This was lifted from the Smart Balance test given in the eleventh grade. An example of why scores will be low. Please tell me what occupation this problem would be involved within? Please tell me what college remedial math class would ever have to cover this topic?
Common Core and the higher standards are nothing but irresponsible intellectual buffoonery. This is nothing but a dork playing around and saying, … how difficult can i make a question so everybody fails?
And if everyone fails something no body ever needs, are we hurt by it? Yes, if you are the teacher….
Common Core is an embarrassment to human creativity and intellect. Opt out now, even if it “supposedly” impossible to do… Get sick that week and get doctor’s orders requiring your child to recuperate only in Jamaica. And don’t forget to bring back duty free rum….
At least someone gets something good out of Common Core.
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February 28, 2014 at 2:25 am
Mike O.
This math problem encapsulates the difference between an aptitiude test and an assessment of knowledge learned. It is designed to test whether you know a handful of rules for working with exponents and roots. There was a time when I did know this and could have easily found the answer. That time was right after I had studied that unit and done dozens of similar problems in math class – in the eleventh grade.
I have forgotten most of it, but it does not look alien to me; it looks like a reasonable question. But we are used to aptitude tests instead, with much lower complexity that just test if you COULD figure it out, if you knew the rules. This is not an aptitude test. It wants to know if you actually know the rules, having just been taught them.
February 28, 2014 at 8:11 am
kavips
Good points. So should we be using question like this to fire teachers and close schools? If someone gets this wrong on the test, should they be a second class citizen for the rest of their lives? Is this question’s use in real life that important that one’s entire future hang in balance on it? is this included in the minimum amount of knowledge required to be college or career ready?
This may be a good assessment question if presented in a quiz on the week after it is covered in school, but it certainly does not deserve the high stakes consequences its placement here will entail… I would venture putting it on the SAT could even have merit, since that test is used to separate who gets into MIT and who goes to Harvard. One would want to be able to distinguish between layers of the top echelon.
But to say one can’t graduate high school if one does not know this problem, is ridiculous.
February 28, 2014 at 11:02 am
Mike O.
So should we be using question like this to fire teachers and close schools?
No, but not for the reasons you think. This math question is totally fair, and it is reasonable to expect most eleventh graders to be able to work with exponents, which is a necessary skill to advance to calculus in the twelfth grade. The math skills are a lot more basic that it looks. And in the occupational world there are lots of math problems where these skills are needed. Not knowing this level of math is not something to be excused or celebrated.
So if the teachers job includes teaching exponents, yes it is fair to evaluate whether that lesson has been learned. But it is not fair to put their jobs on the line, because if a student doesn’t get it, the failure likely occurred long before the eleventh grade.
And not every student belongs in this level of math. But I suspect most of them do, and expectations should be increased. But raising expectations is a long term game, and the bar can’t be raised all at once in the eleventh grade.
February 28, 2014 at 3:26 pm
kavips
From your key points above 1) No it should not be used to fire teachers; 2) No it should not be used to put their jobs on the line; 3) and no, not every student belongs in this level of math, it sounds like we are in agreement.
In your first comment you said that you had “forgotten most of it, but it does not look alien to me”. My question to you, is if someone who adores Tesla enough to clean out his garage (figuratively speaking) naturally forgets something as basic as the basic rules regarding exponential problems, how much of a use is it anyway?
Would we hold the exact same high stakes and importance for a similar question, perhaps in another category, such as: “what is the capital of the Central African Republic?”
Even in that case, your argument would still pertain. Teacher telling her students, “we just covered it, you should know it” …and so it is featured on a test. But its obscurity of ever being used is such, that like the capital of hte Central African Republic, the only reason it was ever taught in the first place, was because of the fore-knowledge it would be on the standardized test….
I mean why is the Central African Republic’s capital so important to know? Why not Bhutan’s?
I was embarrassed enough to refresh my memory on the rules of exponents which unfortunately, I’d misplaced that neuron somewhere from lack of use, and the problem was actually easy enough to visualize and solve completely in my head… So I was probably milking it’s visual shock value a little…
And it actually made me pretty glad that I still have my old college calculus problem solving skills, once those misplaced neurons get found, lol, 🙂 but I don’t want the size of my forest to get lost over looking at individual trees.
My point of this and future illuminations of the test’s questions, is to bring this important point into discussion: should a compulsory test that determines our teaching effectiveness, only measure those things which are compulsory? And not be so full of itself, that it loses focus and instead becomes the test makers ego trip of proving how smart they actually think, they are? It sounds above like you agree.
If you yourself have forgotten how to do this illustrated problem while being in your field which most would consider being on the cutting edge of using math and science, wouldn’t you agree that this type of question should be more at home in a bar, with cheap drink prices, deep fried appetizers, and a trivia master who also asks the capitals of obscure African nations?
(Just curious if you had to look up the capital of Bhutan as did I? Man, I’ve got to come up with a system to organize these neurons.) Good news is I’ll probably remember it for a year at least now. 🙂
July 6, 2014 at 5:37 pm
All About Common Core, Charters, and Public Education | kavips
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