From NPR: Who needs college algebra? Kansas universities may rethink math requirements
About one in three Kansas students fails college algebra the first time around. Some take it several times before they pass. Others get so frustrated that they drop out altogether. And that cuts into university graduation rates.
That’s one reason the board that oversees the state’s public universities wants to rethink math requirements.
“We’re sending the majority of students down the college algebra road, which is really not necessary,” said Daniel Archer, vice president of academic affairs for the Kansas Board of Regents. “It’s not practical. It’s not really needed. And it’s not relevant for their fields.”
College algebra, listed as a freshman-level math requirement at most major universities, is designed to prepare students for calculus. But only about 20% of majors require higher-level math.
This is an interesting quotation: “It’s not practical. It’s not really needed. And it’s not relevant for their fields.”
If one looked at a list of required courses for any given degree, how many are practical? How many are really needed? How many are relevant for the field associated with the degree?Report
College definitely prepared me for my career oh wait. 😉Report
Good there are other maths that could be taught or value in learning other areas. They could teach practical stats w/o needing all the math background.
I would not have been remotely prepared for the work world without many of the courses i took. Some in major and some not. Various courses like English and writing helped me once i wasn’t stocking veggies at the Try N Save.Report
How different is “college algebra” from “the algebra that they teach in 8th grade”?
I’m not certain that “practical stats” will be passable for someone who has trouble with “college algebra”. Is “practical stats” significantly easier?Report
“College algebra” typically means algebra II from the usual high school sequence algebra I, geometry, algebra II, pre-calc. Many/most colleges consider you deficient in preparation without it, and require you to make it up. It’s one of the high-demand classes at Colorado community colleges because: (a) CC tuition is a lot cheaper than at a four-year school, (b) the four-year schools are required to accept the CC credit (and the CCs are required to teach to the same standard as the four-year schools), and (c) a surprising number of high school graduates who go on to college were never told that it’s a required class for full admission.Report
So it’s the algebra that they teach in 10th grade?Report
The “traditional” pathway described by the Colorado Dept of Education says 11th grade, but yeah, that one.Report
By practical stats i mean kids do not need to learn all the math to calc stats or the theory behind. Teach kids about how to use stats, what they mean and how they are misused. Just base the course on the book How to Lie with Statistics.
People use stats all the time. Often badly of course but that is why they need to learn about them. It should be a hell of a lot easier. One reason is that kids have experience with real world stats so it’s less foreign then stuff like alg/calc which they often don’t see in the real world.Report
If they’re serious about enforcing a math requirement, then sure. The article mentions statistics and quantitative reasoning. I don’t know what the latter covers.Report
In 1999, I passed my college’s “quantitative analysis” requirement with a class in Intro to Psychology. The acceptance rate at my alma mater has been around 20 percent for many years. I do not remember what the acceptance rate was in 1997-1998 when I applied but the guides all listed it as “highly selective” or “most selective” for whatever that is worth.Report
Oh, that must be why I was seeing this comic being shared so much yesterday.Report
Though this one is maybe even more apropos.Report
It’s an interesting policy problem, particularly for small high schools. Replacing algebra II and pre-calc in the curriculum with something more practical — no-theory stats? intro to algorithms? — may be better for most of the students. It also guarantees that essentially zero of the students will go on to study engineering. Teaching both tracks is problematic at small schools because of the faculty load.Report
With all the online learning options we have now, it seems like there would be more opportunities even in the school context for differentiated learning… but the devil’s in the details I’m sure.Report
I don’t think online ed really works at the k-12 level. Not an expert of course but I think the evidence is mounting from the covid experience that something critical is lost.Report
differentiated learning
That’s calculus.Report
I know in years past this sort of comment would have kicked off a series of punny responses, and I feel some responsibility to contribute to that — but it’s been done so many times before, it just feels too derivative.Report
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think it’s fair to say that most people are unlikely to use the level of math required by K-12 and undergrad college curricula. At the same time, we need to be careful about allowing atrophy of these skills, particularly when our model remains mostly one-size-fits-all. So this makes perfect sense if we’re restructuring education in America to track to student skill sets, and the math and science kids are still doing lots of math, indeed even more advanced math than they otherwise would be, and we are no longer bothering with pointless stuff for kids tracked to something else. But in the absence of that, it could well amount to a larger scale dumbing down and the ongoing war on educational excellence and rigor.Report
Somewhat related to that concern, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has, apparently, avoided telling parents/students who get National Merit awards that they got them.Report
Yea, they have been in the DC area news on and off for the last couple of years due to their embrace of the 2020 zeitgeist. Which in practice seems to amount to lowering standards, and in some instances outright racism againt Asian people.Report
Granted that it’s been a half century, but when I got my National Merit award they notified me directly.Report
The story points out that the kids did get the certificates late:
This seems to be a mixture of the mom freaking out as only moms can do and administrators screwing up as only administrators can do.Report
Huh. The Lt. Governor is getting involved.
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Once upon a time, I taught a class for CS majors that was a math class. Finite Automata and Formal Languages. They often wondered “what does this have to do with programming?”.
I developed a few responses. The best one is, “You know how they love to show football players running through a bunch of tires laying on the ground in training camp? Have you ever seen tires on the field in a game? Or pushups. Do you ever see football players doing pushups during a game?”
It’s not literally useful, but it’s useful. It gives you a different way of understanding the world. It let’s you realize that “buy 2 get one FREE!” when the price is 50 cents is a worse deal than 29 cents each.
Yes, algebra is full of problems having to do with “how fast is the train going”. This can be thought of as preparation for harder stuff, as a demonstration of what these methods can accomplish, or as overtraining. If you can do this, then the simpler stuff you might need in everyday life will probably stick.
Oh, and I had several students come back and tell me after graduation that “wow, there are finite automata everywhere!” Which would prompt me to smile and nod.Report
Maybe that’s what algebra needs, a rebranding with a cooler name.Report