Calculators or not ... placement tests

This article is the 4th in a series titled "Calculators or not". You might want to take a look at the previous three short articles "Calculators or not" , "Calculators or not .... high school math" , "Calculators or not ... college entrance exams". Please feel free to comment at anytime!

This is not my final article on this topic ... but it is probably one of the most important ... College PLACEMENT tests. Not ENTRANCE tests .... PLACEMENT. A Placement test is given to a student entering the college they have enrolled with in order to place them in the correct level of Math and/or English classes. The Math classes available at the College level are:

• Beginning Algebra (approximately equal to high school Algebra I) No College Credit ... but must pay tuition ... considered remedial.
• Intermediate Algebra (approximately equal to high school Algebra II) No College Credit ... but must pay tuition ... considered remedial.
• College Algebra (approximately equal to high school Pre-Calculus) Does earn college credit and is required by almost every Major for graduation.
• There are many more Math classes above College Algebra, but it is the minimum required for most degrees.

The ACCUPLACER is one of the most common tests given for this purpose, but various colleges and universities use various tests. However, nearly every college placement test has this one thing in common .... NO CALCULATORS ALLOWED on the Math Portion of the test.

This might not seem like such a big deal to you, but believe me, it is. Keep in mind that not only have students been allowed to use calculators for their entire high school Math education, they have been encouraged to use them. Teachers even encourage them to buy one of their own and they cost $100+. "You will need it for college" we tell them. They know how to use it and they take it with them to their college placement test, where it is taken away from them. Panic sets in. Regardless of whether they actually NEED the calculator, having it near them is a comfort. Suddenly they feel defenseless against the oncoming onslaught of mathematics ...

Okay ... maybe I am over-dramatizing things, but I'll bet I am not far off the mark. Suddenly a student who finished high school Algebra II with a high B is placed in Beginning Algebra at the College Level. Or a student who finished Pre-Calculus with an A is being placed in Intermediate Algebra. And colleges and universities are ranting about how today's high schools are not doing enough to prepare students for college. They then reference the number of students taking "remedial" math.

Top that off with the fact that many of these remedial college math courses are not allowing calculator use at all and I am wondering what is going on? These remedial math courses have become huge money makers for the colleges and universities. The professors assigned to teach them feel the courses are "beneath" them and often teach over the students' heads. Many of the courses are going to online programs which are extremely cumbersome to use. Students are failing these remedial courses left and right, thus having to take them again and pay more tuition, which brings in more money for the college or university. And students still haven't even gotten to the one Math course they actually do get college credit for, College Algebra. And College Algebra is a minimum Math requirement for almost any degree offered these days.

Texas Instruments!! Where are you??? You have done a fantastic job of getting your calculators into the hands of high school teachers and students. You have integrated your calculators so deeply into the Texas TAKS test and the Texas Math textbooks and in teacher training that teachers feel compelled to use them in order to keep their students up to date with emerging Math technology. Then the student moves on to college and it is like going back to the 1970's. No calculators allowed. It's like the great leaps and bounds which calculator technology has made don't even exist! Even the online Math courses have professor monitored tests where no calculators are allowed.

Hello Colleges ... it is 2008 ... that would be the 21st Century .... No Calculators is a bit backward, don't you think?

So I ask again .... Texas Instruments! Where are you??

Calculators or not .... college entrance tests

This article is the 3rd in a series titled "Calculators or not". You might want to take a look at the previous two short articles "Calculators or not" and "Calculators or not .... high school math" . Please feel free to comment at anytime!

You will note that the picture I used with the first article mentions that the TI-nspire calculator is "permitted on SAT ACT and AP testing". This is true and so are several other versions of Texas Instruments calculators, as well as Casios and HPs and a few other brands. However, for the most part, calculators are not even really needed in order to do VERY well on these tests. And you certainly don't need the most high powered graphing calculator you can get your hands on! You do need to know a great deal about Math in order to do well, but the calculator does not tell you WHEN to multiply or WHEN to take the square-root. The calculator will do these things for you, but you have to know WHEN. And that is what the college entrance exams are testing.

The SAT and the ACT are the two main College Entrance exams which students take in order to gain admittance to the college of their choice. Students can use calculators on these tests and they are required to bring their own calculator to the test. Most of them do.

They bring the calculator and there it sits. Rarely will they have to touch it while they take the math sections of the test. BUT .... they LIKE having it there. It is a source of comfort to have it there. Forget your calculator, and suddenly you don't know anything! Have the batteries go dead, and suddenly you are in a sweaty panic! It isn't so much that you NEED it ... it is that you THINK you need it.

For sample questions from the SAT, sign up for the SAT Question of the Day . Every 3rd day there is a sample Math Question. It is actually a very educational thing to do everyday. If you sign up, you'll get a question in your email everyday! Do these questions for a few weeks and see how often YOU have to reach for a calculator. Not often, I'll bet.

In short, calculators are not really needed on the SAT or the ACT, but they are permitted. Students like having them beside them, whether they touch them or not.

But ... there are other types of entrance tests and placement tests which do NOT allow the use of a calculator ... and that will be the subject of my next article ... "Calculators or not ... placement tests"

Calculators or not .... high school math

Texas Instruments is one of the leading manufacturers of calculator technology. They make amazing little tools! And they are very smart about their marketing. Texas Instruments has insured that every student in every Math class in Texas public high schools has access to one of their graphing calculators. Every high school Math classroom has a classroom set (28 or more) of TI-83's or TI-84's or better.



The state mandated TAKS test also has a requirement that every student taking the Math portion of the high school level test must have access to a graphing calculator. And here is the kicker .... many of the TAKS test questions are written so that a graphing calculator is actually almost necessary for success on the test. Teachers are STRONGLY encouraged to teach with the calculators and Texas Instruments is very generous with their training and extra little devices to enable engaging teaching with their technology.



If you will go to my Sample Videos page and look at Question #50, you will see just one of the tools which all teachers have to use. This device, called an Emulator, can be projected from the teacher's computer onto a board in front of the classroom. It is a wonderful teaching tool! In fact, Texas-Instruments has dozens of wonderful teaching tools and they are working very hard to get them into the hands of every public school Math teacher in Texas and probably everywhere else in the USA.



The point I am attempting to make is that for 4 long years of Math education, every public school high school student has daily access to a TI-graphing calculator. Students are also encouraged to buy their own to use on their homework at home. Many of the Math textbooks include instructions on how to write programs for your calculator and how to use your calculator to do the lessons.



But probably one of the most addictive AND comforting things about using a TI-graphing calculator is that .... (Drum roll, please) ... it does fractions for you! It adds them, it subtracts them, it multiplies and divides them ... and it will give you a reduced fraction for the answer! What's not to love?



Through the 4 years of high school math, now required of all students, our kids have constant access to a graphing calculator. It actually becomes a source of "security" for them. Do they use it all the time? No. Do they need it all the time? No. But take it away from them and ask them to do a Math problem and panic sets in.



Which leads me to my next article ..... coming soon ... "Calculators or not ... College Placement Tests".

Calculators or not

How do YOU feel? Should students be allowed to use the fancy graphing calculators in their high school Math classes?



Do you use a calculator when doing things with numbers? Or do you pull out a pencil and paper and do long multiplication by hand? Long division by hand? Add columns of numbers by hand?



If you were to be handed a fancy graphing calculator, would you even begin to have a clue how to use it?



Should high school and college students of the 21st Century be using these fancy calculators in their classes? Or are we handicapping them?



I would love to get your feedback on this. I have my own opinions, which I plan to share in a few articles ... but I would like to know how the general public feels about "Calculators or Not?"

Race and test scores ....

President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama recently referred to himself as a "mutt". If you don't know what he meant, well, what rock have you been living under? America elected a mixed race, mixed religion man to be President. Unprecedented! America has become color-blind! Finally!


And this is as it should be! Why are we dividing everything up by race here in the 21st Century? This is actually getting more and more difficult to do. For instance, which box would our President-Elect check on most forms where the race question is asked? Asian? Black? Non-Hispanic Caucasian? Hispanic? American Indian? None of the Above? All of the Above? And why don't these forms have directions to "Check all that Apply"? How is a person of mixed heritage supposed to complete these forms?

As any educator in Texas knows, one of the great driving forces here is the TAKS Test ... Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. And every time this test is given, the results are broken down by the following categories: All Students, African American, Hispanic, White, Economically Disadvantaged, Limited English Proficient, and Special Education. Click here for a Sample of Results. I notice there are a few categories missing. One that really jumps out at me is the lack of an Asian Category. Why is that?

So, what category does a student select if they are multi-racial? Well, to be honest, they don't get a choice. When they receive their testing forms, the race is already filled out for them. Somebody somewhere has already decided what category these students need to count for, or against. I remember one young lady in particular who was half-black and half-white. She wanted to be counted in the Caucasian category but her test form had her placed as an African-American. When she went to her counselor to ask to have that changed, she was told that since she always scores well she needs to stay in the African-American category in order to improve the overall performance of African-Americans in her school. They did not change her to Caucasian. Several other students had similar issues. If they were smart, they were placed in the race category needing the most help. If they usually didn't score well, they were placed in the Caucasian category. Does anyone sense anything fishy about that?