Friday, September 16, 2005
Catching up to Singapore
Tom Friedman's one of the smartest guys out there, on a lot of topics. And he's exactly right about Singapore [NY Times - may need to register].
Singapore reminds me of a smart tech like Apple. If you haven't heard, Apple killed their most successful product because they thought they could do better.
Singapore's doing the same thing. They're tops in the TIMSS results, but they know they'll get beat, if they don't try to improve. They're not afraid to change what they're doing, if they see a better way. And they're always working on a better way.
The embarrassing US performance in these international comparisons is not because we're getting worse in math. In fact, NAEP results show small improvements over time. Its just that much of the rest of the world has improved much more rapidly.
In the US, we're still debating about whether we should go back to basics -- back to the supposed glory days of the 1950's. The problem is that we're already back in the 50's, in terms of achievement, and that isn't good enough anymore.
I don't know anything about HeyMath (though I guess I should), but I know that we at Carnegie Learning have been seeing a lot of interest from the Singapore government about what we're doing with technology and math. They're paying close attention to what's being shown to work in the What Works Clearinghouse.
The attention goes both ways. We've been imitating a lot of the diagramming techniques used in Singapore math texts in our Bridge to Algebra product. And it works.
Singapore reminds me of a smart tech like Apple. If you haven't heard, Apple killed their most successful product because they thought they could do better.
Singapore's doing the same thing. They're tops in the TIMSS results, but they know they'll get beat, if they don't try to improve. They're not afraid to change what they're doing, if they see a better way. And they're always working on a better way.
The embarrassing US performance in these international comparisons is not because we're getting worse in math. In fact, NAEP results show small improvements over time. Its just that much of the rest of the world has improved much more rapidly.
In the US, we're still debating about whether we should go back to basics -- back to the supposed glory days of the 1950's. The problem is that we're already back in the 50's, in terms of achievement, and that isn't good enough anymore.
I don't know anything about HeyMath (though I guess I should), but I know that we at Carnegie Learning have been seeing a lot of interest from the Singapore government about what we're doing with technology and math. They're paying close attention to what's being shown to work in the What Works Clearinghouse.
The attention goes both ways. We've been imitating a lot of the diagramming techniques used in Singapore math texts in our Bridge to Algebra product. And it works.
// posted by Steve Ritter @ 10:17 AM 
