Reply to Is it just me? The MCAP Algebra I seems ridiculously hard

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Reply to "Is it just me? The MCAP Algebra I seems ridiculously hard"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=juanjunoz]^ This is exactly it. My daughter's math teacher is excellent, but my daughter never had a question like this on her homework that I recall. This question is from the MCAP practice test and made her completely panic. With a little bit of help, she was able to visualize the problem and realize that the ball was hit from the ground and would land again, and so she was looking for the x-intercepts. Then she remembered she could use a graphing calculator, which saved a lot of time.
We'll see how kids end up doing on this round of the MCAP. Personally, I don't feel not being able to answer this question on the spot, under timed circumstances, is an indictment of the student or the teacher. I also don't think it should be a requirement for high school graduation, which it will be for the class of 2024 (?) 
The DC area has a disproportionate number of extremely bright people, and they produce extremely bright kids, so although this question may seem obvious to a lot of people on this board, remember that you're probably at least in the top 10% of intelligence. I went to Whitman for a short time and used to laugh at how much the school patted itself on the back for the great job they were doing, when in reality, they just got really bright kids and pushed the low achievers (like me!) out the door (again, this was the early 80s). When you look at the state as a whole, most kids are not going to grow up to work for a think tank or a senator and will never, not with any amount of instruction, find this question easy or obvious. 
I get that the US is really far behind in math, and I can see an argument for yearly standardized testing, but it seems like the government's approach is to make the curriculum and test as hard as possible and then blame the teachers and the students for failing. When you set impossible (yes, impossible for many) standards, won't a lot of kids just give up? And just not graduate from high school? If you're going to have kids answer really tough questions like the one above, why not make sure it's relevant to their lives? Like compound interest problems. (Yes, there were some on the test.) But again, back in my day, ha ha, this wasn't part of Algebra I. [/quote]

Wait a sec! You child was  allowed to use a graphing calculator on the test to solve this problem? That’s what is ridiculous. The problems should be written so no calculator is needed. [/quote]

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