In Which Content Areas Are Students Relatively Strong or Weak?
For purposes of comparison, Exhibit
3.2 profiles the relative performance in mathematics content areas
within the comparison countries, while Exhibit
3.3 provides the corresponding information for the Benchmarking
states and Exhibit
3.4 for the districts and consortia. These exhibits display the
difference between average performance in each content area and average
mathematics performance overall, highlighting any variation. The profiles
reveal that as in the participating countries, students in many of
the Benchmarking jurisdictions performed relatively better or worse
in several content areas than they did overall. For example, students
in all the Benchmarking entities generally followed the U.S. pattern
of performing better than they did overall in fractions and number
sense; data representation, analysis, and probability; and algebra,
but less well in measurement and geometry.
In particular, a number of jurisdictions had relatively worse geometry
performance, including Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Missouri, and Pennsylvania among the states. Districts and consortia
with such results were the Academy School District, the Delaware Science
Coalition, First in the World, the Fremont/Lincoln/Westside Public
Schools, the Michigan Invitational Group, Montgomery County, Naperville,
and Project SMART. Students’ relatively low achievement in geometry
is most likely related to less coverage of geometry topics in mathematics
classrooms (see Chapter 5).
Among other notable findings, students in North and South Carolina
did relatively well in algebra compared with their overall performance,
and those in the Rochester City School District had particular difficulty
in the area of measurement. Differences in relative performance may
be related to one or more of a number of factors, such as emphases
in intended curricula or widely used textbooks, strengths or weaknesses
in curriculum implementation, and the grade level at which topics
are introduced. For the Benchmarking entities, the patterns of relative
strengths and weaknesses profiled in Exhibits
3.3 and 3.4
are sometimes reflected in strengths and weaknesses relative to other
countries and the United States (shown
in Exhibit 3.1).
