College students are struggling with basic math,
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Anonymous
Fox News. OK. |
Anonymous
So GMU basically takes everyone. Even the people who are behind in math. Good thing they are finally learning it somewhere. |
Anonymous
| 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. |
Anonymous
| People keep electing leaders who dumb down math courses & requirements to ensure equity of results. Then we’re supposed to be surprised by substandard math skills? What did you think was going to happen?? |
Anonymous
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Because public HS is full of retakes.
I have one in private and one in public. My public HS kid has a retake option for every test. She can also correct incorrect answers for half credit to boost her grade, say if she got a C close to a B or B close to an A. Most of her teachers require retakes if the student scores a D or F on the test. Most require turning in answer corrections for kids who score a C, especially when close to bumping to another letter grade. Kids use the D/F rule to not study. DD has even admitted to it. She said she was overwhelmed one week and didn't have time to properly study, so she put that class on the backburner because she knew she could do a retest the next week when her schedule wasn't as busy. My kid in private has no retakes. None of his teachers offer this or even offer test corrections for partial credit back. Very few of his private school teachers even accept late work for partial credit. Due dates are firm. This is great for him because he needs firm due dates to keep on track and this is actually the reason why we switched him from public to private. When covid lockdowns first happened, we quickly saw that working from home and no firm rules/due dates would not work for him. He saved all his work up until the last minute to submit it and then didn't care if it was right or done well/completely... and from the grades he received from his teachers, they didn't care either. I wanted to move DD to the private in 2022 but she wanted to stay with her friends. We agreed that as long as her grades remained good and she agreed to keep doing outside tutoring, we'd allow it. I hate that she's probably getting a lesser-quality education, but hopefully the outside tutoring helps fill the gap and she doesn't struggle in college. |
Anonymous
| Kids have been spending 7-10 hours a day staring at screens for the last 12 years and their brains are mush. |
Anonymous
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I agree. I’m a community college instructor. It’s very common for students coming out of high school to just ASSUME a bad test performance can be erased by re-taking the exam or doing some B.S. extra credit assignment. They seem shocked when I tell them those aren’t options.
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Anonymous
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Back when America was great a high school diploma meant something. |
Anonymous
| Too many multiple-choice exams in high schools. Scantrons are the enemy of learning. |
Anonymous
This is a really interesting point, and something I wish were discussed more. It's something I think a lot about when discussing free college for all, to which I'm opposed because I believe it would merely water down college education, as US K-12 education standards have been lowered in our (valiant and worthy) attempts to avoid tracking or failing students. There's an good discussion along these lines at https://www.quora.com/Why-is-free-universal-college-education-not-mandatory-If-an-economy-is-as-big-as-the-United-States-why-is-there-no-free-universal-college-educational-system |
Anonymous
Does it matter if you DD can retake a test if she learns the material or earns a better grade the next time? I don't see the issue. The real issue is getting 50% for doing nothing or extra credit and not learning the material, not what you described. |
Anonymous
| I was reading about a medical program where they needed to raise diversity for impression and grants, they accepted lots of Hispanics and Black kids, ones with high GPA and MCAT declined as they are in demand so get accepted into their desirable programs. Ones who enrolled were low GPA and low MCAT. Majority failed and dropped out so they had to change their diversity policy and focused on only accepting URMs who are not far from average merit applicant's GPA and MCAT. Less URMs were admitted but they were competitive and performed well. Later they started asking low stat applicants to do one or two year post baccalaureate and retake MCAT and apply again, it increased retention rate. Colleges can do something similar for math. |
Anonymous
| Math is a struggle for majority of human population because its hard to find good teachers. |
Anonymous
USNWR uses "selective" like the industry uses "leather". It means "least selective", because it's not 100% open admission. |
Anonymous
The interesting thing though is that while GMU is close to open admissions, its average admitted students stats are higher than many of the other VA public schools with tighter admissions and they have been steadily improving. |