Texas went through this phase of “every student is going to college”. It turned out to be a failure. It did not increase student achievement but only increased the school’s ability to make the numbers look good.
I looked back at something I wrote 4 1/2 years ago and the same applies, not all students are going to college and if they do go, their chances of completing it with a degree are low.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/what-about-the-other-80/
One of our regular readers, who is a member of a college mathematics faculty, sent this following comment about the state of math education today:
“I teach at a small four year college in NY. We administer a mathematics placement test to all incoming freshmen. The test we use was created in house and covers basic skills from algebra, trigonometry, and pre calculus. Questions are asked in a straightforward manner (unlike the current NYS common core based regents exams).
“Any student may take a statistics class (taught outside the mathematics department), regardless of placement score. However, we use the results of the placement test, high school coursework and individual discussions with the students to place students appropriately in the remedial algebra, college algebra, pre calculus, calculus sequence.
That said, fully 25% of our incoming freshmen place into remedial algebra–some should probably be placed lower than
remedial algebra, but we do…
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David R. Taylor 