Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad to see the article has a link to an actual 10th grade standardized math test from Florida since I was wondering about this after reading that the school board member scored 10 out of 60 and didn't confidently know how to answer any of them, and upon later study concluded that the math in the test was irrelevant to real life. This made me wonder what sorts of questions the test asked.

http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/releasepdf/06/FL06_Rel_G10M_TB_Cwf...

The test proves mostly to be multiple choice with four possible responses. But there are a few questions with a scantron array of numbers for filling in numerical answers.

Calculators are allowed, but do not seem to be necessary.

The test covers at its most advanced basic algebra and simple geometry (no proofs). There is no trigonometry or calculus. There are also topics much simpler than algebra such as calculating percentages, areas, and fractions.

I did about the first half just now and didn't run into any problems. It does not seem conceivable to me that someone who can't answer any questions at all is adequately qualified to evaluate scientific data such as one might need to do when voting on matters of public importance.

It would be a very reasonable idea for all legislators and public servants who work in a decision making capacity to take a test similar to this and be required to post the results. Just for informational purposes of course.

I'm an Indian, and a smart 8th grade kid could probably get a perfect score on this test. How on earth did Mr. Roach pass out of high school, let alone earn two degrees?

This is at least partly a matter of retention. There was a study on giving algebra tests to adults, and one of the best predictors of performance was how much math the person had taken. So someone who had taken math through calculus did pretty well on the algebra test, regardless of age, while someone who had only taken through algebra had basically exponential decay from when they had taken it. (I can't think of where I saw this -- does anyone else know?) So I would assume that Mr. Roach's degrees are in non-technical subjects, and that he likely didn't take anything higher than pre-calc.

I would assume that Mr. Roach's degrees are in non-technical subjects

Mr. Roach's degrees are now known to be in education.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3326293

"Roach, the father of five children and grandfather of two, was a teacher, counselor and coach in Orange County for 14 years. He was first elected to the board in 1998 and has been reelected three times. A resident of Orange County for three decades, he has a bachelor of science degree in education and two masters degrees: in education and educational psychology. He has trained over 18,000 educators in classroom management and course delivery skills in six eastern states over the last 25 years."

I will note for the record that a proper, accredited degree program in educational psychology ought to have a statistics for psychology class included that would provide a mathematics refresher to postgraduate students who don't test out of that course. If not, the degree program was appallingly bad.

Yes - but it's reaallllyyy hard to teach a bunch of non-mathematicians statistics in a couple of terms. The problem is that it is an assorted mish-mash of hard and easy maths, the basis of which is too difficult for them to understand, and the brain-bending proper interpretation of a p-value.

I believe the study you're thinking of is "Lifetime maintenance of high-school mathematics content" (Journal of Experimental Psychology). I read about it in Why Don't Children Like School, perhaps you did too?

He probably graduated before we had standardized tests.

This is actually a good argument in favor of standardized tests - make sure morons like Roach don't get to put things like "High School Graduate" on their resume.

I was shocked what a weak effort had been to make the questions appear relevant to real life.

The entire test reads as if the math problem was written first (20+2n=30+1.5n; n=?), then a story concocted to fit, with a few names awkwardly sprinkled on top.

Please could you give an example? And your new version of a question to test the same concept?

How about question 7?

Abdul plans schedules for several biologists who are researching the manatee. One biologist must travel from Newport to Russell Key. Later the biologist has a meeting in Islamorada. Abdul must use the map below to ﬁnd the distance from Russell Key to Islamorada to determine how much time the biologist can spend on Russell Key. [diagram of a right-angled triangle, three points labelled "Russell Key", "Newport" and "Islamorada", one side labelled "13.2 mi.", the other "15.5 mi."] What is the distance in miles (mi.) from Russell Key to Islamorada?

The whole manatee/biologists/Abdul story is irrelevant and distracting, relies on an incredibly unlikely coincidence (the right-angle), assumes that Abdul is bright enough to get a map out and measure distances but not bright enough to measure the distance he actually cares about, and confusingly sets the reader up to expect a question about time rather than distance.

My version: "[diagram]. How far is it from Russell Key to Islamorada?" or skip the place names entirely and "[diagram] What is the length of the third side of this triangle?"

(edited to remove a comment about Islamorada -- turns out that it is a real place. It also turns out that the map seems to be using real place names, but not real distances, which can only serve to confuse people who know the area.)

"Islamorada? really? is that in Koranistan?"

It's in Florida, as are the students this test is aimed at (and the Manatees too for that matter).

I think that's the whole point of these types of problems: the first step is always to parse the question, find out what's the actual problem and which data is relevant. You know, just like in real life. (Granted, those particular examples may be especially contrived, but that's a different problem...)

Indeed. The entire purpose of word problems is to see if you can apply math to real life, to see if you can come up with formulas to fit the situation at hand. You aren't given formulas in real life.

If I save a certain percent, P, of my monthly income, N, and I want to save an amount, X, to buy something, and I want to know how long in months, M, I'm going to have to save. The formula M = X / (P * N) [or P / 100 depending on how we're expressing the percent] isn't going to magically appear in front of me. Whether I can solve it or not won't matter if I can't come up with it.

That's a trivial example, but I hope the point is clear. Word problems are supposed to test your ability to convert life to math, not just your ability to do simple algebra. Which is why it's especially concerning that in many of the word problems they actually give the formula. It defeats the whole purpose of making it a word problem.

Yes - there is nothing as sexy as being given a big chunky real-world problem with no predefined mathematical representation and getting to pick and choose your own. I live for these moments.

Dan Meyer often talks about this so-called "pseudocontext": http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?cat=89

That doesn't change the fact that they are _very_ easy. European student here - apparently our schools teach way more math.

No, they're easy. I went to school in Florida and took these kinds of tests all the time. The state has a real hardon for standardized tests.

> apparently our schools teach way more math.

That's a required test for 10 graders, so most of our students would pass it as well.

Math retention is another thing all together. Almost everyone could pass that test when they were in 10th grade, give it to a 100 random 50 year olds anywhere in the world, and see what happens.

I'm nearer 60 than 50 (!), and after a quick scan the test did not strike me as anything especially hard...

There will be plenty of people who retain it, but most people who go 30 years without using information will not retain it.

I went to school in the US and the test represents what I personally had been taught and was competent in by the end of 7th grade (age 13), not 10th grade (age 16). That was some years ago. It wasn't in Florida but I have no reason to believe their schools are substantially different.

It might be that the test doesn't match actual 10th grade curriculum and is a minimum competency test. Then again, based on math skills of typical high school and college graduates, I am not completely surprised that school board members with a masters in education can't do basic math. It's not just math that is a problem, there are also many high school graduates now who are functionally illiterate (meaning they may have basic reading skills but can't understand anything they read that is more than very simple). This is not to say the schools are incompetent since obviously many very skilled and talented people make it through the same system.

Also, it has been established that Masters of Education students have the lowest GRE and SAT scores of any major.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37245744/heres-the-na...

"Research over the years has indicated that education majors, who enter college with the lowest average SAT scores, leave with the highest grades. Some of academic evidence documenting easy A's for future teachers goes back more than 50 years.

The referenced study on education major grade inflation: http://www.aei.org/article/education/k-12/grade-inflation-fo...

Furthermore, the most intelligent and competent education students are the most likely to rapidly leave the field (see Progress Through the Teacher Pipeline; Henke, Chen, & Geis, 2000; http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000152.pdf)

There's tons of papers and research about this issue, sometimes discussed as the "teacher quality" problem, though that may be a misnomer. More than I can reasonable cite but once you know about the issue, and some of the above citations as starting points can lead you down a pretty deep rabbit hole once you start researching.

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