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<p>That’s one of the reasons that Johns Hopkins uses the SAT for 7th and 8th graders, they say. Their literature claims that it takes the kids in 7th and 8th who are in the 98th percentile and above and stretches them out by SAT score. So if you get a 650 on the SAT in 7th grade, that’s great; but if you get a 750 in 7th grade that’s awesome.</p>
<p>Mini: What did you do to get such a smart kid? That’s amazing!</p>
<p>Beats me. She still had to take out the garbage, and don’t ask her to clean her room! Certainly wasn’t anything she’d done in the classroom, 'cause she wasn’t in any classrooms…(hm…maybe that was the secret? ;))</p>
<p>NJRes: The AMC’s are exactly the test you’re looking for to distinguish among the extremely talented kids.</p>
<p>Is it possible that we as a society do something to discourage girls from math at an early age? I suppose so, but I actually do think math brilliance is more like to be sparked by testosterone or some other aspect of male wiring. </p>
<p>Jovenes, calculators have nothing to do with American math standards. I never even saw a calculator until I was in high school, but standard track for Americans back then was algebra in 9th grade.</p>
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<p>In a great many cases, it is because the parents educated overseas received better math education than typical American parents. For full details, see Liping Ma’s book [Knowing</a> and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0805829091/]Knowing”>http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0805829091/). Prepare to be shocked by what you read in that book. </p>
<p>And, yes, the test that distinguishes the kids for whom SAT I math is easy is indeed the [url=<a href=“http://www.unl.edu/amc/]AMC[/url”>http://www.unl.edu/amc/]AMC[/url</a>] test series. Those tests are much more challenging.</p>
<p>Simba, then maybe he missed two (he got a 780; I thought that was just one wrong answer). He missed one question on the recent PSAT and it was a 76. </p>
<p>His weaker verbal score in grade 7 is the reason he will have to take the SAT this year. Couldn’t rely on that score even if the math was strong!</p>
<p>There is a short video interview of the boy and his mother at the original link. They show the SAT score report, and he did extremely well in the verbal and writing sections, too. Clearly someone who is way out in the tails of the normal distribution. </p>
<p>tokenadult, I read a few of the reviews of the book you linked to - very interesting!</p>
<p>To mini: Your daughter seems absolutely amazing, and I was wondering, did the fact that she had no high school class experience hinder her at all for the college experience?</p>
<p>It would be cool to find out if high school helped, or even hurt some students and their future college experiences.</p>
<p>so my 630 in 8th grade seems pretty bad now doesnt it? I am much more impressed with the perfect score on AMC 8… lets see if he takes AMC 10 next year</p>
<p>“To mini: Your daughter seems absolutely amazing, and I was wondering, did the fact that she had no high school class experience hinder her at all for the college experience?”</p>
<p>I would say it helped her immensely. Now, mind you, she had more than 60 credits at two four-year colleges and the community college before she entered, all of which she threw away. She had to figure out how to get between the institutions, in different parts of town, without a car, and keep a very tight schedule. After that, falling out of bed and into class - and having her meals prepared by someone else - was a piece of cake. (Of course, beginning her second year, she opted for coop housing where the students all cook for each other.) </p>
<p>And no busywork - that’s just not something she would have put up with.</p>
<p>@mini - congrats on having such an incredible daughter. I’m so glad everything worked out so wonderfully, it just goes to show what some people are capable of, and how much they really “need” high school (<em>cough</em>none<em>cough</em>)</p>
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<p>Yes. </p>
<p>And physical sciences, and engineering, and computers too. I think society has a lot to do with it. I won’t go into details, though, cause it’s not my place (being the parent’s forum and all, I think I’m overstaying my welcome 
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<p>The “90% asian” phenomenon in the AMC winners is also the result of Asian immigrant parents discovering the existence of these math competitions in the US and their use as credentials. Word has gotten around for years now. The Asian dominance dissipates at the higher levels of competition, though the share is still high. </p>
<p>American parents generally don’t know or care as much about these contests, although there are a certain number of eager-beaver homeschoolers who go much further overboard than Asian parents.</p>
<p>“mini - congrats on having such an incredible daughter.”</p>
<p>Thanks. She is incredible. But I don’t think her SAT score had much to do with it. ;)</p>
<p>not criticizing the moderators, but it’s a shame that this thread moved to Parent Cafe, as I think it’s very relevant to college admissions – i.e., readiness for college, not just readiness for SAT.</p>
<p>The comment just made (can’t find it now, it disappeared) about overreliance on calculators is not the main story. Advanced mathematics, comfort with math, fluency in that arena is not strictly based on calculation. More to the point were the earlier references to Asian math methodology. The U.S. has a lot to learn in this dept., i.m.o. There’s some conventional but erroneous “wisdom” out there that the pay scales for teachers is the main reason why there’s an enormous shortage of high school math teachers, let alone excellent ones. That’s only part of it. The pedagogy is a bigger part. There are brilliant mathematicians that don’t know how to teach it, & fail in the classroom. Historically that has been true, today that is too often true. </p>
<p>In order to not be Left Behind – haha with multiple allusions, there – the US needs to get on board quickly (preferably) with a radically modified approach to the teaching & learning of math. And we should be open to other countries’ methodologies in that regard, as well as the best of our own.</p>
<p>Anybody who doesn’t think overuse of calculators has something to do with this hasn’t had kids in k-12 school recently, and/or, isn’t ocd about math themselves. I will probably get flamed for that but I am in the process of getting my last kid (of three) through hs and am a bruised veteran of the math wars. As the first two are girls, I am familiar with the gender aspects of the various arguments.</p>
<p>Yes, the US schools over rely on the use of calculators in the classroom, and yes, that negatively impacts math ability across genders. The fad is starting to ease off now that a huge group of students had to hit a brick wall in college and suffer through flunking college placement tests that (with my Ds’ school) all too often resulted in kids who’d finished calculus being forced to start over at the univ. in algebra.</p>
<p>Many of the state colleges we looked at for my oldest had math placement tests where use of a calculator was forbidden. More than one dept head told me that they did that 'cause of too many entering freshmen not really knowing how to do math because the high schools relied too much on calculators and the students then flunked too many of their college courses.</p>
<p>The asian students we knew avoided this pitfall because their families taught them at home and made sure they knew their stuff no matter what the classroom was doing. And yes, most of the asian parents I knew were either doctors, engineers, or college math professors.</p>
<p>Kumon math classes after school and on weekends take kids back from where they seem competent to drill and drill and drill, so they’ll really know the basics. Tried it for a few sessions with one son and it bored him to death.</p>
<p>Has anyone here done those classes??</p>
<p>yea, but he only got a 600 on the critical reading portion…slacker! :)</p>
<p>“Anybody who doesn’t think overuse of calculators has something to do with this hasn’t had kids in k-12 school recently, and/or, isn’t ocd about math themselves.”</p>
<p>You’re way off-base. Have an 11th grader now. Have a daughter in college now. Am also a teacher, in the classroom weekly.</p>
<p>Learned myself without calculators; never allowed to use them, at any stage or for any testing or assessment or homework reason, application. They were considered something of a toy, by my family, when I was in school. </p>
<p>Daughter #1 never had problems with calculation. Memorized times tables early, for example. The SAT prep and the general math prep concerns are NOT limited to the use of calculators, although there is some indirect application to that – esp. with regard to speed, which is one of the essentials to SAT performance. In the case of my daughter #1’s entire class, the problem was the high school math curriculum, which failed to address key aspects, topics, & approaches of the SAT Quantitative. And she graduated Val from an “elite” Private.</p>
<p>Naturally, when basic skills (operations) are not covered sufficiently & tested sufficiently in elem. school (often the case in my State), because of a system’s lax requirements, the student will never advance in math. There is no substitute for memorization, but it hardly ends there. Way more complex than that, and anyone who does not understand that is not familiar with the entire picture of elem, high school, & college math performance in this country, & why it is where it is.</p>
<p>I think the value of higher math is way overrated for the vast majority of the college-going population, and for adults. In my job, I use quantitataive analysis, and use virtually NONE of the higher math I learned in high school, and didn’t take a single math course in college or graduate school. There is a huge population of college students for whom their math “preparation” turns out to be useless.</p>
<p>I have always been surprised that, even given other major problems with the SAT, that colleges would use math scores for screening at any level close to that of the verbal. No question that if you need it (science/engineering, etc.) it is of critical importance. But even at many of the elite schools, fewer than 30% of students are science majors, and most of the needs of other students could be taken care of with a good (rare, I know) high school course in statistics, and really good training in the use of the calculator.</p>
<p>As to why we use it, I’ll leave that for another forum. Bricks invited.</p>
<p>VeryHappy,
We did Kumon briefly with younger daughter. She needed calculation repetition, but Kumon’s uses are definitely limited. It had a temporary benefit for her. Perhaps (had it not, yes, been so boring) longer-term benefits could have resulted, but with everything else, it was just one more cost for us. The structure and the regularity were helpful, since the classroom was providing neither, and she was resisting my own intervention.</p>