|
|
Re: Discussion: Do US Math Teachers Suck?
Posted:
Mar 28, 2012 12:42 AM
|
|
Do you mean to say that students who take the AP Calculus courses for purposes
other than getting credit for college courses are prepared for those courses?
I don't recall addressing any of the issues you mention below---and
don't entirely
disagree with you. But I will stand by my statement that one of the
possibilities (only
one) for the the low pass rate is that a large fraction of students
are unprepared to
enroll in a calculus course.
As to aiming for "in-depth conceptual understanding of the normally troublesome
components of calculus," I'm afraid that's something most college courses don't
do either.
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Clyde Greeno @ MALEI <greeno@malei.org> wrote:
> " But it seems clear that
> a large fraction of Florida's students who enroll in AP Calculus are
> not prepared to do so,..."
>
> Woah! The AP Calculus program was set up and run by the College Board for
> purposes of educating high school students in some or all of elementary
> calculus. The AP test scores reflect *only* the number of students who
> qualify for college credits at specific levels.
>
> Many high school students who enroll in AP calculus have no intention of
> testing out of college courses. Many use it only for advanced prep for
> calculus ... or even to decide whether or not the should think about STEM
> majors in college.
>
> Many schools give students the opportunity of exploring calculus, without
> expecting them to get college credit. A 70% failure rate on AP exams does
> *not* equate with a only a 30% success rate for the HS courses. Depending
> on what the schools are trying to do for the students who enroll in their
> calculus courses, the actual success rate for a course might be 95%, while
> only 5% pass the AP test.
>
> [Indeed, a high school course that aims for in-depth conceptual
> understanding of the normally troublesome components of calculus might not
> even be designed to produce good AP scored.]
>
> Let's be thinking!
- --Louis A. Talman
Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Metropolitan State College of Denver
<http://rowdy.mscd.edu/%7Etalmanl>
|
|
