Complex math stumps students.

When asked for detailed answers to mathematics questions involving reasoning and problem-solving skills, very few U.S. students perform satisfactorily. According to a report by the U.S. Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), only 16% of fourth-graders, eight percent of eighth-graders, and nine percent of 12th-graders could solve and explain their answers to examples that required understanding and applying mathematics principles and operations. Even those who had adequate skills and knowledge to solve problems had trouble explaining their work.

The report provides state data for fourth- and eighth-grade public school students in 44 states and other jurisdictions and national data for fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-grade public and private school students from the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics assessment. The findings are presented by sex, race and ethnicity, community type, geographic region, type of instruction, and school.

Students in the Northeast outperformed those in the other regions, with the...