Saturday, February 13, 2010

NECAP Math & "College and Career Readiness"

I forbid myself from looking at math standards, because it is way too easy to convince oneself that you are an expert on math education (see also the internet for examples of this phenomenon). But I have been puzzling over the low pass rates on the 11th grade math NECAPs in Providence.

All the neighborhood schools are around 5% or less. Classical High School has the highest proficiency rate at 54%. I'm not a huge fan of Classical -- the exam school which siphons off a big chunk of the academic talent in the system, but I find it hard to believe that 50% of the kids at Classical won't be ready for "college or career" because of their math skills. Nor, for that matter, do I think 96% of the kids at Feinstein are not prepared for college or career.

And this could, of course, be empirically tested. Did the kids who didn't pass NECAP math in 2007 have to take remedial math as college freshmen in 2009? What grades did they get in college math?

I don't understand the premise that "college- and career-ready" standards would be higher than what we have now. If they really hold to that definition, they would almost certainly be lower, or at least easier to achieve.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm being lazy. You have a quick link for the content, format, and scoring routines for the exam?

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