Billionaire Tries to Reform Math Education: Can the US Learn to Teach Math Again?

A billionaire investment wizard is trying to save the US educational establishment from itself. James Simons is head of Renaissance Technologies Corporation, the top hedge fund in the world in terms of performance. Like most thoughtful and intelligent North Americans, Simons is dismayed at the horrific lack of math skills in North American graduates (24th out of 29 nations tested).

Government education in the US has been a disgrace for decades now. Schools and teachers have failed students badly, especially in math and the sciences. One obvious cure for the problem is to make mathematics relevant to the real world, by bringing in teachers who have actual work experience in the real world.

....Math for America addresses a simple, but profound problem: Nearly 40 percent of all public high school math teachers do not have a degree in math or a related field. Even the best curriculum in the world, the reasoning goes, isn't going to inspire students if unqualified individuals are teaching them. (In a recent round of testing, the U.S. placed 24th out of 29 nations in math proficiency.) If knowledgeable teachers exude passion for the subject, they stand a greater chance of pushing students toward careers in math in science that are the technical backbone of the country's economy.

....In its first two years, MfA has already had an impact. Several of the teachers it has placed are career changers, reversing the tide of defections from teaching. MIT grad Alan Cheng, was previously a researcher and software engineer, and another fellow I met turned down graduate studies at Harvard to teach math in a New York City school.

...."This is a problem that doesn't just affect education, but also the economy, our security, and, because I am an old Jeffersonian, I believe it affects our democracy," said Kra. "People should know basic concepts in math and science in order to make informed decisions about the issues."

...."As an employer," he said, "it's more and more difficult for me, if that were my objective, to hire Americans or American-trained-and-born people into the company. We hire research guys in math and physics in reasonable numbers, and almost all of them are non-U.S."

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Unfortunately, Simons is looking for help from New York Senators Schumer and Clinton, two people who are most snugly in bed with the teachers' unions. Teachers' unions resist reform and needed change to the schools, so for all his intelligence and accomplishment, Simons has still shot himself in the foot.

Thanks to the corrupt collusion of teachers' unions and politicians, the government schools of the US, at least, are solidly fixed in a doomed, downward course. Simons means well, but his blind spot prevents him from understanding that an alternative approach that bypasses the teachers' unions is called for.

Any solutions that have a chance of working must come from outside the system, and gather momentum outside the system until they are large enough and successful enough that the corrupt school systems can no longer deny their problem. Reform has to forced on the system by people of integrity--not by politicians who have long since been bought and paid for.