The 2007 NAEP test results showed small but statistically significant gains in both math and reading. Mathematics scores at fourth and eighth grade continued the steady progress registered since the main NAEP test was first administered in 1990. Both grade levels notched 2 point gains in scale scores. Table 1-1 reports the magnitude of the math gains in scale score points and years of learning. Figure 1-1 illustrates the upward trajectory of the scores. The gains indicate that fourth and eighth graders in 2007 knew more than two additional years of mathematics compared to fourth and eighth graders in 1990. On the face of it, this is an amazing accomplishment. Previous Brown Center Reports have raised questions about such gains. The primary question concerns the content of the NAEP math tests. Students are clearly making progress, but at learning what kind of mathematics? Suffice it to say that students are making tremendous progress on the mathematics that NAEP assesses, in particular, problem solving with whole numbers, elementary data analysis and statistics, basic geometry, and recognizing patterns. NAEP pays scant attention to computation skills, knowledge and use of fractions, decimals, and percents, or algebra beyond the rudimentary topics that are found in the first chapter of a good algebra text. In sum, we know that students are getting better at some aspects of math. But we do not know how American students are doing on other critical topics, including topics that mathematicians and others believe lay the foundation for the study of advanced mathematics. Thus, the years of learning gain must be taken with a grain of salt.
The 2007 Brown Center Report on American Education:
How Well Are American Students Learning
plus ça change (scroll down)
[Suffice it to say that students are making tremendous progress on the mathematics that NAEP assesses, in particular, problem solving with whole numbers, elementary data analysis and statistics, basic geometry, and recognizing patterns. NAEP pays scant attention to computation skills, knowledge and use of fractions, decimals, and percents, or algebra beyond the rudimentary topics that are found in the first chapter of a good algebra text.]
ReplyDeleteThis move away from computation, fractions and percents towards visuals and data collection (including make-believe statistics) is completely in line with the visions of NCTM. The goal of the visionaries is "math" without math.
It really is extraordinary. They're all chart-proficient.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile C's most recent grade on an Earth Science test was abysmal, probably because he couldn't read the visual data. He got the "information" questions correct, hosed the "read the chart" questions.
As far as I can tell, the visual representations in the Earth Science test are the real thing -- complicated diagrams depicting "the collision of an oceanic plate and a continental plate" and the like.
In other words, the Earth Science diagrams are the kind of thing an educated person is actually going to encounter in Real Life as we know it.
The kind of thing one is not going to encounter in Real Life as we know it is, say, a bar chart depicting the number of eyelets on class tennis shoes.
C. appears to have spent his childhood attaining proficiency in chart-reading that does not transfer to Real World chart reading.
It's going to be a long century.