New Mexico Math Musings

Any of you who follow my blog will have figured out that I haven't been nearly as prolific as I used to be. Well, I've been grading scoring New Mexico's standardized math test for fifth grade. Here are some of the more interesting observations:

Collapse!

Test questions ranged from fairly simple pattern recognition to multipart reasoning and basic set theory type questions. To my knowledge, students did not use calculators. I scored only the written/short answer questions, which had a maximum of 26 points available. All questions were to be scored holistically - meaning trying to look at student process to determine whether the student understood the concept being tested.

1) None of the student tests that I scored earned more than 24 points, with the bulk of students earning in the 9-12 point range. Note: I scored about 6,000 separate tests. This was a highly discouraging result for me to see. I've always assumed that most kids can perform basic tasks in mathematics. Simple ordering of 4 numbers from greatest to least also left about 25% of these 5th graders banging their heads against a wall. Stating the range of those same 4 numbers left almost 90% of NM students lost beyond all hope.

2) I was also disappointed at the universally poor spelling. For instance it was not uncommon for a student to spell either "right" or "write" as "rit". Nor did it end with just poor spelling. Grammer and linear thought processes were lacking in about 50% of students.

3) The other scorers on my team were trying to figure out what the root cause of the dismal performance might have been. The usual culprits were trotted out - poor school districts, Native American disconnect, poor socio-economics in the communities, etc., etc., etc. I wonder about a slightly different cause, namely teachers not holding students responsible for basic levels of performance before they are passed onto the next grade. With so many different districts having such low scores, I believe there must be something systemic to NM's education system that prevents so many students from performing basic competencies. I have no idea what the true cause might be.

I sincerely hope that NM students can get their act together some day. But in the meantime, "No Child Left Behind" has blatently pointed out the failure of NM schools to the children and their communities.

Read more!

Collapse!