High school students who learn math in other classes, such as auto mechanics or Web design, do better on standardized math tests, a national study shows.
The two-year study, which included 15 school districts in Colorado, showed students were better at math when they used trigonometry to push the speed of an engine in shop class or algebra to calculate a company’s break-even point in business class.
“Students could make the connection when they saw that question on a high-stakes test,” said Sherrie Schneider, director of curriculum and instruction for the state community college system.
For some students, math alone is too abstract, Schneider said. She coordinated the Colorado study for the National Resource Center for Career and Technical Education.
The study – sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Adult and Vocational Education Office – compared test scores of students taking only traditional math classes with those who also studied math in their career and technical education classes.
Nationally and in Colorado, students who studied math in other classes outperformed other students by 2 to 4 percentage points on math sections of two standardized tests.
“Broadly speaking, this works,” said James Stone III, director of the research center and a professor at the University of Minnesota. “It has a lot to say about how we think about teacher education. There’s math embedded in everything.”
Mike Diamond, a business and marketing teacher at Lewis-Palmer High School in Monument, was careful to use the same terminology as math teachers when he incorporated math into his lessons.
Diamond’s economics students used formulas to calculate the elasticity of supply and demand, and his marketing students used math to figure out the costs of placing ads in a magazine.
“It helped them to make that connection between real-world concepts and just math,” Diamond said. “The kids really learned more as a result.”
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
