Challenge: For Able StudentsAuthor(s): Phares G. O'DafferSource: The Arithmetic Teacher, Vol. 29, No. 1 (September 1981), p. 45Published by: National Council of Teachers of MathematicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41191983 .

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ployees without calculus backgrounds. About 30 percent were looking for stu- dents with at least the "soft" calculus sequence, and 68 percent were looking for students with the "hard" calculus sequence in the undergraduate major (see table 1).

These data indicate the economic and academic importance of good pre- college backgrounds in mathematics. Thus students whose sixth-grade test scores are seriously below grade level are effectively shut out of access to the college majors that have the greatest job potential and offer the highest sala- ries. When parents become aware of the critical economic value of access to algebra and geometry for students not going to college and of access to calcu- lus for students going to college, they will become more supportive of the ef-

forts in the elementary schools to have students achieve mastery of skills through homework and home drill.

The data from the 1978 study also show serious underachievement for some minority students. Seventy-nine percent of the Asian students and 72 percent of the white students were en- rolled in the open opportunity mathe- matics track as compared with 25 per- cent of the Hispanic students and 20 percent of the black students. In one school, black students comprised 40 percent of the total enrollment in mathematics courses, 79 percent of the enrollment in courses off the college track, 58 percent of the enrollment in courses on the terminal mathematics track, and only 16 percent of the en- rollment in courses on the open-oppor- tunity track.

Within the open-opportunity mathe- matics track, black students comprised 21 percent of the enrollment in the in- troductory courses, 1 1 percent of the enrollment in the intermediate courses, and only 5 percent of the enrollment in the advanced courses required for ac- cess to calculus.

Mastery of arithmetic skills at grade level in the elementary grades is of crit- ical importance if students are to be able to look forward to a choice of ca- reers in their adult lives. There is great potential for making a difference for all students, regardless of race, sex, or so- cial or ethnic class.

Reference

Sells, Lucy W. "High School Mathematics En- rollments.'* Unpublished study of a California High School, December 26, 1978. W

Challenge: For qblG Mudante

TILING FLOORS 1

'

Suppose you have floor tiles shaped like those below. How many different ways can you find to tile a floor -

(1) using tiles of only one shape, (2) using tiles of two or more shapes.

Use tracing paper and trace these shapes to show a portion of each different tiling that you find.

êooO From Phares G. O'Daffer, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois

September 1981 45

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