Gaaaa... I still have PTSD from those stupid things.
If you took that blog post above and added "What a surprise that I went on to earn a PhD in a physical science, eh?"
Then that pretty much sums it up. I can remember my 3rd grade teacher's AMAZEMENT that in spite of my apparent "slowness" at "math" I was easily the top student in the geometry enrichment unit offered to the 4th graders in that split classroom. Just imagine! It must have been a savant ability... {rolling my eyes here}
Yeah, nothing like teaching a subset of kids with dysgraphia, poor focus, test anxiety, poor fine motor skills, or slow processing speed that they are "too stupid to ever do math" before they've ever even SEEN anything resembling actual mathematics to start with.
I'm here to tell you that this practice is DAMAGING. It labels kids with genuine mathy ability as "deficient" and it wrongly labels kids who have fast processing speeds and good memory as "good at math" when they really haven't demonstrated that. As anxiety mounts for the kids who can't do them easily, it's very easy for that anxiety alone to begin interfering with such students' ability to EVER meet the benchmark.
No wonder it's "predictive" to some degree-- it generates a self-fulfilling prophecy!!
I never felt good about my math ability until I took differential equations as a college senior. I was downright math phobic until then, and it all can be traced back to those STUPID pink mimeographed sheets of what seemed like a thousand problems to be completed in ten seconds. Blergh. Seriously-- I can remember just giving up on them and putting my head down on my arms and crying. I love math, by the way-- particularly applied mathematics.
:grr:
