Study: Confidence not helping math scores

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, has said U.S. math scores lag behind those of countries that do not stress real-world relevance.

The institution's annual Brown Center report on education said the U.S. curriculum, which focuses on real-world relevance and boosting the confidence of students, is lagging far behind countries that put less emphasis on those points, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The report said 14 percent of Japanese math teachers polled said they attempt to tie math lessons to real-life scenarios, while 66 percent of U.S. math teachers use the student's lives as a teaching tool. However, the report said, Japanese math scores are considerably higher than U.S. scores.

Likewise, the report said 6 percent of surveyed eighth graders in South Korea expressed high self-confidence in their math skills, compared to 39 percent of eighth graders in the United States. South Korea's math scores also surpass U.S. scores by a wide margin.

The report said the comparison holds for other countries that use the same techniques.

"The more relevant the math, the lower-scoring the nation," wrote Tom Loveless, the report's author.