Above: Average IQ Scores by Race (U.S., 2008)
Posted on 12/18/2017 9:34:06 PM PST by GuavaCheesePuff
SAN DIEGO—Anthony Rodriguez recalled sitting in a remedial math class at Grossmont College, bored out of his mind. The professor was teaching basic math skills that the 18-year-old had already learned in high school. Rodriguez was forced into remedial math by the community college’s placement test, which assesses a student’s ability to succeed in for-credit, higher-education classes. Rodriguez’s placement-test scores dictated at least a year of these low-level math courses. They cost the same as regular classes but don’t count toward a bachelor’s degree. Each week, Rodriguez watched as fewer and fewer classmates showed up. Eventually, he dropped out too. “Who goes to college to learn what they were doing in high school?” he asked.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
She is very pleased with this.
Will there be some students who have the skills but just had a bad day when tested? Yes, and there should be an appeal or retest procedure. But I think many people in this stories are pretending that the community colleges are having a placement problem when the more likely problem is from poor excuses for public high school education in California.
Above: Average IQ Scores by Race (U.S., 2008)
This came up about five years ago in Virginia. Major local college mandated a test as you entered. Most folks failed math and had to accomplish a pre-college course (meaning it had zero credit attached). You were paying around $400 to be taught what you should have learned in high school.
I think what has happened here is that math got pushed down over the past thirty years, and people aren’t capable of relating math to actual problems. It’s like asking a kid....what’s a quarter of an hour, and ask the kid to make the short formula for that. Every single 13-year old kid should be able to make a simple formula. I would make a bet that fifty-percent of high school kids can’t do it (even at the 12th grade).
The professor was teaching basic math skills that the 18-year-old had already learned in high school. Rodriguez was forced into remedial math by the community college’s placement test …Bull. If he already knew the math, then he would have placed higher in the placement test.
When it came time for this little cholo to read, I was never more embarrassed for another human being in my life.
This little retard sat in class with his cholita novia. He began reading, tracing the words with his fingers, all the while with a puzzled look on his face and a hesitant, questioning voice. When he got to the hard words, he would stop, look at the teacher like he did in second grade for hher to rush over to his desk and help him with the word.
Remember, this was a four year state university, not a community college.
So yea, tell me again about the poor oppressed minorities.
I agree.
Math achievement tests were the most objective and the best grade predictive tests I ever took.
I consistently ranked above the 80th percentile, but I was never elite, and I always knew I was not competitive with the best math students in my high school or my college.
I had to take remedal math in college. My high school algebra course just didn’t cover the stuff I needed at the university level. BTW, who drops out of a course because it’s easy? Sounds more like he dropped out because wasn’t smart enough to do the math.
Ha. Reminds me of that Cheech and Chong song about Mexican Americans : "Mexican Americans take Spanish in High School and get a "B" …".
It represents a “dumbing down” of the college level curriculum, both at the community college and state college level.
This is the result of the problems in the state’s Kindergarten - 12 schools. The state publishes the results of grade level achievement tests. There is a demographic difference in students who meet grade level standards in English and Math.
See this article for a bar graph and discussion on the ethnic gap in English and Math scores.
I think I would understand this article better if the rational description of the problem was written in plain, logical English.
It’s Whitey’s Fault, that’s all you need to know.
The wording contradicts itself, if he’s relearning math that he allegedly already learned. And there are no more college placement tests in high school? They still have the SAT, I thought.
Having read the entire article it looks like they’re pushing putting kids directly into statistics designed for idiots, which really isn’t a math class. It’s a regurgitate formulas class that anyone can pass.
It was the Greeks Philosophers who established mathematics as the prerequisite to all high-level learning. Their reasoning for it was quite specific: It’s easy to pretend to be smart, but people who can’t do math are just not that smart. It’s both an important tool to work with the higher sciences and a good device for keeping stupid people out of higher learning.
Such twisted logic: “The old way—using placement tests—felt to Smith “like a segregation machine.””
So a test that is color blind and is administered to all incoming students is a segregation machine? It’s always someone’s fault, isn’t it? The students failed to learn what their peers learned but it was racism, really?
I was a tutor to disabled students and when I transferred to another college, tried to work again as a tutor, this time to English students. At some point I asked about the kinds of disabilities we were dealing with. The director gave me a cold look and said these were students who had no disabilities but had failed to learn preliminary English and were not ready for Freshman English. They hated the fact that their failed the placement test and felt singled out and punished based on their race. But ALL STUDENTS take that test and have to pass it.
The circular logic in the OP: Amid cries of racism, the schools did away with entrance tests and agreed to accept grades as qualifications for admittance (forget but I think it was top 20% of every high school). Instantly grade averages rose in high schools, ensuring that their students would automatically be accepted into Community colleges.
But once in, they hit the wall and had to take remedial classes. That’s why they were screened out in the first place - they weren’t ready. Solution? Claim racism and accept grades for placement in classes. Apparently having concurrent remedial coursework makes them feel better about arriving unprepared - but they still consider any impediment to easy access and guaranteed success a likely indicator of racism and a sign the bar must be lowered.
I have no issue with the authors asserting that remedial courses are not succeeding in preparing students for college-level courses. The data show very low success rates for students of all races placed in remedial classes. The problem is that students are arriving on campus unprepared: specifically, the majority of minority students are prepared. To link subsequent failures to race in any way is nothing more than playing the identity politics game... to imply that anyone opposing EQUAL OUTCOME policies is inherently racist. The authors are correct in asserting that there is a “segregation machine” holding back minorities in California, they have just failed to identify the form that it takes: leftist policies locking poor students into crappy schools and placing no value in the trades via pro illegal immigration stances.
I read this and I think, “They are cheating the students.” The most basic lesson learned in college is “push yourself harder until you make it” and they are implying to students that they just have to ask for the right accommodations.
if you cant pass the entrance test for the math class you don’t belong in the course and you will be lost in the college level courses work.
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