In Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education (1989), the National Research Council describes the potentially disastrous implications of the gap in mathematical competence between poor and minority students and white students in the context of today's changing workforce needs:
"Because mathematics holds the key to leadership in our information-based society, the widening gap between those who are mathematically literate and those who are not coincides, to a frightening degree, with racial and economic categories. We are at risk of becoming a divided nation in which knowledge of mathematics supports a productive, technologically powerful elite while a dependent, semiliterate majority, disproportionately Hispanic and Black, find economic and political power beyond reach. Unless corrected, innumeracy and illiteracy will drive America apart."
Frank Press, Ph.D., past president of the National Academy of Sciences, underscores the important role that mathematics education plays in the financial and political decisions that affect our lives:
"Mathematics is important not just in the education of scientists, engineers and economists but also in the education of every working citizen in the United States. It's hard to see how anybody can pull down anything better than a minimum wage job in the years ahead without quantitative skills. The world is changing, with an increasing emphasis on science and technology in every aspect of life: the service sector, the manufacturing sector, and so forth. Consequently, quantitative skills are prerequisites to enjoying a decent standard of living."This, of course, has special significance for women and minorities, groups that have traditionally been shut out of many technical jobs and careers because of weak mathematics preparation. Increasingly, these groups will be shut out of just about any job in the years ahead without an adequate basis, a foundation in mathematics. The nation as a whole has to be sensitive to this problem and raise its priority concern, because as demographics show, our work-force is changing. And increasingly, the nation will have to depend on the talents and the abilities of the traditionally under-represented groups. Therefore, this is really an economic necessity for our nation." (Press, 1990)
Silver, et al. (1995, forthcoming) describe the kinds of mathematics skills needed to prepare students for changing workforce needs and social conditions:
"It is essential that students be able not only to read, write and perform basic arithmetic procedures but also to know when and why to apply those procedures, to make sense out of complicated situations, and to develop strategies for formulating and then solving complex problems. As a result of such a high-literacy education, students would be expected not only to execute algorithms and recall factual knowledge but also to impose meaning and structure on new situations, to generate hypotheses and critically examine evidence, and to select the most appropriate from among a repertoire of strategic alternatives."
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