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

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 925 posts

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

#691

Post by fsckboy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #14
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #7

>Critics call the SAT inequitable and say high school grades are a good predictor of college success. I mean, it seems pretty clear from the last 6 years of experience by professors and others that grades (or at least grades in isolation) aren't a good predictor at all for this. The problem is removing the use of standardized tests here was done for ideological reasons. You can already tell by the use of the word "in…

> the public believe that we should push for equal outcomes ("equity") over equal opportunity (usually referred to as simply "equality") This is the direct inverse of what's actually asserted by people talking about equity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_equity Providing a hearing aid to someone hard of hearing so they can learn is equity. Their outcomes aren't guaranteed; an obstacle to achieving them is…

>Providing a hearing aid to someone hard of hearing so they can learn is equity. Their outcomes aren't guaranteed

from your cited wikipedia page: "Equity is equality of outcome" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_equity#Equity

giving somebody a hearing aid is basic decency, but will it erase all deficits, guaranteed? no.

IQ is a different page of the book, it basically says that a kid with a high IQ who needs a hearing aid is likely to do better on the SAT than a kid with a lower IQ and perfect hearing. Sadly there is no "IQ aid". But just as families with a Down Syndrome child love that child every bit as much, IQ is not a measure of worth as a human, but simply "this kid can run the cognitive 40m dash faster"

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

#692

Post by gdsimoes »

borski wrote: post #448
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give teachers authority again. It shouldn't be their problem if a student wants to fail the class.

The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal. My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years. I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me. Activist teachers are also a thing.

That’s why the same person shouldn’t teach and evaluate the students learning.

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

#694

Post by efavdb »

naet wrote: post #540
trunnell wrote: post #435

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…

I'm in Oakland with a three year old and I'm looking to either move to a better school district or pay for an expensive private school. I used to be a substitute teacher for the Oakland unified school district and I straight up refuse to send my son there. I have seen firsthand that these kids are not being taught well and the shortcomings compound year over year until you end with high school level students that are…

FWIW: A few nearby towns that are supposed to have good schools: Castro Valley, Albany, Alameda.

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

#695

Post by matheusmoreira »

nradov wrote: post #179
mlsu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely actively bad to involve a device in the vast majority of education. And, it’s a purely selfish thing by tech companies to insert themselves into education. A student should not see a computer until college or vocational school unless they are taking e.g a high school programming or electronics class.

You've got to be kidding. Writing longhand was always a miserable experience for me no matter what technique or pen I used. Typing on a keyboard is so much faster and more fluent.

Same. Slowly writing things out by hand is excruciating for me. I would always refuse to do it, even as a kid. Rarely took notes.

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

#696

Post by charlieyu1 »

J37T3R wrote: post #685
Glyptodon wrote: post #683

So just to be clear, I guess the issue isn't so much SAT or placement tests as it is that there's no functional baseline level of knowledge without some kind of entry exam, and without that there's no functional boundary on the starting place or length of time it will take to get a degree. So some level of entry exam is needed to avoid rebuilding a new remedial version of K12 education inside of every four year colle…

It's at least a standard, and that's the important part. Narrow down what exactly the best way to tell is later, the SAT fits the bill of good enough to re-impliment quickly.

I’d say written tests is a common thing in many countries, and at college age you really should be doing more than multiple choices

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

#697

Post by jrumbut »

ethbr1 wrote: post #523
thot_experiment wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance. I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different sty…

Multiple things can be true, because the goal is to optimize in aggregate. - Some teachers are bad (and some students will have them) - Overriding teachers with policies intended to control the bad ones impairs and burns out the others Consequently, the reasonable path is somewhere in the middle. Create feedback systems designed to identify and weed out the worse teachers* and avoid overloading everyone else with out…

> identify and weed out the worse teachers

By and large, everyone knows.

Data might be useful to tell you "hey that longtime great teacher approaching retirement has checked out early" or "the new hire who was struggling last semester has turned the corner" but it's no secret in a school building which teacher everyone hates and which one everyone loves.

If you woke up tomorrow and discovered you were an elementary school principal, you would have the lay of the land by week two at the latest.

The problem is not separating the flowers from the weeds, it's what will happen if you pull the weeds. Who's gonna take care of that room full of 8 year olds tomorrow? And for the next several years? If a weed shows up every day and doesn't commit any crimes, the downside of replacing them is larger than the upside.

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

#698

Post by ocschwar »

bearjaws wrote: post #149
kleiba2 wrote: post #28

I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercise…

I'm always torn on this, I learned a lot of algebra, stats and calc from actually writing TI-Basic programs in my calculator. I was deeply interested in programming since the age of 11, so it felt very natural to translate the formulas and concepts to code. Ultimately I am sure the majority of students learn better writing it out by hand.

It didn't hurt that you can't play Fruit Merge on a TI 84

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

#699

Post by CamperBob2 »

zahlman wrote: post #671
zahlman wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. I'm not sure this distinction can be made, really. > And don't get me started on the false disability claims (see [0] for a taste). If you even verbalize questioning one, you're eligible for discrimination. Case in point. It's exactly because of the politics both that the students feel empowered to make those claims, and…

For those who downvoted without comment: how did I say anything disagreeable, untrue, or otherwise meriting a downvote?

Challenging someone else's lived experience without providing any justification or alternative explanations, would be my guess.

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

#700

Post by tptacek »

fsckboy wrote: post #688

the SAT is an IQ test, btw. who would have thought that could lead to better results in cognitive fields? shocked. shocked! Now that there is some grudgin recognition of this idea, it might do to remind people that high SAT scores on Verbal are correlated, and salient in non STEM subjects. and that there is no known way to increase scores significantly, neither from early intervention nor sustained practice. And, dep…

> And, depressingly from an egalitarian perspective, there is a strong genetic correlation.

No, there isn't. Hope that helps your mood!

Post reply on HN