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February 8, 1999
By Tim Stephens
The good news is that there are a few good mathematics textbooks available for middle school students. The bad news is that these are not the textbooks being used by the majority of middle schools in the United States.
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Chancellor Greenwood poses with (l-r) Gerald Kulm, program director for Project 2061, and George Nelson, director of Project 2061.
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Those are the basic findings from a rigorous analysis conducted by Project 2061, the long-term math and science education reform initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Chancellor Greenwood joined the leaders of Project 2061 to announce the findings at a press conference last month at the AAAS annual meeting in Anaheim. Greenwood is the retiring president of AAAS and chair of the AAAS Board of Directors.
"We have learned from a number of studies that students in the United States are falling behind many other nations in mathematics and science competency. One of the reasons for this is that our mathematics textbooks are too superficial," Greenwood said.
The Project 2061 analysis used a variety of benchmarks to evaluate 12 middle school mathematics textbooks. Only four recently published textbook series received high ratings, while the other, more well-established textbooks were rated as unsatisfactory (see table or get pdf file).
"The Project 2061 analysis gives busy educators the solid information they need to make informed choices about which textbooks will help their students improve their understanding of and skills in mathematics," said Gerald Kulm, who led the evaluation.
The AAAS established Project 2061 in 1985 with the long-term goal of helping to reform the nation's education system so that all students are literate in science, mathematics, and technology when they graduate from high school. George Nelson, director of Project 2061, noted that textbooks can be changed on a shorter time scale than any other part of the education system. The results of additional textbook evaluations will be announced later this year, Nelson said.
Detailed information about Project 2061 is available on the Internet at http://project2061.aaas.org.