30% of the people who took the Algebra 2 SOL passed. 33% of the people who took the Geometry SOL passed. Hmmmm.... who's fault is that?

Read the article about Math tests requiring more thought this year in VA.


Link to article on "Harder math tests in VA"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/va-students-prepare-to-take-tougher-math-standards-exams/2012/05/17/gIQAJYHuVU_story.html




Author is Emma Brown; Students in Va. facing harder math exams. Friday, May 18th METRO section

Tests for Math are much more harder this year; parents should not be alarmed if their children get lower scores on the new tests than they did on previous versions, said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education.

“It’s an indication that the state is expecting more, not that the student is necessarily learning less,” he said.

Some multiple-choice questions have more than one correct answer; others require students to go beyond plugging numbers into formulas and instead manipulate the formulas to reach an answer. Rather than being asked to calculate the volume of a box, for example, students might be asked to figure out how the volume of a box with a given height — six inches, say — would change if that dimension shrank by half.

In sixth grade and up this year — and in all grades beginning next year — the tests will be delivered online. Students might be asked not only to interpret graphs but also to create them. Sometimes they’ll have to supply their own response instead of plucking an answer from among a set of choices.

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> Read the article about Math tests requiring more
> thought this year in VA.
>
>
> Link to article on "Harder math tests in VA"
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/va-s
> tudents-prepare-to-take-tougher-math-standards-exa
> ms/2012/05/17/gIQAJYHuVU_story.html
>
>
>
>
> Author is Emma Brown; Students in Va. facing
> harder math exams. Friday, May 18th METRO section

There is no "might" about it. Math SOLs now have multiple-answer questions, correctly plotting points on a graph and/or number line, typing in answers rather than multiple choice, manipulating bar graphs, etc.

Anthony V Wrote:
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> 30% of the people who took the Algebra 2 SOL
> passed. 33% of the people who took the Geometry
> SOL passed. Hmmmm.... who's fault is that?


"who's"??? ("Who is fault is that"???)

My guess is you failed your 4th grade English SOL.

As soon as we stop pointing fingers, we might be able to seriously improve education. The truth is that the blame does not rest with any one group of people (teachers, parents, unions, politicians, testing companies). Each person needs to point the finger back at himself/herself. Only then will the real learning start. All of us have been a part of this path to ruin. Nobody can say that they have the answer or have been clean in this. Lots of people want to go around with a halo over their heads, but those are the very people who are preventing us from getting to a real solution.

the fault is the people who think SOLs are a good idea to begin with-this "in the box" thinking is flawed as is NCLB, the worst piece of bipartisan garbage to ever come down the path.

what are they going to do about the 40-60% who are not passing algebra II because it tests something they have not been taught, critical thinking and is also, as usual in virginia poorly conceptualized and of course, test sucks because it was put together in the summer by math teachers...

The test was made by Pearson, a textbook company. The problem with the new tests is that many teachers have been teaching only the SOLs, which are designed to show *minimum* competency. When you teach students the minimum, you are usually not teaching them to think critically. The SOLs have hurt students tremendously.

I don't understand why only the SOLs would be taught. Shouldn't the teacher be teaching Algebra 2 (the subject) and then the test is just something that happens and for which a student would be way over prepared (especially in FCPS) if the student were passing the course? Or am I dreaming of the land that was supposed to be, but never happened once the testing frenzy arose?

I wonder if having things like E-Cart along the way (all multiple choice) and constant top down monitoring and data analysis made it worse? In the quest to save students from "bad" teachers, you get teach to the test. Standardizing human beings is not a great idea.

Yes, hmmmmmm, you described what has happened perfectly. The only thing you left out is that the teachers who are *not* teaching to the test get slammed for being too tough and not giving enough As.