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Going back to school for a medical assistant course, if I pass the accuplacer math test will I still have to take a regular math course? Thanks.

My daughter has a very bright and sweet friend that is doing horribly in Algebra II/Trigonometry in high school in NY state. She came over today and asked me if I could Tutor her in Math because she knew I had an Education degree used in a past life. I said Math wasn't my specialty, and I wouldn't be of much help. She started to cry and say she was going to fail and even though the class took all her time, she had failed her midterm miserably and had quiz grades in the low 30's! She went in for...

There are also traditional word problems. Twitchy has found a word problem that may be the most egregiously awful math problem the Common Core has produced yet. Take a look: 15. Juanita wants to give bags of stickers to her friends. She wants to give the same number of stickers to each friend. She's not sure if she needs 4 bags or 6 bags of stickers. How many stickers could she buy so there are no stickers left over?

The OECD is out with new global rankings of how students in various countries do in reading, science, and math. Results of the full survey can be found and delved into here.You can see below how Asian countries are obliterating everyone else in these categories.The United States, meanwhile, ranks below the OECD average in every category. And as the WSJ notes, the US has slipped in all of the major categories in recent years:The results from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which are being released on Tuesday, show that teenagers in the U.S. slipped from 25th to 31st...

Big Guy visited Brooklyn yesterday and told kids at Pathways In Technology Early College High School that (the Republicans) in Congress need to take a remedial math class;12 + 7, uh…okay, no, no - don’t tell me! I’ve got that one here, somewhere. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, some of these ideas I’ve laid out before. Some of them I’m just going ahead and doing on my own. Some of them do require Congress to do something. And one way we can start is by Congress passing a budget that reflects our need to invest in our young people. I know the...

When Aria Shahrokhshahi got a much improved grade in math he knew one person would be particularly pleased: his dad, who helped him study. Aria, who is dyslexic, admits that "no one thought I was going to pass, not even my dad. But he stood by me, supported me in anything I wanted to do ." After his teacher told Aria the good news, he knew just what to do to surprise his father: "I played it cool and like I did something wrong." Lucky for us, he set up a secret camera to catch the heart-warming reaction. "My dad...

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on Friday released the initial results of an international survey of adult skills in literacy and mathematics, revealing that Americans rank 21st in “numeracy” and are tied for 15th in literacy among adults in 23 advanced economies. American adults also scored below the average in both numeracy and literacy for all respondents in all 23 advanced economies. Japan and Finland ranked first and second in both categories and Italy and Spain took the bottom two spots in both.

The number of sexual assaults reported to the US Navy rose dramatically over the last year, officials have said. The Navy puts the rise down to sailors' growing comfort reporting incidents of sexual assault and to their belief that authorities will take action. The Navy says about 1,100 assaults were reported in the year ending this month, an increase of 50% from 726 last year.

ObamaMath is coming!Remember in the 1960′s when the pointy-headed nitwits tried “New Math” on kids? I sure do. It was a total failure so… hey! Let’s try it again!Quick: what’s 3 x 4?If you said 11 — or, hell, if you said 7, pi, or infinity squared — that’s just fine under the Common Core, the new national curriculum that the Obama administration will impose on American public school students this fall.In a pretty amazing YouTube video [below], Amanda August, a curriculum coordinator in a suburb of Chicago called Grayslake, explains that getting the right answer in math just doesn’t...

Nicholson Baker hates math. The novelist and nonfiction writer spends almost eight pages of this month's Harper's Magazine making the case that compulsory algebra courses in American education are at best, wrongheaded, and at worst, downright cruel. Baker isn't the first to suggest we turn the much-maligned subject into an academic elective, in order to put those who struggle endlessly with math out of unnecessary misery. Last summer, a New York Times op-ed by Andrew Hacker made much the same point: The myriad road blocks in our educational system that can only be surpassed by proving competent in algebra and...

Three Phillips Exeter Academy students — Alex Song, Ray Y. Li, and Kevin C. Sun — shocked the world when they respectively won the gold, silver and bronze medals in the 54th International Mathematical Olympiad in Santa Marta, Colombia. While the U.S. team placed third overall — Song competed on Team Canada — the trio won the medals for individual performance. The annual competition is a six question, two day, nine hour proof competition with competitors from over 100 countries on 9 continents.

A group of Woodland Park parents and educators want to get rid of the Common Core Academic Standards that are being implemented in Colorado Schools. Teller County Citizens Against Common Core Standards maintains the new academic guidelines aren't as good as the ones in place. It also argues that the system is unconstitutional because it takes local control away from school districts. It may lobby Woodland Park School District RE-2 and the state to drop out. "We want to get the word out. The standards were just a money carrot for the state to get federal money," ... Among other...

MADISON — Sure, officials with the state Department of Instruction met with higher education stakeholders in crafting programs for college and career readiness as part of Common Core State Standards, but is that spectrum wide enough? Some educators don’t think so. Steffen Lempp, a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert in training elementary and middle-school teachers, told Wisconsin Reporter that nobody came to him for input before signing on to Common Core. “They don’t come to the math department. They go to the school of education,” Lempp said. “They very rarely consult with the math...

Plants have a built-in capacity to do maths, which helps them regulate food reserves at night, research suggests. UK scientists say they were "amazed" to find an example of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation in biology. Mathematical models show that the amount of starch consumed overnight is calculated by division in a process involving leaf chemicals, a John Innes Centre team reports in e-Life journal. Birds may use similar methods to preserve fat levels during migration. The scientists studied the plant Arabidopsis, which is regarded as a model plant for experiments. 'Astonished' Overnight, when the plant cannot use energy from...

Enlarge Image Primed for numbers. Random pulses of electrical current can accelerate math learning. Credit: Albert Snowball If you are one of the 20% of healthy adults who struggle with basic arithmetic, simple tasks like splitting the dinner bill can be excruciating. Now, a new study suggests that a gentle, painless electrical current applied to the brain can boost math performance for up to 6 months. Researchers don't fully understand how it works, however, and there could be side effects. The idea of using electrical current to alter brain activity is nothing new—electroshock therapy, which induces seizures for therapeutic...

In Daniel Tammet's mind, three is a dotted green crescent moon shape, one is a sort of white sunburst and four is a blue boomerang. Every number has a distinct color and shape, making the number pi, which begins with 3.14, unfold like a beautiful poem. For math enthusiasts around the world, March 14 (3-14) is Pi Day, honoring the number pi, which is the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle. On Thursday, Tammet is promoting France's first Pi Day celebration at the Palace of Discovery science museum in Paris. Tammet's relationship to this number is special: At...

A fifth of adults are so bad at math that they struggle to perform basic mental arithmetic, a survey has revealed. More than a third can only manage sums that total less than 100 and have to use a calculator for anything larger. One in 50 people were stumped by adding or subtracting in their head if the total was more than ten. And one in three parents believed their children’s ability exceeded their own. …

Imagine you're a trader. You're on the trading floor, trying to price out if a 15-year bond issued by General Electric will generate the returns needed to placate your investors. Bad news, your calculator is dead and the trader from Cantor Fitzgerald is readying to signal his buy. What to do? Well, if all you need to do is double the investment in five-years, you're in luck. That's probably not the case, and maybe GE isn't issuing 15-year debt. But we compiled a list of eleven math tricks that might just come in handy at various times in life. If...

America's downfall doesn't begin with the "low-information voter." It starts with the no-knowledge student. For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. "Progressive" reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap. Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers -- empowered by Washington education bureaucrats...

... After fifth grade, he found, student assessment becomes a matter of “a teacher’s subjective assessment of the student’s performance,” and is further removed from the guidance of objective test results. Teachers, he says, tend to assess students on non-cognitive, “socio-emotional skills.” This has had a significant impact on boys’ later achievement because, while objective test scores are important, it is teacher-assigned grades that determine a child’s future with class placement, high school graduation and college admissibility. Eliminating the factor of “non-cognitive skills…almost eliminates the estimated gender gap in reading grades,” Cornwell found. He said he found it “surprising” that...