College students are struggling with basic math,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can get on board with retakes, but with two caveats:

1) You can't do infinite retakes. You get one chance

2) Your grade on the retake is capped at a B. You shouldn't be able to flunk a test and then walk away with an A. That completely devalues those who made the effort to work hard and prep for the test the first time.

The end goal is that they walk away from the class knowing math, not putting a premium on acing the test the first time.

There are multiple goals with education. One goal is knowing, another end goal is learning effective work-study habits, time management and organizational skills.

Generous retake policies might help with the former, but they definitely harm the latter.

My issue with this is that they grade the kids on soft skills, but they don't make it an explicit objective and they certainly don't teach them. The ones who pick it up naturally or learn from their parents do well and everyone else gets bad grades because they didn't know how to do something they were never taught.

I do think that the better way to approach this is to *teach* those soft skills--in a separate study sills class--rather than just make learning content the entire objective. But there are so many different issues at play here that I don't know how anybody who has really dug into the research on both sides can feel 100% confident in their opinion.

[Anonymous]

A quote

"I teach math, not time management. I see to it that my students learn the material. Those other life skills will have to be picked up elsewhere."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in Information Technology, get paid 250K per year for the past ten years, and I have never used math beyond Algebra.  

yikes.. it's not about using the math. It's about higher level thinking. I'm sure you've read books in school by a bunch of old white dead men. Have you ever had reason to quote Shakespeare at work? No, because that's not what reading those books is about.

It's amazing to me that people don't understand the purpose of higher level math. I guess it's because a lot of people just really hate math.

-another IT person

I'm an English Lit person, but I'll chime in here and say it's neither. I don't think students will need it because they will use it in their lives and I don't think it creates higher-level thinking in anything other than math (humans are very bad at transferring thinking about one topic to thinking about another topic).

I think that kids should take algebra (and beyond!) in high school because 1) the more you practice numeracy the better you get at it and that really is an important life skill 2) some kids will fall in love with math but they need to be exposed to different types of math for that to happen and 3) learning is inherently rewarding; it feels good to be able to solve math problems and play around with numbers and you can't do that if you're bad at it.

And that's why it's important to take classes that teach more complex thinking with application.

Higher level math won't teach you better numeracy. It teaches complex thinking.

Feeling good about solving a complex math problem is the dumbest reason to make kids take higher level math. And I say this as a parent of a math-y kid who loves solving complex math problems (taking diffeq and discrete math as a freshman in college).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son is starting college in pre-calc that he took in 12th grade. He’s always been a terrible math student but his grades reflected that (mostly low Cs). But at least his private school was completely honest with us. His public MS gave him straight As in math including algebra 1 in 8th grade. When he took the algebra 1 placement test at his private HS, he failed miserably. There’s a lot of grade fraud going on in public education.

I don’t doubt you but how can you fake or inflate an algebra grade? I get it for other subjects. But isn’t Algebra a standard course? If you can’t solve X problems, you don’t get an A. I’m not being funny. I’m not American so maybe I’m confused.

How? When students can retake assessments, they can get higher grades. Many students use the first assessment as a feeler for the retake. Add in that students are trained to not expect just one assessment and watch out when they get to college when that’s all they get.

No good student is doing that. Retake grades top out at a 90%/A-, and that's for a 100%. The good students get As the first time around

A 90% is still an A. And MCPS doesn't do plus or minuses, so the 90% grade looks the same as the kid who got 98%.

My kids' FCPS school allows one retake with the maximum being a 90%. FCPS uses a 100 point scale, but translates a 90 into an A-. That all assumes the kid will get a 100% on the retake. If they miss a single question, then it's a B+.

Part of me is pissed that my DC’s FCPS School caps re-take grades at 80% while other FCPS schools allow up to 90% on re-takes. Totally unfair when some schools like UVA look more at GPA. One bad test hurts my kid more than others.

Part of me feels glad knowing that my DC’s grade more accurately reflects their understanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in Information Technology, get paid 250K per year for the past ten years, and I have never used math beyond Algebra.  

yikes.. it's not about using the math. It's about higher level thinking. I'm sure you've read books in school by a bunch of old white dead men. Have you ever had reason to quote Shakespeare at work? No, because that's not what reading those books is about.

It's amazing to me that people don't understand the purpose of higher level math. I guess it's because a lot of people just really hate math.

-another IT person

I'm an English Lit person, but I'll chime in here and say it's neither. I don't think students will need it because they will use it in their lives and I don't think it creates higher-level thinking in anything other than math (humans are very bad at transferring thinking about one topic to thinking about another topic).

I think that kids should take algebra (and beyond!) in high school because 1) the more you practice numeracy the better you get at it and that really is an important life skill 2) some kids will fall in love with math but they need to be exposed to different types of math for that to happen and 3) learning is inherently rewarding; it feels good to be able to solve math problems and play around with numbers and you can't do that if you're bad at it.

And that's why it's important to take classes that teach more complex thinking with application.

Higher level math won't teach you better numeracy. It teaches complex thinking.

Feeling good about solving a complex math problem is the dumbest reason to make kids take higher level math. And I say this as a parent of a math-y kid who loves solving complex math problems (taking diffeq and discrete math as a freshman in college).

I didn't say that higher-level numeracy teaches numeracy, lol. Obviously it doesn't. I said it gives you practice. If somebody stops at pre-algebra they are less likely to be able to do 42-37 in their heads as adults than those who stopped at Pre-calculus because they haven't had as much practice.

And we can disagree on this, but I think that giving a kid a sense of confidence in their ability to learn things and letting them experience some pleasure in learning of learning's sake is one of the best reasons for kids to go to school. The whole idea about how high school students are going to school to learn to be critical thinkers is kind of bunk (like I said, learning to think critically in one topic doesn't transfer well to others and people rarely have to think critically about the stuff they learned in high school), and most of what students learn in high school isn't going to be necessary for their future jobs.

On the other hand, the sense of personal satisfaction you get from successfully doing something difficult builds self-confidence, and wouldn't it be great if all young people had that kind of self-esteem and self-efficacy? And it's just a service to kids to give them tasks just challenging enough to trigger the reward center of their brains.

Honestly I think that's the best reason to justify making *all* kids learn a lot of things like analyzing imagery in a poem, recounting the events leading up to WWI (a lot of history is very relevant to our world today but I do think people can be excellent global citizens without knowing the name Archduke Franz Ferdinand), labeling the parts of a flower, etc. This isn't just about math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son is starting college in pre-calc that he took in 12th grade. He’s always been a terrible math student but his grades reflected that (mostly low Cs). But at least his private school was completely honest with us. His public MS gave him straight As in math including algebra 1 in 8th grade. When he took the algebra 1 placement test at his private HS, he failed miserably. There’s a lot of grade fraud going on in public education.

I don’t doubt you but how can you fake or inflate an algebra grade? I get it for other subjects. But isn’t Algebra a standard course? If you can’t solve X problems, you don’t get an A. I’m not being funny. I’m not American so maybe I’m confused.

How? When students can retake assessments, they can get higher grades. Many students use the first assessment as a feeler for the retake. Add in that students are trained to not expect just one assessment and watch out when they get to college when that’s all they get.

No good student is doing that. Retake grades top out at a 90%/A-, and that's for a 100%. The good students get As the first time around

A 90% is still an A. And MCPS doesn't do plus or minuses, so the 90% grade looks the same as the kid who got 98%.

My kids' FCPS school allows one retake with the maximum being a 90%. FCPS uses a 100 point scale, but translates a 90 into an A-. That all assumes the kid will get a 100% on the retake. If they miss a single question, then it's a B+.

Part of me is pissed that my DC’s FCPS School caps re-take grades at 80% while other FCPS schools allow up to 90% on re-takes. Totally unfair when some schools like UVA look more at GPA. One bad test hurts my kid more than others.

Part of me feels glad knowing that my DC’s grade more accurately reflects their understanding.

Really? I thought FCPS general retake policy is that there is one retake, it's for tests only, and that the the maximum retake grades is an 80. (This is what it is at my kid's schools--and teachers can opt not to offer any retakes at all). This seems appropriate to me since it prevents you from your grade destroyed from a bombed test, incentivizes you to study to improve grade, but doesn't disincentive you from studying in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Trades require basic math these days. These kids have no economic value. Basically welfare cases in an economy that can still afford paying people for un-needed or truly necessary “jobs”.

I'm appalled at the situation here, but you can have plenty of economic value without knowing how to divide polynomials or the slope intercept formula.

There is no way the vast majority of those kids will produce more than they consume. They will always be subsidized in some way, shape or form. If they were forced to produce even equal to what they are consuming they would riot.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two causes. first and predominant cause is that schools are passing everyone and doing so with As and A-s. Secondary is learning loss from COVID. A lot of kids missed out on the opportunity to learn fundamental math concepts. US math education is far behind the rest of the world.

This is such BS. In the rest of the world, by the time you get to a school like Mason, those kids would be in trade school not college. People bash the US because we don't pressure kids to leave the college track early or just drop out and our over all scores reflect it. Meanwhile kids from countries that people love to praise fall over themselves to attend US universities

People "fall all over themselves to attend US universities" for two reasons:

1. they want to go to elite colleges like Harvard, not GMU
2. they want the job opportunities the US, which is easier to get with an education visa, so they are willing to go to a lesser university to get that visa.

Those two may be partial reasons, but #1 should be “couldn’t get into university in their home country.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A quote

"I teach math, not time management. I see to it that my students learn the material. Those other life skills will have to be picked up elsewhere."

I hate employees who sit on their hands and ignore major impediments in reaching project goals because "that's not in my job description."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Trades require basic math these days. These kids have no economic value. Basically welfare cases in an economy that can still afford paying people for un-needed or truly necessary “jobs”.

I'm appalled at the situation here, but you can have plenty of economic value without knowing how to divide polynomials or the slope intercept formula.

There is no way the vast majority of those kids will produce more than they consume. They will always be subsidized in some way, shape or form. If they were forced to produce even equal to what they are consuming they would riot.

This is false. You sound like you have some kind of warped Randian worldview where only a few Galtian supermen produce and the mass of humanity is made up of useless eaters.

[Anonymous]

My husband was a TA when he pursued his masters and PhD in statistics. He was shocked at the undergrads math level. It's one of the reasons our kid does Kumon math. Lot of our friends think it's cruel our children do Kumon but I guarantee they will have more than basic math skills in college so there's that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband was a TA when he pursued his masters and PhD in statistics. He was shocked at the undergrads math level. It's one of the reasons our kid does Kumon math. Lot of our friends think it's cruel our children do Kumon but I guarantee they will have more than basic math skills in college so there's that.

Maybe your husband should have worked harder and gotten his PhD at a school with smarter undergrads

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband was a TA when he pursued his masters and PhD in statistics. He was shocked at the undergrads math level. It's one of the reasons our kid does Kumon math. Lot of our friends think it's cruel our children do Kumon but I guarantee they will have more than basic math skills in college so there's that.

Maybe your husband should have worked harder and gotten his PhD at a school with smarter undergrads

Or maybe he went to college with Kumon kids who never learned to understand math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster who posted about my son’s As in public MS math classes. My problem with retakes is that he was offered them a lot and the retake grade replaced the original grade. So his semi-understanding of math was masked by the A grade. He earned As but instead of an A representing mastery of the subject, it really represented him being trained to use the first assessment as a trial to determine what to focus on for the retake. He didn’t demonstrate mastery across the board in every skill but his overall A masked that. Parents shouldn’t have to pay tuition to a private school to be told the truth of their child’s abilities. I wish I had switched him much sooner because MS was educational fraud IMO.

This isn't typical of many public school's practices.

Didn’t used to be, but is very common today.