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Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
The Political Race for Fewer Cures
America is leading the world into a new era of medical cures and biologic treatments, and the benefits to human health promise to be staggering. Yet why is America's political class—first Democrats and now Republicans—working hard to delay and maybe forestall this progress? Democrats have done much harm already with their Inflation Reduction Act price controls, as research and venture funding have declined. Now comes President Trump, who last week threatened drug companies with price controls or worse if they don't cut prices as he wants. Mr. Trump's excuse is that other countries are 'free riding' on American innovation. His solution: Demand manufacturers give Americans their 'most-favored nation' (MFN) price—i.e., the lowest in other developed countries like Canada and the U.K. If drug makers refuse, he may yank their drug approvals, harass them with lawsuits and more. 'If you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices,' Mr. Trump wrote to 17 large drug makers on Thursday. *** It's true that countries with government-run health systems like Canada, the U.K. and France pay less for drugs than Medicare and U.S. private insurers do. But the price disparities Mr. Trump cites don't include all the discounts that U.S. manufacturers provide insurers, hospitals, pharmacies and the feds. A Berkeley Research Group study last year found that drug makers received about 50% on a dollar of revenue for every drug they sold in the U.S. The rest was paid out in fees and discounts to intermediaries and the government. Some discounts are passed onto Americans through lower insurance premiums, though some boost hospital and insurer profits. Medicare and Medicaid spent $181 billion on prescription drugs in 2023 versus $662 billion for hospitals. Patient out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs accounts for about 1% of U.S. healthcare spending. Drugs aren't the main driver of healthcare premiums, patient costs or government spending. Manufacturers benefit for a few years from patent protection after medicines launch, but then they face stiff competition from follow-on medicines and generics. Prices typically fall by more than half after patent protection ends. Sales of AbbVie's auto-immune blockbuster Humira have shrunk by more than half since its patent monopoly ended in 2023. Unbranded generics in the U.S. make up 90% of all prescriptions and cost one-third less than in other economically developed countries, according to RAND. Generics also make up a much larger share of prescriptions in the U.S. than in other countries. That's because higher manufacturer list prices provide an incentive to develop biosimilars and generics. This market competition can reduce prices more than government price controls while providing an incentive for drug makers to continue to innovate. Mr. Trump's order would do the opposite by discouraging development of generics and new breakthrough treatments. Mr. Trump claimed last week that drug manufacturers receive 'generous research subsidies.' Not true. Universities do, and some of their research can lead to future drugs. But the pharmaceutical industry spent $141 billion on research and development in 2022, nearly 40 times as much as the National Institutes of Health did on research directly related to drug development. Browbeating companies, as Mr. Trump is doing, could spur them to move more intellectual property to China, where Xi Jinping is rolling out the red carpet. And it will likely result in fewer new drugs developed and sold in the U.S., especially in riskier research fields like neurologic and rare genetic diseases. If drug makers refuse Mr. Trump's MFN price, he has directed his Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission to take antitrust 'enforcement action.' Mr. Trump also ordered his Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary to modify or revoke approvals 'for those drugs that maybe be unsafe, ineffective, or improperly marketed.' Translation: Nice medicine you have there. Terrible if something happened to it. *** It's not clear what legal authority Mr. Trump plans to invoke to do any of this, and it would presumably need a rule-making that could be challenged in court. His plan appears to usurp Congress's power over commerce and violate the Supreme Court's major questions doctrine. It may also violate due process and property and contractual rights. Mr. Trump had a chance to include drug prices in his trade negotiations with other countries. But he failed to do so with Europe and Japan. Instead he is now going to import foreign price controls to punish U.S. companies—and the Americans who will get fewer cures as a result.
Time Magazine
31-07-2025
- Time Magazine
Police and Courts Are Turning to AI. Is the System Ready for It?
Can AI be used to make the criminal justice system more fair and efficient, or will it only reinforce harmful biases? Experts say that it has so far been deployed in worrying ways—but that there is potential for positive impact. Today, AI tech has reached nearly every aspect of the criminal justice system. It is being used in facial recognition systems to identify suspects; in 'predictive policing' strategies to formulate patrol routes; in courtrooms to assist with case management; and by public defenders to cull through evidence. But while advocates point to an increase in efficiency and fairness, critics raise serious questions around privacy and accountability. Last month, the Council on Criminal Justice launched a nonpartisan task force on AI, to study how AI could be used in the criminal justice system safely and ethically. The group's work will be supported by researchers at RAND, and they will eventually take their findings and make recommendations to policymakers and law enforcement. 'There's no question that AI can yield unjust results,' says Nathan Hecht, the task force's chair and a former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice. 'This task force wants to bring together tech people, criminal justice people, community people, experts in various different areas, and really sit down to see how we can use it to make the system better and not cause the harm that it's capable of.' Risks of AI in law enforcement Many courts and police departments are already using AI, Hecht says. 'It's very piecemeal: Curious people going, 'Oh, wow, there's this AI out here, we could use it over in the criminal court.' But because there are few standards for how to deploy AI, civil rights watchdogs have grown concerned that law enforcement agencies are using it in dangerous ways. Thousands of agencies have come to rely upon facial recognition technology sold by companies like Clearview, which hosts a database of billions of images scraped off the internet. In many databases, Black people are overrepresented, in part because they live in communities that are overpoliced. AI technology is also worse at discerning differences in Black people's faces, which can lead to higher misidentification rates. Last year, the Innocence Project, a legal nonprofit, found that there have been at least seven wrongful arrests from facial recognition technology, six of which involved wrongfully accused Black people. Walter Katz, the organization's director of policy, says that police sometimes make arrests solely based on AI's facial recognition findings as opposed to having the AI serve as a starting point for a larger investigation. 'There's an over-reliance on AI outputs,' he says. Katz says that when he went to a policing conference last fall, 'it was AI everywhere.' Vendors were aggressively hawking technology tools that claimed to solve real problems in police departments. 'But in making that pitch, there was little attention to any tradeoffs or risks,' he says. For instance, critics worry that many of these AI tools will increase surveillance of public spaces, including the monitoring of peaceful protesters—or that so-called 'predictive policing' will intensify law enforcement's crackdowns on over-policed areas. Where AI could help However, Katz concedes that AI does have a place in the criminal justice system. 'It'll be very hard to wish AI away—and there are places where AI can be helpful,' he says. For that reason, he joined the Council on Criminal Justice's AI task force. 'First and foremost is getting our arms wrapped around how fast the adoption is. And if everyone comes from the understanding that having no policy whatsoever is probably the wrong place to be, then we build from there.' Hecht, the task force's chair, sees several areas where AI could be helpful in the courtroom, for example, including improving the intake process for arrested people, or helping identify who qualifies for diversion programs, which allow offenders to avoid convictions. He also hopes the task force will provide recommendations on what types of AI usage explicitly should not be approved in criminal justice, and steps to preserve the public's privacy. 'We want to try to gather the expertise necessary to reassure the users of the product and the public that this is going to make your experience with the criminal justice system better—and after that, it's going to leave you alone,' he says. Meanwhile, plenty of other independent efforts are trying to use AI to improve the justice processes. One startup, JusticeText, hopes to use AI to narrow the gap between resources of prosecutors and public defenders, the latter of whom are typically severely understaffed and underresourced. JusticeText built a tool for public defenders that sorts through hours of 911 calls, police body camera footage, and recorded interrogations, in order to analyze it and determine if, for example, police have made inconsistent statements or asked leading questions. 'We really wanted to see what it looks like to be a public defender-first, and try to level that playing field that technology has in many ways exacerbated in past years,' says founder and CEO Devshi Mehrotra. JusticeText is working with around 75 public defender agencies around the country. Recidiviz, a criminal justice reform nonprofit, has also been testing several ways of integrating AI into their workflows, including giving parole officers AI-generated summaries of clients. 'You might have 80 pages of case notes going back seven years on this person that you're not going to read if you have a caseload of 150 people, and you have to see each one of them every month,' says Andrew Warren, Recidiviz's co-founder. 'AI could give very succinct highlights of what this person has already achieved and what they could use support on.' The challenge for policymakers and the Council on Criminal Justice's task force, then, is to determine how to develop standards and oversight mechanisms so that the good from AI's efficiency gains outweigh its ability to amplify existing biases. Hecht, at the task force, also hopes to protect from a future in which a black box AI makes life-changing decisions on its own. 'Should we ensure our traditional ideas of human justice are protected? Of course. Should we make sure that able judges and handlers of the criminal justice system are totally in control? Of course,' he says. 'But saying we're going to keep AI out of the justice system is hopeless. Law firms are using it. The civil justice system is using it. It's here to stay.'
Time Magazine
30-07-2025
- Time Magazine
Police and Courts Are Turning to AI. Is the System Ready?
Can AI be used to make the criminal justice system more fair and efficient, or will it only reinforce harmful biases? Experts say that it has so far been deployed in worrying ways—but that there is potential for positive impact. Today, AI tech has reached nearly every aspect of the criminal justice system. It is being used in facial recognition systems to identify suspects; in 'predictive policing' strategies to formulate patrol routes; in courtrooms to assist with case management; and by public defenders to cull through evidence. But while advocates point to an increase in efficiency and fairness, critics raise serious questions around privacy and accountability. Last month, the Council on Criminal Justice launched a nonpartisan task force on AI, to study how AI could be used in the criminal justice system safely and ethically. The group's work will be supported by researchers at RAND, and they will eventually take their findings and make recommendations to policymakers and law enforcement. 'There's no question that AI can yield unjust results,' says Nathan Hecht, the task force's chair and a former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice. 'This task force wants to bring together tech people, criminal justice people, community people, experts in various different areas, and really sit down to see how we can use it to make the system better and not cause the harm that it's capable of.' Risks of AI in law enforcement Many courts and police departments are already using AI, Hecht says. 'It's very piecemeal: Curious people going, 'Oh, wow, there's this AI out here, we could use it over in the criminal court.' But because there are few standards for how to deploy AI, civil rights watchdogs have grown concerned that law enforcement agencies are using it in dangerous ways. Thousands of agencies have come to rely upon facial recognition technology sold by companies like Clearview, which hosts a database of billions of images scraped off the internet. In many databases, Black people are overrepresented, in part because they live in communities that are overpoliced. AI technology is also worse at discerning differences in Black people's faces, which can lead to higher misidentification rates. Last year, the Innocence Project, a legal nonprofit, found that there have been at least seven wrongful arrests from facial recognition technology, six of which involved wrongfully accused Black people. Walter Katz, the organization's director of policy, says that police sometimes make arrests solely based on AI's facial recognition findings as opposed to having the AI serve as a starting point for a larger investigation. 'There's an over-reliance on AI outputs,' he says. Katz says that when he went to a policing conference last fall, 'it was AI everywhere.' Vendors were aggressively hawking technology tools that claimed to solve real problems in police departments. 'But in making that pitch, there was little attention to any tradeoffs or risks,' he says. For instance, critics worry that many of these AI tools will increase surveillance of public spaces, including the monitoring of peaceful protesters—or that so-called 'predictive policing' will intensify law enforcement's crackdowns on over-policed areas. Where AI could help However, Katz concedes that AI does have a place in the criminal justice system. 'It'll be very hard to wish AI away—and there are places where AI can be helpful,' he says. For that reason, he joined the Council on Criminal Justice's AI task force. 'First and foremost is getting our arms wrapped around how fast the adoption is. And if everyone comes from the understanding that having no policy whatsoever is probably the wrong place to be, then we build from there.' Hecht, the task force's chair, sees several areas where AI could be helpful in the courtroom, for example, including improving the intake process for arrested people, or helping identify who qualifies for diversion programs, which allow offenders to avoid convictions. He also hopes the task force will provide recommendations on what types of AI usage explicitly should not be approved in criminal justice, and steps to preserve the public's privacy. 'We want to try to gather the expertise necessary to reassure the users of the product and the public that this is going to make your experience with the criminal justice system better—and after that, it's going to leave you alone,' he says. Meanwhile, plenty of other independent efforts are trying to use AI to improve the justice processes. One startup, JusticeText, hopes to use AI to narrow the gap between resources of prosecutors and public defenders, the latter of whom are typically severely understaffed and underresourced. JusticeText built a tool for public defenders that sorts through hours of 911 calls, police body camera footage, and recorded interrogations, in order to analyze it and determine if, for example, police have made inconsistent statements or asked leading questions. 'We really wanted to see what it looks like to be a public defender-first, and try to level that playing field that technology has in many ways exacerbated in past years,' says founder and CEO Devshi Mehrotra. JusticeText is working with around 75 public defender agencies around the country. Recidiviz, a criminal justice reform nonprofit, has also been testing several ways of integrating AI into their workflows, including giving parole officers AI-generated summaries of clients. 'You might have 80 pages of case notes going back seven years on this person that you're not going to read if you have a caseload of 150 people, and you have to see each one of them every month,' says Andrew Warren, Recidiviz's co-founder. 'AI could give very succinct highlights of what this person has already achieved and what they could use support on.' The challenge for policymakers and the Council on Criminal Justice's task force, then, is to determine how to develop standards and oversight mechanisms so that the good from AI's efficiency gains outweigh its ability to amplify existing biases. Hecht, at the task force, also hopes to protect from a future in which a black box AI makes life-changing decisions on its own. 'Should we ensure our traditional ideas of human justice are protected? Of course. Should we make sure that able judges and handlers of the criminal justice system are totally in control? Of course,' he says. 'But saying we're going to keep AI out of the justice system is hopeless. Law firms are using it. The civil justice system is using it. It's here to stay.'
Ammon
29-06-2025
- Business
- Ammon
The United States at crossroads: Between proactive renewal and historic decline
In April 2024, the American RAND Corporation published an extensive analytical report titled "Sources of Renewable National Dynamics." The researchers addressed the structural challenges facing the United States, warning of the risks of decline and loss of global standing if proactive national renewal is not undertaken. This report represents a significant shift in the approach of American think tanks to the issue of the rise and decline of major powers, not only in terms of implicit recognition of the decline phase, but also in presenting a historical and forward-looking model for studying how to restore effective national power. The report reflects growing concern in American decision-making circles that the United States' competitiveness is no longer guaranteed considering domestic and international changes. The report is based on the premise that the rise and fall of major powers is not a historical exception, but rather part of recurring cycles subject to multiple factors, most importantly structural adaptation and the ability to renew during moments of transition. Considering this hypothesis, the RAND team reviewed a number of historical experiences in which great powers experienced relative decline before succeeding—or failing—in regaining the initiative. These experiences include Britain in the Victorian era, the United States during the Progressive Era in the late nineteenth century, the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and China during its transitional periods. The study sought to draw general lessons from these experiences that would help understand the potential for American national renewal before it is too late. The report argues that the proactive renewal of any great power cannot occur without a minimum of subjective and objective conditions, including internal social consensus, flexible political institutions, a productive and innovative private sector, and the state's ability to utilize its resources strategically. It also notes that successful renewal requires a clear recognition of the crisis, not merely cosmetic or defensive rhetoric, as denial often leads to further decline. In this context, the report calls for the need to overcome the sharp partisan divisions in the United States, which it views as a real obstacle to any radical reform. In a systematic approach, the report identified nine key indicators deemed essential for measuring a state's ability to launch a proactive national renewal process. These indicators are: Sustainable resilience: This refers to a society's ability to adapt to crises and transformations without losing its cohesion or dynamism. Sovereign capacity: This is the state's ability to preserve the well-being of its people while ensuring protection from external threats. Freedom of international decision-making: This refers to a state's ability to act externally in accordance with its own interests, without dependence on other powers or coercive alliances. Military power: This refers to the possession of deterrence tools and operational superiority in various arenas of conventional and unconventional conflict. Alliances: The extent to which a state can build a cohesive and effective network of allies based on shared interests, rather than dependence or extortion. Economic power: This refers to the ability to influence the global economy through GDP, production, exports, and the ability to innovate. Market dominance: This refers to control over global market mechanisms, especially in vital sectors such as technology, energy, and finance. Cultural power: This refers to the ability to influence global thought patterns and values through the media, education, and the arts. Technological supremacy: This refers to leadership in technological innovation, including artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and cybersecurity. The report indicates that the United States, despite the challenges, still retains some of the strength needed to rebuild its global position, but it urgently needs a radical review of its economic, social, and educational policies. It also emphasizes that the time available for this transformation is narrowing, and that delaying the launch of the reform process could lead to irreversible consequences, especially in light of the rapid progress achieved by other powers, such as China, in the areas of trade, technology, and geopolitics. The report does not deny the United States' vast resources, but warns that the lack of internal consensus, the escalation of partisan divisions, and the erosion of trust in institutions could empty these resources of their substance and render them unable to fulfill their role in revitalizing the nation. It also indicates that the greatest challenge lies not only in regaining military or economic supremacy, but in renewing a national vision that unites Americans around a common goal and reshapes the relationship between state and society based on justice, efficiency, and innovation. While the report acknowledges that successful cases of proactive renewal are rare in history, it insists that the United States still has a chance to achieve this if it takes serious, thoughtful, and courageous steps. It also emphasizes that renewal is not merely a response to external decline, but rather a voluntary act that requires collective awareness and leadership capable of addressing the public with a language of frankness and responsibility, not one of reassurance and condescension. In this sense, the report is not merely an analytical document, but rather an early call for the need to preempt decline with comprehensive reform initiatives stemming from within and drawing on America's historical legacy of overcoming crises. This warning—issued by one of the most important American research institutions—may be an indication of a shift in the ruling elite's awareness of the magnitude of the challenges facing their country, and a belated realization that progress is only sustainable for those who dare to review and renew. Hasan Dajah is professor of strategic studies at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University
Forbes
28-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
It's Time To Change The Math Calculus: How The US Can Finally Get Math Education Right
Four schoolboys watch as their teacher points to a lesson on the blackboard. PISA scores reveal deep problems in how the United States teaches math. Here's what research—and top-performing countries—say needs to change Julie Fitz, Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, contributed to this story In recent years, a much publicized 'reading crisis' has been a hot topic in the United States, but mathematics achievement tells a much more troubling story. In the 2022 Program in International Student Assessment (PISA), which tested students in 80 jurisdictions worldwide, U.S. 15-year-olds did comparatively well in both reading, ranking 7th among participating nations, and science, ranking 13th. However, U.S. students ranked lower than 30 other nations in math—well below the international average score. In contrast to the highest-achieving countries, U.S. performance is lower for both high and low achievers and shows wider achievement gaps associated with students' socioeconomic status—gaps that national data show have grown even wider since the pandemic. Beyond the scores, the United States has become a math-phobic nation, with many students coming to hate and fear mathematics and too few interested in continuing into mathematically rich fields of study. A recent RAND study found that only about 25% of middle and high school students found their math classes interesting most of the time, while half reported losing interest in math class half or more of the time and the remainder reporting they were rarely engaged by math. Many students had decided they were not a 'math person' before they even got to middle school. This problem has manifested as labor shortages for technical occupations in the United States, with many positions needing to be filled by individuals from other countries on H1B visas, which are increasingly in short supply. As a consequence, calls for reform in mathematics education have once again become widespread. However, efforts to rethink the U.S. math curriculum, instruction, and assessments have come and gone over many years, beginning with the post-Sputnik era in the 1950s, and recurring regularly since. Efforts to create a curriculum focused on deeper understanding of mathematical concepts (often called 'new math,' even though it's decades old) have warred with a status quo that favors rote memorization of basic math facts and the use of algorithms to solve problems that are not deeply understood. This status quo is reinforced by textbooks and tests wedded to a coverage curriculum that touches on many subjects in each grade level without delving deeply into any. At the high school level, the United States has clung to a math curriculum prescribed by a set of educators called the Committee of Ten, appointed by the National Education Association in 1892, the year Thomas Edison received a patent for the telegraph and long before computers, large-scale data, or new statistical methods were on the scene. These combined challenges have been partly responsible for generations of elementary teachers poorly prepared in math and often math-phobic themselves. Furthermore, decades of secondary math teacher shortages means that many positions have been filled by individuals teaching on substandard credentials who have inadequate preparation in math or pedagogy or both. In a high-demand field like mathematics, where college graduates can earn at least 50% more in industry than they can in education, the wage gap between teachers and other professions is particularly problematic, and it is difficult to fill positions with fully qualified teachers. All of this contributes to the widespread difficulties students experience in understanding math. Coupled with long-standing biases about who deserves access to math opportunities, the United States has a widely shared belief that only some people have the 'math gene' that allows them to succeed at math—and that most women and people of color do not have it. There is renewed urgency around math education—fueled by growing global economic competitiveness, equity concerns, and technological change. A number of states are seeking to update their math requirements, infusing more attention to computer science and data science. Councils of mathematicians and mathematics teachers have urged changes to modernize math, focus on big ideas, teach it in meaningful ways, and connect it to real-world problems. Some states, like California, have overhauled their entire math framework with these goals in mind. As this move requires changes in the textbooks and materials the state adopts, it may shift the broader curriculum market. The Gates Foundation is devoting a significant share of its massive giving to the improvement of math education across the country. As Bill Gates has noted, not many students share his love of math. The Gates Foundation's K–12 education strategy is focused on modernizing math education so that it connects to students' interests, abilities, needs, and goals; engages them in collaboration to find answers and communication about their problem-solving approaches; and applies to complex, real-world problems that students know exist outside the classroom, from designing a budget to estimating population growth. The goal is for every student to become a 'math person' and to be able to use the power of mathematics in every aspect of their lives. First, it might be useful to learn from the very different way in which math is taught in the highest-achieving countries, where outcomes are also much more equitable. In the four highest-achieving nations on PISA rankings—Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Estonia—mathematics is taught in heterogeneous classrooms, with no tracking prior to 10th grade. The curriculum tackles a small number of seminal topics in each school year—like ratio and proportion or the concept of integers—and teaches these deeply from multiple angles. These countries and many others present math in an integrated fashion with domains of mathematical study combined to allow for more robust conceptualization and problem-solving. For this reason, none of these countries teach the Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II/Trigonometry sequence common in U.S. high schools, as prescribed by the Committee of Ten in 1892. In Japan, for example, Mathematics I, II, and III each combine elements of algebra, geometry, measurement, statistics, and trigonometry. As is also true in Singapore, the focus is on taking time for students to intently discuss and collaboratively solve complex problems that integrate the content—often just one complex problem in a class period—rather than memorizing formulas and applying rote procedures to multiple problems that isolate the mathematical ideas and challenge students' deep understanding. In both countries, reforms over the last decade have focused more intently on experiential and project-based learning and applications to real-world problems, adding data use across the grades. In Japan, when differentiation occurs in 10th grade to add greater challenge to the courses of advanced students, the curriculum remains similar, and both lanes allow students to reach advanced courses like calculus. A similarly integrated curriculum is used in South Korea, where a 'learner-centered' approach advanced by the Ministry of Education has focused mathematics on active engagement in problem-solving. In Estonia, the most rapidly improving country, reforms over the last decade have followed a similar path while focusing intensely throughout the grades on the use of computers and statistics for data analysis, using real-world problems to organize mathematical inquiry (Hõim, Hommik, and Kikas 2016). In all cases, these highly successful countries develop a more integrated curriculum organized around major concepts that are taught deeply, infused with real-world data and problem-solving, and taught to all students. Second, in addition to modernizing the mathematics curriculum, we need to support the development and use of high-quality instructional materials that reflect the integration of mathematical ideas, the use of real-world data to pose and solve problems, open-ended approaches to exploring problems using multiple methods, and robust mathematical discourse in the classroom. High-quality instruction also requires well-prepared, supported teachers. The curriculum will not teach itself. Teachers need extended opportunities to learn how to teach this kind of curriculum, beginning in preservice education and continuing throughout their careers. They need opportunities to develop both content knowledge and pedagogical skill through preparation programs and professional development that emphasize deep understanding and help teachers learn to create supportive, inclusive learning environments. Unlike the traditional 'sit and get' or drive-by workshops teachers often experience, professional learning needs to be ongoing and job-embedded, with opportunities for teachers to collaborate and learn from each other with support from skilled math coaches—a strategy used by many countries in updating their curriculum and adopted by California as part of its new math reforms. We also need to address the long-standing math teacher shortage. In the high-achieving countries noted earlier, teachers typically earn as much as other college graduates (Singapore pegs salaries to those of engineers), and are treated with great respect, so teaching is a desirable career. U.S. teachers, by contrast, earn about 25% less, on average, than other college-educated workers and have much more grueling work schedules—with more hours teaching students and less time for planning and collaboration. Pay differentials are even larger for fields like math, so filling teaching vacancies with fully qualified teachers is difficult, especially in schools serving large concentrations of students from low-income families, which are often under-resourced. These schools, as a result, offer fewer advanced courses and rely more heavily on uncertified teachers or substitutes who come and go. As was true for a brief time in the post-Sputnik era, the recruitment, retention, and training of teachers need urgent policy and funding attention. Research has shown that math isn't just about what we teach—it's about how we teach it. Classroom environments should foster curiosity, persistence, and collaboration. Instruction must reflect both powerful mathematical concepts and supports informed by the science of learning and development, recognizing students' social, emotional, and cognitive needs. A recent report from the Learning Policy Institute synthesizes research findings from the fields of mathematics teaching and learning, educational psychology, and the learning sciences to identify key classroom conditions that support K–12 math major principles emerge as key: There are compelling reasons on many levels to ensure all students are prepared and supported to excel in mathematics: to support our country's ability to be competitive in a global market, to prepare students at every level for the ever-increasing complexity of modern times, and to develop critical cognitive functioning. But at the heart of it, children should learn math because, as Francis Su said, 'To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas.
