From: Darrell Hoover <darrellhoover@hotmail.com>
To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion
Date: 2004091500:03:27
Subject: Re: Rounding is MORE ACCURATE!!!


I agree with you entirely.  I taught math (elementary through high
school) for eight years and never found any usefulness in grading
students on their mastery of front end estimation.  Rounding is far
more useful and accurate.  Estimating means that there is more than
one correct answer, but rounding requires some level of precision (to
the nearest hundred, ten, et cetera); however, in our current
curriculum, only one answer is correct, and a student can get an F in
front end estimation after studying it for two weeks, because he
missed the book answer half of the time in a skill that is useless to
begin with.  The people writing the test criteria need to hear our
voice and eliminate this waste of time.  To me, it is only an art and
not real math.  It's an aid and not a solution.  It is not science at
all.

Darrell

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