Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Education Week: Will We Ever Learn?

Education Week: Will We Ever Learn?

Excellent article.
Why do all students need to learn the quadratic formula???

Although many states want to make the course a requirement for graduating from high school, there appears to be no need to do so. Northeastern University sociologist Michael Handel has found that only 9 percent of people in the workforce ever use this knowledge, and that fewer than 20 percent of managerial, professional, or technical workers report using any Algebra 2 material. In fact, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy shows that more than 20 percent of adults (and about 50 percent of minority adults) never learn fractions well enough to apply them to common tasks. When we fixate on Algebra 2’s polynomial functions, command and depth of knowledge are sacrificed for ill-learned, and quickly forgotten, breadth.

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