Not in a STEM field but can totally empathize. DD8 scores high on math (99% on MAP) yet for this first quarter she has a C- in math. Why? She is terrible at writing. The test required so much writing and of course it's difficult for her to get one hundred seventy-eight million three hundred forty-three thousand seven hundred eleven on her test let alone other sentences to explain it all! It just seems bizarre.
Why is she writing out the numbers in words? Unless the problem is, "Explain what all the numbers in 178,343,711 mean," then I don't think there's any need to go to extremes like that. Past the basic level, writing in math should be to explain an operation or concept. If the teacher actually expects that, I think she's doing it wrong.
