<p>At the college level, any precalculus math would be considered remedial. Normal progression for a college bound student in high school math results in completion of precalculus in 12th grade, so that the student is ready to take calculus as a college freshman.</p>
<p>The SAT-R math section limits the amount of math used because most students take the SAT-R before completing the usual 12th grade trigonometry and precalculus course. So a high score on the SAT-R math section does not indicate readiness for calculus in college, although a low score should be considered a big warning sign regarding preparation for college math.</p>
<p>Statistical data are good for the masses but at some point reality hits home; if I had a lousy teacher or two in HS Math and was counting the days to get out, you better believe my math skills going to college (STEM or basket weaving major) would have warning signs. </p>
<p>I attended a Calc course at Cajun State for a month while waiting for the department to evaluate my transfer credit (completed Diff Eq in college back home). That month really opened my eyes about the lousy HS teaching and even college teaching I had back home - in a country renowned for its math abilities. Eventually the school got the transfer credit right and I bailed out of the class. </p>
<p>DD1 tested & SAT’d into Calc I in her college, but decided to take one semester of pre-Calc in college before taking Calc I - That pre-Calc was the best money I spent so far. Her prof, TA, and homework / test setup were light years ahead of her (nationally ranked and best in our state) HS. I have already explained how our ‘public’ HS math teachers make serious $ tutoring on the side. At her college, they assigned her a personal tutor (Senior Math major) for 2-3 hours a week for free plus more review sessions than I thought possible. </p>
<p>So, remedial or not, DD1 wasted 3 credit hours and gained a whole new world of appreciation for math. She won’t be a math major for sure, but she won’t grow up hating it either.</p>
<p>If 18% of students aren’t ready for college calculus freshmen year, then that’s “remedial” coursework. If students need to repeat HS algebra, then that’s a question of whether they’re ready for college. May be reflection on student; may be reflection on their HS curriculum.</p>
<p>May be a reflection on the teachers - as I said, our high school offers the entire AP & IB course list, is #1 in the state and nationally recognized, and yet allows people to teach that simply should not be teaching daycare. </p>
<p>In our school also, the more systemic issue is that while we believe we have a world class high school (and by most measures we do) our middle schools are a disaster. We teach the most basic (and important) course in serious math in middle school (algebra 1) and the level and competency that it’s taught is the make or break factor for the students a year later… </p>
<p>It’s easy to generalize and blame the student but there are root causes deeper than this.</p>
<p>I currently have a D in 8th grade algebra, and I have to say the curriculum is significantly dumbed down. This week (as an example) they are doing plots (box and whisker, stem and leaf…) which have NOTHING to do with algebra and they did them last year in 7th grade and the year before in 6th. It is the middle of the year and they have not been introduced to quadratic equations yet. Is this actually algebra or remedial middle school math?</p>
<p>I can trace the lack of math interest in DD1 and several of her friends thru HS math to a specific and lousy middle school teacher years earlier. All the girls had her, and if my calculator could turn itself on it’d probably get an A in the class too… </p>
<p>Finally she was reassigned to 8th grade science and DD2 has her… Sigh.</p>
<p>The school district now requires an additional test plus the state standardized test % to be such and such to place into 9th grade math - before a B or better was automatic placement.</p>
<p>The schools in our state generally have to use a particular vendor for curricular materials in math because that vendor participated on the standards group for the state and their materials align most closely with the state standards. The materials are generally considered to be poor. We’ve had this debate on our town forum for many years and some of the schools supplement the “mandated” curriculum with their own materials - these schools typically do much better than the other schools but the additional work is borne by the teachers and they aren’t compensated for it.</p>
<p>My recommendation to parents that ask is to get Singapore Math and have your kids work through the books on their own time. There is one charter school that doesn’t use the “mandated” curricular materials - they have the best math and science scores in the state.</p>
<p>In Maryland, teachers can get certified K through 8 and though I do not know the specifics of certification , my guess is that the teachers who teach algebra and geometry in our middle schools do not have a major in math. I know that my own kids’ teachers had varying degrees of ability in the teaching of math.</p>
<p>BCEagle, the problem with our math curriculum is that even if you solve every homework, sample test, unit test, chapter test, and so on in the textbook, you’re still not going to see 50% of what will come on the actual test. Not specific problems, but general types of problems and even material needed. In general, the book problems, homeworks, tests, and even website online tests are tremendously easy and simple compared to what is given on the tests…</p>
<p>The HS is very protective of old tests and I had to resolve to going to the principal and near the school board to get DD1’s tests for home review. The school’s answer? “hire a tutor”.</p>
<p>Every few years they change vendors for curriculums (? :)) and tests and the like, and it seems the curriculums are dumbed down a notch. DD1’s Geometry book (never returned for some reason) is a prized hands-me-down to DD2 since the book DD2 will be using next fall is the “chapter book” version compared to the one used 5 years earlier.</p>
<p>And, mind you, this issue is only in the math department. I have nothing but praise for English, Social Studies, Chem, Phys, and the myriad of electives they offer.</p>
<p>Queen’s Mom—It took me a couple readings of your last post to figure out why you are taking 8th grade algebra and only getting a D in the class :).</p>
<p>I don’t know your D’s class, obviously, however, it is possible they are reviewing topics as needed and refreshing memories for upcoming standardized tests. Kids need repetition and you will find that even if she is in a high level math class, just because they are reviewing topics covered in previous grades doesn’t mean it is dumbed down. It’s pretty standard practice since people do forget things.</p>
<p>OK, I may be beating a dead horse here, but I don’t think comments #61 and 71 saying that there’s a high rate of need for math remediation in UW Madison freshman are correct. The most recent document I can find online shows that .2% of freshman(2010) at UW Madison needed math remediation. However, other colleges in the UW system do have much higher rates. Check out page 15 in this pdf:</p>
<p>Finding math problems is not difficult - we use a variety of sources, but one should be up front with their students and let them know that the problems in the test won’t be anything as easy as the book. Since tests don’t come home unless an epic battle with the school and / or school board occurs, it’s hard to judge what’s going on.</p>
<p>It sort of reminded me of how we were taught calc and differential equations back at Elbonia State College… three problems, three hours, and if you did not know how to conjure the appropriate Harry Potter transformation on the problem in the first 15 minutes, you were toast and might as well have 3 days…</p>
<p>This was the way that it was at my son’s university. The rationale there was that there is such a wide range of performance among students that there needs to be really hard problems to differentiate between students. Of course that doesn’t apply to high school classes with much smaller classes.</p>
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<p>Sounds like they don’t want to update their tests annually to save effort. Perhaps some pens with cameras in them could solve the problem of prior year tests.</p>
<p>To get the 0.2% number, they must be defining “need remediation” to be a lower standard than being at grade level in math through completion of high school.</p>
<p>“Some students have math placements well below the college algebra threshold. These students need to complete remedial math. (Math 95 at UW-Madison) before they are eligible to take Intermediate Algebra and then College Algebra (the course that meets the QR-A requirement). Nationally, 16% of first-year students at public four-year institutions require math remediation. At UW-Madison, only 1% of first year students need math remediation-between 50 and 60 new UW-Madison students each year.”</p>
<p>turbo93 hit the nail on the head about the problem with the math curriculum in our high school as well. I remember the year my D could successfully do all the problems given in class, all the problems in her math text and online resources for the chapter, and yet was barely passing the exams. (I even posted a thread about it!) We hired a tutor, who told us D knows the material perfectly well, and was at a loss about what to help her with. We too had no access to the exams to find out what D wasn’t getting correct. The math dept. philosophy was that honor students needed to be able to apply what they learned to problems 3 levels of difficulty above those taught in class. It was really frustrating for students who were smart kids but needed to actually practice and learn skills to solve those difficult problems.</p>