Teach your children well

[foraker]

Given headlines recent headlines such as

 

Study: College students' literacy skills lag

By BEN FELLER

 

The Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON — Most college students nearing a diploma cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit-card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food."

 

Where do you stand? Why? Interested to see what people closer to the trenches (parents, teachers) have to say.

[Gary_Yngve]

Republicans tend to like this sort of thing, as it's a way of doing a financial accounting of the effectiveness of your tax dollars.

 

I don't like it for several reasons:

a) a high-pressure test is not a good way of evaluating someone's learning

b) it takes valuable time away from teaching and costs a nontrivial amount of money

c) teachers are pressured into teaching for the exam instead of teaching how they should teach

 

Not sure if I have an answer for college literacy. But I am annoyed by grade inflation, something moreso present at liberal arts schools than engineering schools.

 

Regarding math, I wish folks weren't so dependent on calculators. Now folks are using their cellphones to calculate tip. I hate it when I pay for $19.52 of groceries, hand them $20.05, and watch as the cashier is dumbfounded.

[Dave_Schuldt]

I heard they don't understand credit cards of check books.

[Gary_Yngve]

I had business class in 7th grade where we learned how to write checks, balance a checkbook, and read an account statement.

 

What's so hard about understanding credit cards? One rule: pay off your balance every month. Credit card companies are evil and will do whatever they can to convince you that it's in your best interest to have a running balance.

[cj001f]

Didn't like my posting this in your bitch about the youth thread

[eric8]

Given headlines recent headlines such as

 

Study: College students' literacy skills lag

By BEN FELLER

 

The Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON — Most college students nearing a diploma cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit-card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food."

 

Where do you stand? Why? Interested to see what people closer to the trenches (parents, teachers) have to say.

 

Where do they get this stuff? What do they mean by many? Do they mean 4 art history and Communications majors or greater than 50%? I have just about the worst language skills of any of my friends and I still think that those would be considered simple tasks. And i should graudate in a year or so.

 

Sorry I realize that your point was about the Wasl. Just the fucking press in this country pisses me off. Anyway I don't think you can really compare Wasl scores to skills sets of graudating college students since the wasl is for highschool students and last time I checked only 25% of graudating highschool seniors went on to 4 year universities.

 

For the Wasl itself. My mom teaches 7th grade English. Meaning the students she teaches have to take and pass the wasl. At first she did not like the WASL testing however last time I talked to her about the wasl she was for it. Her reasoning was that it gave her specific skills she had to teach and other 7th grade teachers would be doing the same thing. So hopefully all kids would be going into 8th grade with the same skill set. The biggest reason she was for it though, was because in a few case where students have been on the boardline of passing she has seen increased parent interest, which she believes has been sharply declining in the past 20 years she has been teaching.

 

All is not well with the system though. I know she gets upset when students who are ESL are still expected to pass the Wasl like everyone else, espically when they have been in the country for say less than a year.

[kurthicks]

I hate it when I pay for $19.52 of groceries, hand them $20.05, and watch as the cashier is dumbfounded.

 

but why in the hell would one do such a thing? just too see them squirm, I suppose?

[Off_White]

Duh, so you can get two quarters back for the peep show.