Katie Couric's Notebook: Math

Remember this story problem from elementary school math class? One train leaves New York at 9 o'clock and another leaves San Francisco at 10 o'clock … oh, never mind – it brings back too many bad memories.

So many of us, including me, were never very good at those problems. So more and more elementary schools are bringing in tutors, not just for the kids, but for the teachers.

Teachers that are great at, say, reading or social studies are not always as comfortable helping students figure out fractions and pi. In fact the National Council on Teacher Quality says most states don't even require elementary school teachers to have high school math skills

Many teachers who have used tutors say they really help, and there's some evidence it's working.

While our children's' math skills are far below results in Singapore, Japan, Belgium, and a number of other countries, they have been going up. That equals progress.

That's the kind of "new math" we can all understand.