In a downtown hotel in New Orleans in mid-January, nearly two dozen math experts from around the nation gathered to report on their progress toward recommendations that could shape the future of math instruction in U.S. schools for years to come.

The occasion was the fifth of 10 scheduled meetings of the U.S. Department of Education's National Mathematics Advisory Panel, a 17-member panel appointed by President Bush last year. (The group also includes six unofficial members, consisting of representatives from various federal agencies.) Based on the model of the National Reading Panel, which has influenced reading instruction in the United States significantly over the last decade, the math panel is tasked with advising U.S. policy makers and educators on the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching mathematics.

It's a topic of debate that has been heating up considerably over the last several years. In the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), U.S. students were ranked 15th in eighth-grade math skills, behind countries such as Australia and the Slovak Republic, while countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong are snagging the top rankings.

"In general, there's widespread recognition that the U.S. is not doing well in mathematics," says Steve Ritter, chief product architect and founder of Carnegie Learning, a provider of mathematics curricula for middle and high school students. "We do, at best, average compared with other countries, and that's below most developed countries. I don't think anybody is satisfied."

That reality, coupled with the confusion about how math is being--and should be--taught in this country, has tossed the topic into the center of a controversy often called the Math Wars.

How contentious has this debate sometimes been? "Other than the war in Iraq, I don't think there's anything more controversial to bring up than math," notes one Utah school official.

Adding even greater urgency to the debate was the release in December of "Tough Choices or Tough Times," from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, indicating there are nearly 7,000 dropouts per day in U.S. schools--and math has been identified as one of the key reasons kids are dropping out, particularly when they reach the algebra level.

"One of the reasons kids fail in algebra is they haven't mastered the skills they need--the basic fractions, decimals, percents, proportional reasoning," says Doug MacGregor, manager of instructional design for AutoSkill, a Canadian provider of math and reading software. "Without that, they can't succeed."

The National Math Panel's goal is to help change that. Although the group's preliminary reports on Jan. 10-11 did not include any specific recommendations--those are expected with the panel's final report, due out in February 2008--it was clear from these early reports that panel members aim to achieve a healthy balance between computational fluency and conceptual understanding of mathematics, an area that underpins much of the current debate.