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<p>I think that’s most students.</p>
<p>I marvel that we can spend 12 years teaching kids math and a very big percentage can’t do fractions, geometry, algebra, percentages, interest calculations, ratios, variations and conversion of units of measure.</p>
<p>Social promotion is a problem and it’s expensive to diagnose and fix deficiencies and reinforcing the stuff learned at home is hard if the home environment is poor. Motivating kids can also be hard. I used to tutor math at BC and someone comes in with a problem - they need review prep for a test, they need help on some homework problems or they don’t get a concept discussed in class. I have to quickly figure out what their problems are and then figure out a way to get them going again. Way back when I didn’t run into the prereq issues that my son has run into in his tutoring. That may have been a result of far more filtering back when I went to college or it might be due to more social promotion. The kids that my son tutored presumably passed the MCAS tests so they at one time knew it well enough to pass that tough exit exam.</p>