A new study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) found that middle school mathematics teachers in the United States are not as well prepared to teach this challenging subject as are many of their counterparts in five other countries.
"Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally in the future," said William Schmidt
This inadequate teacher preparation joins deficiencies in mathematics curriculum as reasons contributing to lower scores for American middle-schoolers.
"What's most disturbing is that one of the areas in which U.S. future teachers tend to do the worst is algebra, and algebra is the heart of middle school math,"
"We can make our mathematics curriculum more demanding, instead of a mile wide and an inch deep, but we also need teachers that are well prepared to teach it to all children."
clipped from: www.nsf.gov