

Our Math Deficit Doesn't Add Up - danso
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/04/our-math-deficit-doesnt-add

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wahsd
Bingo. This has been a general trend across all measures; as productivity and
technology have made things more efficient and profitable, corporations and
their government patsies have had no interest other than lining executive and
investor pockets. No lowering of prices, no increasing wages, no improvement
of quality of living, no improvement of benefits, no public-good spending,
etc. It has all been pure exploitative, carpetbagger type of pilfering of
rigged sham markets; pump, dump, and support the fraudulent the price.

Anyone who thinks the American market is a free trade market is abjectly
delusional; it's a market of dominant cartels who make mediocre efforts at
appearing to provide choice and act competitive just like our inept and
antiquated political parties and structure. Collusion has all but removed real
choice in all of our markets.

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todd2012
There are other possible reasons for the perceived math deficit. Factories
like General Plastics may be seeing lower scores from job applicants because:

1) Racism 20 years ago may have prevented minorities from applying for jobs at
these factories. Now, policies, attitudes, and the workplace environment may
encourage more african americans or hispanics to apply for these jobs. The
full NEAP reports make it clear that there is still a significant math
performance gap between the overall population and whites. A broader pool of
applicants, reflecting less racism today, will result in lower math
performance. (This performance gap although significant is narrowing.)

2) Sexism 20 years ago could have precluded many women from applying for
factory jobs. Now with more women applying, the performance gap in math
between women and men may affect the average results seen on General Plastics
tests. (Unfortunately, this performance gap hasn't narrowed over time.)

3) Improved opportunities for students from lower income families to go to
college (because of student loan programs) may be causing the lower test
scores at General Plastics. There is a significant performance gap in math and
reading associated with family income, so it is more likely that students from
lower income families apply for factory jobs rather than go to college today.
Twenty years ago even the better performing students from low income families
might not have been able to go to college because of the expense. Now, the
better students from this pool will go to college (supported by student loans,
etc.) changing the population that will be applying for factory jobs.

I'm not sure if any of these possibilities is true, but they are alternative
hypotheses not considered by the article. Notice that each of these
possibilites don't imply that things are getting worse, but that things are
getting better (over a multi-decade time period--less racism, sexism, more
opportunities).

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AlienBluer644
"Scaled Score" vs. "Raw Score"

Learn. The. Fucking. Difference.

This article shows a graph of the _scaled_ scores on the NAEP Math test. The
_scaled_ scores remained flat. He then uses that fact to show that students
are about as good at math now as they were 35 years ago.

There's just no fucking connection.

It's true that the scaled scores have remained the same, but all that shows is
that the group of people taking the test now is about as diversely-skilled in
mathematics as they were in 1978. For all we know, the raw scores could have
plummeted 50%.

The only thing we can conclude from this graph is that the test _itself_ is
just about as good at ranking students as it was 30 years ago, and, maybe,
that student math-skill-diversity has remained constant. The "bell curve" is
the same shape as it was yesterday. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been
bitch-slapped to the left. To the left.

The only thing we can conclude from this article is that the author doesn't
know shit about statistics. We can't conclude anything about General Plastics,
or any other military commander.

SOURCE: Psychometrics is my bitch.

TL;DR - Kids might suck more at math than before, or not; the relevant data
isn't in this article.

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thebooktocome
The argument against explanation 3 (roughly, "NCLB created incentives for
schools to teach kids to be good at math tests and not good at real-world
problem solving") is that no one teaches to the NAEP, and that the NAEP has
stayed mostly constant in its material coverage since '78.

This would be sound if the NAEP tested real-world problem solving. However,
judging by their sample question booklets (
<http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/booklets.asp> ), the NAEP consists
of the sorts of questions one would assign for homework in a high school
algebra or geometry class: e.g., "train" problems, proofs of properties of
triangles, and so on -- not exactly things I would call "real-world problem
solving."

My own personal experience as an undergraduate math instructor hints very
strongly to me that #3 is the most significant issue.

