PIAAC - Have we reached a Numeracy Crisis in the U.S.?

Submitted by Brooke Istas on Wed, 02/26/2014 - 15:32
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The following is an excerpt from Time for the U.S. to Reskill? What the Survey of Adult Skills says,

“Of the three skills domains, and comparing the U.S. with other countries, the US 
performance is weak on literacy, very poor on numeracy, but only a little worse than
average on problem solving in technology rich environments. Broadly speaking the
weakness affects the entire skills distribution, so that the U.S. has proportionately more
people with weak skills than some other countries and fewer people with strong skills.”

Reference:  OECD (2013),Time for the U.S. to Reskill?: What the Survey of Adult Skills Says, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing.
doi: 10.1787/9789264204904-en

This is not a shocking statement for several of us in the field.  We see it every day both inside and outside of our adult education classrooms.  This was confirmed last year when the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) presented their findings of the Survey of Adults, which is, a result of the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

Another key finding is that the U.S. ranked better in literacy than in numeracy or problem solving in technology-rich environments.

 

My questions are:

  • How can we stop this ever growing crisis?
  • How can we help adult learners build their foundational skills to enhance their lives?
  • What factors keep us from helping more people build their skills?

​Let’s talk about this survey and it’s implication to the field of Math and Numeracy.  I would like to hear from anyone who is concerned about what this report says to please post their comments below.

Brooke

Comments

I think one possible barrier is an adult's mathematics anxiety level.  My research focus is on math anxiety within adult learners and have seens some adults with high levels.  One of my goals is to develop interventive strategies for both the educator and the student that reduce the anxiety while increasing their confidence.

I have also seen a high degree of math anxiety among my students. I also see a lack of basic number sense. This is evident when they relate that they can't remember HOW to do something. They know some of the steps to solve a problem but then get confused. It reveals that they, at some point, learned a procedure/formula, but they don't really understand how the numbers relate to each other and why that formula/procedure works. This also interferes with their ability to transfer their knowledge into different situations. It also explains the difficulty they have with word problems where they have to figure out what operations to use versus simply solving an equation. I've printed out the report and look forward to reading it.

http://msan.wceruw.org/documents/researchBrief/SERP%20Misconceptions-Worked%20Examples%20Research%20Brief.pdf   this describes where concepts break down for lots of students in middle school, as well as how those misconceptions interfere with further conceptual development and transfer of knowledge.  

 

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/carnegie-perspectives/what-were-learning/what-community-college-developmental-mathematics-students-understand-about-math

Check out the fascinating tables and note that when it says 26 % ... that's how many got a question *right.*   

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/results/makeselections.aspx has a setup where you can filter out the stats you want

(Here's the email I got about it: 

** Announcing... the NEW PIAAC Results Portal
------------------------------------------------------------


** The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently launched a new interactive online web portal (http://air.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d594c8ec6a0ea81ef5da0c3f4&id=fab46bd9e7&e=48659a8340) that will make it easy for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to build customizable data tables using the PIAAC data. This new tool supplements the information available in NCES’s First Look report—Literacy, Numeracy, and Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments Among U.S. Adults: Results From the Program for the Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012 (http://air.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d594c8ec6a0ea81ef5da0c3f4&id=3db466c910&e=48659a8340) —and is designed to enable users to create their own data tables.

Like NCES’s First Look report, the PIAAC Results Portal reports average scores and proficiency levels in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. It can be used to compare U.S. performance to the international average and to the average in any or all participating countries.

You can also dig a little deeper by examining the data by a variety of characteristics. For example, if you are interested in how U.S. adults with different levels of educational attainment performed in literacy, you can create a table based on educational attainment variables. Likewise, if you are interested in what skills adults use at home and at work and how the use of these skills relates to performance in numeracy, you can look at that as well. There are many other variables to explore.

To make your searches easier, NCES has created profiles for key subgroups. For example, the characteristics included in the “unemployed” subgroup profile include age, gender, race/ethnicity, U.S. born, and educational attainment. In addition to these characteristics, the “employed” subgroup profile includes occupation, industry of employment, and level of gross pay.
After you have created your customized table, you have the option to export your data table to Excel.

You can access the PIAAC Results Portal directly from the PIAAC Gateway homepage: http://air.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d594c8ec6a0ea81ef5da0c3f4&id=d603de5029&e=48659a8340.

I hope that many of you are familiar with Dan Meyer, but if not, here's a great video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover?language=en#t-245203

In Virginia's 2014 GED Math trainings, we've been using this video as part of the first 45 minute discussion of alignment with CCRS and the practices outlined in the  GED Assessment Targets. It's been an effective prelude to training on strategies that move away from "procedural"  math towards a more project/problem-based learning model.