Is math optional? Or, should we have O and A levels, a Bac or an Abitur?

Last updated on: March 15, 2015 at 5:49 pm by Jane the Actuary

Is math optional? Or, should we have O and A levels, a Bac or an Abitur? 2015-03-15T17:49:26-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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A couple days ago, I wrote about the “Power of 15” initiative at our local high school/community college, in which they were going to offer dual-enrollment courses, that is, courses offered at the high school which would earn credit at the community college. My take? That in principle the idea was sound, for classes which were truly at a college-level degree of rigor, for instance, by transforming AP History or Calculus into the equivalent college class, and earning the credit based on the work over the semester rather than everything hinging on a single test. Unfortunately, the way this was being implemented was with classes which were not particularly rigorous and seemed to be designed to be granting credit solely for the sake of having those credits to one’s name, rather than providing an enhancement to the educational offerings.

But the Chicago Tribune had an article today which provides a new, and sobering perspective, “Community colleges turn to high schools to keep students out of remedial math.” (Try this link if that article’s paywalled.)

Here are the key paragraphs:

Half of all American community college students must take remedial math and English classes, according to the advocacy group Complete College America. The courses do not count for credit but must be completed before students can advance in their studies. About 90 percent who start at that level fail to earn a degree within three years.

Now, Chicago-area community colleges and high schools are trying to improve the odds by helping students avoid remedial classes altogether. They are creating new courses aimed at high school seniors with shaky academic skills, offering them a chance to enter directly into college-level classes.

The results so far have been promising, administrators say. McHenry County College, for instance, has seen the percentage of incoming students who need remedial math drop from 40 percent to 26 percent since the 2012 introduction of a new math class in the county’s high schools.

“(Remedial college math) is really redoing high school math,” said Tony Miksa, the college’s vice president of academic and student affairs. “The problem is you’re wasting dollars and time. We don’t want them to come here and repeat the same things.”

. . .

The problem is particularly acute in math, a subject that snares many more remedial students than English. Educators say that’s because Illinois requires high school students to take only three years of the subject, allowing those with weak skills to skip it their senior year.

Another Chicago-area community college, the College of Du Page, offers juniors the chance to take its placement test early, to find out where they stand and, hopefully, take an additional math class in their senior year.

My first reaction?

It is worrisome that we treat math and English differently. The fact that only three years of math are required in Illinois, and presumably elsewhere, communicates that its of lesser importance to learn math. Even for kids who don’t have an aptitude for math, they should be taking some kind of math class for each of their years of high school, even if, for kids who know they will not study any math-related field in college, that last year is more focuses on practical applications, such as finance (e.g., compound interest), statistics, and the like. But instead — even the Common Core math curriculum ends after three years, though it seems to me that I remember reading somewhere, “of course nothing stands in the way of taking a math class senior year . . .”

And kids should be taking math classes corresponding to their aptitude level, culminating in precalculus or calculus wherever possible, regardless of their planned major in college.

But maybe this is a bigger issue:

It seems to me that the United States is outside the norm among in developed countries in its one-size-fits-all high school diploma. France has the Bac, and Germany the Abitur to certify that a student is prepared to enter college, quite apart from whether they’ve completed a course of study at one of the tiers of secondary education. Japan, Korea, and China are well-known for their pressure-cooker high-stakes college-entrance exams. The UK has a system that has a certain appeal, though I don’t know much about it, with O level exams to certify that a student has an adequate level of knowledge and A level exams to certify that a student is capable of doing college-level work in the subject.

In our system, in which a high school diploma, or even a GED, has a basic set of requirements that are, in the end, reasonable for students planning on entering vocational training or the workforce directly, it is a mistake to consider this credential sufficient for entering college. If there were a college-entry exam separate from simply high school graduation, college-bound students and their advisors would not believe that whatever high school graduation requirements exist for them (in our case, three years of math, two years of science) are enough to move on to college and succeed there.

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