Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Anyone (in New York) Have Any Reaction to the Algebra Regents exam?

The last Algebra Regents exam, in its current form, was given today. Next year's test will have to align with the Common Core Standards being implanted across the state and around the country. Problematically, some schools started their implementation this year, meaning that their students would be ill-prepared for this exam, which hardly lined up with those new standards.

Any thoughts on the exam? Please, share them. Let's have a dialogue.

EDIT: Thursday morning

In my opinion the dumbest question on the Algebra Regents was 6! + [5!(3!)]/4! - 10.

The question serves no purpose. It's order of operations... but with a twist! Sure, factorial gets covered with permutations, but this isn't any kind of combination/permutation question -- which, by the way, can be figured out without using an exclamation point.

There were too many statistics and probability questions, and there was no graphing. (Yes, there were a couple of multiple-choice questions which involved a graph, but students didn't need to make any graphs.) Statistics and probability are what get crammed in at the end of the year because there are so many topics in the Integrated Algebra curriculum, many of which are interconnected. Statitstics is a separate topic, and probability has been moved out of the curriculum under the Common Core standards. I feel sorry for any student whose school implemented the new curriculum a year early.

What else is there to complain about? (Anything to compliment?)

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