Colleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. More students are being placed into pre-college math, starting a semester or more behind for their majors, even if they get credit for the lower-level classes.
Colleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.
The real issue is that they are teaching arithmetic as though it is just playing with numbers, rather than that it is the alphabet of an entirely different language that is far more precise than any human language ever could be. I don’t know how to fix that because it didn’t click for me until Calculus, but that is a root issue, and why there are so many bad math teachers. Admittedly it’s very dry material, and I don’t know how to get kids excited about math, unless you incorporate it into baking lessons. They all love cookies and cake.