American Dream Turned American Delusion: High School Mathematics Education for an Idealized Workforce

Abstract

This thesis explores whether American public high school mathematics content adequately prepares students for a variety of postsecondary career paths.

For the past sixty years, the United States government has become increasingly involved in public education and increasingly dedicated to fostering equity; the most recent attempt at doing so was the push for nationwide adoption of Common Core State Standards in 2010. Matching analysis of Common Core mathematics standards and content subsets of the SAT and ACT WorkKeys exams indicates that widely used methods of instruction and assessment—centered around Algebra 1—are structured to prepare students for college but not vocational education programs. Further, recent scores on the SAT and the Program for International Student Assessment reveal that mathematics achievement is correlated with race and socioeconomic status, indicating that the public education system still largely caters to already privileged populations.

Reviews of employment projections demonstrate that, while development in technologically-advanced industries has instilled perceptions that four-year degrees are necessary for stable, well-paying occupations, positions requiring industry or job-specific training exhibit growing shortages. Student expectations for educational achievement corroborate the curriculum-instilled belief in the necessity of a college education. Quantitative analysis of numeracy skills used at home and work by demographic group, using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, indicates that basic mathematics usage increases with education level. This may be a signal that commonly assessed mathematics skills are not relevant to workers with less formal education, or that gaps in usage may correspond to gaps in comprehension.

These investigations culminate to conclude that no more than half of the United States workforce is equipped with the proper mathematics skills for postsecondary education by high school mathematics course content. This shortcoming entails lost opportunity for both individual students and the collective American public, leaving the vocation-bound portion of the population unprepared for career-entry and dejected by the disproportionate focus on college-bound individuals instilled by federal, state, and local policies.