Nationwide Test Shows Dip in Students’ Math Abilities (NY Times)  I Say,  It’s Not Going to Stop Until It’s Stopped

Education officials said the decline in scores was unexpected, but could be related to changes ushered in by the Common Core standards.

Source: Nationwide Test Shows Dip in Students’ Math Abilities – The New York Times

I commented as follows.

The major reason for poor math performance is clear to me. It’s due to unscrupulous universities and professors. I know that because I’m a former math professor.

I most recently taught at Wash. U. in St. Louis. Earlier, I taught at a regional state school, where many future teachers were “taught” – “excellently”, according to the school’s marketing.

Those experiences led me to the conclusion that higher ed dumbs down k-12 – not the other way around, as many professors claim.

Explanations and documented stories are on my blog inside-higher-ed. Here I will give only a very brief description of what happens.

Many major universities are more than willing to grant doctorates and masters degrees to people that the professors know are not qualified. There are many reasons for this. One of them is large government grants to enable them to meet “national needs”. (I describe my experience with such a case on my blog.j)

Some of those graduates go on to “teach” our future teachers. Many of them don’t know their subject well enough to teach it, but that doesn’t stop them from becoming “professors”. (Stories of how little they know are on my blog.) Then we get teachers who know little or no content – no fault of their own.

The final result of all of this is a damaged economy and society, and wasted lives, along with rich colleges. This total unaccountability must stop. It will be hard these rich and powerful institutions. Only tremendous political will can do it.