Oregon math teachers have moved middle schoolers far enough ahead in math that the typical eighth-grader now can do math at nearly the same level as many high school sophomores, the Oregonian reports.

Middle school students in every racial, ethnic and income group show greater mastery of mathematics — including algebraic reasoning, statistics and geometry — than they did three years ago.

Educators attribute much of the progress to Oregon’s embracing a national recommendation to drastically scale back the number of math topics covered in each grade. At the same time, more Oregon middle schools organized teachers into teams that meet regularly to discuss their students’ progress and learn from one another’s teaching successes and failures.

The result: Math lessons are more engaging and more thorough — and test scores show more students understand and retain what’s taught.

Read more news

Filed under: K-12 Education News