Why Do Students Struggle in Math?


Over the past few years, math has got a bad reputation among some of the younger generation and maybe the same among the adults. The saying of, "I am bad at math or I am not a math person" has somehow become a badge of honor. In some cases we do not only hear the myth of "I am bad at math", but rather we are recognizing it by another myth “It's ok to be bad at math”. It’s easy and fun to say I am not a math person, or I am bad at math, but did you think about the consequences of this among our younger crowds (midle/high students)? I think these myths only strengthens stududents' growing math anxiety.

In this project (website) I have analyzed, compared and presented math, science and reading scores of the high/middle school students worldwide, then based on my findings, I have recommended a top 12 free resources (websites) where students can practice and improve thier math skills. It's going to be a great resources page for middle and high school students.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] is a global policy organization that includes the United States and about half of Western Europe countries. It administers international comparison tests, called Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), for 15 year-old students in Mathematics, Science and Reading.

I have visualized PISA's 2015-2016 report in the below map.


Average Scores

However, the PISA-2018 report indicates that the U.S students scored slightly better in all three areas (Reading, Math and Science) compared to the previous report (2016), while statistcally insignificant as a measure of imrovement. According to neaToday "the increase was enough to push the United States slightly above the OECD average in reading and science, while still falling below in math. Their scores were similar to those of students in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom in at least two of these three subjects." For more details see the figure below or click here to see PISA's 2018 report.



PISA-2018

For more details about the score of all nations (70) included in the PISA-2018 report, please click here



Why U.S High/Middle School Students Scored Below the Average in Math?


Let's have a look at the Nation's Report Card (NAEP) to compare each state performace with the national average (281).
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what U.S. students know and can do in various subjects. NAEP is a congressionally mandated project administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. Source: Wikipedia.



NAEP

The thematic map above tells us that 21 out of 50 States performed significantly above the national public (281), while there isn’t a significant difference from the national public for 14 of them, and 15 out of 50 performed significantly lower than the national public.

If we compare the 2019 mathematics performance with 2013, it looks like the trend is negative, so there is need for more effort from both students and educators to change the trend from negative to positive. For more details see below figure or click here.


NAEP219and2013


Let's compare middle school students' math performace from 2003 to 2019 nationwide.

NEAP_2003_2019

The above graphic tells us that the "Performed significantly higher than National public" is decreasing and "Not significantly different than National public" is increasing, while the Performed significantly lower than National average retmains nutural. This means our teens need more and better support to improve their math skills.



What Causes Students to be Struggling with Math

There might be several factors that cause students to be struggling with math, however, based on my experience and findings I am going to list four of them as follows:

Misconceptions
Most of the students that are not doing good at math, think that the subject does not apply to real life. They also think that people who are good at math are actually born with a natural ability. Any one of these misconceptions could stop a student from accepting the subject and possibly end their effort to pursue a degree in STEM.
Source: Grade Power
Math Anxiety
Students that have math anxiety don’t simply dislike math, but math also causes them feelings of fear and malfunctioning that hurts their ability to perform better in math. This kind of anxiety can lead students into a lack of confidence when faced with math questions, quizzes and tests. At the end their brain freezes and they forget even the stuff that they already knew. Math Anxiety.
Poor Foundation
For many students that are struggling in math, it’s because they came to high school level with a poor math foundation. For some reasons, they didn’t practice or never learned basics mathematics (e.g. order of operation, division, multiplication, fractions, dealing with parenthesis etc.). Learning elementary school math is crucial, because that is the foundation.
Giving Up
And because of all these misconceptions and rumors about math like: "I am not a math person", "I am bad at math", "math is difficult", "only nerds are good at math", "why should I care about X & Y", students expect in advance that math is not an easy class and they will have hard time understanding it, so without any further thinking and consultation, they just easily give up on it.


How to Improve Math Skills - 4Ps


There might be several useful articles, websites and other documentation that focus on how to improve students' math skill and I encourage you to spend some time reading them, but based on my experience and reading a lot of materials I am going to suggest the following:


Parents:

Parents play crucial role in their children basic math skills. Children begin learning math before they enter elementary school.
Studies show that the early math skills are one of the best predictors for later success.
That being said, parents are the first and most important educators for their children.

Counting numbers from 1 to 20 and simply adding and subtracting alike things, can help children get interest in Math, build a foundation and learn the basics of math before they officially enroll into elementary school.

Principles:

Often students struggling in math, don’t follow the principles/rules when solving a mathematical equation. The first thing they start struggling solving a math problem is, they don’t know what should be done first, second and third. The order of operation is one of the most crucial step in solving a mathematical problem. Students with poor math foundation don’t know/follow the order of operation when solving a math problem and as a result they get a bad score in math. Order of Operation (PEMDAS):

First: Parentheses    Second: Exponents
Third: Multiply or Divide Fourth: Addition & Subtraction

Practice:

New research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology shows that if you want to be good at math, you have to practice all different kinds of mathematics.
People who are most successful in math are the one who work the hardest not those with natural talent. Most aspects of mathematics can only be learned by practicing.
No one thinks they can run a marathon by using only their natural talent, but there are lots of people with no natural talent for running and have successfully completed many marathons.
So Practice, Practice and again Practice.

Problem Oriented Approch:

Students and educators need to relate a math problem into real world problems. Mathematics is not just a long list of random formulas that someone invented out of nowhere.
Math works because it is true–there is a reason for every step, every rule, and every part of every formula. There is no need to just memorize the formulas and the rules, but rather find out where they came from, and how they can be used in solving real world problems.

Performance based tasks help students understand how math exist in their real world.







Free Mathematical Resources for Improving Math Skills



Click on any of the below buttons to practice math/science.
You can also find these links at the top left corner of this page. Enjoy practicing math as math is all about practicing!



If you have read this far, you are a genius and thank you!