I’m deeply disappointed in the local Middle School where this philosophy has suddenly taken hold for all 7th grade math levels. I can only guess that it is related to budget issues and some type of agreement between teachers and the administration.
Sure doesn’t sound like a way to address the poor performance of US students on international math and science tests …
On the science portion, U.S. students, most of them 10th-graders, received an average score of 489 on a 1,000-point scale, 11 points below the average of the 30 countries. Canada, Japan and Korea were among the countries in which students outperformed U.S. counterparts. U.S. students were on par with peers in eight countries and outperformed those from five others.
In math, only four countries had average scores lower than the United States. Students in 23 countries had a higher average score, and those in two countries did about the same as the Americans.
