So after the post about my daughter’s math test, I KNOW you are desperate for the answer:
“In the 2010 New York City Marathon, 42,429 people finished the race and received a medal. Before the race, the medals had to be ordered. If you were the person in charge of ordering the medals and estimated how many to order by rounding, would you have ordered enough medals? Explain your thinking.”
I discovered that the second sentence is the source of the utter confusion, and by excising it, then what is being sought in the question becomes clear.
If one rounds 42,429 to the nearest 10, it’s 42,430 and you have enough medals.
If one rounds 42,429 to the nearest 100 or 1,000 or 10,000, it’d be 42,400 or 42,000 or 40,000, respectively, and it would be an insufficient number of medals.
It took me two hours to figure that out.
My complaint is not just that the question is not easily comprehensible. (Dustbury found a similar one.) It’s that my daughter, who used to LIKE math, is starting to HATE it because she doesn’t get it. As someone who thought math was fun when I was growing up, I find this very sad.
I’m thinking that they must have tested the questions – didn’t they? – and found them understandable. Do you remember what adults sound like in those Peanuts cartoon specials? The dialogue is created by playing a trombone muted with the end of a toilet plunger. While Charlie Brown and Linus could decipher the grownups, YOU could not. And if you think you are SUPPOSED to be able to figure out what they are saying, that would be REALLY discouraging.
If the tests sound like a Charlie Brown Teacher, those non-animated students who are supposed to respond to the test will never learn.
I’m mildly comforted that I’m not alone in my dissatisfaction with the testing. This blogger writes: “When my eight year old boy, who loves to read to his little sister and is excited to go to back to school come July of every summer, calls himself dumb because he is bringing home failing test grades, then this has turned personal.” So the commenter who writes to her, “This is totally bogus. Common Core is just being implemented. It’s too early to judge the impact and consequences,” is just plain wrong. One does not need a longitudinal study to see the consequences.
The reductivist countercharge is often: “But kids need to be tested,” and I have no problem with that. I was tested. But I want the evaluations to be fair, comprehensible measures, and I fear that is not happening. Maybe my complaint is with EngageNY, which put together the curriculum selected. But whoever mandated its use – the state education department – needs to share the blame.