Math standards in middle school changed last year, moving more things down from high school. Who would've thought that a high school student struggling with two-step equations and inequalities in 10th grade would be teaching those topics to 7th graders fifteen years later? Yes, that's me. That topic is probably the most difficult one in 7th grade math, but luckily, most other topics (not standards) are rather easy. Luckily? Maybe not so much.
Most topics, such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing whole numbers, decimals, fractions, as well as any other form of rational numbers might not be too bad for 7th grade, as they're expected to know a lot of that by the time they get there. The problem is that you have to cover all those in a four week period, along with lengthy and confusing word problems. I remember spending almost a whole semester doing that when I was in 7th grade, and word problems were not the whole part, or even the majority of the test.
After that, you could spend about three weeks teaching kids how to solve two-step equations and inequalities, graphing them, knowing how to write them out of a word problem situation (or vice versa), and using equations to solve problems involving missing angles in a triangle, unit angles, complimentary, and supplementary angles. Another four weeks for proportional relationships, including graphing, unit conversions, problems involving percent increase and percent decrease, and similarity. You'll have the finals, along with a few days to review at the end of the semester.
For the second semester, you must cover probability of different kinds of events and situations, area of composite figures, area, surface area, volume, data interpretation (dot plots, pie charts, and box and whisker plots), and financial literacy. I am thinking that if I had been raised with this system I would've struggled. I feel it's too much information in a short period of time and questions are very tricky for middle school students. I have noticed that test performance is not always correlated with a kid's intelligence. Guessing and lucky days might have some kids do well on a multiple choice test when they don't even know how to add decimals correctly, while students who are generally good might have a bad day and fail the test with one of the lowest scores.
After taking college level math, middle school math is a piece of cake. I feel that those kids who have the capability to go to college will naturally learn how to learn by themselves without the need of having too much information given to them in such a short time period. If teachers and other college students who are currently working were successful without those tests, then these kinds of tough tests are probably not needed (I have a feeling that they might even be disruptive to some of these kids' education). While there has to be a way to measure students' and teachers' progress, these kinds of tests might not the best way to do it.
While I'm in this system, I hope that with what I teach, students learn more than just get ready for a test. If there is any other way to make students do better on these tests without teaching to the test, I would like to know how it's done. All I've thought of is going deeper into the finance part after STAAR without a STAARlike format, as well as constantly reminding them about the importance of getting a school diploma and a college education. While I agree on the fact that we need high order thinking in schools, making this the only form of assessment has clearly not made students show growth, and that is why the passing scores are so low, especially in middle and high school math.
