Raising Test Averages: is this good?

Put down six and carry two. ... Gee, but this is hard to do.
You can think and think and think, till your brains are numb.
I don't care what teacher says,I can't do that sum.
-- Victor Herbert & Kenny Baker

Suppose we find that over time more and more kids in a school have test scores above average. Is this good? Not necessarily, even though most people would jump to the conclusion that achievement was going up.

Suppose we find find that over time more and more kids in a school have test scores below average. Is this bad? Not necessarily, even though most people would jump to the conclusion that achievement was going down.

Find out how a common misunderstanding (even by so-called “authorities”) makes schools look bad. -- EGR

To see the details go to Every Child Above Average
Cordially,
-- EGR

Math Wars? A Tempest in a Teapot? Or a Serious Struggle?

edited 012420

As an ex-math teacher (Jr. High and High School, basics through algebra and the calculus) I can only look at the jousting between enthusiasts of different pedagogical approaches to mathematics with wonderment. My experience has been that no matter how people learned math in school, most reach adulthood knowing little mathematics and liking it even less. (See John Paulos’ Innumeracy for extended discussion of this point.)

Debra J. Saunders in the April 9, 2009 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle reports on a conflict in Palo Alto between proponents of, what they call, “solid math” and those who appear to be “unified-theory” advocates, who, among other things, reject teaching alternative algorithms for arithmetical processes.

This debate has been around for a long time: I, myself, participated in the “revolution” of the New Math back in the seventies where it was very apparent that enthusiasm for the New Math varied directly as the distance from the enthusiast and ordinary school kids.

Can this “war” be decisively won? And even if it is “won”, will more people turn out being competent in some kind of mathematics?

To examine these issues further, see The "Math Wars" 
A Short Analysis of the Controversy

Cordially
EGR

Measuring Educational Outcomes: truth, tricks and hype

It sometimes seems that the only real result of math education is to convince its worst students – and a substantial number of us mediocre ones – that numbers are magic. “Anything can be measured,” goes the myth; and, once a number is associated with something, it becomes much more real, much more defined. All problems are soluble once they have become mathematized – even TV pushes this philosophy on the dramatic series, Numbers.

This hocus-pocus has some startingly impressive roots. Psychologist Edward L. Thorndike – unskilled in basic algebra -- wrote: "Whatever exists at all exists in some amount. To know it thoroughly involves knowing its quantity as well as its quality." Heavy philosophy!

But what is the quantity of a chess game? Or of the relation "<>"? Do chess games or "<>" not exist? Do chess masters wait with bated breath for someone to mathematize a chess game so that they can “know it thoroughly?”

The harm done with this exaggeration is that it creates the expectation that when and only when a technical, measurable solution to a problem can be devised, can that problem be solved.

So it is that problems must be left to mathematical geniuses, since their solution is beyond the ken of most people who can only stumble through math counting on their fingers.

To examine these issues further, see Measurability and Educational Concerns

Cordially

---EGR

Still Rushing to Nowhere; Still Competing for ...?

Two years after the 2008 TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), little of educational note has changed. Particularly missing is the cataclysmic impact that study was supposed to predict for our society.

US eighth graders (average 508) were beaten out on math tests by eighth graders from South Korea (597) , Singapore (593), Hong Kong (572) , Japan (570), England (513), and Russia (512). So, what did TIMSS top-rankers win? And what did the U.S. lose? The greatest damage done in the United States has been by people, bankers and speculators, who, you can bet, would themselves be top-rankers on the TIMMS.

If you worried about these scores, did you ask yourself, “What do these numbers mean?” Anybody who claims to know whether they justified anything but the mildest concern – along the lines of “Will my tomatoes yield better next Summer?” – is bluffing.

Of course you will hear the eternal, “Down the road,” or “in the future,” or “in the long run this lack of (what?) could hurt us.” Chicken Little with a crystal ball. Where was this crystal ball when the economy was falling apart?

To examine these issues further, see U.S. Students Reported to ‘Lag’ in the TIMSS: another bulletin from Chicken Little?


Cordially
-- EGR