Are are American students struggling with math?

Doesn’t doing well on the assessment indicate that they have, in fact, learned the material?

 

Standardized testing allows the best schools to get the best students. Why send someone to MIT that can't do long division?

 

Yeah, it is.

Easily. If they can teach masturbation techniques, oral sex and proper condom uses, Marxism is. a walk in the park.

 

No.

 

I'm not talking about the SAT, GRE, or ACT.

 

THAT IS "Standardized Testing". Daily quizzes or routine tests are not STANDARDIZED from school to school... county to county... state to state... or nationally.

 

Are You kidding? that is its purpose To measure what is being taught and insure that our kids are learning the necessary information to be a functioning member of out society. Tests measure competency in subject matter that is all they can measure. What the tests are showing is that our schools are doing a crappy job of teaching our kids the basics they need to function? Why is that? Because they aren't teaching them.

 

Oh and one other question, if they are teaching to the test why are so many kids still failing?

 

Well you probably need to think about the opposite end. Doing poorly on an assessment does not mean you haven't learned the things being assessed. Some people have performance anxiety issues. Some may just need a lot more time than is allowed. The fundamental problem with standardized testing can be something as simple as the time allowed. That can hurt someone who needs more but it can also cause someone who needs much less time to become bored and unfocused between sections. One of the people who comes to mind when it comes to math outliers is my mom. She can do crazy complicated math in her head but if you put a trig problem on paper in front of her and she isn't gonna get it. She has her way of doing math mentally as has a calculator for a brain but she just isn't a pencil and paper type and didn't do well in math at school even though I could ask her what 321 X 491 is and she could tell me the answer in a couple seconds. It is kind of weird.

 

Hence my kindergarten level response to you.

 

Parents teach kids starter job level instructions.
Schools teach kids to do better than starter jobs.

If kids aren't smart enough to have skills to starter jobs, then it's the parents fault.

 

If one is a boomer and watches or listens to RW radio, then it's easy to teach Marxism to K-3. In that sphere.

But in the real world, it only happens 1 of 100,000 teachers or so.
Although, at K-3 level, it only happens in RW conspiracy theory world. For mentioning slavery in USA history is CRT according to them.

Even though, history isn't taught until almost Junior High.

 

Failing what?
What data do you have so many kids are failing? And compared to what time frame?

 

Nope, working for people who don't love you is totaling different that mommy and daddy guiding you along.

nope[/quote]

If kids aren't smart enough to have skills to starter jobs, then it's the parents fault.[/QUOTE]Nope.

 

So bored, unfocused people should nbe allowed to design bridges we ride on, design cars we ride in, design planes we fly in?

 

Because there are two different types in education -teachers and educators. The predominant number in schools are teachers, they just parrot fashion from text books, kids don't understand the gobbledygook terminology.

Educators put the subject across in a way the pupil understands.

My kid came back from school in tears, he didn't know what Linear Sequences were and therefore write an example equation. So I said, "Numbers that go up or down in a pattern. So for example, house numbers that go up in 2's. So X+2=y". He said, "Why didn't they just say that?". Because son, they're teachers, a teaching degree frazzled their brain which makes them feel superior.

 

I'm not sure the data supports that but I do recognize it's an easy answer that doesn't require much thought.

 

If standardized tests don't demonstrate that one has learned the material, then how does one demonstrate that they have learned the material?

 

Then what other mechanism would you suggest be used to assess whether a student has learned the material?

 

Ask yourself 1) can this person do math and 2) if they need to, can they demonstrate to others they can do some math to be day to day functional with it. Assessments are largely administrative paperwork. It isn't like most adults need much beyond being able to work with arithmetic, fractions, and percentages. I mean not once in my life outside of the math classroom have I ever needed to even know what a cosecant is let alone have to do math involving one. In today's classrooms, the teacher allocates X number of days to introduce people to say fractions, and after that number of days passes, they have to move on whether there are students still struggling with it or not. Over the course of that many days, the program is designed to become more complex so some students who are struggling on day 2 are lost by day 5 and left behind by day 10 or whatever. That is why I say let teachers teach. Let them create their own pace, bring in their own materials if they think it will help the kids in front of them, and let them be willing and feel secure in not moving everybody ahead until those who are trying actually get everything.

 

So you haven't read the OP. Start there. Do you understand what a trend line is?

 

So what is it you think schools are supposed to do?

 

So, if I need to find someone who I am sure knows calculus inside and out, what am I supposed to do then? I guess I have to give them a standardized test to asses their ability?

Or if I send my kid to school, and the school says that it taught them calculus, how do I know the school really did what they say?

 

More of it might not make things better, but less of it definitely makes things worse.

 

Well if standardized testing didn't result in you being taught calculus, how would you know if they were right or wrong to begin with?