School enrollment has declined statewide in Connecticut. State education data shows between 2018 and 2023, statewide enrollment was down more than 17,000 students. Almost 15,000 kids left during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. .
American 15-year-olds rank 28th in the developed world for math skills on international assessments, and now a new study aims to find out why many teenagers are turned off by math. Researchers from the nonprofit YouthTruth polled 90,000 students and found only 57% consider it important to learn math. Jennifer de Forest, director of organizational learning for YouthTruth, noted students value a good relationship with their teacher. .
Of all the classes taught in school, many students say math is the hardest and their least favorite subject, but many jobs require math and experts are evaluating recent survey results to determine what could help change the paradigm. Elisha Arillaga Smith, math education and research fellow at Just Equations, a nonprofit working to ensure educational equity, said a recent survey found only 57% of students consider learning math "important," which is a challenge, in a society valuing science and technology. "One of the things that the findings point to is, there are some creative ways where we could combine math with other subjects to show students how math can really come alive," Arillaga Smith explained. " .