Emily Hanford: Attending Arlington Senior High School in St. Paul, Minn., she kept her head in her books and did her homework. “I was that student everybody wanted to multiply,” she said. Her mother was elated with Arlington, a brand new school with the latest technology, web training, access to Apple computers and — best … Continue reading College students increasingly caught in remedial education trap
Karen Herzog: Regent Margaret Farrow said K-12 must be a strong partner in preparing high school students for college. “We’re not, quite frankly, creating this situation we’re trying to solve.” Starting next year, all 11th graders in Wisconsin pubic schools will be required to take the ACT college-readiness exam that universities use in their admissions … Continue reading 21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math
Inside Higher Education Remedial education is getting plenty of attention from state lawmakers. Yet there is little consistency in how states track students’ college preparedness and subsequent progress through remedial coursework. That’s the central finding of a new report from the Education Commission of the States. The education policy think tank also released a companion … Continue reading Remedial Education: Know a Problem to Fix It; Revisiting Madison’s Math Task Force
Wracked with frustration over the state’s legions of unprepared high school graduates, the California State University system next summer will force freshmen with remedial needs to brush up on math or English before arriving on campus.
But many professors at the 23-campus university, which has spent the past 13 years dismissing students who fail remedial classes, doubt the Early Start program will do much to help students unable to handle college math or English.
“I’m not at all optimistic that it’s going to help,” said Sally Murphy, a communications professor who directs general education at Cal State East Bay, where 73 percent of this year’s freshmen were not ready for college math. Nearly 60 percent were not prepared for college English.
“A 15-hour intervention is just not enough intervention when it comes to skills that should have been developed over 12 years,” Murphy said.
The remedial numbers are staggering, given that the Cal State system admits only freshmen who graduated in the top one-third of their high-school class. About 27,300 freshmen in the 2010 entering class of about 42,700 needed remedial work in math, English or both.
Related: Madison’s Math Task Force and K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation.
Sharon Lurye: A few years ago she shifted her approach, turning to more direct explanation after finding a website on a set of evidence-based practices known as the science of math. “I could see how the game related to multiplication, but the kids weren’t making those connections,” said Stark, a math teacher in the suburbs … Continue reading Math Curriculum
Wesley Crocket: Faculty members in the University of California (UC) system have begun to speak out against their campuses’ adoption of lower math standards in order to bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The controversy surrounds a policy enacted by a UC committee in 2020, which changed the admissions requirements for high school applicants in … Continue reading UC faculty speak out against reduced math rigor
Lucy Kellaway: Some years ago, shortly before I left the Financial Times, I gave a talk at a literary event in Oxford. Put up your hand, I said to the audience, if you are useless at maths — whereupon the arms of around a third of them shot into the air. At the time, I … Continue reading Forcing maths on teenagers is cruel and counterproductive: Rishi Sunak would be better focusing on primary schools than making students study the subject to age 18Forcing maths on teenagers is cruel and counterproductive:
Kevin Carey: The problem, from a regulatory standpoint, is that they borrow a lot of money to obtain the degree — over $78,000 on average, according to the university. The total tuition is $62,593. And because it’s a graduate program, students can also borrow the full cost of their living expenses from the federal government, … Continue reading K-12 Math Rigor? Are High School Graduates Capable Of Basic Cost/Benefit Calculations…
Cory Koedel and Morgan Polikoff, via a kind Dan Dempsey email: Textbooks are one of the most widely used educational inputs, but remarkably little is known about their effects on student learning. This report uses data collected from elementary schools in California to estimate the impacts of mathematics textbook choices on student achievement. We study … Continue reading Big bang for just a few bucks: The impact of math textbooks in California
Lindsay Gellman: New waves of Indians and Chinese are taking America’s business-school entrance exam, and that’s causing a big problem for America’s prospective M.B.A.s. Why? The foreign students are much better at the test. Asia-Pacific students have shown a mastery of the quantitative portion of the four-part Graduate Management Admission Test. That has skewed mean … Continue reading On B-School Test, Americans Fail to Measure Up; “Improve K-12 Math”