Day of Reckoning for my students!
Today my students took the dreaded New York State Mathematics A exam. This time last year, there was much controversy about the fairness of the test, or lack thereof. This year the discussion, by my fellow teachers was, centered on whether the scoring chart was too generous.
I stopped by Tops on my way into school today and bought about $20 worth of mini-donuts and juice, for the students attending my Last Chance Last Minute Review. I had a little less than half my students show up, and I think they found it valuable. Still lots of questions on quadratic equations, probability and logic, as well as why we didn't spend more time working with graphing calculators and doing constructions.
After lunch, the students came in and the test began. It looked pretty fair, similar to January's, a couple of curveballs, and a lot of questions where they had to remember material from different units to come up with an answer. The last question was a winner: a quadratic-linear system, involving a circle. The linear equation did not lend itself well to an algebraic solution; thus, forcing students to graph it. Additionally, there was a construction on it, and I feared that might come back to bite me in the Angle-Side-Side, as I think, I showed them was a compass looked like, in class.
By 2:30, everyone was done, and I could return to the math office to retreive the scoring conversion chart from the Internet, and grade the Part I's of my students. I was the last teacher to return from the gym, and those that returned before me, had indicated that their students had fared well on the Part I. One of my coworkers pulled up the conversion chart, and to our surprise, (and my delight), the raw score necessary to pass was only a 37. In a way, I think that's a bit ridiculous, since that's out of a possible 84 points, which means that a student can basically know 44% of the material on the test, and still pass; hence the aforementioned discussions. To give you an idea as to the complexity of some of the questions, I didn't even get all 30 multiple choice questions correct: I didn't remember that 1 is not a prime number. For those interested, here's a link to the NYS Education Department website that has all the past Math A Regents Exams on it. The June 2004 Exam won't appear on the page until probably the end of June or early July. But, it will appear here eventually.
I graded all my Part I's, and I was quite happy. The lowest score was 30 points, which means that my students needed at most 7 points out of 24 on Parts II, III & IV to pass. I looked over the tests of those that got below 37 on the Part I, and it looks like most of them have enough right on the other parts to have passed. It's very possible that I had all my students pass the Regents, even though there will be a couple that won't pass the class (sucks for them). The only other thing that I'm hoping for, and I probably won't know for a couple of more days, is to hear that merina888's younger sister (not the one that just got married, c'mon guys!) passed the Math A Exam.
Had an interesting conversation with my Principal, afterward. We got to talking about the NYS Math A Curriculum, and he indicated that he thought that NYS Ed Dept. finally got their hands around the Math A Exam as a minimum competency test, to replace the local exams that were given in previous years, and that the Math B was going to be targetted to those wanting to receive the Advanced Regents Diploma. Interesting thought. If that's the case, it's going to make it really hard on those teaching Math B, to get those students that barely know what a parabola is to learn/re-learn enough material to be able to pass the Math B exam. It should be interesting to see how our students fare on the Math B exam, which Snorwich is offering for the first time next week. My feeling, and I've shared this with a number of administrators, both in Snorwich, and when I've invariably asked in interviews, is that NYS is doing our students a disservice by packaging the Math curriculum the way it has. There is too much material, which inevitably gets glossed over too briskly for our students to remember enough of it to become proficient at math. In the Fall semester, I taught the first half of the Math B curriculum, and I was amazed and disgusted by the amount of time I spent reteaching Math A topics, because my students couldn't remember this, that or the other thing. At the risk of sounding terribly old school, I think the Math Currculum was better when I was in school and there were three one year courses: Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry. I think that was better than the Course I, II and III, that was offered from the mid-1980s through the early-2000s. As much as I believe that logic and locus should be part of the Math Curriculum, I'm not sure they need to be emphasized to the extent they currently are. I certainly don't remember them being a part of any high school classes that I took, and am I worse off for it? I don't think so. The last interview I was on, I discussed this with the interviewers who asked me, "What could I do to fix the NYS Mathematics A Curriculum?" I didn't give them the long version of the above diatribe, but I basically said I thought that it was too broad and not deep enough, and that I think its purposes would be better served by distributing it over three one-year courses rather than two 1.5 year courses. The interviewers seemed quite happy with that answer, and indicated that they agreed. **Writer descends from soapbox**
Spent about 30 minutes cleaning crap off my desk, then left at about 5pm. Got home and found Merina888's "interesting" email in my mailbox, and decided to post this.
Side note: Go Detroit Pistons! Was very happy that they won the NBA Championship last night. Particularly glad they beat the LA Lakers. That's what they get for trying to buy another championship. Phil Jackson's won enough already, as have Shaq and Kobe. Sorry, Karl Malone, maybe next year. Now Kobe can focus on getting his ass out of legal hot water.
Now that the NYS Math A Exam is over and done with, I can try to relax a bit, think about more job applications for the Ra-cha-cha area, as well as trying to hunt up some summer work. Also need to think about my APO Board report for the July meeting, as well as book travel for that. Still lots left to do, so I can relax just a bit, but not much!
I stopped by Tops on my way into school today and bought about $20 worth of mini-donuts and juice, for the students attending my Last Chance Last Minute Review. I had a little less than half my students show up, and I think they found it valuable. Still lots of questions on quadratic equations, probability and logic, as well as why we didn't spend more time working with graphing calculators and doing constructions.
After lunch, the students came in and the test began. It looked pretty fair, similar to January's, a couple of curveballs, and a lot of questions where they had to remember material from different units to come up with an answer. The last question was a winner: a quadratic-linear system, involving a circle. The linear equation did not lend itself well to an algebraic solution; thus, forcing students to graph it. Additionally, there was a construction on it, and I feared that might come back to bite me in the Angle-Side-Side, as I think, I showed them was a compass looked like, in class.
By 2:30, everyone was done, and I could return to the math office to retreive the scoring conversion chart from the Internet, and grade the Part I's of my students. I was the last teacher to return from the gym, and those that returned before me, had indicated that their students had fared well on the Part I. One of my coworkers pulled up the conversion chart, and to our surprise, (and my delight), the raw score necessary to pass was only a 37. In a way, I think that's a bit ridiculous, since that's out of a possible 84 points, which means that a student can basically know 44% of the material on the test, and still pass; hence the aforementioned discussions. To give you an idea as to the complexity of some of the questions, I didn't even get all 30 multiple choice questions correct: I didn't remember that 1 is not a prime number. For those interested, here's a link to the NYS Education Department website that has all the past Math A Regents Exams on it. The June 2004 Exam won't appear on the page until probably the end of June or early July. But, it will appear here eventually.
I graded all my Part I's, and I was quite happy. The lowest score was 30 points, which means that my students needed at most 7 points out of 24 on Parts II, III & IV to pass. I looked over the tests of those that got below 37 on the Part I, and it looks like most of them have enough right on the other parts to have passed. It's very possible that I had all my students pass the Regents, even though there will be a couple that won't pass the class (sucks for them). The only other thing that I'm hoping for, and I probably won't know for a couple of more days, is to hear that merina888's younger sister (not the one that just got married, c'mon guys!) passed the Math A Exam.
Had an interesting conversation with my Principal, afterward. We got to talking about the NYS Math A Curriculum, and he indicated that he thought that NYS Ed Dept. finally got their hands around the Math A Exam as a minimum competency test, to replace the local exams that were given in previous years, and that the Math B was going to be targetted to those wanting to receive the Advanced Regents Diploma. Interesting thought. If that's the case, it's going to make it really hard on those teaching Math B, to get those students that barely know what a parabola is to learn/re-learn enough material to be able to pass the Math B exam. It should be interesting to see how our students fare on the Math B exam, which Snorwich is offering for the first time next week. My feeling, and I've shared this with a number of administrators, both in Snorwich, and when I've invariably asked in interviews, is that NYS is doing our students a disservice by packaging the Math curriculum the way it has. There is too much material, which inevitably gets glossed over too briskly for our students to remember enough of it to become proficient at math. In the Fall semester, I taught the first half of the Math B curriculum, and I was amazed and disgusted by the amount of time I spent reteaching Math A topics, because my students couldn't remember this, that or the other thing. At the risk of sounding terribly old school, I think the Math Currculum was better when I was in school and there were three one year courses: Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry. I think that was better than the Course I, II and III, that was offered from the mid-1980s through the early-2000s. As much as I believe that logic and locus should be part of the Math Curriculum, I'm not sure they need to be emphasized to the extent they currently are. I certainly don't remember them being a part of any high school classes that I took, and am I worse off for it? I don't think so. The last interview I was on, I discussed this with the interviewers who asked me, "What could I do to fix the NYS Mathematics A Curriculum?" I didn't give them the long version of the above diatribe, but I basically said I thought that it was too broad and not deep enough, and that I think its purposes would be better served by distributing it over three one-year courses rather than two 1.5 year courses. The interviewers seemed quite happy with that answer, and indicated that they agreed. **Writer descends from soapbox**
Spent about 30 minutes cleaning crap off my desk, then left at about 5pm. Got home and found Merina888's "interesting" email in my mailbox, and decided to post this.
Side note: Go Detroit Pistons! Was very happy that they won the NBA Championship last night. Particularly glad they beat the LA Lakers. That's what they get for trying to buy another championship. Phil Jackson's won enough already, as have Shaq and Kobe. Sorry, Karl Malone, maybe next year. Now Kobe can focus on getting his ass out of legal hot water.
Now that the NYS Math A Exam is over and done with, I can try to relax a bit, think about more job applications for the Ra-cha-cha area, as well as trying to hunt up some summer work. Also need to think about my APO Board report for the July meeting, as well as book travel for that. Still lots left to do, so I can relax just a bit, but not much!