That is how math is being taught in high school today, and the SATs are based on that as well. My wife has ranted about this for years, ever since she was a TA for CS at UIUC (so we’re talking about the very top students for CS).
Student aren’t taught to look at math as generalized problem solving, but of how to memorize specific formulas and formats. That is also what students are expected to do on their SATs, so the SATs do not actually test for anything besides memorization skills.
Which brings me back to what I say is the weakest part of the SATs - you can learn how to do well on the SAT without actually learning how to use the material to do anything else. You can, essentially, get a 750 on the math without actually understanding what a variable actually is.
Math is taught badly in the USA, and the math SAT is based on this poor teaching methodology.
Wait a minute. These students WANT to be judged based on four years of hard work maintaining a 4.0 average in the most rigorous classes available, academic ECs, LoRs by their teachers, etc. These students are asking, nay, they are DEMANDING to be judged based on their hard work. So how does your claim make any sense at all?
I’m responding to the Caltech op-ed which says the opposite: it’s not possible to judge our mastery of Caltech’s entry requirements based on standardized tests, APs, GPAs or anything else (“AP tests were administered online in a shortened format over the pandemic and the reports from both students and high school teachers from that period indicate that they were not representative of students’ true grasp of these concepts. Moreover, widespread high school grade inflation, especially during periods of online learning, makes it almost impossible for the admissions office to discern which students have actually mastered calculus and other math topics based on their transcripts. As none of these metrics can serve as appropriate measures of student learning over the pandemic, it would be worthwhile for the members of the faculty who signed this petition to take this into account”).
Maybe they want to be judged simply on working hard, regardless of whether any knowledge was gained, or maybe the expectation is that they should be judged based on how difficult their life experiences have been (“More than a few students lost parents and other close family members, lost regular access to school-provided meals, and lost access to academic support and extracurricular opportunities during the pandemic. To expect them to master calculus and other math topics that are tested by the electrical engineering “basic math test” during such a tumultuous period is almost absurd.”)?
How does your claim match up to the assertions made by the op-ed writer?
AOs read SAT scores and whatnot in context, but now these students also feel like they are entitled to easier classes?
We often devalue the work of kids from higher SES, top HS. IME it can be a lot easier to stand out and do well if you are a smart kid in an under-resourced environment. COS126 is not that hard. That is not to say its not challenging, and you may have to live with a B. My kid (very non-STEM) had to put in the time, but for them it was business as usual.
Let us take a step back and realize we look at this generation of students from our personal perspective. However, it is not the same world of 30 years ago, let alone 5 years ago. Kids communicate in a short-hand style, have a gazillion bits of data thrown at them constantly (lower attention spans), labeled and studied constantly, and have a better grasp of what technology can do than most of their professors or parents.
When faced with a problem, they have learned to totally depend on technology, “google this” “youtube that”, “Chatgpt to write an essay” etc… Yet, we expect them (“we” meaning education system as a whole) to respond to how we educate them based on “our biases”. There is another side of the coin with all that is thrown at these kids and that is mental maturity part of the education.
This comes from my own experience (observing my own kids, their cohorts and students I taught- I lectured 7+ years in a graduate program fifteen years ago). Today’s kids are wired differently, they don’t have to adapt, we do.
Overall, this seems to be the theme at least on the SAT (which I looked at more recently than the ACT which my older kids took). The mechanics involved algebra/geometry, but they would layer operation after operation to raise the “complexity”. I don’t have extended data points regarding this but it seemed like the more “higher level” you think, the straighter your paths through the problems are and the more accurate and time expedient your answers become.
You can also get A’s in high school algebras without actually understanding what a variable is. In fact, getting A’s is A LOT easier at most high schools than making a 750, where only 5% did.
This has not been my experience hanging out on undergraduate and graduate admissions forums. Students are more inclined to ask Reddit for answers than to Google for themselves or check primary source websites. I constantly read posts along the lines of “my friends say x, are they right?”. It never occurs to them that if they don’t trust the hearsay of their friends, asking random strangers on the internet for corroboration probably isn’t going to be more trust worthy. Frequently the answer to their questions are easily Googleable or can be found on university websites. They also don’t access course syllabi or their university course management software (Canvas, Blackboard etc.) instead expecting their professors to verbally tell them what to do and when to do it. They just can’t be bothered to find the answers for themselves. There’s a level of learned helplessness and dependency where they expect handholding and answers to be spoon fed to them that I’ve never encountered previously.
As to the tech part, ask professors how many students don’t know how to use basic software like Excel and Word having been raised on iPads, Chromebooks, and phones that use app based operating systems. They don’t know how to use computers running Windows.
I am very surprised by that. In Quebec and Ontario, programs to put IPADS in the classroom (public schools) began as far back as 2014. My kids (private high school) have been on IPads since grade 7. BTW. Canadians are not big “Reddit” users at all. We have been fortunate in Canada in that the provincial govt (despite a million other faults) have been very proactive in bring technology to public classrooms.
Haven’t you heard? Some people are “bad test takers”, so it’s unlikely no matter how you fiddle with a test they’ll still perform “poorly” (or actually average or competently, just not as well as they hoped/imagined).
This begs the question why not advocate for better k-12 education (the root cause in many cases of a poor test performance), or a common US curriculum, so that all students are receiving a good education. That is sadly not the case now.
For some people who don’t support testing this is one of the reasons why…k-12 education is not an equal playing field so the argument goes how can a college/society place importance on a test that measures what a student has learned when many students haven’t adequately learned what is on the ACT/SAT.
I have yet to meet a person who is against better k-12 education. I doubt it will ever be perfect for everyone, but we should try to make it better. We should try to make things fair. We all agree on this.
Still, society must carry on. Higher education has to function in the here and now. The same students who, unfortunately, attended inferior elementary, middle and high schools will not only be at a disadvantage when taking standardized tests, they will also be at a disadvantage when taking tests of all kinds in college, grad schools, medical schools, law schools, etc.
Testing isn’t going away, and we can’t delude ourselves into think that a utopian non-testing world is just over the horizon.
Yep, and the majority of four year colleges are test optional or test blind and I don’t see that changing. I do expect some more schools to return to requiring testing over the next couple of years though.
I certainly don’t believe that, and haven’t heard any other poster espouse that.
This is too much of a leap for me, as there are plenty of successful people including doctors, lawyers, MBAs who came from disadvantaged backgrounds. Do you have data?
Just to clarify, you think that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are behind the 8-ball when it comes to standardized tests, but are on the same level as students from more advantaged backgrounds when it comes to tests given at colleges & universities?
That may be the most interesting thing said in this entire thread.
My grad student’s experience has been that the second part of your statement has been true of a significant minority of her students (learned helplessness and dependency) but not the first. She has had plenty of students who are adept at using the course management software but use it to pester the TA’s to post the answers for them.
So, is your point that the SAT is not providing a barrier of any kind to students from disadvantaged backgrounds? You seem to be a bit all over the place here.