Education Week – Liana Heitin
“It’s been a tough year for parents trying to keep up with their kids in math. Last March, a North Carolina father tried to help his son with a word problem and ended up writing a note to the teacher saying that, despite having a degree in engineering, he couldn’t figure it out. Both the note and problem went viral. Parents have also been taking to social media to complain about the “new” methods their children are learning for basic computation under the Common Core State Standards. Then last week, this high school problem from Singapore made the rounds on the Internet…The Singapore television host who posted the problem wrote that it was for students in the equivalent of 5th grade. That made some parents panic. It turns out that the problem actually came from a math competition known as the Singapore and Asian School Math Olympiad, which is aimed at the top 40 percent of high school students…Since the problem was posted, much has been made of the fact that Singapore scores well above the United States on the Program for International Student Assessment…”(more)