Louis C.K. put up some tweets blasting the math homework that his third-grade girls need to do in the New York public schools. You can find a list of them here.
He is an awesome comedian, a brilliant man, but this I just do not understand. The pictograph question was weird, but it seemed that some key words had been cut off. The other math problems seemed entirely reasonable for the third grade. What am I missing?
I'll chime in with another voice for not seeing a problem (besides the typo that makes question 4 hard to read).
The language used in asking the question embeds/explicitly asks about a set of concepts that I've seen many of my intro physics students (back when I was doing that) and econ 101 and 102 students struggle with: the idea that formula need to be given context just the way sentence phrase need it, that there are many ways to represent relationships between things (say a function written as an algebraic formula and graph of that function) each of these representations can be used to help system which is the same system. It is heartening to see those things (presumably) taught.
I will say I would have HATED drawing that picture as a third grader. My fine motor skills would not have been up to it, which would have been in sharp contrast to other students in my class who would have a had nicely colored pictures of cutely embellished balloons.
Posted by: Bitsy | May 02, 2014 at 08:47 AM