Posted on 06/08/2010 12:46:17 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
When does 2 + 2 = 5?
When you're taking the state math test.
Despite promises that the exams -- which determine whether students advance to the next grade -- would not be dumbed down this year, students got "partial credit" for wrong answers after failing to correctly add, subtract, multiply and divide. Some got credit for no answer at all.
"They were giving credit for blatantly wrong things," said an outraged Brooklyn teacher who was among those hired to score the fourth-grade test.
State education officials had vowed to "strengthen" and "increase the rigor" of both the questions and the scoring when about 1.2 million kids in grades 3 to 8 -- including 450,000 in New York City -- took English exams in April and math exams last month.
But scoring guides obtained by The Post reveal that kids get half-credit or more for showing fragments of work related to the problem -- even if they screw up the calculations or leave the answer blank.
Examples in the fourth-grade scoring guide include:
* A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12.
* A miscalculation that 28 divided by 14 equals 4 instead of 2 is "partially correct" if the student uses the right method to verify the wrong answer.
* Setting up a division problem to find one-fifth of $400, but not solving the problem -- and leaving the answer blank -- gets half-credit.
* A kid who subtracts 57 cents from three quarters for the right change and comes up with 15 cents instead of 18 cents still gets half-credit.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Hope these kids won’t be building bridges in the near future ...
but their self-esteam will never be stronger...well that is until they’re actually called upon to justify their abilities like during job interviews or job performances.
But thats were union and government jobs come into play.
You can’t make silk purses out of sows ears!
ir smrte. U gif me job!
Haven’t you heard? There are no wrong answers anymore. The only thing that matters is whether or not the student is sincere in formulating his answer.
They will probably be on welfare or holding some public office. But then there isn't much difference, is there.
This supports my pessimistic view of Western culture. The problem is equally serious over here in Holland.
I shudder to think: these kids might become doctors and prosecutors. What if a doc doesn’t have an inkling how to make the proper dilution in an emergency situation? Or if killers are set free because the prosecution wasn’t able to formulate its case properly?
Are we doomed? If this continues, and if Islam pays proper attention to the things that matter in education, guys like Ahmedinejad will only have to blow once into the air in 2040 or so. And the West will be theirs...
Almost fifty years ago one of my sons had a test question showing a rectangle with a line from one corner to the mid point of the opposite side to the opposite corner along the same line as the first point. The large triangle was shaded. He got the “correct” answer by saying the 1/3 of the area was shaded. When I pointed out to the teacher that 1/2 of the figure was shaded she blathered for a while and finally said that they were just trying to teach them fractions, not areas. She didn’t have a clue and didn’t understand what I was telling her.
They need stupid people who are likely to vote Democrat.
Reminds me of the OJ trial where the prosecution's expert, an FBI "scientist" didn't have any idea how to calculate the area within a circle. The defense made a fool out of him and the judge chimed in to decree that PI was "two and a quarter." People who wonder how OJ got off probably didn't watch much of the trial.
OMG
This is all about raising average grades so that the school overall gets favored status. More awards and therefore more money. It has nothing to do with actual learning.
Right on. This is a template for creating a permanent democrat majority through permanent incompetency and dependency.
I think this has been going on for some time. I graduated from a local college a couple of years ago and although there were not many ‘just out of high school’ kids in our night classes there were a few. I took Technical Math and Business Calculations classes and when they failed a test they always asked the instructor to give them partial credit for the parts they got right. The college instructors always refused stating that in math there were no partially correct answers. It was either right or wrong. The kids were furious! Obviously they had been used to getting a passing grade for wrong answers.
Geez... that’s what I meant, exactly!
Makes sense to me. If you’re smarter than the “President” of the United States, then you’re smart enough to pass an elementary school test.
I have a few employees in my company who will never even begin to reach their full earning potential simply because they were failed by a public school system that considers an hour of watching "The Little Mermaid" to be an hour of education.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.