I just found a long post by a math prof at Georgia speculating that it’s the AP courses contributing to declining math abilities in college….it’s at my blog. Also, I’m linking to you in my side bar.

Myrtle on March 30, 2007 at 10:07 am said:

The Calculus class in which the students scores decreased was a college course? And the implication is that this is the fault of the high school curriculum?

Whoa, back up. Where did I say anything about the high school, much less the curriculum?

I hope I didn’t give the impression that I was responding directly to you. I was responding to the original post. The focus of the discussion seemed to be on the College Board recentering scores, meaning the students are getting out of high school less educated with further evidence provided by this decline in end of Calculus test scores. I am not trying to assert this so much as figure it out.

I read a couple of other things he’d written. He seems to focus on calculators.

Whoa, back up. Where did I say anything about the high school, much less the curriculum?

I hope I didn’t give the impression that I was responding directly to you. I was responding to the original post. The focus of the discussion seemed to be on the College Board recentering scores, meaning the students are getting out of high school less educated with further evidence provided by this decline in end of Calculus test scores. I am not trying to assert this so much as figure it out.

Really not that interesting a study. *One* professor. It’s odd indeed to assume that the test changed its validity, rather than that one professor’s teaching changed.

Well yes, it is interesting precisely because it’s unexpected, and because it reflects the experience of so many faculty over the last ten or fifteen years. And if you think it odd that the test changed its validity, as you put it, then you have little experience with College Board or ETS.

The CB has been screwing around with the scores forever, trying to make successive class years look like they are getting smarter…there’s nothing new here.

rightwingprof, one reason the SATM scores might’ve remained the same, but the actual calculus test scores went down is because more kids study “to the test” today than they used to.

I had a quick look at disaggregated SAT score trends, but I realized that the participation rates would skew these.

The horrible thought that occured to me, John Hopskins probably became even more selective over the years, and more students take AP calculus.

The Calculus class in which the students scores decreased was a college course? And the implication is that this is the fault of the high school curriculum? If that is what you are saying I guess I can imagine how that might be possible.

I wonder if there is some unmeasured background knowledge that the SAT doesn’t measure, but his test did?

Isn’t the SAT limited to the kinds of questions that can be puzzled out in about 60 seconds? A Calculus final at a university might test “higher order thinking skills” on problems that require a bit more thought. If high school math class were designed to “test to the SAT” then there isn’t any pressure to get students involved in more profound problems.

Off topic, I’ve been trying to find online articles that address my idle speculation about this.

rory @ parentalcation on March 29, 2007 at 4:32 pm said:

Unfortunately he gave the exam after the class was over, so the test measures previous knowledge, plus what he taught.

Even in the content of his class was the same, do we know if the textbook was as well?

I wonder if there is some unmeasured background knowledge that the SAT doesn’t measure, but his test did?

My math SAT score was 600 in 1988, but I was also a C- student in High School. Yeah, I am an idiot.

He said nothing about the textbook, but interestingly, the grading curve had been changed (he calculates what grades the 2006 students would have gotten had they been graded on the 1989 curve, and vice versa), though I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t really relevant to what I focused on.

And the discrepancy between the two scores rules out blaming this on pedagogy (were that the problem, the discrepancy would be much smaller).

But somebody needs to research this.

Even in the content of his class was the same, do we know if the textbook was as well?

I wonder if there is some unmeasured background knowledge that the SAT doesn’t measure, but his test did?

My math SAT score was 600 in 1988, but I was also a C- student in High School. Yeah, I am an idiot.