“There’s room for improvement”

“It seems that there is a clear need for a more ambitious curriculum -- and more rigorous assessment of teachers and student performance,” Charny said. 

Chester said the state’s new Common Core curriculum has made many changes to math education standards already, such as putting more emphasis on teaching proportional reasoning and fractions. 

“Too often, curriculum in those areas have not been as deliberately and carefully sequenced as they should be,” he said. 

Ultimately, though, “math is math,” said Sweeney. “Nothing’s changed about it.” 

“So much of what we’re talking about is the basics,” said DeBenedictis. “Give (students) support, and math is really much easier to supplement than writing, for example.” 

What’s important, educators agree, is finding ways to make the subject interesting to students, and rewarding for them to master. Sweeney said he often tries to incorporate real-life math problems -- figuring out electrical circuits, for example -- so that students will “see firsthand how (math) is done, and how it’s used.”

Read more: http://www.milforddailynews.com/archive/x386669906/Solving-Americas-math-challenge#ixzz1VZB1Fiqp