PROVIDENCE — A problem that has long been suspected by state educators became painfully obvious in February when test scores from a tougher state math exam showed that roughly 80 percent of high school juniors could not do the work asked of them.

Yesterday, about 250 educators attended a daylong mathematics summit at Rhode Island College, called by Governor Carcieri in response to the dismal test scores, kicking off a statewide conversation about how to improve math curriculum and instruction.

“It was a wake-up call to a lot of us,” Carcieri said of the results of the New England Common Assessment Program.

The problem has existed for a long time, said Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, but hard evidence has come to light only recently, as the state struggles to align what is taught in the classroom with what is tested each year.

Because of the New England Common Assessment Program, educators and parents have a clear picture not only of how individual students perform, but also of how well districts and schools have adapted to more demanding grade-level expectations that outline what students are supposed to be learning each year.

The disappointing test scores show that school systems have a lot of work ahead of them, officials said yesterday.

“What we’ve found out, from many teachers, is that many schools have not aligned [classroom instruction] to the state standards,” McWalters said, calling the discovery “a slap in the face.”

The purpose of the summit was to identify the key reasons why more students are not successfully mastering math and find ways that all levels of educators can work together to solve the problems. The state Department of Education will work with districts this summer and in the coming year, helping them to identify their weaknesses and cooperate with other districts, local colleges and educational collaboratives, McWalters said.

The summit highlighted problems in several areas:

•Some classroom teachers lack deep content knowledge in math, which makes it impossible for them to help their students reach the higher standards.

•Many schools continue to “track” students, steering some students into easier math classes and away from higher-level algebra, geometry and calculus courses demanded by colleges and needed by today’s work force.

•Students are too dependent on calculators and lack the ability to perform high-level work on their own.

•Teachers are struggling to “differentiate instruction,” preventing them from adequately helping non-traditional learners, special-education students and others who find math challenging.

Educators said problems with math instruction are systemic. Students who struggle with math as early as elementary or middle school find their problems compounded over time. Students are left ill-prepared for the rigors of algebra and geometry in high school.

“The two most important areas are teachers figuring out what is happening with their students during instruction, and the depth of their own content knowledge,” said Diane Schaefer, director of instruction at the Department of Education.

Carcieri and McWalters emphasized that many states face a similar challenge with math education. Rhode Island developed the NECAP with New Hampshire and Vermont, states that generally score higher than Rhode Island and have fewer minority students living in poverty. Yet those states’ scores were also low: 27 percent of juniors scored proficient in New Hampshire and 30 percent in Vermont.

“You were not brought here to be reprimanded,” McWalters told the teachers and administrators who came from 31 of the state’s 36 districts and some charter and state-run schools, as well as representatives from all the state’s public and private colleges, which train many of the teachers who work in the state. Representatives from Burrillville, Foster-Glocester, Glocester, North Smithfield and Westerly did not attend.

Stacy Simmons, math coordinator for Riverside Middle School in East Providence, said the summit has given her ideas about how to improve her own math instruction.

“I’m thinking about myself, as a teacher, how I know what the students know and when to move on and when to slow down,” Simmons said.

jjordan@projo.com