MIDDLETON, Wis. -- The most recent research from the U.S. Department of Education shows that American 15-year-olds are behind their international counterparts when it comes to problem-solving and math literacy.

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The report showed the U.S. ranks 24th out of 29 nations. However, a math program that's gaining in popularity is trying to change that. The program is called Everyday Math and its usefulness is being applied locally.

Lori Rusch is a fourth-grade teacher at Middleton's Elm Lawn Elementary. This year, she teaches an advanced math class.

On Monday, students in Rusch's class were mastering fractions and percentages, but her students began learning fractions and percentages in first grade.

"We've been incredibly successful with it," said Middleton's curriculum director George Marvoulis. "Our students on all of our comparative assessments, like WKCE, Explorer Plan, ACT, our students score higher in math than any other subject area so we've been very pleased."

According to Marvoulis, Middleton was one of the first school districts in the nation to use the Everyday Math program in 1994.

"The concept is kind of a toolbox of different tools they can use to solve a problem," said Marvoulis.

"We teach them the way I solve the problem got me the same answer that you got and it doesn't mean the way I did it was any better than the way you solved it," said Rusch.

Gone are the days of rote memorization of math facts, endless pages of computations and math units that would sometimes stretch for weeks until it was mastered.

"So, the kids are introduced to things say in second grade and they're not expected to master it," said Rusch. "They get small snippets of exposure to it all the way through second grade and then they're exposed to it again in third grade and then in fourth grade we expect mastery."

Rusch said the program can be frustrating for teachers teaching it for the first time because it goes against concepts they were taught in college. The program can also be frustrating for parents who learned a specific way to solve math problems when they were in school.

"Sometimes, it's hard as a teacher to teach knowing that a good chunk of the students aren't expected to master it at that time," said Rusch. "It's hard to let go of that. You know you're going to be teaching it again and again and the kids will get more of it in following years and that's when mastery is expected."

"I know a lot of kids will come back after I teach them something and say, 'That's not the way my mom told me to do it. This is how she said I should do it,'" said Rusch. "I tell them mom's way was right, but so was the way I showed you to do it."

Rusch said the spiraling curriculum also moves more quickly and keeps students more interested.

"My younger one is learning to tell time, count coins. Jackson is doing cubic centimeters so we're looking in the cookbook for conversion rates," said Middleton parent Judy Grimm.

Grimm said her sons, who are in first and fourth grades, love math. She said that as a parent she also enjoys the Everyday Math program.

"He's taught me a few new ways to do multiplication that I'd never heard of," said Grimm.

"I feel like I'm preparing kids to be good problem solvers," said Rusch. "It's what's going to prepare them for the future because things are coming at us way to fast. We can't learn everything in school that we need to know 20 years from now. So what we need is to teach kids how to learn and how to be problem solvers -- how to take the information we know and use it to solve a problem."

Marvoulis said the statistics don't lie. Most Middleton students finish algebra and even geometry before they leave middle school and are ready for more challenging math courses in high school.

Right now, the Middleton-Cross Plains School District is conducting a math assessment across the district.

Marvoulis said the district currently requires two math credits to graduate, but he said most students end up with three to four math credits. She said the district might consider requiring more math credits and may add a financial math class.

Middleton-Cross Plains high school students can now go as high as Calculus 2, but higher classes might soon be considered.

Mavroulis said one of the drawbacks to the program is that students who transfer into the district who haven't had Everyday Math often struggle to catch up.

The What Works Clearinghouse from the U.S. Department of Education found that Everyday Mathematics was found to have potentially positive effects on students' math achievement.