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Re: Engage To Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates with STEM Degree
Posted:
Apr 1, 2012 12:08 AM
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(I prematurely hit the send button on my last reply)
Here are the two main faults in your analysis that cause your arguments to fail (in other words that cause you to predict a result that everyone here knows first hand is false, that we have succeeded in teaching scores of students calculus).
1. You cite comparisons of very poor performance against very poor performance. The scores you cite are meaningless because those very same students you claim are successful cannot finish even one free response problem and they miss most of the MC problems. You claim that a student that scored a "1" is rocking because compared to other students in the world they score higher. If they were rocking then how come they failed to correctly answer over 90% of the AP exam? A contradiction like that Paul should be the end of that thread but instead you proclaim that 2 + 2 IS EQUAL TO 5!
2. You misunderstand how a "cumulative" exam works. A cumulative exam starts off with basic conceptual questions and works its way up through whole questions. The quality of the exam depends on how long it takes to get to the whole problems and where the cutoff scores lie. I did an extensive study of the 2003 and 2008 exams and found that the typical student scoring a "3" answered mostly just the basic MC questions and almost none of the FR problems. Remeber, they miss 60% of the test. They most certainly did not succeed at calculus. Cumulative exams are not a good fit for final exams and many courses do not use this format, especially if they are serious about whether a student succeeded or failed. This "cumulative" exam format became popular with mass education because it is easy and every student gets a prize.
By the way, if you talked to AP teachers then you would understand that the students can't do algebra.
The AP exam results are all the evidence I need. That should be all the evidence anyone needs. The questions are right there to examine and every 5 years they release the exams and some detail for the results. They are fraud just like Florida's test scores are fraud. Failing has become the new passing. And yes, this grade inflation started in earnest in colleges and now has infected high school.
The end result of all this is that college is a bad investment for many students now. It is their version of the housing crisis. They will lose their entire investment and be in debt. And here is how it is going to play out from here on. Many of these students will default on that debt and the credit will dry up. We all saw this coming. Even when I went to college there was a trickle of students misusing loans to pay for an education (and other things not even having to do with education) that they were doing very poorly in. Well, like with the housing crisis, that trickle turned into a flood. The colleges had some reservations in the beginning but those reservations only delayed the inevitable. The flood is now here, the system is broke, and the defaults are on there way.
This country has a very serious problem with socialism. The persons in charge of our socialistic programs simply refuse to make the tough calls that are required of them. We elect them to manage our government and our schools and they fail time and time again to do their job. When we really need them the most they balk. Medicare is unsustainable, their answer is to turn it over to private companies. Education is blowing up, their answer is to turn it over to private companies. These are not their answers because they are the right things to do. These are their answers because they do not want the responsibility they were elected to.
Bob Hansen
On Mar 31, 2012, at 12:50 PM, Paul Tanner <upprho@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Robert Hansen <bob@rsccore.com> wrote:
>> Why do you think that passing (getting a 3) on the AP calculus exam is
>> "prepared" to do anything having to do with mathematics beyond arithmetic?
>
> Because ALL of the objective, general - as in non-anecdotal -
> scientific evidence that holds up under rigorous analysis says so.
> Your repeated claims that "in my day" there were more well educated
> people in mathematics is not objective evidence - it's not evidence at
> all. I in my post
>
> "Re: Discussion: Do US Math Teachers Suck?"
> http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7752982
>
> give a partial list of all this objective, general - as in
> non-anecdotal - scientific evidence that holds up under rigorous
> analysis. (Reader: Follow all the links I give to get a more complete
> set of information from all that I cited.)
>
> Part of this objective and non-anecdotal evidence is that study I keep
> citing (including in the above post), where in that study the average
> scaled score on that TIMSS Advanced retake of the all those who passed
> a national calculus exam with a 3, 4, or 5 was VERY MUCH higher than
> the average scaled scores of even the highest performing countries the
> world in either the 1995 or 2008 TIMSS Advanced. They scored an
> average of 596 while the top scoring country in 1995 (France) scored
> 557 and the top scoring country in 2008 (Russian Federation) scored
> 561. That is a MASSIVE difference. Even those who failed their
> national calculus exam with a 1 or 2 scored 565! The two groups
> together, which is the entire sample of AP Calculus students who took
> an AP Calculus exam, scored 573. This scientific study used the exact
> same sampling techniques used by all the countries in the 1995 and
> 2008 tests. That means that even if that sample of AP Calculus
> students who took an AP Calculus exam were skewed upwards a bit in
> comparison to the set of all AP Calculus students who took an AP
> Calculus exam, the skewing would not be that much and so the general
> statistical comparison to the highest scoring countries in the world
> would still stand - the average student who takes and especially the
> average student who takes and passes a national calculus exam is as
> well educated or is better educated or even much better educated in
> advanced mathematics than the average student in the highest scoring
> countries in the world in TIMSS Advanced 1995 and 2008.
>
> But it is also the case that just good old fashioned common sense says
> so. To say that the average high school senior who has learned
> calculus well enough to pass a national calculus exam, an exam that is
> cumulative over an entire year of high school calculus that is
> equivalent to either one or two semesters of college calculus
> depending on the class, cannot possibly do the mathematics in 8th
> grade Algebra 1 is one of the most fantastically beyond common sense
> and fantastically beyond stupid things that anyone could ever say.
> Think about it. By the above study, such a claim says that even those
> students from the highest scoring countries in the world who scored
> highest on TIMSS Advanced in 1995 and in 2008 could not do 8th grade
> Algebra 1 math. How is such a claim anything else but one of the most
> fantastically beyond common sense and fantastically beyond stupid
> things that anyone could ever say?
>
>> And let's keep
>> in mind that a "3" today is about one and a half grades lower than it was 20
>> years ago, according to the lowering of the cutoff scores over that period
>> of time.
>
> If this is true, then it merely reflects what is going on in college
> calculus classes. And since it does not in any way negate the fact
> that these aforementioned hundreds of thousands of students could
> major in a STEM area of study if they were to put their minds to it,
> there is no preparation gap.
>
>> The majority of students taking AP calculus
>> have no desire for calculus (or algebra and precalculus for that matter).
>
> So what? The vast majority of those who major in a STEM area of study
> also would rather not have to take the math classes they have to take
> to get their degrees. It's always been that way. To say otherwise is
> to claim that some mythical world of human beings used to exist on
> this planet a few decades ago.
>
> I again challenge you you back up your claims with objective, general
> - - as in non-anecdotal - scientific evidence that holds up under
> rigorous analysis.
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