

Pearson says 3x7x26 is not 546 - taylorling
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/08/pearsons-wrong-answer-and-why-it-matters-in-the-high-stakes-testing-era

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anigbrowl
I don't care about an answer key being wrong - typographical errors are a fact
of life, and as long as they're not too common that's fine. What I care about
is teachers using an _answer key_. I never _heard_ of such a thing until I
came to the United States. At least in Ireland, where I grew up, teachers are
expected to be good enough at the subject they teach to do the damn homework
assignments. There are no such things as answer keys for textbook problems.

Every time I bring this up with an American teacher they go into this long
litany of how busy they are and how poorly they're paid and so on. I don't
give a fuck. If you are using an answer key, you are No Good and I don't take
you seriously. I refuse to give a fuck about any of your other problems if
your brain is not minimally engaged with the subject material in which you
purport to be competent.

~~~
mattlutze
Teachers in the US regularly work 9-12 hours a day already building lesson
plans, actually teaching, dealing with administrativa, etc.

It's common sense to run through a homework assignment to certify the key
they're using. But I don't understand how it would be logical to suggest
they're no good as teachers unless they spend another 1..n hours a night
writing all their assignments by hand and not using prepared material from the
books.

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't care any more. If you're using an answer key then you're prioritizing
something else over your core task and you don't have a leg to stand on in
political terms. I'm very pro public education, and I would like to be pro
teachers, but I am simply not going to lend any support to them as long as
they rely on a strategy of whining to get what they want. Relying on answer
keys is shameful. The implacable opposition to any sort of standardized
testing is bullshit. Academic rigor should be teachers' trump card in
political negotiations, and yet they keep acting like it's some sort of
unwelcome imposition.

I'm well aware of all the pressure on teachers to act as substitute parents,
social workers and so on. But none of their input on these subjects has _any
value_ when its divorced from a foundation of academic rigor as their first
priority. Without that foundation you cannot have any political leverage.
American teachers seem to have forgotten this basic political truth. If the
general public does not perceive teachers are intellectually competent and
engaged, then it is not going to give any weight to those teachers' opinions
on other topics. A degree is education is not a substitute for command of the
course material, it's a complement to it. If you can't do a problem like 3 x 7
x 26 in your head then you are _innumerate_ and should not be allowed to teach
a math class.

~~~
mattlutze
From the position you've taken here, I'm getting the impression that you
haven't taken the time to learn what the job/business of teaching actually
requires, and have instead substituted that knowledge with an idealized model
of your own design.

Yes, it would be lovely if all primary and secondary school teachers simply
walked into the classroom 5 minutes before class like it happens on TV and
spate forth a soliloquy of insight and exploration. That fantasy is simply
that.

As a side note, on this line of thought, it'd be similarly shameful for a
developer or engineer to use 3rd-party libraries, refer to APIs, crib from
pattern cookbooks, etc.

I mean, you do rebuild from scratch the functions you need from jQuery, right?
It'd be ridiculous to use reuse the work someone else published, after all.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, you have the wrong impression. I've given extensive thought to this,
talked to a lot of teachers, spent many years reading teachers' point of view
in essays, articles and so on, and generally bent over backwards to see things
their way, even (or maybe especially) on practices or ideas that I find
counter-intuitive.It's not that I'm uninformed on the topic; I simply don't
agree with you.

Also, I'm not a developer. Even if I was, your analogy would be faulty because
I am not suggesting teachers originate all of their teaching materials - as
you well know. I didn't even suggest that teachers should originate all
homework assignments. I am fine with using the ones in a textbook in many
circumstances.

Instead I specifically singled out the practice of using answer keys. Not only
do some teachers just employ them mindlessly and so incorrectly grade
students' work, but all the students are aware of the existence of answer keys
and their widespread use by teachers. Do you think that makes the students
respect teachers more or less? Do you think that might have any effect on
classroom discipline?

I find it depressing that your response to the very narrow argument I was
making (ie that answer keys were bad, and if you have to rely on them you are
probably not competent to teach that subject) has consisted of one rhetorical
fallacy after another instead of addressing the basic point. As I pointed out
yesterday, the math problem described in the article, which involves
multiplying 2 x 7 x 26, is so simple that any numerate person should be able
to do it in their head in a few seconds. If someone can sit there grading
homework and not notice that the answer key is wrong - because most or all the
competent students in the class would have supplied the actually-correct
answer, and at some point the teacher should have noticed that that this
problem seems to have been generating a disproportionate number of 'wrong'
answers - then something is terribly amiss.

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vancomycin
I disagree with her premise. Higher stakes tests presumably have their answer
keys reviewed more closely. Multiplication problems in math textbooks
appropriately don't have their answer keys reviewed with the same degree of
scrutiny. In medical qualification exams, if enough people get an answer
wrong, it may be reviewed for an incorrect answer key, or even thrown out for
being confusing or ambiguous.

