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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

What grade is this supposed to be for?

This is for teachers. Unbelievable, I know.

I have dyscalculia to the nth, I couldn't complete this test, I closed it after the first question. Although I wouldn't want to teach math, I'm perfectly well qualified to teach art.

How would you teach perspective?

Is geometry considered pure math? Funny you should ask, I was I thinking about that, I guess I'd just teach it via leading lines, and maybe look at the required geography prior to the class. Although I have a degree in art and I've never considered perspective in the context of geometric math, and I'm not sure it would be required to teach primary school art (or high school for that matter?)

Geometry is indeed math, and understanding perspective is impossible without it.

> dyscalculia to the nth

I see what you did there

How did you manage to make it through school? This is pretty basic stuff.

In Scotland in the 90s, after a few years, they just put me in a class with kids with down syndrome when everyone else was in Math and tried to teach me 1:1, and then when I moved to Canada I had 2 more years of High School and they just didn't make me take math because there was no way I'd manage it and there was no point in stopping me graduating because of it so I was given special consideration as someone with sever and complex special needs.

A little off-topic, but DeviantArt has been a hugely important part of my kids' lives. It's helped make them the artists that they are. Thank you for whatever role you had in building it.

Aww, thank you for saying that. I'm really happy to hear! I was one of the original community directions when a few of us were trying to get dA off the ground. I'm pretty sure there are actually a number of the original dA staffers around HN.

The issue is that elementary school teachers in Ontario are required to teach all subjects. We don't have subject-specialized teachers such as art teachers in elementary school.

Should this test preclude me from teaching grade school in Ontario? Are we not all weaker in some areas than others? My mother, Ms. Findlay, taught elementary school in Whitby for years, she's really great at maths, but she couldn't draw a stick figure or build something out of lego if her life depended on it, heck she can't drive stick shift. Unfortunately for me, dyslexia and dyscalcila are hereditary through the father line, so much like myself, my father can't spell or add two numbers together for jack, thankfully neither of us have had to work in areas that you'd notice, but I still think we could both teach elementary school just fine.

> Should this test preclude me from teaching grade school in Ontario?

Yes. If you cannot do basic arithmetic, you should not be responsible for teaching math to children.

> Ms. Findlay, taught elementary school in Whitby for years, she's really great at maths, but she couldn't draw a stick figure or build something out of lego if her life depended on it, heck she can't drive stick shift.

I don't understand what you are talking about. Elementary school teachers are responsible for teaching math, not teaching kids how to drive stick.

I'm sorry about your condition. It honestly sounds like hell.

I can't say I know much about how the education system works, I was under the impression grade school teachers are much more focused on soft skills and things like arts and crafts than say, high school teachers who teach harder skills. My point on mum was she isn't very creative or coordinated, and I would have thought creativity is more important in the elementary years, again i don't know much about how pedagogy works so I may very well be mistaken.

It depends on what you mean by grade school, I suppose. In the US and Canada, kids attend first grade at around 6 years old. From this age, they should be learning how to read, write, and do addition. By third grade or so, they are learning multiplication. Softer skills is definitely part of school, but learning to read and write and do math is like the fundamental thing you send kids to school for.

I would find it disturbing if a teacher assigns tests and homework for their students with some expectation of proficiency which outmatches their own.

In a field test, 19% of them failed the test (or, as they'd put it: "around 1 in 12" :) ).

> The EQAO led a field test between February 18 and March 7, 2020 to monitor, assess, and refine the implementation of the MPT before it was launched. A total of 4,065 applicants participated in the field test, with 81 percent successfully completing the MPT. The field test allowed the EQAO to test MPT items with the applicant population and collect data to establish items as valid and defensible.

IMO, if you fail this test, you have no business holding a teaching certificate that would allow you to teach math. It seems like the issue is that teaching certificates in that area do not adequately distinguish teachers who are certified to teach math up to 6th grade (where a general certificate is all that's required). Fixing that would seem to (me at least to) allow the testing to continue to be qualified to teach math. Fail the math competency test and you can teach other subjects. (That might not be ideal, but it's way better than having teachers who aren't competent in math teaching math.)

When I was a child in Ontario in the 1980s we had a single teacher for each class that taught all subjects except French, so (except for the French teacher) there weren't really any non-Math teachers. I imagine that things have changed a little, but probably not enough to except the preponderance of elementary teachers from being expected to be competent math teachers.

The problem is that in Ontario teachers are not differentiated until around high school, meaning a teacher has to be responsible for teaching up to that level in a general, well-rounded way.

I sure wouldn't want a teacher who has fewer requirements in math proficiency than the very students they're teaching. Imagine students receiving harder math tests than what a teacher would be comfortable with.

I understand it’s simple, especially the addition questions. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had to do long division. Without knowing some of the questions on this test beforehand, I’m confident I would be toast.

But you're not a teacher, right? Is this test not testing something that a teacher kind of sort of ought to know well enough to... teach?

I suspect if you know you were writing such a test you could have someone refresh your basic long division in relatively short time.

The two division questions in the section where you didn’t have a calculator didn’t require you to complete the division. You could examine the answers and get easily to the answer in one case and get to the answer or a 50/50 shot in the other case with basic knowledge of math, even if you forgot the long division mechanics.

There are 4 multiple choice answers. The questions were pretty simple to answer without even doing the math properly. They seem to be more "are you even aware of how to do this" than "here's a question that might present some difficulty".

A little less than 1 in 10 teachers failed this test when they tried ...

And frankly the quality of teachers isn't much better elsewhere.

Oh my.

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