Singapore Mathematics in the US (UPDATED)

This may not be news to many of you, but Singapore's mathematics syllabus is enjoying some success in the US. (UPDATE: Singapore Ink has an earlier post that slipped my mind when I blogged this)

Perhaps more interestingly, a study recently released by the American Institute for Research comparing the teaching of elementary school mathematics in the United States and Singapore found that "Singapore’s textbooks and assessment examinations are more demanding and their teachers more skilled mathematically but that U.S. approaches often put more emphasis on certain important 21st century math skills." The report (.pdf file) predictably identifies a host of strengths for Singapore's mathematics: superior framework, textbook, teaching and assessment; but also concludes that the US method has the following strengths:

Although the U.S. mathematics program is weaker than Singapore’s in most respects, the U.S. system is stronger than Singapore’s in some areas. The U.S. frameworks give greater emphasis than Singapore’s to developing important 21st century mathematical skills such as representation, reasoning, making connections, and communication. The frameworks and textbooks also place greater emphasis on applied mathematics, including statistics and probability.

UPDATE: I'm still unsure exactly what to think...mostly because I'm not a math teacher. Singapore Ink rightly concludes from the above (in a new new post) that "we shouldn’t celebrate too early just because our textbooks are being used in some schools in the US." Agreed--though I would have thought the same without the AIR report. First, I doubt that elementary mathematics teaching is the place in our education system most urgently needing improvement. But more to the point, it's hardly all that great beating the US elementary school math teaching: as the AIR news release points out (.doc file),

Singapore is a recognized leader in mathematics achievement. Singaporean students ranked first in the world on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study-2003, while U.S. students ranked 16th out of the 46 participating nations. Scores for U.S. students were among the lowest of all industrialized countries.

The question for us is: to what extent does the AIR study point to a genuine shortcoming in our own math teaching. To do that, I went to the part of the study entitled, "Areas of Strengths in the U.S. Mathematics Sysytem compared with Singapore's System":

The U.S. places a greater emphasis on applied mathematics, including statistics, probability, and real-world problem analysis. The U.S. mathematics frameworks stress data analysis and probability, whereas the Singapore framework treats statistics in a strictly theoretical way. Everyday Mathematics, the nontraditional textbook we examined, uses a problem-based learning approach, which presents multistep real-world mathematics problems. Such applications give students practice in understanding how to apply mathematics in practical ways. However, the Everyday Mathematics lessons use real-world applications without providing the foundation of the strong conceptual topic development found in Singapore’s textbooks. Even though Singapore’s textbooks would benefit from more real-world applications, their emphasis on conceptual development of mathematics and problem-based learning make them superior to U.S. textbooks overall.

Now I'll be quite interested to know what our math educators think about all this.