Have Mathematics Exams Become Easier? 853
Coryoth writes "The BBC is reporting on a recent study in the UK that found that the difficulty of high school level math exams has declined. The study looked at mathematics from 1951 through to the present and found that, after remaining roughly constant through the 1970s and 1980s, the difficulty of high school math exams dropped precipitously starting in the early 1990s. A comparison of exams is provided in the appendix of the study. Are other countries, such as the US, noticing a similar decline in mathematics standards?" Readers with kids in school right now may have the best perspective on changes in both teaching and testing methods -- what have you noticed?
tools (Score:5, Interesting)
doing the math is going to be easier, even if they didn't ask harder questions. However, the amount of automation these days means that most people aren't ever going to have to do the harder math in their daily lives.
Slashdotters are an anomaly because our careers and interests require us to do maths all the time. If the future historians are allowed to slack off on their trig tests, so what? They weren't going to be engineers anyway.
They probably should track out classes more than just "regular" and "honors/AP" though. That way the future nobel prize winning poet who is an over acheiver and the future NASA scientist don't have to compete for the teacher's attention to detail in Calculus.
Just a suggestion.
Good Timing (Score:5, Interesting)
Blame? Look at the No Child Left Behind Act (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids aren't dumber, they just aren't given the opportunity to fail. If they aren't given the chance to make mistakes, they don't learn from them, and unfortunately, that is where the NCLB is leading us.
The teaching of math and science are doomed. (Score:4, Interesting)
While this is true, very few actually pursue higher learning in these fields because all of the emotion and excitement is gone when math and science are taught in this way. The wonderment that inspired so many young engineers during the space race is gone. Teachers need to address and emphasize the larger concepts to get children excited about math and science.
The "dumbing down" and muddying of math continues. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the government education establishment in many places has given up on any attempt to maintain the tried-and-true approach to math education that has been employed in the past - building skills step-by-step in such a way that the student's "toolkit" grows in a logical fashion through the different skills, now they are left with a very fuzzy approach that doesn't really build anything on anything, and mostly is concerned with keeping busy doing something that they can pretend is math and pretend that some sort of progress is being made.
The most tragic part of it is that the kids who would have been the real math enthusiasts under traditional teaching methods never get the chance to see the order and beauty of math, because curricula like this completely hide it.
For more info on this, see the Web site mathematicallycorrect.com .
Because the poor government "education" establishment is failing to really teach math, of course they have to put a happy face on the situation by dumbing down the tests too.
Re:education policymakers need to look good (Score:5, Interesting)
But maybe we're just being weird here.
My unprofessional anecdotal experience (Score:4, Interesting)
Students are dumber (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with everyone else, we need to pay math teachers more. In states like TX a public school teacher makes barely enough to live poorly, and with a math degree, they can make double working in private industry. It is a very hard sell to convince mathematicians to go into education.
The other thing we need to do is not be afraid to actually fail someone. This society has made it so that everyone feels its their "right" to graduate high school and go to college. We need to change this and actually fail people when they can't do the work. If someone doesn't earn a degree, they shouldn't be "awarded" one.
Mensa and testing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Easier or more straight forward? (Score:5, Interesting)
The newer example questions seemed more rationalized, they test whether you know the theory or formula needed to solve the question without throwing you a curve ball.
Would you rather encourage people to continue studying onto more advanced levels with easier tests, or throw them a GOTCHA question which will totally turn them off to the subject matter?
There is a difference between testing knowledge of the subject matter, and giving the test taker a hard time. A "difficult" question might be great to ponder when you have unlimited time, but in a time pressured test, it is not appropriate.
Maths has changed / evolved... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maths in the 1950s was designed for engineers and scientists in that generation. They learned what they needed.
Maths today is exactly the same. The fact is you can't use 1950s standards to evaluate today's exams any more than you can use today's standards to evaluate 1950s exams.
The only real question is - Are engineers and scientists finding their maths education weak?
The answer in my view is no in most cases. In a limited number of careers the maths they received isn't nearly advanced enough but that would have been the case in the 1950s too.
As I said they're using the wrong measuring stick to measure the difficulty of exams. Nobody needs to know half of the useless junk that kids learned in the 1950s when frankly it is less time consuming and more accurate to use a calculator.
That's just my opinion. I honestly think a lot of this kind of "research" is a result of much older people looking at today's maths and thinking "Why aren't they learning what I did?" While completely ignoring what they're learning that the 1950s students didn't.
Re:I think so (Score:3, Interesting)
Not quite the same thing as here, but standards, for Maths A-levels at least, had toughened between the 70's and 80's.
Its called "How to cheat mandates" (Score:5, Interesting)
What it all boils down to is that no matter what standard the Federal Government tries to set someone tries to cheat it. That is why there is always such an uproar versus standardized tests. Down here in Georgia they failed nearly 40% of all students in tested grades versus a standardized test. They knew it was coming. They even had practice tests. Is it all the schools fault?
No. Students seem have this sense of inevitability. They are still of the belief that they don't have to. After all anything else they complain about in school gets changed. I don't see their attitudes as defeatism, its entitlement that they suffer. They don't have to do this, that, or what not. We don't have the right culture in schools, especially city schools among minority students. Until we change the fabric of society the MTV generations will forever think themselves above "working hard". They are all going to be rap starts, professional sports players, or worse win the lottery!
We gave up control of our schools to "feel gooders". Now its all about grief counselors and no winners allowed because no one should be a loser. When we removed the reward of success what did we expect? I have seen articles where every student got to walk the diploma line regardless if they graduated just so they didn't feel ostracized. Well tough shit. Your boss ain't going to worry about making a failure to feel good. If you don't perform your in for a world of hurt. I guess you could go into government work, of all categories in the job market they have added more jobs than anyone and everyone knows the saying about how its near impossible to lose a government job.
Schools and students are simply trying to cheat the system. The problem is the schools encourage it because they don't allow for losers. They don't want to hurt little Bobby's feelings so they set him up to fail in life. If they want control of our kids then they should be responsible for them. They get hell bent if someone raises a finger about the Bible in school or complains about sex education yet they are completely aloof when it comes to holding the kids to a standard of education.
Private school was the only recourse I found. Standards had to be met or we might not be allowed to come back. Students were encouraged to be better. I don't see that outside of a few select public schools; you know I hear it all the time how so and so's public school isn't like those others but sorry it is.
Yes, yes, yes and partly no. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maths has definitivly become a lot easier here. It takes a lot less work to get good grades now, and there's an alarming lack of focus on basic math skills. There's plenty of A-students who can't do basic math. The norwegian school-system is really fucked up though. There's so much focus on getting the trouble-makers through school, so they're allowed to basically take over classes. I mean, we don't want to send them to special schools, because that would stigmatize them! Never mind the 25 other students in the class, they'll just have to sit there and feel neglected.. Not to mention, without consequences these students never learn. I've had students yell at me straight off at 08:15 in the morning because the last test had some questions which weren't exactly as the ones in the book. They're so mal-adjusted and unfit for real life it's scary.. (ohh.. and just for kicks.. 90% of the worst students are pakestani.. while they make up about 3-4% of Oslo in total..trying to teach them anything is basically a crash-course in becoming a racist)
That said, I work with a couple of really old math teachers, and there's a few subjects like probabilites that are completely new them.. so math has changed. Don't be fooled though, they've replaced all the hard'n'gritty stuff with fluffy feel-nice stuff.
In Norway, we've had two big reforms in the last ten years, and both made the hardest paths easier. Ironically, they also both made the maths for students taking vocational education harder. It's so tragic I want to cry :(.
(Anecdotal) Proof of Impact? (Score:3, Interesting)
When kids start Algebra I with a TI-89 that is drawing tangent lines and running linear regressions (in between games of tetris) for them, they don't learn any of the basic skills. This leads to a general decline in non-assisted capability, leading to a 'requisite' decline in the difficulty of tests so that more students can perform acceptably and schools maintain their funding.
Perfect Example? Shopping the other day in a store who's register was offline. I was -unable- to make a purchase because the register was down. When I offered that we could simply calculate the tax on the purchase and subtract that total from my $20 you should have seen the look on the kids face; would have thought I'd just asked him to land a hampster on the moon w/ just pencil and paper.
Imperial College agrees (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:tools (Score:5, Interesting)
Calculators on tests have made tests easier, but this is a good thing. Can you imagine having to figure out sines and cosines by hand anymore? What calculators do is make it easier to get to more advanced topics. Knowing how to add 1234+2345 in my head is just no longer a necessary skill. I rather students practice the properties of math, and write things out on paper anyway. (#1 problem with algebra and calculus students, they try to do too much math in their head) Calculators are not going away any time soon, and anything that encourages the entire population to do more math is a good thing in my book.
Secondly, while historians may not need to know trig, it is imperative that as a nation we raise our mathematical abilities. Great math and science students generally did not learn everything at school. Having a parent that can help out with some algebra homework (or even better understands the value of math) will make it much MUCH more likely that the child will grow up with an appreciation of mathematics. If we as a human race want to push the maths and sciences as far as we can, then we much raise the math and science ability of the entire population.
Just so everyone knows where my loyalties lie, I am a mathematics major, I am a math tutor, and hopefully eventually you'll see me teaching mathematics at a University near you!
Re:Blame? Look at the No Child Left Behind Act (Score:3, Interesting)
Since surely this is at least in part teaching issue, and seems to be commonplace in most of western society (not just nations with the NCLBA or equiv.) doesn't this really suggest a drop in teaching quality/ability? Are we handing out 'licenses' to the wrong people, or too easily (to people with integrity issues who bend to NCLB standards) or some other flawed way? Should we be handing out 'licenses' at all? Can teaching ever be taught, really? Are teaching unions a help or a hindrance to the education product (and not to the teachers standard of living which I agree is generally too low)?
I'm sure this'll kill my karma, but I'd be genuinely interested in hearing thoughts along those lines since pinning it all on some amorphous 'system' or act or generation seems like a bit of a cop out, to say the least.
Re:Maths has changed / evolved... (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. An engineer in the 40s/50s would need to have in-depth critical skills of geometrical proofs and relationships, nasty algebraic manipulations, and "bag of tricks" mathematics like series approximations, dummy variable substitutions, etc, because computing resources were rare and resource intensive. If you look at the older tests linked in the OP, you can really see a reflection of that need.
As an engineer today however, I have zero need for knowing trig simplification identities, calculus proofs, and the like beyond a high conceptual level, but I have far more need and usage of logical and discrete math fields, programming concepts, vector operations, statistical methods, and other "math" topics that are still completely absent from any high-school math curricula that I've seen.
My wife (a math degree and former teacher) suggested throwing out the "calculus path" of mathematics entirely and retool math education to a "discrete math path". It sounded heretical to me initially, but I've come to believe that she's correct.
Re:Maths has changed / evolved... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maths today is exactly the same. The fact is you can't use 1950s standards to evaluate today's exams any more than you can use today's standards to evaluate 1950s exams.
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen a few teachers fired - none had tenure except one that was caught doing illegal things with minors. I've seen MANY very very poor teachers that would have long ago been removed from their job if there was any kind of performance review. The problem is the teachers union (USA - NY) does a great job fighting to ensure that 'years on job' and 'education credits' count much more than anyone's ability to teach, motivate students, or even understand the subject they are teaching.
I've seen young teachers come in movitated, involved and truly providing a wonderful enviornment for kids to learn in. Even "problem children" would sit down and pay attention...and learn. It's amazing what happens when you treat a student like a human being after all (seriously, besides school and *JAIL* where else is one forced to go where you need permission to go to the bathroom?) The problem is that after a few years of political BS and all the other nonsense like having to spend their own money for supplies to teach their students they realize they get paid for showing up, their education credits, and years on the job.
Yes there are some small, limited programs that offer performance-based pay or rewards to teachers. Their very own unions tend to fight them...because the unions have lots of older teachers with 20 or 30+ years on-job that don't want to mess with their status quo.
Hell, I'd love a job where i work 8AM-2PM and roughly 180 days a year. 10 weeks off for summer and extra pay if you chose to work.
Re:Blame? Look at the No Child Left Behind Act (Score:3, Interesting)
I want standardized testing to make teachers "teach the test" -- so long as the test covers all the material we want students to understand, that's an ideal outcome. It gives schools and teachers and objective reference to determine if their curriculum is complete and accurate. And the scores give us feedback about the relative performance of schools and teachers, so we can determine when we fail to meet academic goals, and investigate the difference between schools and teachers with different success rates.
It's not like you have to shove all this testing into 2 hours in the last week of class -- a situation where you couldn't possible cover all the requisite information. We could construct a series of short, standardized tests to be given through the year in various subjects, as part of normal classwork. Combine those with more comprehensive tests given on a less frequent basis to ensure retention. You know, just like teachers should be (and for the most part are) doing anyway, except designed by people who are both experts in the subject area and who have experience with statistics and test design.
Math education in the US is *officially* flawed (Score:3, Interesting)
In our district, the nonsense stops in high school (which is administratively separate), and and I actually think my ninth-grade daughter is learning more math than I did at the same age. But you have to survive elementary and middle school math to get to the high quality teaching. It's such a waste.
Stereotype vs reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly the High School that she is going to is aware of that teachers failings and identified all of his students as likely needing extra help in ninth grade.
This was supposed to be the GATE class too. Now most of these advanced math students have lost the edge they had and are behind other GATE students in the district.
Glad they got rid of him.
Re:Maths has changed / evolved... (Score:3, Interesting)
- Trigonometric identities go bye-bye. Even real mathematicians consider them little more than curiosities. Bring them out when you do Taylor expansions, put them away again when you're done.
- Game theory is in. I'd happily trade Calculus for Game Theory for "non-Engineering bound students". Game theory is fantastically useful, even if you don't (or can't) actually "compute" with it in the real world, the concepts serve you in economics, politics (how many maths can make that claim with a straight face?), and business.
That latter one I particular wish I could get in.Re:Pay teachers more (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the problem, as seen from my view, is the complete and utter dependance on calculators, especially those fancy, programmable Texas Instruments ones, that can practically do the work for you. I have one (it was considered 'required course materials') that I have used maybe a handful of times, preferring my old two-line Casio scientific calculator, particularly now that I know what the little cursive 'i' does.
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, free education is a wonderful thing! I just feel that you're comparing apples and oranges here; the educational system and its stakeholder pressures were completely different "once upon a time."
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:2, Interesting)
Initially we were nice and tried to allow the school to fix the situation, but they just kept fobbing us off and we had to become VERY demanding and threatened to pull our kids out, (which really gets the governments notice) as well as lodge official complaints (which affect funding). We were told by the headmistress that even though the entire class was failing and at half-way through the year was 3 months behind, the maths teacher who was retiring the next year "was a really, really nice person" and maybe the kids could up the following year!
But then again, in the same school our son at a higher level had the most wonderful maths teachers possible and he thrived.
Re:Blame? Look at the No Child Left Behind Act (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:tools (Score:3, Interesting)
I definitely agree with you, when tutoring trig students the first thing I do is have them reproduce the unit circle and the trig values for multiples of 30 and 45 degrees. Trig exams force students to learn this by asking things like, what is the sine of 60 degrees? sqrt(3)/2 is the correct answer, but generally not one that most calculators can spit out.
However, eventually when most calculators are able to spit out an answer like sqrt(3)/2, students may no longer need to know their 30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangles. That is fine, we can instead focus on how to use trig to find lengths of a triangles sides and move to more advanced trig topics.
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Blame? Look at the No Child Left Behind Act (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad also complains bitterly about the reams of paperwork (being chairman of the math department is an unwanted honor because of it). The principle at his school said he probably spends half his time just making sure the school is compliant with regulations, so they don't lose federal funding.
The teachers at that school also say they have funding problems because are the only school in the valley that doesn't tweak test results to get more govt funding. Overall, the general problem is that kids can't be forced to do anything they don't want to do. Thanks, popular psychology.
(Oh, and one of Dad's favorite cartoon he posts is a calculator saying "I think, therefore, you don't.")
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry but I don't believe this is the case at all, the culture of "pay me more" is bullshit. Many teachers and experts can't teach, but there are those in both groups who can. Paying teachers more is not the issue in many places, in Canada highschool teachers after a good decade or so can pull in 60,000-100K per year and student disengagement is at recrod levels. The idea that the private sector will 'solve everything' is also bullshit, it's cultural and it's complicated, people have made the same argument your making throughout history, yet the same problems occur you're not a unique snowflake here.
The problem is really about the culture itself, it goes deeper then that though it's north american insitutional and business culture that is the problem. See here:
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG3HPX0D2mU [youtube.com]
Listen to the comments of "calcification" of kids in the school system and adults in the workplace. It makes a lot of good points about self management and responsibility.
I don't agree that all kids are just "lazy", they are disengaged because most of the time we don't allow their curiousity to blossom by killing it early through 'school'. The other problem is that we don't have a place for certain kinds of people in the job market that will pay decent wages. That is the REAL problem, technological displacement, and trying to achieve the impossible (i.e. raising the bar and expectations to unreasonable levels and then being disappointed when kids don't meet them)
Modern schools are often harmful and disengaging enviornments, for many it's positively toxic to someones development. No amount of paying teachers more, or accountability will deal with forced schedules and irrelevant curriculum, the lack of alignment of student curiousity and interest with what they want to learn vs the boring pablum clueless teachers, businesses and government elites, pushing their pablum as 'education'. Many slashdotters can no doubt attest to the low quality of the curriculum and their teachers and school simply not being relevant to what they are interested in, so they 'carve their own path'.
I think something is to be said by not killing childrens motivation and curiousity, which we do very young.
Re:we don't want to upset them (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing against the disabled kids, it's not like they asked to be that way... but the effect was a class full of bored kids who never progressed toward any kind of advanced curriculum. Thirteen years after I graduated, with the addition of calculators, teenage kids can't even do simple 3 digit math anymore. They're utterly reliant on calculators for all of their daily math needs (including making change for small purchases, forget about any higher math), their vocabulary is stunted, they fail to grasp basic science concepts and they have little knowledge of history.
Sure, some kids will excel anyway, but that's in spite of the system, not because of it... and most likely, that comes down to their parents involvement in their education rather than their school's involvement. I thought it was a scary thing that, in my Intro to Computer Engineering class in 1995 at college, only 2 out of 35 of us knew what binary numbers are. In retrospect, those kids were geniuses compared to the current crop of grads getting their high school diplomas in a couple weeks.
BTW, starting teacher pay fresh out of college is slightly above the median income for the residents of my town and about 15% above it after just 5 years. It's not like we're paying peanuts at $15k per student to get these results. Only 5.3% of residents under the poverty line as well, so that's not an excuse either.
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:5, Interesting)
The caveat is that you frequently have to go to grad school to be qualified to teach, and grad school prices are rising much faster than public school salaries. Of course housing prices and food prices are also rising faster than salaries. Every career that used to be "just enough to get by" is in danger of falling out of the bottom of the middle class. When you have something like modern public school teaching, where most of the potential creativity and chance to influence young intellects has been replaced with neck deep bureaucracy and a focus on preparing for the next evaluation test, there isn't even a "contribute to the community" sliver lining any more. Public schools in America are broken.
Re:The "dumbing down" and muddying of math continu (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was in high school I tutored. One of my (junior high) math students had a problem where she was supposed to add two vectors. So I started to show her how to decompose them into orthogonal components and... she told me that's not how they learned in class. Oh? So how did they teach you how to do it?
Well, first you draw a diagram. So far so good. With a ruler. Uh, okay, seems a bit over the top, but whatever. Then you draw a line from the start of one vector to the end of the other. Mmm kay. Then you measure the distance with your ruler....
Flash forward to my one (required) undergrad business course where the recommended method for solving a system of linear equations was... drawing a graph and visually identifying where the lines cross.
Slashdot heresy (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no need for most math instruction in school!
Everybody has to take algebra in school. Everyone must pass it more or less to graduate from high school. You can't get any kind of decent job without a high school degree.
But less than one in a hundred thousand people will every use algebra. For anything. For the rest of their life!
"But learning algebra helps students to learn how to think!" So does spending four years learning 13th century Ukrainian grammar. So does learning anything stupid and useless.
So if the math tests are getting easier, fine! The vast majority of people who aren't destined to become rocket scientists don't need to learn math and don't need to put into a situation where their future career depends on learning a difficult subject that they will never use.
Math is a fetish of the educational establishment in the US and other countries. It used to be learning Latin, but that requirement was finally waived about thirty years ago. After the language had been dead for 1800 years. That goes to show what a bunch of cement-heads the teachers and the educational establishment are in the US. I understand that the situation is worse in other countries. So if the youth of America are the dead last of the civilized world in their mastery of mathematical concepts, so what!?! If you are never going to use a subject, what the fuck difference does it make if you don't learn it well?
I'm a firmware programmer and electronics technician. I've used algebra once in fifty years. I did OK in it in school, but I hated it. I wish that every hour spent learning this stupid and worthless subject could have been spent instead learning the Beatles and Rolling Stones guitar licks. Something fantastic that would be useful for my entire life!
But no, some asshole with a Master's degree insisted that we all had to learn fucking algebra.
Now I know that you like math. You're reading this on Slashdot, for Christ's sake. But seriously, guys, it's not for everyone. Don't judge people by their fucking math scores.
Re:Maths has changed / evolved... (Score:4, Interesting)
Here, you've provided me an excellent demonstration of why we need game theory in high school, because your post neglects the vitally important concept of opportunity cost [wikipedia.org], something that I'd much rather the general populace had exposure to than something as useless as trig identities. The opportunity cost of teaching trig identities when you could be teaching, say, opportunity costs, is way too high. Trig is not even close to the best thing we could be spending our time on.
Besides, optometrists and surveyors are invited to take specialized courses in trig identities, just as the mere fact that I took a course on the mathematics of evolutionary computation doesn't even begin to imply that everybody in high school should learn about that stuff. Time is finite. Opportunity costs are important. Trig identities are too expensive and displacing a lot of stuff that is both useful in real life and more useful to mathematicians, who, like I said, don't consider them important.
(Actually, the disconnect between real mathematicians and mathematical education is truly staggering once you fully understand it. The educational community, and I say this with full consideration to the people involve, wouldn't know math if it bit them on the ass.)
Re:Maths has changed / evolved... (Score:1, Interesting)
If you look at the pdf of sample problems (as linked to in the article), you will see that the geometry problems from the 50s and 60s test the ability of students to solve geometry problems that are useful in doing good engineering drawings. This skill is no longer needed because we have very good 3-D CAD tools (and nowadays, for the most part, engineering is just using powerpoint or ooimpress anyway). The newer geometry questions (from the 90s/00s) test things like your ability to visualize the relationship between 3-D geometry and the mathmatics describing it, which is much more useful when you end up in a job working CAD tools. There is nothing wrong with abandoning the old, less useful, problems. It is just progress. Simplification in this case is a good thing.
Similarly, the newer problems focus on things like vectors, matrices, factorization, etc., which are again very useful in computer algorithms. No one (or very few) write down complicated equations on paper anymore. We write down simple equations that are coupled to describe complex systems. Then we solve them over and over again with a computer. Again, this is just progress, and it is good progress.
I consider the rash of recent articles about the current state of education to be alarmist FUD. Our kids are more intelligent than ever before. They work harder than ever before. It takes an insane amount of work to get straight A's in school. You also end up sacrificing a lot of your normal childhood experiences. I think we need to focus less on the hard skills and focus more on the soft (social) skills, which are the keys to sucess in the modern world.
BTW, I have a Master's degree in electrical engineering. I got straight A's most of my life. In the real world, I use computers to solve all of my math problems.
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Their children get better subsidies for education (they still have to make the grade).
2) They get subsidies for further education (if they are a good teacher).
Also, sometimes it's not just that more teachers are needed. If someone can figure out a system where the teachers can spend more time teaching and less time doing administrative crap, things might work out better.
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet... [wikipedia.org]
-l
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:General request! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummm... I believe pretty much every English speaking country outside of the US says "maths" rather than "math". Don't forget all the Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans and so on!
Also, in non-English speaking countries, it tends to depend on their history and location as to what "form" of English they prefer - most of mainland Europe for example, will learn British English, and so will also say "maths" (there are some exceptions - there's a strong shift towards US English in the Netherlands); whereas I believe in South America they tend to learn US English and would be more likely to say "math".
Re:Pay teachers more; increase top tax rate (Score:4, Interesting)
That's been a bad trend over the past
It's the same "root cause" as teacher's not being able to afford to live in the communities they teach in. Not enough resources into education -- too many resources invested in high-end of life and the adult stages (including, recently, this war that is causing oil prices to go up (war->deficit spending->'printing' money (how close is US debt to 3 T$ (Tera-$)?)->dollar deflates in value as massive 'unbacked-money' is created, commodities (incl oil) go up) -> US goes bankrupt)). But look at how much the rich spend on luxury goods --- increase in cruise ships, vacation spots -- extremely expensive hobbies/sports...so much wealth concentrated in top 1% people -- but it's the 'masses' that are taught in schools -- and that's where the dollar share has been shrinking the most.
There was an opinion piece in the WSJ that tried to show how increasing the top tax rate didn't increase the government's tax-income as a percentage of GDP -- what it unintentionally showed, actually was GDP going up as
the top tax rate rose, and GDP going down as it fell -- so the % going to government appeared level. GDP going
up or down reflects almost directly goes into a rise or fall of the "standard-of-living" of the nation. That meant that as the top tax rate fell, the average standard of living for the nation as a whole fell -- and vice versa.
GDP has fallen to lowest levels in my lifetime under the top tax rate falling from over 70% to the 20-25% it is now. All that was Reagan-& the Bushes rolling back taxes on the rich while using government deficit to inflate the economy. While Clinton didn't raise taxes -- he did manage to get the deficit from around 2-billion to almost breaking even by the time he left office -- now it's up higher than ever.
Bush needs to be out of office so yesterday. I think my postings are too long and people don't get this far...
*sigh*...just supposed to shut-up while the nation is tanking to hell...
Good thing they nixed him the first year (Score:3, Interesting)
New York City decides to fire a 5 year veteran (tenured after 3) for gross incompetence. Costs $250k, 2 years.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05272008/news/regionalnews/253g_to_fire_one_teacher_112703.htm [nypost.com]
A flow chart of what you need to do to fire a NYC teacher. Warning: PDF. And its big, and I'm not talking file size.
http://oldsite.reason.com/0610/howtofireanincompetentteacher.pdf [reason.com]
Re:Pay teachers more (Score:4, Interesting)
Knowing more advanced math is not required to be able to teach high school mathematics; it does, however, make a teacher better able to teach high school math by giving them a better and richer understanding of the material they have to teach. Sure, a terrible teacher who has that extra appreciation of the material isn't a great substitute for a fabulous teacher who doesn't, but in general I think we can expect the distribution of quality teachers to be roughly the same between those who seek a degree in math and those who don't... given that, on average, those with a degree in the subject will be that much better.
Read first, buddy. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have found very little in Milton Friedman's writings that I can wholeheartedly agree with.
Well that says a lot more about you than about him. Friedman, a Nobel Laureate, was one of the most important 20th century economists. His contributions to the field are on the level of Friedrich Hayek. If you ever find yourself disagreeing with Friedman on monetary theory or consumption analysis, then you should engage in some serious self-reflection on why you have gotten it wrong. You will find that the overwhelming majority of economists will tell you the same thing. I highly recommend that you put down Free to Choose, and pick up A Monetary History of the United States.
[a] corporation's management is under a legal obligation to ensure that the company makes as much profit as possible
Well, I own three corporations and no one has ever made me aware of that law. Could you please cite it? I'll not hold my breath.
a few moments' thought should be enough to show that any for-profit entity operating in the field of public services is going to provide the least possible service at the highest possible rates.
This is absurd, and patently so. A few moments' reflection would yield this: Let's say you run a school under your model (lowest service and highest cost), and let's further say that I open up a school next door to your school that provides higher service at the same cost. Whose school do you think would be more profitable?
In reality, the free market will supply many different products and many different price points. Can a Safeway survive next door to a Whole Foods? Of course it can. And what can you see happening? Have you been inside a Safeway recently? You'll see better quality foods and more organic foods. That's free market competition raising the bar for everybody.
Fobbing such services off onto the private sector produces other problems as well, as corporations are by their very definition protected by legal limits on their liability.
This is silly. There are plenty of private daycare centers, and those are incorporated. Private schools are incorporated. You'll find that the officers of corporations have little liability protection for willful misconduct and illegal activity. Just ask Dennis Kozlowski or Jeff Skilling, both of whom you'd have to visit in prison.
Why would companies suddenly spring up to take over the role of schools?
What difference does it make? So what if private enterprise does not create any schools? Or did you not even read Free to Choose? Friedman advocated vouchers, not the selling off of public schools to private enterprise. If public schools are meeting the needs of the community, then certainly no for-profit schools would survive. But then, how is that a problem? All that means is that the public school system is A-OK.
His model is also flawed in ignoring the very real geographical constraints of schools
I don't get your point here. If the market dictates a need for a school in a certain location then it will spring up there, not 1 hour away.
Why would parents just suddenly decide they wanted to give money?
You ever hear of private school?
But if, as Friedman apparently describes, the basic idea is that the government would subsidize education, then the basic budget should be completely covered,
Ahh, OK. I see you haven't even read Free to Choose, yet feel the need to open your mouth anyway. That explains a lot.
Primer: Friedman envisions a voucher system where each pupil gets a voucher equal to the amount the public school system spends per pupil. That pupil can take that voucher and enroll in any school, including the local public school. Private schools could open up and accept as tuition either the face value of the voucher, or the voucher plus a supplement (just as private schools currently charge tuition). I suppose if a school