Are are American students struggling with math?

There you go.
The unpleasant underbelly of self esteem based education as opposed to knowledge based education. If there is no underlying substance to that self esteem then what you have is extraordinarily fragile people whose every day life is just one assault on their ego after another.

 

Standardized testing is how we recognized there is a problem. How to solve the problem -- If the average person set in the classroom for one day they could diagnose the problem and then give you a solution. It ain't rocket science.

 

The purpose of standardized testing is to determine if education is happening. Not to make it better.

 

But it makes it worse.

Teachers teach to the test. Like it or not, that is what happens. It makes the quality of education worse.

What has happened to the quality of education since standardized tests have been implemented? The good ole days that people like to say had better public education didn't have standardized testing.

 

I was a recruit instructor in the Navy Reserves and I "taught to the test". Nothing wrong to that as most test contain the knowledge that should be learned. It makes a good teaching guide or subject outline. Too bad the phrase is used as a negative term. When your grade school teacher told you to memorize the alphabet or memorize the multiplication tables or learn to spell 20 words you were being "taught to the test". If you teach math and then give a test you have "taught to the test".

 

Nope. It's a terrible way to teach. It doesn't care about comprehension, just memorization.

 

That wasn't the issue. The issue was why standardized testing would work better in countries with government healthcare.

 

It's not a knock on blacks, it's just that the article mentioned blacks, I didn't.

As I mentioned above, when kids aren't learning the essentials then less classroom time should be spent on things that won't advance a kid in life. CRT and gender stuff are not essential, math is. If you had kid in school, would you rather she/he know about all the different genders or how to perform basic math?

 

Standardized testing is a metric; you are measuring what's learned, able to be performed, and retained, not "improving education."

If you can't measure what you are teaching, then they are probably not learning it.

 

Without standardized testing, how do you know how well kids are performing?

 

Education has gotten steadily worse ever since standardized testing was implemented.

 

How did we know in the 50s 60s and 70s?

 

Comprehension is included in the teaching. You teach that some things must me memorized to long term memory and you also teach why. Students comprehend at different levels, some comprehend music, some don't, some comprehend math, some don't. When all students can't pass a math test there is a big problem. Send in a proven problem solver.

 

I want them to teach the test. It is a proficiency test after all. It measures the things the kids need to know to be competent. There have been standardized test since Roosevelt if not before. Hell the chinese had them during the Ming Dynasty.

 

The current model of standardized testing didn't come in to widespread use in the US until the 1980s. It has been a massive failure.

They have been teaching to the test for at least 30 years. It ain't working.

 

How would you know if there were no standardized testing to measure the "quality" of pre standardized testing students?

 

Not to mention the teachers.

 

BS, I took the Iowa and others from the time I was in the third grade. I took the SAT, ACT and PSAT in the sixties when I was in high school.

 

So do you think public education is better today that it was in the 1950s?

 

I was tested in school from the '40's through the '50's. I was also given a 'report card' to take home for my parents to look over and sign so I could return it to the teacher. I well remember competing with my classmates to see who could get the best grade. Fear of my parents, fear of my teacher, fear of the school principal, helped me to learn. Fear can be a great motivator.

 

If they can buy R-rated books for kindergartners, they can buy math and science books.

 

Nonsense. And even were it true. Wrote knowledge beats the hell out of ignorance every day of the week.

 

I assume you are taking guesses only, since any data on student performance, like a quantum observance, alters what's being observed.

Anyway I thought you would provide data that testing reduces performance?

 

I started school in 1984. At my school, my group was the first ones who had a standardized test every year. Before that it was about ever 4th year. Maybe we were way behind the rest of the country.

I'm not talking about SAT, ACT or that sort of thing. Those are used for college entrance, they have an entirely different purpose.

 

Not sure what made you think that.