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I don't know how to respond to you, except to say these are more difficult questions for an 8th grade exam than I think most people realize are expected of 8th grade students.
Considering the constant whining about the education system. These questions seem quite difficult.
You keep harping on it being for 8th grade. What...the average 8th grade student is about 13 or so? Yes, this is an appropriate level of questions for a 13 year old kid. Google what age/grade students in China start doing calculus.
Kids have a much larger capacity to learn than the average US school grade scheme allows them to learn. Notice how most of those wonder kids who go to college at age 14 are usually home schooled? I believe there would be more of those kids if learning was adjusted to the cadence that an individual kid could learn. Of course, that's difficult to do in a classroom setting.
You keep harping on it being for 8th grade. What...the average 8th grade student is about 13 or so? Yes, this is an appropriate level of questions for a 13 year old kid. Google what age/grade students in China start doing calculus.
Kids have a much larger capacity to learn than the average US school grade scheme allows them to learn. Notice how most of those wonder kids who go to college at age 14 are usually home schooled? I believe there would be more of those kids if learning was adjusted to the cadence that an individual kid could learn. Of course, that's difficult to do in a classroom setting.
I was raised in China, most of didn't start calculus until the last year in high school or even freshman year in college. But we had to do very hard math problems under a tight time constraint. SAT math is super easy for most Chinese high school kids.
But I believe US math education is better. I did my undergraduate in a pretty decent engineering school in Texas and I met a lot of talented students. There's simply no shortage of kids good at math in the US. Very few people need strong math in their career/life, just make sure scientists/mathematicians/engineers are good at math.
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 7 days ago)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude
Okay. So far, you're pretty much in a minority of one.
We'd really have to see an entire sample test to judge the overall level of difficulty. I strongly suspect these represent the toughest examples, and that half of the questions are really 5-6th grade level.
I was counting the people who think the SAT is much harder than the eight grade STAAR.
The first 10 questions of the SAT I could do quickly, with no calculator, although a calculator is available to those test takers and not STAAR test takers.
I think you're a party of one in this thread, on that topic.
Not a party who cares. You have your own viewpoint on this and are completely welcome to it.
Even though you've completely overlooked that 30 teaching samples from one test are going to include easier questions, including a few that are completely "for dummies," while the article you cite almost certainly cherry-picked the hardest STAAR questions the reporter could find, for journalistic/clickbait reasons. It's not an even comparison.
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 7 days ago)
35,629 posts, read 17,961,729 times
Reputation: 50652
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude
Not a party who cares. You have your own viewpoint on this and are completely welcome to it.
Even though you've completely overlooked that 30 teaching samples from one test are going to include easier questions, including a few that are completely "for dummies," while the article you cite almost certainly cherry-picked the hardest STAAR questions the reporter could find, for journalistic/clickbait reasons. It's not an even comparison.
Interesting. So you do think the sample questions are cherry-picked because they seem hard.
That's why I posted, later, the STAAR math portion in it's entirety, to make it clear the questions in the "click bait" article are representative of the full length 8th grade math test.
So. Interesting that after seeing the samples (that to me, appear completely representative) you thought they were harder than the actual test. Because yes, they are surprisingly hard.
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 7 days ago)
35,629 posts, read 17,961,729 times
Reputation: 50652
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude
Okay. You think they're really, really hard.
Only one person has agreed with you.
Six people disagree.
Your turn.
My turn is, you apparently thought they were hard, too, indicating that the sample questions you read must be cherry picked because the real test wouldn't be that difficult.
And now I'm done with this back and forth.
It's going nowhere, and it does appear to me you also found them surprisingly hard, thus deciding they were cherry picked to slant the article.
But yes. Compared to the SAT college entrance exam, I think the STAAR is more difficult.
I don't know how to respond to you, except to say these are more difficult questions for an 8th grade exam than I think most people realize are expected of 8th grade students.
Considering the constant whining about the education system. These questions seem quite difficult.
That's based on ideology.
Its not based on actual curricula and what students are being taught nowadays. Most people have no idea about that.
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