Reply to Struggling in Hon Precalculus

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[quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's kind of ridiculous that MCPS can't point to a standard example test and say "a student with a grade of X in math course Y would score about Z% on this test." 
[/quote]

It does. It’s called syllabus, curriculum, and grading policy.

Usually homework is a good indication of what  will be on the test.

What’s ridiculous about this?[/quote]

It's not true. The syllabus is general, and does not mean the tests are standardized across the classes. Even simple things could vary,  like 20minutes vs 40minutes for the same test, and also what questions and how many questions the teacher chooses to put on the test, and how they weight the questions. Kids in the same school sometimes report that different teachers assign and score differently.

Homework may or may not be a good indication of what's on the test. [/quote]
One important observation that correlates to lots of learning and (usually) translates to good test grades, is the difficulty of the homework assignments. The more difficult the outcome, the better the kids will do on tests (assuming of course they attempt/do the homework). If homework assignments are too easy, kids are not learning much and the scenario is either 1) the test is also easy which means they've had a bad learning outcome and likely get punished in future classes. 2) the test is hard and they're seeing things that they did not see or practice at all on the homework, which is equally bad because they are forced to learn on a timed test and their grade very likely suffers.

On the other hand, if homework is difficult and challenging, and if kids can take the time to persevere through it, the outcomes are usually great: 1) the test feels easier than the homework and the kids who learned by doing the homework can show their understanding and feel good about all the work they put in or 2) the test is perhaps of similar difficulty to the homework, but again those who took the time to learn and understand the concepts should be able to do fine on them (assuming they're given a reasonable amount of time to think). Either way, grades are likely to be good, and most importantly, they've learned a lot and are very well prepared for future classes.

TLDR: Parents should really pay attention to their kid's math homework. If they are not struggling to some degree, they likely are missing out on a prime learning opportunity. In particular, if quizzes and tests are HARDER than the homework, that is a big red flag that grades might suffer without additional inputs. Also, it is the [i]quality [/i](not the quantity) of homework that matters.. i.e working through 40 questions for multiple hours means nothing if almost every question was an exercise (and not a problem). Better to have 5-7 questions that are problems (in that they actually force the student to think from an initial state of "I don't know what to do" to the end state).[/quote]

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