
Man with multiple degrees fails standardized test for children - joejohnson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html
======
noonespecial
_"Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in
their profession."_

I know I'm biased. Geek is as geek does, but _$deity almighty_ am I tired of
that line. If simple math isn't valuable to your profession, it might at least
be worth a think about how valuable your "profession" might be in the first
place.

Some of the huge systemic problems we are facing right now may have something
to do with the fact that we have entirely too many professions where it really
_doesn't_ matter if one could master simple math.

~~~
narkee
I think that's the difference between academic education, and vocational
training.

I've made this point before, but people often conflate the two, and are unable
to separate them in their minds.

What this person is saying is "these things do not train a person to perform
these specific sets of tasks". That's vocational training, and there's nothing
wrong with that. Academic education, on the other hand, is about learning to
think, about history, rhetoric, science, and all sorts of things that aren't
directly applicable to a particular job, but provide a necessary foundation
for critical thinking and enlightenment, so to speak.

What our system really needs is two streams. An academic stream, for those who
choose, and a vocational stream, which is what a large proportion of students
and seemingly educators like this guy want.

This way, everyone gets what they want. Students truly interested in learning
things not directly related to performing a job will have the benefit of a
more supportive learning environment, and students who just want to get a job
will also attain the required vocational training.

It's really win-win.

~~~
gnaritas
Our system already has those two streams, has practically forever. People
still abuse the college stream as if it were vocational training.

~~~
absconditus
Unfortunately they are winning and academia is being dumbed down so that
everyone can obtain a degree.

~~~
michael_dorfman
How do you reconcile that position with the original article?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The article is a single anecdote from the wrong side of the college continuum.
After helping my daughter all year with geometry, it is not surprising to me
that he couldn't do the math. Those kinds of tests ask questions like "Can you
prove these triangles are congruent" and you have to remember all the SAS,
SSA, ASA, etc theorems and postulates to have a chance. You will forget those
after 20 years, no matter how much you excelled in high school, if you aren't
using them (or derivative concepts in higher math) regularly.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Proving theorem's is often taught very poorly. If you haven't already I highly
recommend you read Lockhart's Lament:

<http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html>

~~~
rapind
I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's been pretty eye-opening. It
reminds me of how I once took a photoshop course in order to improve my design
skills... pretty easy to guess how well that worked.

------
petercooper
On detailing the contents of the test to his business peers: " _Not a single
one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession._
"

Close to none of the history, RE, French, geography, music, phys ed, or even
science (heck, nearly every subject) I took in high school has proven directly
necessary for my _profession_. But the standardized tests aren't for adults,
they're for students. (Should we expect to pass their agility/phys-ed tests
too? :-))

Being able to learn these things, and developing the skills necessary _to_
learn them, is a worthwhile experience and hopefully provides a lot of the
inspiration, brain-shaping, and knowledge exposure necessary to get by as an
educated adult, even if you can't pass the tests to some arbitrary standard.

I barely remember any of the French I learnt, but I can't help but feel the
exposure has given me a better insight into, and a better ear for, my _own_
language. It's a similar story for most of those other subjects.

~~~
jerf
The problem is that math education is not only not relevant to your career,
it's _also_ not relevant to your future education!

#include <lockharts_lament.pdf>

Students are correct and so is this board member, math education as it stands
today really is worthless. It is of no value. It has no practical value _and_
it has no theoretical value. And if you think otherwise it is likely because
you managed to escape from the system, possibly with a four-year degree in
computer science or other relevant field, with little more than a glancing
introduction to _actual mathematics_ , which are arguably one of the most
valuable things mankind has ever produced.

There's no need for the cognitive dissonance necessary to insist that math as
learned in school is incredibly value even as you, if you search your heart,
_know better_. All you've got in its favor is that you've been told its
valuable, so by golly it must be. It's not. It's taught terribly and all the
value has been sucked out of it.

<http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

~~~
dpark
What math did you learn in high school that you believe is so worthless? My
school taught algebra, trig, and calculus. Some of these are useful for
everyday life and some are useful for academia.

~~~
jerf
Read the linked PDF. Schools teach _calculation_ , not _mathematics_. Some of
the calculations occasionally manage to be useful, but if you developed a
mathematically mature mind it sure didn't come from your schooling.

If you did not take _multiple classes_ that consisted almost entirely of
writing many proofs per week, you never took mathematics. If all you did was
problems 6-32 evens due next Tuesday, that's not math.

~~~
dpark
Putting kids through years of proofs would not improve the situation. They
would still call it dumb. They would still hate it. They'd probably hate it
even more, because it's harder.

Moreover it's necessary to teach kids the basics before you teach them
advanced concepts. Despite what the article might have you think, we do teach
musical notation first. Kids learn that as they are first learning to play.
Composition is reserved for the university.

Also, the inefficiency of math education in schools does not mean that what
they teach is worthless. Certainly they could do better. And maybe making
teenagers do hundreds of proofs would be better. But at the end of they day,
the student who took calculus in high school is better prepared for college
(and a scientific career) than a student who did not.

~~~
jordan0day
I think jerf isn't really phrasing his position in a palatable way, even
though he's right. Since he's referencing Lockhart, I'll go with that. The
crux of Lockhart's argument is that math is actually really beautiful,
intriguing, and exciting, and the legalistic, browbeating manner in which it
is currently taught basically takes all the beauty and excitement out of it.

Assuming your high school was like mine, when you learned algebra, trig, and
calculus, you were probably taught a few of the _whats_ , some of the _hows_ ,
but almost none of the _whys_. It's only in upper-level undergrad and graduate
courses that the beauty really starts to be taught in earnest.

You're absolutely right to say that putting kids through years of proofs would
probably make them hate math even more. Again, that's largely due to the way
proofs are taught, especially at the secondary school level. They're all just
a bunch of _rules_ listed one after another, "doing a proof" is basically like
explaining all the _rules_ of chess to someone who's never played before, and
then asking them to put the board in a particular state, thirty-two moves into
a game. It ends up as a bunch of trial-and-error guessing... it's frustrating
and it's boring. Sure, there are a few savants or folks whose brains are wired
in such a way that it's either easy or interesting, but it's just painful for
most folks, because there's no _intrigue_.

It's not until three or four years into college that most people are exposed
to proofs as an intellectually stimulating game, where intuition plays an even
bigger role than "looking at a list of rules and deciding which one fits".

But we don't get that in high school. We're not taught how to intuit something
and _then_ map the rules to our intuition. In fact, we're usually taught that
this is _wrong_!

~~~
dpark
I get that Lockhart thinks math is beautiful. I don't think the average
student agrees, though, and not just because they were taught it in a poor
fashion. Similarly, I personally think programming is super-nifty, but most
people don't agree. They find it difficult and tedious.

The fact is that we can't convince someone to find programming (or math)
beautiful. So we teach them enough that they can hopefully 1) pass the tests,
and 2) absorb enough to be useful. We do that through repetition and
exercises. This is why beginning CS classes are often so tedious. They are
aimed at a fairly general audience. In contrast, later classes are aimed at
students who are specifically interested in CS, so the teaching methods are
different, and better _for those students_.

~~~
jordan0day
I think you're wrong, and I think distaste with math is entirely due to poor
teaching and/or poor/limited exposure.

If we were talking about music, would you let me get away with saying "The
average student doesn't like music, in any form whatsoever"? Music is
something human beings _just like_. We're wired to like it. Certainly there
are forms of music we prefer, but I think you'd have a hard time finding
someone who didn't like _any_ music.

Math, numbers especially, can resonate in the soul in the same way that music
does. It's more abstract and much less visceral, but just as beautiful, once
you've really learned how to comprehend it.

I think your argument about math classes being tedious is orthogonal to
whether or not math can be beautiful for everyone. Entry level music classes
can be tedious, too. No one repeatedly hammering out "Frère Jacques" on the
piano would say that _it_ was beautiful, but they could hear someone playing
some Chopin and easily acknowledge the beauty. Again, I maintain that this is
due in large part to music being much more visceral -- you don't have to
understand it to appreciate it, while in math you often do.

~~~
cpher
I upvoted both of you because you each raised some interesting points. The
thing that piqued my interest was the analogy of "feeling" math like you
"feel" music.

Early in high school (late 1980's mind you), I decided to take up percussion
to play in our award-winning marching band. I started out on cymbals, but that
was too simple. Then, I worked on the rudiments of percussion/snare drum. I
had to work hard on the "math" of the musical notation, but I soon realized
that I had a feel, an "ear" for complex percussion rhythms. And it jived with
my already attuned ability in singing. There was something natural that "just
clicked."

I see this same pattern in African spiritual music performed by people with no
formal education. There's a natural mathematically knowledge they possess
without any formal math education.

To me, music is just a higher abstraction of math. One that people with no
math education can appreciate without even knowing why.

It's only when educated in math, that the "resonation of the soul" takes
place. And I'll superficially agree with the reasons of the other commenters
about why the education is lacking.

My point is that we don't have to teach them to _feel_ anything about math.
Some people will grok it at a deeper level than others and come to that
realization on their own. But I think the overall analogy to music is pretty
good. Mozart grokked music theory better than anyone alive today, but that
doesn't mean I can't appreciate his genius (given no formal training). And I
couldn't integrate an equation today (15 years out of college), but that
doesn't mean I can't appreciate math in my life.

------
raganwald
A lot of the criticiscm of the article seems to be missing the point it makes.
The author and subject are criticizing the standardized tests as having been
put in place without evidence linking its scores to outcomes. Neither the test
nor its champions have any accountability for it.

To refute this, we either have to come up with a way of measuring whether
streaming students based on their scores is a benefit, or we have to come
clean and say it's arbitrary.

Saying that high school doesn't teach you anything vocational but you learn
how to learn is interesting, but to answer the OP directly we need some
evidence showing that students are indeed learning to learn. Otherwise, it's
just faith.

We should be especially wary of survivor bias hre. Most folks here are
educated and pleased with their career arc. It's easy to assume from n=1 that
our education is the reason. But many who took the same classes aren't doing
so well. Maybe our education isn't the reason for our success.

One criticism of IQ tests is that they measure the ability to pass IQ tests.
Do we have the data to refute the accusation that standardized tests measure
only the ability to pass standardized tests?

~~~
wanorris
Your point is well taken, but I can't help feeling that the original post and
this entire discussion are ultimately worthless without specifics and examples
regarding the test what the original author was complaining about.

Yes, we should confirm our biases with studies, but at an even more basic
level, we don't even know what we're arguing about here.

------
patio11
Success, education, intelligence, and credentials are all available
independently of each other. If they were binary, you could find all 16
combinations in spades. (Probably not uniformly distributed, but I'm sure I
could come up with anecdotes for SeIc or SEiC or any other combination if I
needed an editorial written.)

With particular relevance to this article, "I am successful and well-
credentialed, ergo, if a test suggests that I am not educated or intelligent,
that test must be faulty" is not by itself very persuasive to me.

~~~
TheCapn
Although I agree with you I do find it fishy to say this man holds multiple
degrees, with one (at least) being in the sciences.

If he's capable of defending that degree then he theoretically should have a
grasp on the kind of mathematics are being thrown in Grade 10. If the grade 10
mathematics are some odd-ball thing that has no real relevance (and thus the
last time he saw it was grade 10) it points at a bigger issue.

If my memory serves me, grade 10 was algebra almost exclusively. It wasn't
until my grade 11/12 courses that other topics like limits and matrices came
into play (and those are still simple by my terms).

What I'm trying to say is, although intelligence and success are separate
entities the test should be somewhat correlated with his university education.
If what high schools are doing is NOT preparing students for real world or
post secondary life then what are they doing?

~~~
zbuc
Somebody posted a sample question above, asking students to determine if
certain triangles in a set are congruent.

I don't remember the definition of "congruent". I graduated with honors in
Computer Science, and took many math classes along the way and did very well,
and the topic of "congruency" never came up beyond high school mathematics.

There's definitely something weird going on here. I imagine that it will be
tempting for people on Hacker News to argue that they know the definition of
"congruent" and it's not a difficult question and I should turn in my degree,
but whatever.

~~~
Tichy
I have used geometry a lot in programming, actually - usually when it comes to
games programming. Of course you might not need it for standard web
development, but I think enough of a case could be made to include it in a
preparation for CS.

Also, when we did the "congruent triangles" stuff in school, it was actually
the most "graphical" way of conducting mathematical proofs. It was a very fun
way to practice doing proofs. I don't even remember how much we continued to
prove stuff in other parts of math. And again I think knowing about conducting
proofs is useful/essential for CS.

Could it be that you never had the congruent stuff at school? Our teachers
mentioned that there are alternative ways to do geometrical proofs (I think
with mirroring and projections?), so your teacher might have chosen another
route. Because the congruency stuff is really easy to remember imho, it seems
likely you never actually heard about it.

Summary of "the congruency stuff" off the top of my head: two triangles are
congruent if the have either three equal edges, or two equal edges with an
equal angle between them, or one equal edge and two equal angles. (equal
meaning same length for edges). I think that's it :-/ (it's late...).

------
beloch
On the test-taker's failure:

In order to perform well on a math test you don't always have to really
understand the fundamental principles behind what you're doing. Sometimes you
can get away with wrote memorization. e.g. You can come up with equations for
a lot of things yourself if you understand Gaussian distributions but, if
you're being prepped for an exam by teachers who know roughly what's on it,
they might just give you equations to memorize for the things that are likely
to be asked. You may perform nearly as well as someone with deep understanding
of the material, but you are unlikely to remember those equations long after
you've taken the test!

It is quite likely that the person who took and failed this test was the sort
of math student who was able to get by memorizing what he was told to without
really understanding things. If he had written the same test in high-school he
likely would have done much better because he would have been prepared for it
with memorized methods and equations that he never understood and has long
since forgotten.

On teaching methods:

When teachers teach students to pass tests, short-cuts like wrote memorization
tend to happen. The useful knowledge learned from this kind of teaching is
minimal. Unfortunately, many teachers are unable to teach the deep meaning
behind mathematics because they were taught by wrote memorization themselves.
When they were assigned to teach math class they probably had to look
everything up themselves since, like our test-taker, they never understood the
basis behind it and have forgotten most of what they memorized.

It seems that we must overcome the problem of educating teachers before they
can overcome the problem of educating students.

~~~
bradleyland
You hit upon two important points, but I'd take the conclusion further:

A) Our current evaluation methods don't tell us whether a student is simply
memorizing steps or _learning_ the subject matter.

B) When your primary evaluation critera is to pass a standardized test, the
system will optimize to achieve that goal. Since we know that standardized
tests don't really evaluate understanding, we have a vicious cycle on our
hands.

~~~
sethg
I would add that it is _possible_ to make standardized tests that teach more
than memorization, but those tests will cost more to construct, norm, and
grade. Schools are caught between the imperatives of testing and budget-
cutting.

~~~
ctchocula
Good point. I for one can't wait for the day schools can afford to hold the
Kobayashi Maru test.

------
rdouble
I'm skeptical this happened. The guy is anonymous, the town and state are
unnamed, and there are no examples of the test questions.

~~~
jxcole
I was particularly annoyed that though they mentioned he has degrees, they
never said what the degrees are in.

------
gmichnikov
I tutor all sorts of math students, from middle school and high school
students to people preparing for the GRE and GMAT. The most common question I
hear, by far: "Why does any of this matter? Will I ever use it again?"

Until 8th grade or so (pre-algebra), students learn math that (I think)
everyone should know. After that, it can be hard to give a good answer. Why
does someone who is not interested in studying math after high school need to
know the quadratic formula? Why does someone studying for the GMAT need to
know anything at all about geometry? Math curricula simply cover the wrong
things (and as a result math tests test the wrong things).

Take a look at these two sample 10th grade math tests (the level taken by the
guy in the article): <http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/2011/release/g10math.pdf>
[http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/o...](http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/online/2009/taks_g10_math/10math.htm)

There is TONS of focus on geometry and coordinate geometry. There is NO focus
on math concepts that are much more important (in my view), like basic
finance, basic statistics, basic probability. These are things people need to
know in order to be informed citizens, understand policy, process things in
the news, rent/buy a home, take on college loans, etc.

None of this means that tests are bad of course. I think tests are, generally,
a good way to understand what people know (in math).

Finally, the guy says: "The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers
to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly."

If he really knew the answers to NONE of them, I have a hard time taking him
seriously. I love how he gives himself credit for managing to guess 10
correctly. These tests are mostly multiple choice!

~~~
Tichy
Doesn't the quadratic equation pop up all the time if you try to solve
equations? Which you might do now and then, if you could remember how to solve
equations, which is probably also a negative for most people :-(

But definitely for personal finance I think quadratic stuff might pop up now
and then. Exponential stuff definitely pops up...

------
tibbon
Despite all the comments about this guy and his incompetence, it might be even
better if a public version of these tests were made available (and could be
graded automatically) for the public to take and review. Instead of
speculating about this guy's ability, of which I know nothing, I'd rather just
take it myself and then draw my own conclusions. That being said, I was always
_very_ good at taking tests, even if I had no idea on the subject matter.
Unless you put in "none of the above" as a choice, I could pass almost any
test. It wasn't until the LSAT that I had any problems at all with a test.

Here's a novel idea: publicly commented and curated testing system. Wikipedia-
like. People write questions, other people can take the test, leave comments,
suggestions, etc and those can be factored in to build a smarter and better
test.

------
dmbaggett
Can someone who actually knows tell us what kinds of math questions were on
the test? It's hard to come to any conclusions without any details, and the
article didn't seem to include any pointers to the test itself.

My personal axe to grind is that number theory and basic finance, rather than
calculus, should be taught to teenagers.

And in my own US public schooling, I found the teachers completely unable to
provide any intuition whatsoever behind calculus. It wasn't until two decades
later, when I was studying computational finance for fun, that I actually
_really understood_ integration as something other than symbol manipulation.
Seriously, this whole "teach to the test" mentality may get kids to answer
correctly by rote over the short term, but doesn't help them to learn much in
the long run -- at least if they're intuitive learners.

~~~
iamandrus
Junior in college-prep high school here. The math questions are really easy:
basic algebra, geometry, and trig. I can do it in my sleep, and I barely
studied for that test and did well.

I agree with you fully, kids need to be taught based on what they want to do.
I've wanted to be an entrepreneur for a while now and the only class that
interests me in school is journalism (I enjoy writing). The math class is a
joke, English is boring, and the rest of the classes are boring.

~~~
gnaritas
After 20 years of not using basic algebra, geometry, or trig, you'll forget it
too.

~~~
dhoe
It's very hard to imagine you'll forget it, but it really is true. I used to
be able to solve integrals while being too drunk to walk, but nowadays basic
trig would require substantial effort for me. Time does that.

------
talmand
I think it's a matter of being up-to-date on the material, which he himself
sort of admits to. I learned a great deal of things in high school and college
that if I were asked to take a test today I'm fairly sure I would fail. The
only way I would pass is if I was able to spend some time to prepare.

But that's the thing, what I got out of my education was HOW TO LEARN a
subject.

I'm confident that you could pick nearly any subject that I know little about
and, with a proper amount of time, I could become somewhat proficient at it.
The level of my ability will, of course, depend upon the subject and various
factors to do with me as a person.

Standardized tests are a tricky thing, they are needed to determine a
student's progress but at the same time they assume that all students are the
same. To me that's the problem with education systems in the US, they assume
that they can teach all kids the same thing the same way with the same
results.

As a father of two children with completely different personalities, attitudes
and interests, I can tell you treating kids as emotionless puppets to force-
feed information to is a path to failure.

~~~
randomdata
"I'm confident that you could pick nearly any subject that I know little about
and, with a proper amount of time, I could become somewhat proficient at it."

Wouldn't it be fair to say that is basic human nature, not a result of your
schooling? I remember already successfully jumping in and picking up new
subjects on my own before I even entered high school, and I imagine much of
the HN crowd were too.

Though, I admit I may come with some bias. I grew up on a farm where I was out
there at a young age trying to solve real problems alongside my father and
grandfather. They valued my insight into the problems as much as their own. If
learning how to learn is a skill that is taught, that is where I learned it.

~~~
talmand
Yes, it would be fair. Especially since I did mention the level of ability
would be influenced by me as a person. I should have expanded on that.

But, as a human, you do have the ability to learn but a proper education does
go a long way in helping you discover how to learn a subject. Instead of
goofing around on a subject for ten years when you finally figure it out, a
proper education lets you learn the subject much quicker and more efficiently.

After all, as a basic example, it would be rather difficult to learn physics
if you can't read the papers written by the smart people who came before you.

------
drblast
The fact that someone is comfortable saying "all of my friends haven't used
math in their successful careers, therefore math isn't useful and shouldn't be
stressed and tested" is the exact reason that math should be stressed and
tested.

This is hindsight bias. Knowing math helps cure you of the affliction of
hindsight bias. The fact is, you don't know what career a person will end up
choosing, and math is important (as is art, music, philosophy, chemistry,
physics) in a subset of them. Therefore, if you want ANYONE to be able to do
the math for you later on, you need to expose everyone to it to find the
future mathematicians.

Not everyone grows up to be a writer, but we all read Shakespeare. Is that a
waste of time? Only in hindsight.

And maybe, just maybe, this guy isn't all that smart and the test is valid.
But of course, the article doesn't address that, as it's more interesting to
write about anecdotal evidence and drama for the innumerate audience.

------
tokenadult
From the submitted article: "A longtime friend on the school board of one of
the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants
are willing to do."

Oh, well, that's the problem. He is on a public school school board. School
boards have been known to have adverse selection for dullness for more than a
century. Here is Mark Twain's harsh comment on that: "In the first place God
made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards." -- Mark
Twain, Following the Equator (1903) 2:295

Other than that, the author of the submitted article simply describes the
school board member as a "success" who makes money. The genius of the American
political and economic system is that people who desire money more than they
desire deep understanding can often achieve that goal. America is a wealthy
country, and by world standards a lot of Americans are more successful than
what you would expect if you look at the success of people in developing
countries who know more and who work harder.

The submitted article is by a guest author, but it is part of a regular column
series in the Washington Post that takes the consistent line that criticisms
of the United States school system for inefficiency and waste of resources are
misplaced. As an American who has lived overseas, spending the first part of
the 1980s in a developing country, I can't agree with that party line. United
States schools could do a LOT better, particularly in teaching mathematics in
elementary school,

[http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-
Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-
Understanding/dp/0805829091)

and while it may be that many current United States standardized tests in core
subjects have poor validity (being designed by state governments more for
political than for educational purposes), the answer is NOT to throw away
reality checks on how the school system is doing. Rather, the answer is to
align reality checks on United States schools more closely with testing
programs that identify the most successful countries,

<http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf>

and to look to the practices of the most successful countries for policy
guidance on how to reform United States schools.

<http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf>

It is still possible for United States school to improve a lot simply by
bringing in better management practices,

[http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...](http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf)

and efforts to improve United States education shouldn't be sidetracked by a
single anecdote about the occasional well-off school board member who has
limited academic ability.

~~~
timsally
Your analysis is simplistic. When you break up TIMSS by ethnic groups, the US
performs comparably to other counties across the board (Asians, Europeans,
etc). [1] There's something to be said about the differences between
attempting to educate a racially diverse population versus a largely
homogenous one.

I've done more analysis on a similar test called PISA, but I think it's worth
bringing up in the context of this debate. In standardized testing there are
often significant underlying factors that have nothing to do with the schools
themselves. From the executive summary of PISA: "[In the United States], after
accounting for socio-economic background, the performance difference between
students from single-parent families and those from other types of families
stands at 23 score points.... Parents’ engagement with their children’s
reading life has a positive impact on their children’s reading performance."
Consider that the divorce rate in the US is one of the highest in the world, 5
times that of China. This problem along with any others is one that needs to
be considered in the context of education.

Also, PISA was not done on China, but rather on two specific cities: Shanghai
and Hong Kong (similarly, TIMSS was done in Hong Kong). Along with Beijing,
these are the most advantaged areas in China in terms of both money and
education. The US administers PISA to a wide range of schools across the
country. I imagine we would see much different results if PISA only tested
Boston and some other advantaged city. The PISA study itself even notes that
scores were much higher in urban schools. Other countries are either testing
exclusively urban schools or urban schools at a higher rate than the US.

There are serious, serious problems with education in the US. But it's
important to look at these studies with a critical eye and avoid the
temptation to go off on a rant on how the US is bad at math. Data doesn't lie,
but analysis is often wrong and/or exaggerated. In sum, problems with
education in the US are deeply rooted in racial, social, and geographic
issues. Better management practices and policy reform, while good, doesn't
change the fact that the US isn't Singapore.

[1] <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001_suptables.pdf>

~~~
tokenadult
I checked the link you kindly provided. Before I go further in replying to
your reply, would it be all right to ask where the support for your assertion
at footnote 1 actually is found in that publication? What I see, in the data
tables there, is that some countries plainly outperform all subgroups in the
United States. Several of those countries have lower spending per pupil than
the United States (either by current exchange rates or by purchasing power
parity), so I'd like to know what they are doing right. I claim, in my
grandparent post to which you replied, that one thing other countries are
doing better than the United States is simply providing better primary
instruction, with better designed curricula. One other thing that I think they
are doing right is giving students better-designed educational tests, aligned
to those better curricula, that more realistically gauge whether or not the
students are learning what they need to learn. (That's the point of the
anonymous anecdote about the school board member mentioned in the article that
was submitted to open this thread. Perhaps United States standardized tests
given to tenth graders in some unnamed state have poor validity and poorly
written item content. I actually think that is quite likely. But I don't think
that the correct policy response to that is to stop giving students tests to
find out what they know, but rather to write better tests based on better
curricula. It's too bad that the article doesn't link to the actual test.)

I agree with some points in your reply. I don't think China as a whole is well
represented by the schools in its most developed urban areas. The results from
Shanghai in the most recently announced test to include Shanghai surely don't
reflect what students from rural areas in China would do on the same test. But
even agreeing with that point, I wonder if you've had a chance to take a look
at what Ma's book

[http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-
Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-
Understanding/dp/0805829091)

says about differing classroom practices and differing lesson content between
the United States and China. China is very, very, very much poorer than the
United States because of the lousy policies it had in the 1950s and 1960s. But
its educational policies since the 1970s have been on an increasingly sound
basis, and seem to be producing admirable results in economic growth with
remarkably low school budgets. But please note that I never appeal to China as
a country with country-wide results that are uniformly better than those of
the United States. China is especially doing well on a resources-adjusted
basis, while Singapore, Taiwan, and some other countries are just plain doing
well nationwide, period. (I am most familiar with Taiwan, from much time
living there.)

I also agree with the idea that it's important to look at education studies
"with a critical eye" and it was with that in mind that I referred fellow
participants on HN on several earlier occasions to the studies showing that
United States schools are underserving the most able learners,

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

missing opportunities to reach the top end of mathematics achievement reached
by other countries. "Data doesn't lie, but analysis is often wrong and/or
exaggerated," I agree, and what I find is that some forms of analysis are not
even attempted by many commentators on education policy. I think writings that
are good examples of good analysis

<http://economics.stanford.edu/faculty/hoxby>

<http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/content.asp?contentId=60>

[http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-
directory/pau...](http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-
directory/paul-peterson)

<https://rowman.com/isbn/9781578866229>

are food for thought for those of us participating on Hacker News who seek
ways to improve education wherever we live.

------
martin1b
Immediately, this story looks like link bait. Even the title misses the point
of what he's trying to say, true or not.

Even more entertaining is all of the discussions of those who have 'real'
degrees and who are 'not like this man'. They believe he must be a ignorant
bureaucrat who lucked his way to the top. They believe it's inconceivable that
schools are to blame, even though many are sold a bill of goods from schools
that degrees set the social classes apart from others and they really are more
human than others. While in fact, schools have become one of the most clever
profit centers ever created. While there, you are indoctrinated to believe
only those going through here are human. So, when you go out to the world,
only hire those from here (plug for more school business!)

Remember, some of the most financial successful people in the US, in the
world, do not/did not have degrees > Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuck, the
list goes on. Although, my personal believe is financial success is not the
true success (even stated by Gates recently)

This belief that you must be part of academia to be innovative and this near
prejudice of non-academia citizens is appalling.

Learn what this man is saying rather that trying to prove him wrong and self-
justifying. Yes, we can count, read, apply studied principles learned from
books and media. His point is, are we the principle authors? Are we the ones
innovating, improving society by our ideas, helping our fellow man/woman by
our work? If not, perhaps something IS missing from our schools. Perhaps that
is part of the problem. Let's fix it and make our world a better place.

------
josefresco
I know this will come off as critical of the test, but maybe the real
criticism should be directed at the institutions where this particular adult
received his degrees. Maybe both systems are flawed.

------
mikealle233
The man's multiple degrees are meaningless without knowing where they're from.
We live in a world where literally anyone can enroll in the University of
Phoenix. In fact, I've heard many people in the education field do so because
union contracts guarantee them raises, regardless of where a degree is from.

That one man rose to power in government and obtained degrees, despite poor
math and reading skills, doesn't surprise me much less outrage me.

------
baby
Link to the tests? Because really, I don't want to say anything before seeing
the test.

~~~
Technopia
Second that.. If anybody has links to the test, post them.

------
apgwoz
I can understand doing badly at the math portions, but the reading portions?
Presumably he needs to be reading and comprehending what he's reading in his
day to day job responsibilities.

Why can I understand the math difficulties? Well, I too forget stuff that I
don't use very often. I'd have to go look up the all the trig identities if I
needed them. But, I wouldn't take this test blind without any refresher.

The advantage "kids" have when they take these standardized tests is that it's
very close to fresh in their minds, or at least relatively fresh. That has to
count for something.

------
ejgejg
The problem is the author went to school too many years ago and missed the
ubiquitous "how to take standardized tests" curriculum.

These days kids are taught from kindergarten on how to take standardized
tests. My sixth grader can look at a test question and narrow it down to two
answers before even reading the question. And for math, he doesn't solve the
problem, he plugs the two answers in to see which is right.

I teach math at a community college and it is common to have students test
into math classes that they don't have the basic prerequisites for - just
because they test well.

------
tryitnow
In most organizations corporate politics and personality play a greater role
than ability.

This will change with the continuing revolution in data and the data driven
decision making it makes possible. Eventually corporations that reward
politics and personality will become weaker and those that reward data driven
decision making will become stronger (except in cases where the corporation
can depend on government handouts, e.g. Wall Street).

~~~
stfu
Absolutely agree about the first part but I don't see that this necessarily
has to be a bad thing.

No matter what kind of business you run, the seller knows almost all the time
more about the product/service/etc than the buyer. And as long as you don't
have perfectly comparable products markets are far from ideal. Therefore the
individual relationships between people matter because you can never fully
quantify human relationships.

------
popplebop
>It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have [...] 15 credit hours
toward a doctorate

This statement is suggestive of where the problem lies. A doctoral thesis is
supposed to be an original piece of work. The idea of assigning credit hours
towards it is meaningless. We don't honour creative people for the number of
hours they put in but for the works they leave behind.

~~~
lambersley
Along those lines, how many times were you given a paper to write that 'must
be at least 10,000 words' or 'presentation must have a minimum of 8 slides'?
Discard the fact that you can communicate and support your idea(s) in 5000
words or 3 slides.

Modern education systems in North America focus on the wrong things.

~~~
dgabriel
There is a huge difference between the two assignments. If you are
communicating and supporting your ideas in half the words or slides, then you
are not going into enough depth, or you've chosen a topic of lesser
complexity. There is a good pedagogical reason that length is mandated. If you
are "just filling out paper," to meet the word requirement, you've
misunderstood the assignment, and possibly cheated yourself.

------
richieb
Have you guys considered that the test could have been written by someone who
does not understand math at all? My wife is a teacher and occasionally I look
at the crap questions that come on standardized tests and I am appalled.

I saw a 8th grade textbook that explained how compute square roots by hand -
but the algorithm was wrong. It only worked for examples in the book.

------
yummyfajitas
Here is a question for everyone who agrees with this editorial:

Suppose that this man is correct - that the material being taught/tested is
useless and unnecessary for a successful career. In that case, shouldn't we
stop teaching it, remove the material from the curriculum, allow students to
graduate a year or two earlier and fire a bunch of useless teachers?

If not, why not?

~~~
esrauch
There are almost certainly people (laborers?) who are successful without
having any knowledge taught in school at all.

Modern schools explicitly aren't vocational, they don't even claim to strive
to teach skills that can be directly applied to jobs, the point is that it is
useful to understand how to learn and think about things well. They also
provide exposure and opportunity; there are plenty of jobs that _do_ require
these skills (or more accurately, require skills for which learning these
skills is a prerequisite), and if we didn't teach them to everyone then the
children of laborers would end up as laborers even when they are capable and
interested in being rocket scientists.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You are disagreeing with the premise - that the skills being measured are not
necessary. I nominally agree with you.

But I'm asking people who _agree_ with the premise whether they also agree
with the logical conclusion - if the tested skills are unnecessary for
most/all, why not stop teaching them, fire teachers and reduce spending on
education commensurately?

~~~
esrauch
I did make a claim about how it makes sense even if the skills aren't directly
applicable to any profession.

I understood the claim to be "the skills being measure are not necessary" to
mean "you don't need the skills to be successful" which I do agree with. That
is a completely different claim than the idea that that the skills are
useless, the skills are only useful to some (significant) subset of the
population, and I argue that we should teach them even to people that they
will be useless for to force feed them an opportunity that they might
otherwise have ignored as a possibility.

------
po
For the most part, I think the point of school - elementary through college -
is to learn how to learn. Yes, we try to teach students things that will be
useful in their careers but I think it's more important to teach students
things that are _hard_. It is the process of learning to internalize difficult
concepts that makes you 'college ready'.

If you don't use that knowledge for your profession, then yes you will forget
it. However, if you don't use it for your profession, it doesn't mean learning
it was useless. I would be more worried if he still sucked at math after
preparing for the test for a semester or two.

I have a degree in Chemistry and yes, that knowledge is slowly slipping out of
my mind. However, the skills I learned while learning chemistry - logical
thinking, ability to memorize and recall, building a mental model of abstract
concepts - these stay with me.

------
jarin
Hmm, yeah I'm not really so sure that the problem with our educational system
is that the tests are too hard.

------
jellicle
It's easy to fail a test if you go in deciding to fail it, because you have a
already-extant political bias against testing.

------
memset
Possibly I missed it, but is there somewhere we can see the test itself? It
seems almost silly to try and discuss the pros and cons of testing, or of this
gentleman's position in society, without seeing the exam.

------
pandaman
I am willing to bet that none of the subject's degrees has been in a real
science or math.

------
bwooceli
I could not agree less with the conclusion the board member came to. In my
experience, the general education is dual purpose. There is surely a
foundation-building aspect to it, where the student's body of general
knowledge is expanded. But more importantly, the process of learning builds
discipline and habits for success. A successful educator and educational
system balances these two purposes.

------
kevinalexbrown
Note that this is a person who makes budget decisions. Whenever people tell me
math isn't important, I can't help but compare it to spelling/grammar
mistakes: a member of the school board would never send out a professional
document that had spelling errors, but a math error, hey, what's the problem?
It's just the budget.

------
Mc_Big_G
School, in general, isn't for learning shit. It's for learning how to learn.
He obviously knows how to learn things, has learned the things he needs to
know and could (re)learn the material covered by the test. The fact that he
failed a test covering material he hasn't (re)learned doesn't mean a fucking
thing.

------
teyc
The man on the school board is drawing the wrong conclusions.

His role today is one of management, and he has no need for anything beyond
basic maths. However, there would have been a time when mastery of things
technical meant a promotion, or an opportunity to supervise younger graduates.
I know of many brilliant managers who no longer have their technical chops.

For all we may know, his degrees may be in Biology and Marine Science. It
means that his profession would be one that doesn't have to worry about
differential equations, or chemical reactions, or American History.

However, there is an interesting point whether too much irrelevant material is
taught at school. I hear this in universities too, that professors keep adding
material to the curriculum. I don't have an answer for that. I think schools
focus too much on abstract thinking, and too little on effectual thinking.

------
nene
What struck me most was having multiple-choice answers on a math test... WTF?

You shouldn't be able to just guess the answers one-out-of-four. When I was in
school (not in US) there never was such a thing. You simply solve the problem
and write an answer, which usually is a simple number.

~~~
drblast
One of the easiest ways to take a multiple choice math test is to work
backward from the given answers. You hardly even have to know what you're
doing; just plug the answers into the question.

I don't think any of my classmates or teachers ever figured that out. They
just thought I was smart for finishing early with 100% correct. Which, in a
way, I guess I was, but not the way they thought.

~~~
ootachi
"(E) None of the above" is an easy way to solve that problem and is commonly
used on standardized tests.

------
refurb
This is sort of silly.

I'm sure if the man actually prepared for the test, he would have done much
better. Hell, I've taken standardized tests, gotten very good scores, but if I
had to take them RIGHT NOW without any preparation, I'd probably fail them.

------
jacquesm
There is a very simple explanation for this: If you are out of the school
system long enough then you will forget 'basic' stuff unless you exercise it
regularly.

It doesn't mean that you're dumb, it just means that you haven't flexed that
particular muscle for long enough now that you may simply have to re-learn
those things or you will have to invent them on the spot from first
principles.

The brain is great at throwing out unused (unreferenced) memories.

Given proper preparation (like the ones students go through), say a couple of
years of relevant re-education I'm sure the author could pass the test.

------
swah
Can we see the test?

------
scotty79
I think that schools are not so much about learning stuff as about training
and testing ability to learn dull things that you don't like and/or care
about. That's invaluable skill in life.

Most people forget 90% of things they've learnt in school after 5-10 years
after finishing.

If you take a look at the things you were learning in college, you'd be amazed
how much of even interesting and seemingly useful things somewhat associated
with what you currently do, you can't even remember learning.

------
peterwwillis
Before I went to high school (maybe 8th grade?) I took some kind of test to
determine what kind of career I was best suited for. It said the least likely
position was computer programming because my math skills were so poor. I was
already programming in C and Perl at this time. (I'm still not a "real"
programmer; I learned early on that sysadmin was easier and pays more on
average. I now regret going the easy route)

------
grot
tl;dr

Successful man fails 10th grade standardized test, concludes that success is
not correlated with being able to do math.

Aside from the obvious logical/statistical falacy of making an overreaching
conclusion from a sample size of one, and various other illogical claims("if
this guy doesn't need math, why does anyone??") this article assumes that the
purpose of education is developing vocational skills.

Why should that be? Kids should learn to appreciate the world, get exposure to
different things. There's no reason to make them hunker down at age 5 and
start preparing for their future careers. If they don't like math, that's
fine. Likewise for history, science, whatever. But it's a shame for anyone to
miss out on the beauty inherent in all of these subjects.

------
swdunlop
That's a safe position to take for the readership of the Washington Post:
"kids don't need all that education -- we're doing fine, despite forgetting
basic operations and failing reading comprehension."

------
zephjc
Are his degrees in psychology, sociology, pedagogy, political science and a
teaching qualification?

------
absconditus
This article is superficial and conflates several issues.

------
dragonsky
Education kills the joy of learning!

Situation: I have three children, current ages 11, 10 and 5, parents are
University educated and engaged in the children's learning.

The progression of learning for each child has been:

Age 3: Starting to learn to read at home. Enjoying being read to, and
discovering that letters and words have meaning. Starting to understand
counting, and a one to one relationship between a number and a quantity of
objects. Learning that numbers of objects can be added and subtracted. Really
excited to learn, and will try new things if they give a chance to learn.

Age 5: Starting formal schooling, with pre-school/prep. Getting readers to
take home, very excited at the time that is being spent being presented with
new words. Fully understanding numbers and how to count things. fascinated by
the idea of infinity and zero. Learning the concept of fractions (of apple).
Loves learning.

Age 5.5; half a year into formal schooling.... I'm board at school... Parents
still introducing new ideas at home and encouraging reading of material to
extend ability... Trying to introduce new maths concepts to encourage
interest.

Age 6: Bringing home standard worksheets for maths and literacy, some conflict
to get homework completed... Not really interested in school. Loves reading,
not interested in maths.

Age 8: Don't want to go to school, Don't want to do homework... What is going
on? Just wants to spend time reading. Loves an argument about the physical
world.

Age 10: Discipline problems at school, no interest. Loves reading, loves
computer games.. Still loves a good argument...

Age 11: OK We have a problem, High school in one year... he's missing a bunch
of the basics What happened? Looks like lots of remedial work over the
Christmas Holidays.

How is it that kids who are engaged and excited to be learning at five years
old can so quickly have this interest buried when confronted by formal
learning? How am I to prevent this from happening to my youngest (currently
5yrs) as well? She is very bright, some would say "gifted", I don't want here
to start to hate learning as well. There has to be a better way!

Digging deeper and talking to the older kids it quickly becomes obvious that
they do enjoy learning, they just can't be stuffed doing the boring repetitive
stuff once they have grasped the concept being covered. We go over maths
concepts at home... They get it, they are interested in it, they just don't
want to do it at school.

Looking through the kids school books it becomes obvious that what they have
been doing all year is not "learning", but more "drilling". Now I'm not an
education expert, but I do understand the value of repetitive drill when
practising to become an expert at a particular procedure or action, it has
great value if you are a dancer, gymnast or swimmer... I'm just not sure at
how good it is at instilling enthusiasm for learning and an ability to take
what has been learnt and apply it to new situations.

My understanding is that the current methods of education came about shortly
after the industrial revolution in Europe, and were a way of training people
in a standard way that would make them suitable for employment as workers in
factories and offices. We are no longer living in industrial Europe c1850,
surly we should be looking at better ways of educating our young.

------
dos1
This makes me angry. How did this man get to his current position? I can't
possibly understand how he did not know any of the math questions. I'm sure
even I would have forgotten some of the trig, but to not know ANY? But I hear
people saying, "his job didn't require much in the way of math." Granted, but
I'm sure his job requires lots of reading, and he got a 62%?

The real tragedy is that this man was able to rise as high as he did, and our
current system supports it.

~~~
dgabriel
How many kids have mastered trig in the 10th grade? The standard math track is
two years of algebra, a year of geometry, then trig (as far as I remember),
and the more advanced track has you starting, but not completing, trig in the
10th grade, then moving on to calc.

My guess is that the test had a lot of algebra 2 material, which requires some
memorization of formulas. It's not _hard_ math, it's just sort of plug and
play, but it's hard to remember what to plug the numbers _into_ if you haven't
had a recent refresher, or you're not teaching it.

As far as getting a 62% on the reading portion, well that's just pathetic.

~~~
sethg
_As far as getting a 62% on the reading portion, well that's just pathetic._

For all we know, the reading test was either testing for a different kind of
plug-and-play (“the author of the above paragraph is using (a) apostrophe; (b)
synechdoche; (c) both; (d) neither”) or is testing mastery of a certain kind
of teaching-to-the-test in the guise of “reading comprehension”.

------
kahawe
> _"I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion
> operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data
> related to those responsibilities."_

...which all requires a completely different skill-set than what kids are
being taught in school. Politics, opportunism, cold-blooded back stabbing if
necessary and clever PR being just a few of those.

Also, when he actually was in school, the curriculum was probably (at least
somewhat) different, different tests and questions. He cannot really base an
educated opinion on the school system and standardized tests from just that
alone - leaving what you personally feel about the school system out of the
equation for a second.

------
nuje
"By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are
well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in
the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. "

Sounds more like a disaster from the rest of the biosphere's POV.

------
tyohn
Wow - after reading the comments on this thread I have to say that I am
thoroughly disappointed in the HN community. If you replaced the word
math(ematics) with a religion of your choice you'd see the same kind of
fanaticism you often see from religious zealots.

The God of math has spoken: obey, conform or be cast out...There is nothing
other than Me. All other gods require Me to make them whole - in fact you
can't even think without Me... Now go forth and preach my wisdom because there
is no other wisdom other than Me.

