said. "It helps us move on to the bigger picture in math more quickly," he said.

genevieve.marshall@mcall.com