Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 183 posts

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#11

Post by netsharc »

ajross wrote: post #3

Embarassing Occam's failure in the lede: > For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Good grief. No, it's just the pandemic. The kids whose middle school years got disrupted are behind on skills taught in middle school. Can you squint and blame other things? Sure. But experimental education policies are hardly new i…

Did you just read 5 words into the article and come to this conclusion? The article that the authors researched and told us it's been going on since before the pandemic?

Ah, their next article should be about the confidence of fools...

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#12

Post by bena »

skeezyjefferson wrote: post #6
jackallis wrote: post #4

".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."

"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...." how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?

One could use course grades. The problem with that is the variance in instructor quality between institutions.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#13

Post by tehjoker »

Aurornis wrote: post #9
skeezyjefferson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...." how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?

They don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead. It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.

There is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#14

Post by massysett »

jackallis wrote: post #4

".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."

Thank you, this answers the question I was going to pose in a comment: why did this supposedly selective university admit students who can’t do basic math? Maybe their grade wouldn’t reflect it, but surely a standardized test like SAT or ACT would have flagged this? Maybe instead of remedial courses, they should stop admitting unqualified students?

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#15

Post by ajross »

netsharc wrote: post #11
ajross wrote: post #3

Embarassing Occam's failure in the lede: > For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Good grief. No, it's just the pandemic. The kids whose middle school years got disrupted are behind on skills taught in middle school. Can you squint and blame other things? Sure. But experimental education policies are hardly new i…

Did you just read 5 words into the article and come to this conclusion? The article that the authors researched and told us it's been going on since before the pandemic? Ah, their next article should be about the confidence of fools...

I did! Here's the quote:

> But the national trend is very clear: America’s students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic.

So I, a "fool", read that and think: Hm... well if the article isn't giving numbers I'm going to take the "sharp acceleration" as a statement about magnitude and clearly infer that the pandemic is at fault.

Again, is the subject complicated? Sure. But education policy doesn't produce effects like this. It never has, probably never will, and the article even doesn't claim it does.

You know what does produce effects like this? Keeping 13-year-olds out of class for two years.

I mean, come on. I repeat: write it down, in 4 years we'll all be reading about the miracle of American education policy. And that will be wrong too.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#16

Post by giancarlostoro »

zecg wrote: post #10

> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” I think the answer is Boeing

What bewilders me is that I've read (maybe here on HN) that the issue with some of those planes is a lot of the key people who built the previous generations were moved around to different departments, and I'm just thinking to myself, are you guys going to get the right people in the right spots? This is embarrassing and downright evil if you aren't taking steps to ensure the quality of your aircrafts.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#17

Post by naIak »

tehjoker wrote: post #13
Aurornis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead. It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.

There is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.

You can’t have a good teaching programme when there is a variance of 40 points of IQ among the pupils.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#18

Post by TechRemarker »

Aurornis wrote: post #8
jackallis wrote: post #4

".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."

The war on admissions testing is one of the worst education trends. I couldn’t believe it when it was first proposed, but I was even more shocked when the trend started to spread. It does appear to be reversing a little bit in some places as schools realize they were fooled by people pushing ideology over data and results, but it’s going to take a while. For those who aren’t in the loop: There’s an ideological push t…

Imagine still will be all the advanced tracks but will be only reserved for those with the resources to afford it and seemingly further the divide.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#19

Post by triceratops »

Aurornis wrote: post #9
skeezyjefferson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...." how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?

They don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead. It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.

> his goal to phase out gifted education programs

Gifted education programs for kindergarten. I don't necessarily agree with that either but it's important to be accurate when talking about proposed policies. The man isn't talking about taking away AP algebra. Most kindergarteners still need to be told not to eat their boogers.

Post reply on HN