<p>For what its worth: I teach at a very selective college. Calculus at the uni level is required for students in sciences. Many students do not do necessarily very well in calculus, even though all those who are taking it took it in HS. While it seems required to take it in HS now, it sure doesn’t help them much. Clearly calculus is not always calculus. .</p>
<p>I have rallied all along that colleges and unis have minimum admissions requirements for a reason. And while many may argue that you cannot place too much emphasis on SAT/ACT tests, at least it can provide some starting point of reference for finding the right college. Couple those scores with level of difficulty/grades of HS classes and a kid should be able to find some solid schools that they can be successful academically. Of course, we all know the kids that are admitted with much lower scores-for various reasons… . And on the other hand, if you have kids that had the scores/grades to be admitted to particular colleges and unis, then perhaps something else is going on if they cannot attend a prof’s office hours/extra help. It has been amazing to see kids that are admitted to certain colleges in the spring that post on this forum indicating their scores/grades and knowing what the minimums for admittance were for that particular school. One has to wonder if they ever graduate; or perhaps our tuition money is helping to pay for tutors, etc to try to retain those students that should never have been admitted to begin with!</p>
<p>Why is there no math placement test?</p>
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<p>This reminds me of a calculus joke that is relevant to this discussion:</p>
<p>Two mathematicians were having dinner in a restaurant, arguing about the average mathematical knowledge of the American public. One mathematician claimed that this average was woefully inadequate, the other maintained that it was surprisingly high.</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what,” said the cynic. “Ask that waitress a simple math question. If she gets it right, I’ll pick up dinner. If not, you do.”</p>
<p>He then excused himself to visit the men’s room, and the other called the waitress over.</p>
<p>“When my friend returns,” he told her, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to respond ‘one third x cubed.’ There’s twenty bucks in it for you.” She agreed.</p>
<p>The cynic returned from the bathroom and called the waitress over. “The food was wonderful, thank you,” the mathematician started. “Incidentally, do you know what the integral of x squared is?”</p>
<p>The waitress looked pensive, almost pained. She looked around the room, at her feet, made gurgling noises, and finally said, “Um, one third x cubed?”</p>
<p>So the cynic paid the check. The waitress wheeled around, walked a few paces away, looked back at the two men, and muttered under her breath, “…plus a constant.”</p>
<p>This article is depressing. Colleges are making money, but the students are not even trying to do well in the class. Yeah, I know they have outside obligations (job, family) but really they should take their education seriously so they can move ahead with their lives.</p>
<p>Last night I suggested to H that in freshman year, the HS should tell parents that in many cases they have 4 years until their kid’s health insurance runs out… unless the kid lands a good job, or unless they can successfully remain in college.</p>
<p>When I first started adult tutoring, mostly for GED students, my first student was actually taking college course for a business degree at a for-profit. Apparently her math placement test required her to take a basic college math course. Her skills were dismal; she couldn’t learn how to divide fractions, for instance. She got an A in the course. Then she had to take a stat course, which was way over her head; she aced that one, also. In addition, she couldn’t write an organized paper; my D, who was a freshman in HS at the time and not a strong writer, could have done much better.</p>
<p>This really shook my faith in for-profit colleges; if this example applies to other such students, they are buying not only a degree, but grades also. Not really fair to serious students who really work hard to learn.</p>
<p>I asked H, and he says they have no placement test: they go by the student’s HS transcript. </p>
<p>One would think that after <em>years</em> of 50% of the students failing this particular class, they would start using a placement test. One wonders why they don’t…</p>
<p>I also wonder how most of these kids managed to pass Algebra II in HS, which would normally be considered the prerequisite for pre-calc…</p>
<p>That is a good question.
I have worked as an advisor in community colleges in my city & I tell you after advising students who have 3.5GPA from " good high schools", after they have failed placement tests to take Math/English at the college level, I am pretty fed up with what some of these schools are doing in the classroom.
It is really doing students a disservice- because if they are doing what is expected in class- they are getting good grades- how are they supposed to know that they aren’t learning enough to go on to further education?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/education/14math.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/education/14math.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin</a>
</p>
<p>FYI, I discovered that they say their “average” first year student has a M+CR SAT of 1000, and a GPA of 85. They say that they expect their students to have taken “college prep” classes. (That is, not honors. They note that a lower GPA in honors classes will be acceptable.)</p>
<p>I noticed that the Times article mentioned Everyday Math. These books are among the reasons why kids are doing so poorly in math .My biggest problems with these books (when my kids were using them) is that they don’t reinforce with work sheets.
When I spoke with older teachers at my kids’ schools all of them told me they use Everyday Math with other books.
I think parents should forced the University of Chicago (which published these books) to come up with better books.</p>
<p>Everyday Math is used by all of the high-performing districts in our area. They supplement with some drill around math facts, and some additional problem solving.</p>
<p>Kids who are innately good at math reportedly like EM a lot because it enables them to answer questions in many ways. And supposedly it devotes a lot of attention to developing the “number sense” that has been shown to correlate closely to success at math. </p>
<p>I know that people sometimes complain that their teachers are not properly trained to use the curriculum, or that the teachers skip parts of it because they don’t have enough time…</p>
<p>in our area- schools that serve students with engaged parents- who will seek out what is necessary- are at least moderately successful whatever the program in the school.</p>
<p>In my younger d’s elementary classes- some teachers supplemented & some did not. Her teachers didn’t- despite going outside for some supplemental tutoring her last year or so of middle school- she was two years behind in math, when beginning high school.</p>
<p>When teachers have experience to know where the gaps are in curriculum, and are willing to take the time and effort to fill in those gaps, then the kids can learn no matter what the program the district has adopted * this year* 
But when you have newer teachers- who haven’t accumulated their own classroom supplies and are themselves not very comfortable with math, then you have big gaps in learning that keeps getting worse as students move through a spiral curriculum.</p>
<p>So I think that is how you can get students who are moving through the system- but not building enough to move forward.</p>
<p>An additional fact is that this class is, in my view, conducted like high school. (H has no choice, as an adjunct who is more or less a long-term sub.) Students in some way get points for attendance and for turning in the homework. </p>
<p>I’ve never understood the points-off for homework thing: surely what matters is what you can demonstrate you have <em>learned</em>, not whether you complied with the program? </p>
<p>That kind of practice just serves to reward compliant students and punish independent learners, IMHO.</p>
<p>I used to live in an area that had a community college that provided non credit precursor courses in writing, study skills, mathematics, etc. The first college course for credit was Algebra and that course had a high fail rate as did a number of other courses. </p>
<p>A big problem occurs when community colleges give college credit for courses when the student is nowhere near the standard for college work. I have seen this happen, and it is a big problem when those kids transfer, some of them with excellent grades from a cc, to a 4 year school. My husband’s family if rife with such students, as they live in Delaware. It is not easy to get into UDel, and the community colleges do not seem to prepare the kids for junior year at the flagship. Time and again, I have seen kids do very well at cc, then fail immediately at the uni.</p>
<p>I just don’t understand why students continue to fail algebra each year. (Students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia are not whom I am referring to in my post.) It has to be one of the easiest math courses next to geometry. If you pay attention, take notes, go to class like you should, and try to complete the homework assignments, you will pass the course.</p>
<p>People who are interested in making things better should take a look at </p>
<p>[Hung-Hsi</a> Wu’s Home Page](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/]Hung-Hsi”>Hung-Hsi Wu's Home Page) </p>
<p>by a math professor who cares about improving K-12 education, and also at the more politically controversial </p>
<p>[NYC</a> HOLD National on Mathematics Education Reform](<a href=“http://www.nychold.com/]NYC”>http://www.nychold.com/) </p>
<p>which has news from around the country (not all from the same point of view) on mathematics education reform. </p>
<p>I do think that every college in the land needs to give its students a mathematics placement test. There are many good tests from many publishers that help placement in all levels from prealgebra (! needed in some “colleges”) to multivariable calculus.</p>
<p>I think that putting “college” in quotation marks is part of the answer to my original question.</p>
<p>For some kids, college is what high school was to others. I remember thinking way back when <em>I</em> was in college in the 1970s that the assignments of a friend who was attending the local branch of our state U were essentially high school–and not the honors track, either.</p>
<p>A kid I know went to one of the CTCL. He had chosen to challenge himself in HS, taking many honors classes, gotten mediocre grades, and fell afoul of the unweighted GPA policy combined with a dolt of a GC who revealed his class rank in the rec. (The school does not officially rank.) As a result, he was rejected from ALL of the schools he originally applied to. His father told me that his freshman year turned out to be a repeat of HS. He got excellent grades, as one might expect, and things turned out well for him in the long run, I’m happy to say.</p>
<p>But a lot of “colleges” are essentially spending time–at least the first year, apparently more in some places–teaching kids what many of us think they should have learned in HS.</p>
<p>I think a lot of UW professors would agree.
[Freshmen’s</a> weak math skills worry UW faculty](<a href=“http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/353199_math29.html]Freshmen’s”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/353199_math29.html)</p>
<p>I also think that it would serve many well to take a 13th year or to take a year off before college.</p>
<p>Well, if you accept the premise that average HS kids are being sold a bill of goods, that their ‘college prep’ is not adequately preparing them for 4 year college work, then what should we do? Should we support activist groups that provide feedback to the HS community regarding the success/failure of their grads? If the average HS student learned that only 30% (say) of his peers graduate from a 4-year institution, would that dissuade him from pursuing that path? Would they head straight to the CC for plumbing or welding or nurse assistant or ?</p>