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A Russian works to fix U.S. math education

Sometimes it takes somebody from the outside looking in to help fix a problem. 

A Russian-born mathematician has created a nonprofit program that he thinks will revolutionize education in the U.S.

He created Reasoning Mind because he had a dismal opinion of American education, from kindergarten through high school.

This Web-based math program "does not merely incorporate technology into teaching. It is based in technology and capitalizes on the power of technology to deliver information and content," Dr. Alexander R. "Alex" Khachatryan said.

The results from a pilot program during the 2005-06 school year were impressive. At-risk students at a Houston school and advanced math students at a school in College Station were introduced to Reasoning Mind.

"At the inner-city school, the test group’s average improvement from the pre-test to the post-test was 67 percent, while the control group improved 6 percent," Dr. Khachatryan said.

"The test group students also demonstrated extraordinary results – a 20 percent higher passing rate – on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, despite the fact that only three out of 48 problems directly checked students’ knowledge of the two math units covered by RM in the pilot," he said.

Dr. Khachatryan also says that it took only one semester to close the achievement gap between the scores of the predominantly Hispanic students of the inner-city school and those of the average white student in Texas.

Advanced math students in the program also improved 49 percent on a test that measures in-depth knowledge of ratios and proportions. 

And just what motivated Dr. Khachatryan to put this together?

The impetus for Reasoning Mind came seven years after Dr. Khachatryan and his family came to the U.S.

His son, George, then 12, had been in three public and four private schools, and "the experience was absolutely shocking," Dr. Khachatryan said.

(snip)

Dr. Khachatryan says American colleges are among the best in the world, but he was appalled at the anti-intellectual aura of the K-12 educational system. 

Comparison of U.S. universities to K-12?  Check.  An Army of Davids approach to curriculum design?  Check.  Edspresso: your vision into the future of education!