Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Teachers can't pass certification tests

(Note: she didn't say that education major scores AVERAGED the 20th percentile, only that it was possible.)


This site lists average SAT scores by major, presumably for 2013, which would be about when the would-be teachers in the OP were taking the SAT.

The average math score was 482, which is the 38th percentile. If you dig around the College Board site or do a web search, you'll find that education majors as a group have long had low SAT scores.

The College Board has set a math score of 530 as indicating that the student is ready for college-level work:


Education major average reading scores were also 482, which puts them barely into the college-ready category. And that category has a low bar: a 75% chance of getting a C in "college courses" --- but I'm not sure why algebra and pre-calc are called college courses. They're high school courses. But we've dropped our expectations to a point where 11th grade math counts as a "college course" now.

In this sense, I don't blame education majors or anyone else who goes to college thinking they're ready for college classes when they aren't. Education romantics can pretend that algebra 2 is a college-level course by renaming it "college algebra," but that won't change the reality of STEM and other degrees that start with Calc 1. This is a bit OT, but IMO, it's shameful that we tell lies to children, encourage them to attempt majors for which they're unprepared, and then leave them with enormous student loan bills after they fail and drop out. It's wrong. Literally half of my eldest's freshman engineering class failed. He was aghast as he watched his classes shrink during the year. That is just wrong.

Completely off-topic but my youngest is on track to complete Calc 1 in 9th grade. Are there any high school math courses that go higher than that? Not sure how that's going to work, if he runs out of math.

The SAT scores are not impressive. I don't think most people realize that. Are those scores education K-12, or just elementary? I'm hoping they are higher for secondary teachers.

My son is a Sophomore this year and taking APCalc BC. His school has a course called Advanced Math Topics 1 and 2. After talking to some of the kids and knowing who teaches the course it will be a self learning experience I am sure. It is a weighted class but I doubt there is any accountability. I know it will not prepare you for any college board exam. We will look else where for something.

My son participated in math competitions up thru elementary and middle school with highly qualified and motivated teachers/instructors. I am working on it but in this High School it is lacking in involvement in this area. They do a few competitions, math league, AMC but they are just unaware of what is out there and don't know how to spark interest or have no interest.

My son got finished with one of the math league test last year and afterwards approached proctor/teacher with a question. The teacher said "I don't know I didn't read the question's". He was not interested in reading the questions either my son said.

My son was put off by the teachers not knowing the problems to the test or going over any of the solutions. There are only 6 problems each month for 6 months.
I just don't think the teachers are interested.

sorry for the mini-rant

I doubt that SAT math scores are much higher for secondary teachers than elementary.

I agree that secondary teachers who are not math teachers probably had lackluster SAT math scores. But actual math teachers, especially high school math teachers, need to take quite a few college math courses to be certified, at least in my state.

The thing that drives me crazy about high school (and college and grad school) instructors who have zero understanding of math is that their grading can be completely wonky. As in, they give a ton of low point assignments, take off a "few" points for extremely trivial things on each one, and then artificially increase the value of those assignments by making them worth some large percent of the grade. I've seen this happen over and over at all levels.

Or here's another one. I've also seen this at all levels, but the most disturbing place was at a graduate school of education at a major state university. They had a grading rubric for written work that defines the values 0-10 like this:

9-10 Excellent, 6-8 very good, 3-5 satisfactory, 0-2 unacceptable

And then they averaged these scores and expressed them as a percent. The course grades were awarded as follows:

94-100 A, 84-93 B, 70-83 C, 0-69 F

According to this scheme, a student could get a mixture of "very good" and "excellent" scores and still fail the course.

Why even have a grading rubric if you're not going to use anything but the high end? And this isn't a problem that was peculiar to one particular school. As far as I can tell, it is pretty much standard practice to use rubrics this way.

So my point here is that a teacher not understanding math has more implications for students than just poor math instruction.

If you have a local community college, try that route. High school students are often allowed to dual-enroll in CCs for free.


That score is an overall average. Scores are a little higher for high school teachers...which means that they're a little lower for K-8 teachers.

I don't have time to find a link now, but the information is out there.

My son likes competition math and we commuted to a middle school where there were many kids that also enjoyed AMC's and other academic competitions. DS took AP Calc BC in 9th and we initiated the AMC 10 and 12 at his high school and there is very little interest. I think he found 5 kids for the 20 spots we had.

Similar story with Mu Alpha Theta...the school did the first and third tests but forgot to do the second one.

DS spent significant time trying to locate middle school kids in our area to teach competition math (he gave up on high school kids) and we found two that were family friends. Luckily they seem to enjoy it and plan to get the AMC 8 offered next year at their school.

We live in a high-income area where the majority spend time on sports, not academics.

Good grief. DS already has high school credit and I figured out that basically his entire grade (or probably 90 percent of it) is based on chapter tests. So If you mess up a single test, which may only be 10 or 20 questions, there goes your A. There may only be one or two other tests that trimester to try to make it up. Luckily DS got an A but I was cringing at the thought all along of a 10 or 11-year-old's screw-ups being on a permanent transcript. One huge negative of acceleration. I wonder if it will be clear from a transcript that someone took a course when they were far younger than "normal"? Because moving forward this still makes me nervous.

In our state, if it is only subject acceleration, the grades from any courses taken prior to actual enrollment in 9th grade are only on the high school transcript if the parent wants them to be.

School (as opposed to homeschool) transcripts are generally grouped by year, so it should be obvious that the courses were taken at a young age. But if they're being submitted as part of the high school record, they will be incorporated into the GPA.

My acceleration philosophy is that the student should be advanced enough to produce A quality work in an honors level class. Unfortunately, the way most classes are run, an A is more about executive function than actual knowledge.

This is how it is for my son grading wise and transcript too.

I hate the amount of 5 pt daily quizzes.

His APUSH teacher this year gives the kids a list of terms and you have to find them in the book like a word search game. It is driving him nuts.
His WHAP last year gave them the whole syllabus for the year up front with everything due on Mondays for the whole previous week. He loved the way that worked. If he was really interested he could stay ahead of the game.

Yup. The 5 point quizzes in my son's AP Econ class caused his grade to go from an A to a B. The quizzes were always five questions from the reading the night before, reading that had not yet been discussed in class, so if a kid didn't understand something immediately, well, too bad. My son got many Fs and Ds on those quizzes, because he frequently missed 2 or 3 questions. I know he was reading the book because after a string of low scores, I made him do it in front of me every single night. We tried everything in an attempt to improve those scores--and nothing worked consistently. Not taking notes, not reading aloud (by either him or me), not doing the comprehension questions, not discussing it with me, nothing. There were even a few times that he got 5s after *not* doing the reading.

Then after all that, he would end up getting close to 100% on the chapter tests. Go figure.