Anyone who has read my blog probably already knows my feelings about high-stakes tests. In a nutshell, I think the tests do more harm than good. I think the tests are emphasizing the wrong skills, and I think we’re teaching the wrong skills in order to “help” students be “successful”.
Long before “No Child Left Behind,” there were two pathways for high school students to study mathematics. One was the algebra-geometry-trigonometry-calculus pathway, which served students who intended to go to college and pursue subjects that required higher math, such as science, and engineering. The other was the “business math” pathway, which served students who intended to forego college and go straight into the business world, as well as students who intended to go to college to pursue non-mathematical disciplines.
In most states, the content of the tenth-grade high-stakes math test is algebra 1 and geometry, in part because NCLB is based on the notion that school systems need to prepare every student for college. I have long maintained that our society would be better served by requiring high school graduates to pass a test in “business math” instead of algebra & geometry. (Or, even better, perhaps we should offer the option of either one.)
I was perusing the archived Regents Exams on the New York State Library’s website. The exam for Business Arithmetic appears to have been given most recently in 1958, though I couldn’t pull up the 1958 exams. However, here is a link to the copy that I downloaded of the June 1957 NY Regents Exam in Business Arithmetic. The exam was three hours long, but the first page was a “Rapid Calculation Test“—five sets of questions to be answered in 15 minutes, performing the calculations mentally. The directions for the rapid calculation section stated explicitly, “All answers [in this section] must be written with pen and ink. Scrap paper may not be used, nor may computations be made on the question paper.” (Scrap paper was permitted for the remainder of the exam.)
How would you do if you had to take this exam? (For those not familiar with the term, “$ per M” means “dollars per 1,000″—which comes from the fact that “M” is the Roman numeral for 1,000.) For those who believe in standardized testing, might our society be better off if most of our high school graduates had to pass an exam like this one instead of an algebra & geometry exam?
I think the year was shorter then, it had 360 days.
The real year was 365.25 days (approximately) just as it is now. But loan contracts were based on a 360-day year to make the math easier, and 50s business arithmetic students would have known that. It explains why most of the numbers of days in the “calculate the interest” section of the test are integer divisors of 360.