New York algebra fact of the day

Take here in New York, where in 2016 the passing rate for the Regents Examination in Algebra I test was 72 percent. Unfortunately, this (relatively) higher rate of success does not indicate some sort of revolutionary pedagogy on the part of New York state educators. As the New York Post complained in 2017, passing rates were so high in large measure because the cutoff for passing was absurdly low — so low that students needed only to answer 31.4 percent of the questions correctly to pass the 2017 exam.

That is from Freddie deBoer, who has returned to writing, and who argues lower standards and higher graduation rates are a good thing, all matters considered.

And here is another education result of note: “We estimate a dynamic model of schooling on two cohorts of the NLSY and find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the effects of real (as opposed to relative) family income on education have practically vanished between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s.”

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