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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Elroy who wrote (256359)10/19/2005 10:42:28 AM
From: TigerPaw  Read Replies (1) of 1573429
 
I'm still interested to learn what is the difference between "teaching to the test" in 5th grade, and teaching basic math and arithmetic.

I can answer that, since I have just sheparded my kids through Texas schools.

Instead of teaching long division or factoring, for a few weeks the teachers teach how to read the test questions. For example they are taught to look first at the answer choices. If the answers have the same digits, but differ in power (for example the answers might be:

a) 3.14
b) 314.0
c) 3.14e-3
d) 3

Then the student knows that the question depends only on the size of the numbers and that the calculations will only take wasted time.

Another question might have answers of:
a) 4872
b) 5764
c) 126
d) 88
The student taught to notice that the answers fall into two ranges. One range or the other will be correct depending on a division (if you get the right dividend and divisior you will get the right range). The actual value is decided by the order of a subtraction somewhere, but even if you screw up that you can change the problem into a 50-50 guess by getting the range right.

The point is: you don't even have to know what the question is.
This is interesting stuff, but it's not math.

The list goes on and on for other subjects too.

TP
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