Re: “Plummeting WA math scores point to trouble. Time for course correction” (April 11, Editorials):
Whereas I’m sure most of us agree we would like one of the best schooling potential for college students in Washington, as a highschool math instructor it troubles me that we’re nonetheless making generalizations about this schooling based mostly on the outcomes of standardized math exams. Such exams include rigid, formulaic questions that college students may be coached to reply. Whereas time spent on this teaching could yield higher state efficiency on standardized exams, it says subsequent to nothing about college students’ real skills to assume and problem-solve, the true objective of math schooling.
I spend my free time doing logic-based math issues and I encourage my college students to do the identical. Although in fact it is very important frequently enhance public schooling and search for achievement gaps, the obsessive nationwide concentrate on arithmetic stems from an entire misrepresentation of the purpose of the topic. It’s a tragedy that the typical American believes math is a topic of formulation and calculations when in its true type math is way extra much like artwork.
Sure, allow us to right Washington’s math schooling. Allow us to make it about educating our college students to assume, not teaching them to memorize in preparation of standardized exams.
Megan Bultman, Redmond
