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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#431

Post by organsnyder »

rayiner wrote: post #394
organsnyder wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just giving a shit: it's also the capacity to act on giving a shit. I'm exhausted at the end of the day after getting the kids to bed, and I'm fortunate to be in a stable marriage, live in a large home that my wife and I own, and work a well-paying WFH job. I can only imagine how tiring it must be to not have those advantages. There are the parents doing heroics that I can hardly imagine, and they should be…

> I can only imagine how tiring it must be to not have those advantages Yes, you can only “imagine” what it’s like for people who are less comfortable than you. But that cuts both ways. It could be that you’re also “imagining” the barriers you think exist to people accessing charter schools. In particular, I suspect you’re incorrectly assuming that people work as much as you do, just for less money.

Actually, I can more than imagine it. I have friends that are in those situations, and help out when I can.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#432

Post by chasd00 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #326
scarmig wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one philosophy, sure. My philosophy is that schools that graduate students who are illiterate and innumerate have failed, no matter what rhetoric they put out about equity and social problems. (There are limited situations where it does make sense, logistically, for schools to provision social services. E.g. meals for students who don't have access to steady food sources. But those are relatively uncontroversi…

> schools that graduate students who are illiterate and innumerate have failed I don't disagree. But at the same time, it's also important to ask: was that child offered to learn and apply themselves in the same, stable environment as a child from a more wealthy upbringing? If the answer is no, that child was done a disservice. If the answer is yes, and they still fail, obviously don't graduate them... The goal shoul…

> every child has the same opportunity and circumstances to succeed.

If you’re 18 and can’t read/write/math there is no opportunity to succeed, giving them a diploma doesn’t change that. At some point the child is just out of time no matter the circumstance.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#433

Post by rsanek »

hedora wrote: post #161
confidantlake wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important factor isn't the schools, it is the kids themselves.

California used to have the best schools in the country, and roughly a third of our urban population is Silicon Valley. It's home to the largest economy in the US by a large margin, and is one of the richest states. Yet, somehow, for math: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=... the only states/territories doing worse at math are DC, Puerto Rico, New Mexico, and Alabama. I'm not sure what Alab…

Note that with that link you're looking at data that is over a decade old. Alabama is actually doing better than California in the most recent grade 4 math profile. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=...

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#434

Post by wisty »

julianeon wrote: post #143
hedora wrote: post #53

This doesn't surprise me at all. From what I can tell, California's education system has moved from "equality" (which I would define as providing similar opportunities to all the kids) to focusing on "equity" (which I think they define as dictating the same outcome for all kids). To get an idea of how off the rails this has gotten, go read up on their statements trying to justify banning high school calculus. They ex…

> Personally, I think all funding in California education (other than terminal levels like 4 year bachelors and up) should be a function of the percentage of students that succeed at the next step. This has the unintended consequence of encouraging schools to eject students who are struggling. For example, if the student has a learning disability, declare that it's too serious for them to handle, and then transfer th…

You're too optimistic on the skills of teachers and school admin.

Let's ignore good teachers and principals, they aren't an issue.

Bad teachers and admin will do what bad students do when facing a high stakes test - forget that learning is important and just do a crap job gaming the test, and often do worse than if they would focus on just doing the content properly.

A bunch of people here probably don't see the issue - they think that they would do a good job learning or teaching a student when focusing on a specific test. But it's not the good teachers and good students who are the issue. A bad teacher might give students the same past paper every week for a year, and their bad students just memorise the right answers for the multiple choice. This is just an example, there are lots of bad strategies and the bad teachers will find them all (while the good teachers ignore all the noise).

It's the bad teachers and students that the system needs to fix, and too heavy an exam focus will screw it up (as will zero exam focus).

"Well just fire the bad teachers lol" um ... ok ... that's a bold strategy, but you can't axe that many and not massively increase their salaries to find replacements. You want super star individual performers, you gotta pay to attract them. You want a cheap consistent workforce where the bad eggs do less damage, focus on a good process that the weaker ones can follow, not rewards for individual success.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#435

Post by trunnell »

I'm in the SF bay area w/ middle school and high school age kids.

Between San Jose and San Francisco, 15%-30% of kids are in private school (it's 30% in SF where the public schools are extra dysfunctional). That's far above the California statewide average of 8% in private school.

Among our peers, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of kids are doing advanced math outside of school, typically either Russian School of Math or Art of Problem Solving. This group only partially overlaps with the private school group. This is happening despite the fact that both public and private school teachers strongly discourage math outside of school!

So by decelerating math in the public school, incentives were created for privileged parents to take matters in their own hands and put their kids into programs that accelerate math education far beyond what public schools used to do. We now have a system that is creating even wider disparities in outcomes. It stands to reason that it's producing far less equitable outcomes, too, given that extremely bright kids who happen to be in lower-resourced schools have fewer opportunities. Universal screening for giftedness, advanced public school math courses, and the SAT -- all avenues for advancement regardless of background -- were all eliminated.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#436

Post by jaco6 »

StateflowsLabs wrote: post #2

"The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one. Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, bu…

[dead]

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#437

Post by tash9 »

HelloNurse wrote: post #258
Bratmon wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the answer to this is that schooling/care for people with disabilities that make it impossible for them to succeed in normal school should be a totally different budget with different success criteria than the budget for normal school. There are two different and contradictory goals here- the current dynamic where every gain for one is a loss for the other creates a ton of bad outcomes across the board.

[flagged]

As a parent of a kid that has special needs (at a minor level), there really is a separate set of skills needed to teach to these kids, as well as needing a better student teacher ratio. It made a huge difference for my kid.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#438

Post by linuxhansl »

Please, not the SAT!

My son is prepping for the SAT and I am helping him. I studied physics and computer science, and was a advanced math A+ student...

IMHO: The SAT is useless, solving equations under artificial time constraints is something that only happens in these kind of tests. The focus is on solving problems fast and getting a good score, and nobody really cares if you understand the math behind it.

So, please, if you go back to testing, find something more useful than the SAT.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#439

Post by john_strinlai »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #422
john_strinlai wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it does not claim that professors are only allowed to fail 1 to 2 students in a year.

[flagged]

>Here's more, spoon-fed style:

friend, you can just say "oops, my article was about high school, my bad". no need to start being a dick.

>Are you disputing [...]

i am disputing your claim: "You cannot reject more than one or two students in a year or the school will reject you" (as i have reiterated 3 times now).

you have now morphed it into a completely different claim, which appears to be something along the lines of "you should not fail more than 30% of your class". which, for most of my classes, would be approaching 24 students i could fail. 12x your initial claim!

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#440

Post by nradov »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #362
eunos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And SAT as high school math exam itself I think is way too easy. They should design another test which can clearly distinguish top 1% or even 0.1%.from others

Yes, the scores at the top are way too bunched. A perfect score should indicate generational genius, not the 100th smartest kid your year in California.

That's not a real problem for UC admissions. They accept thousands of students every year. Anyone who scores near perfect (within the margin of error) should be admitted to at least one UC campus. If that's not happening then the problem is with the admissions criteria, not with the SAT.
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