What Motivates Us
Math Nation works with amazing students, teachers, families, and school districts.
We celebrate their successes and triumphs, and the challenges they face are what drive us to continue developing resources to provide the education every student deserves.
Here are some of the issues keeping us up at night:
- In 2012, just 50% of Florida students were proficient in algebra. In low-income schools, proficiency rates were even lower, with fewer than 20% of students demonstrating proficiency in some schools.
- In Spring 2016, 67% of 8th grade students in Michigan failed to earn at least a “Proficient” score on the state’s M-STEP Mathematics exam, while 63% of 11th graders didn’t score high enough on the state’s MME exam to be considered ready for success in college or a career, according to Michigan Department of Education data.
- Mississippi’s high school graduation rate is on the rise (84% in 2019), but more than 46% of students at Mississippi’s public colleges and universities need to enroll in remedial math courses before they can begin taking credit-bearing, college-level courses in math and related subjects.
- A 2016 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that states that reformed their finance systems to send more money to low-income districts saw students’ performance rise over 10 years due to the increased spending. The gains were significant compared to student gains in states that did not increase funding to low-income districts.
- Civil Rights data show that states with less funding tend to have higher student/teacher ratios, while schools serving minority students have high rates of first-year teachers.
- A recent study shows that personalized math tutoring resulted in an average increase from a 1.77 GPA to a GPA of 2.35 (effectively a jump from a C- to a C+).
