Word: maths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have no idea where Peov is today. Seng was adopted by a family in Massachusetts, and the last I heard from him he was studying math in a university. If the two of them saw the televised pictures of Pol Pot during the Khmer Rouge show trial, I cannot imagine what they thought...
...Some people get testaphobia," she says. "I passed my math classes with flying colors, but I get to that TAAS test and my mind's like blank. I have no idea why." She'll try once more in July, but if she fails, all her plans will have come to nothing...
Already 18 states have high school exit tests. National tests, endorsed by Bill Clinton and George Bush before him, will begin in 1999 with fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. The tests are supposed to serve only as a benchmark to assess educational progress, but they could one day lead to nationwide graduation standards. Now Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and IBM chairman Louis Gerstner Jr., co-chairs of last year's Education Summit, are adding to the pressure, enlisting companies to pledge that they will look at young applicants' academic records, including exit-test scores, rather than rely only...
Texas is a national leader in high-stakes testing, having instituted a statewide high school exit exam in 1985 at the urging of a committee chaired by Ross Perot. Since then scores have climbed. In 1993, 51% of Texas 10th-graders passed all three sections of the TAAS--math, reading, writing--on the first try. This year 67% did. (Students get eight tries over three years...
Proponents of testing respond that while it may be unfair to deny graduation to a kid who has passed his or her courses, it's also unfair to let a student graduate who can't read or do math. "You've got to start sometime saying to kids that the tests of the real world are going to flunk you anyway," says E.D. Hirsch Jr., author of Cultural Literacy. "Tough love is the right kind of fairness. And you have to change the system with shock treatment at some point...