NY State – Integrated Algebra
June 18, 2008 am30 6:50 am
I will have a lot to say about this exam, but most will need to wait until after the Conversion Charts are published. I signed a confidentiality agreement…
Until then, you might like to follow the discussion on the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State (AMTNYS) listserve, here. Teachers and administrators from across the state are asking questions about wording and scoring, discussing problematic questions, asking advice and making suggestions, appealing rulings to NY State Education Department. and venting a little.
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JD2718 
yeah i actually took this regents it was really hard the write out questions multiple choice was more of a process of elimination if you didnt quiet understand one question i should be getting my results soon!
From what I’m reading about the exam, I swear that our math teacher didn’t understand how to grade it. We had scores as high as 83 points, and most in the 74-78 range (we are a small middle school).
Something seems wrong….
Not necessarily. It depends on students, curriculum, teaching…
You couldn’t have had a 75 without a high multiple choice score, and there’s no (well almost no) way to miscount wrong 1s 2s 3s and 4s. That makes it sound like students were well-prepared for this exam.
Also, since they are 8th graders, I’m assuming that they were in some sense advanced, making high scores more likely.
It is a problem, however, if only one teacher graded the exams. The State requires at least 3 graders per, and has guidelines to ensure that none of the three does the lion’s share… You might have a quiet word with the teacher so that he can protect himself next time round.
HARDEST EXAM ever better be a HUGE curve
IMO this exam was very fair. The multiple choice questions were easy. My students (8th graders) saw nothing on there they hadn’t seen during the year. We also reviewed at the end and a lot of the review was based on the “green book.” If a student can’t pass this exam with the curve, they shouldn’t be getting credit for Integrated Algebra.
Rather than ask fair or unfair, we might ask, what is this test for?
If we don’t know if it is a high school exit exam or a test of algebra, we have a problem. It can’t reasonably be both.
Mary, did you teach an algebra course, or did you teach to this exam? The choice puts all of us (math teachers) in a hard position. In most cases our schools insist that we teach to the test.
jd,
I taught an algebra course and used the new Amsco book – cover to cover. Light coverage of the last couple sections on algebraic fractions because I thought it was a bit much for a first algebra course. Light coverage of the last part of probability because it’s a bit difficult for a first introduction. Other than that, everything was included.
I teach at a private school (8th graders) so I don’t have to worry about passing rates, etc. Almost all students go on to a 10th grade honors class.-
this test was impossible, i saw my teacher walkingg by when i was taking it and he was saying to another teacher ” this is a damn vocabulary test”, it wasnt based on concepts, only if you knew the wording.
this better be a HUGE curve
I have a 98 in my math class and this test was HARD! We had prepared in our class for the whole year and there was about 20 questions that we didn’t go over.
sae – I am sorry that your class was unable to cover all the material. there was nothing on this exam that wasn’t in the standards and the sample exam provided by the state was a good indicator of what was going to be on the exam. I am curious about what book you used and how much you covered. If your classmates were students who consistently met the state standards in earlier years (elementary and middle school), you should have been able to cover the required material. I covered all of it (and more) with 8th graders.
A friend of my mother’s is a math teacher in upstate New York. I took the test this year and asked her what she thought of it. She told me that the test wasn’t based on an understanding of algebra, as it was more of showing the steps to how you got your answer. From what I understand, there was a huge curve. I’ve heard that if you got 15 multiple choice right, you passed. It would almost be an effort to fail. What are these tests telling the state? Our understanding of a higher mathematics vocabulary or if we know how to use algebra to solve a series of problems. I don’t think this test was made well, as they didn’t give points for showing work and steps…What’s up with that? Maybe I am wrong and if so please correct me.
As a ninth grader who did not always grasp the concepts of algebra, I thought the test was difficult. There were problems I had never gone over with my teacher. Thank goodness I had a tutor. I used the Barron’s review books which seemed to help quite a bit. Is it just me, or does New York take the oppurtunity to test students because they can, or because we actually need it?