ABSTRACT
The 1980s brought an increased awareness among political and educational sectors of the impoverished mathematical skills of many Americans. In part, this heightened awareness was stimulated by representatives from United States industries, who argued that a poorly educated populace was weakening this country’s ability to compete in the global market. As evidence, industrialists pointed to large-scale international studies (e.g., McKnight et al., 1987; Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986) in which it was consistently reported that American children perform worse on mathematical examinations than children from virtually all other industrialized countries; this gap was especially evident when comparing American and East Asian children. Of further concern was a decline in scores through the 1970s and early 1980s on several national indices of mathematical achievement, such as the Scholastic Achievement Test and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Jones, 1988; Mullis et al., 1994). This situation resulted in numerous proposals regarding how mathematics education in the United States should be reformed. These proposals included a set of national standards suggested by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (1989) and various novel teaching and assessment methods (e.g., Lampert, 1986; Katims, Nash, & Tocci, 1993; Simmons & Resnick, 1993). In addition, broader changes to the educational system were tried by various states, such as increasing the amount of time children attended school, expanding the amount of money allocated to education, and raising high school graduation and teacher qualification requirements (Finn & Rebarber, 1992; Murphy, 1992).
