Hey, it’s not just me with the problem!

RightWingProf has a great post about the differing perceptions of what secondary and post-secondary* instructors think students should be learning in high school. My favorite:

Look, it would be nice if I had a class of incoming students who already knew what Chi-square, ANOVA, t-test, regression, binomial distribution, and so forth were, knew how to do them, and when, but they can’t add.

They don’t have the basic arithmetic fluency to be able to set up and

solve a problem. They don’t know that they can’t divide by zero. They

don’t understand the relationship between multiplication and division.

Forget Chi-square. Give us students who are arithmetically fluent, please!

He also has links to two great sources from the Chronicle of Higher Education and ACT.

*I think this means "college." There’s an unfortunate trend these days to blur the distinction between high school and college. A local manifestation is the relabeling of the years in college as grades 13-16: UTSA’s Office of K-12 Initiatives has declared its imperial ambitions by renaming itself the Office of K-16 Initiatives. I don’t remember being in the 16th grade….

Tip from Joanne Jacobs.