WSJ - only 22% of American 12th graders can do grade level math

Sounds like GOP will be in power for the next 100 years.

Just judging from this forum, only 22% of Americans can do grade level English.

I don't believe it. The pinnacle of grade school math is being able to formulate and solve a linear equation from words. While there are probably some idiots who can't do that as a senior in high school, I would imagine the poor test scores are due to student apathy. I.e. they are just filling in random answers because they can go on their phone after finishing the test.

Shame. The world needs ditch diggers too! No, seriously. Skip college, go in the trades. Go work for UPS. You will be part time for a while, can’t be a driver until you’re 21. By the time your peers are out of four years of college with a bunch of debt you will be in your second year of driving. Halfway to top rate. That’s $45 an hour atm. By the time you’re a driver it will be more than that. GOAT health/dental/vision. 401K. Pension, most companies have scrapped that. Be smart with your money, retire at 51. 30 years full time. Perhaps go into feeder driving, the big trailers. Top rate for that is 60-ish atm. Boom.

Whoa that’s almost like 1 in every 5 students

Breaking news: Most people are really f#cking stupid

I went to a school where a third of students went to an Ivy/Stanford/MIT/etc and another third went to the next tier of schools. A good portion of the class always left the entire test blank. The school consistently had the top number of average AP tests taken and the top number of National merit semifinalists in the state and was also very average in standardized test scores.

What is "grade level" math for 12th grade? High schools are elective about math, those students who can learn it usually start with algebra and work their way up to calculus by senior year.

When I got to college (back when schools were better) I was surprised to find college freshmen being taught introductory algebra. I'm genuinely curious what other kind of math they were studying all the way through high school, if algebra was still new to them. Maybe they just didn't do math at all?

It’s astonishing that basically only 1 in 10 can do basic math. Our education system is a failure in America.

There's no rigor....If someone fails it might hurt their feelings...

Can’t make chicken salad out of chicken sh!t.

Lol....We invented everything people use in everyday life....Computers, cars, trains, airplanes, electricity, telephones....The most powerful, prosperous, advanced country in history...eat your heart out....

We? Who is we?

Youre the typical American who thinks he contributed to an accomplishment when you just sit in your moms basement

Pretty much every state requires high school students to take at least three years of math to graduate. However, I know that at the school where I teach (30 minutes outside of a midsize midwestern city, gradually changing from rural to a rural/suburban mix), what we used to think of as one class, Algebra 1, can now be split into Algebra 1A and Algebra 1B. Average to below average kids take those during freshman and sophomore years. After that, they can take geometry and pretty much stop there, or take what are essentially math electives: things like "Intro to Financial Statistics" or similar.

However, just because students take those courses, it doesn't actually mean that they learned much. If they can scrape together enough participation/completion/retake points for a D, they can get credit for the course, even if they hardly understood much content, and certainly didn't retain it. Most colleges require students to take a placement test before enrolling in gen ed courses, or to submit ACT subject scores or AP scores as proof of basic proficiency. The kids that do poorly on the gen-ed placement test (because they never took an AP math class and got <21 on the math ACT) almost certainly took both algebra and geometry in high school, because they wouldn't have the requisite diploma to be in college otherwise. However, they came in lacking core foundational skills (memorized times tables, basic fraction fluency) and didn't add much to them during four years of high school.

This doesn't even get into the topic of "credit recovery" software, in which kids who flunked a class the first time sit on a computer program and either Google answers or get fed them by a study hall monitor for a few weeks until they magically show they they've "recovered" a full year's worth of content knowledge.

There is so much to be said for how low the standards are in many US high schools and how few people care or even realize it's happening.

Republicans passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. That implemented a huge emphasis on standardized testing and charter schools. The main goal however was to try and smash teachers unions by marginalizing teachers by standardizing curriculum with worksheets and canned teaching plans. The ultimate goal of privatization was never realized as a number of for profit startups crashed and burned.

Big surprise that 20+ years later we come to find that students are doing poorly and our schools suck.

I'm not surprised at all. I'd like to see it broken down by race and gender.

Have you been to Asia or Africa? They are also dumb AF and have been around for way longer. Every people has its share of idiots, brilliants, and a large swathe of apathetic in-betweens that with the right stimulation and/or necessity would do better than they do.

Americans are no exceptions.

I bet most of them dudes have ran faster than you.