But the answer isn't even correct, and it's the bad kind of pedantry. It looks myopic, but with a flair for overgeneralization (an attack on Common Core itself).
Following the typographic (not mathematical) logic of using implicit operators, why would exponentiation of three 9's be correct in the face of tetration of three 9's? Alternatively, why would 111 be correct in the face of 999?
There is so much right with this article, and so much wrong.
Firstly, it's not the Common Core he's fighting, but the implementation of some of the testing. Assessment is hard, really hard, really really hard. Making sure someone actually knows something, as opposed to going through the motions in which they are well drilled, is nearly impossible.
But secondly, 9^9^9 is not the largest number that can be represented by three digits. There's Knuth's notation. Oh, perhaps they haven't learned that yet.
And there's the dilemma. Arguing that all the other students were wrong because they didn't use something that they hadn't learned, we can also argue that his daughter was wrong for the same reason.
Education is hard, assessment is hard, and arguments like this don't actually help.
Well, yes. Assuming the story is true in the first place. And if we believe the story - might as well, the guy is out there with his full name in view - then he did give them the option.
Now about whether or not it is true or not, a girl in my class was the only one to get a particular test question right (math as well). The problem was that that test had already been administered to all the other classes and nobody got it right so it was decided to drop that question from the final grading. And then she answered it right. That test comprised 10 questions, with a 'base' of 1 point for showing up so she actually scored an '11' on a scale of 1 to 10. She had to fight for that too, this stuff occasionally does happen.
They said: We can either: Mark her wrong, everyone else right; or mark her right and everyone else wrong.
He said: Well if you don't want to just mark her right and everyone else too, if you can't accept that the question may have multiple answers, then do what you must.
Exponentiation (or tetration) is as much a symbol, it's just not explicitly penned down for brevity. The question could ask for a limitation on operators, but then I think it's outside the scope of the class.
However this is in essence a typographical question. A digit is a typographical entity! There is also a lot of implied machinery in writing 999 but for brevity's sake we omit it (base, writing system etc). If you allow symbols then this article comes into play http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html
If one permits exponentiation, then one would also permit tetration, because it's the typographic mirror. It also turns the question to one of radix informational efficiency in base 10 to one of typographical misinterpretation. Unfortunately, in this case, the typography is not interesting, because although I say implicit, I really mean "implicit". It's actually explicit. You can consider the the superscript here as functions taking inputs -- not digits, and thus is not a question of radix information efficiency.
Machinery is different from operators. We don't need to talk about other radices because digits explicitly means base-10.
Algebra is the math of symbolic logic, of objects and morphisms. I am not opposed to symbols, but rather the inclusion of operators. I also mention tetration as a cheeky answer, because I think it's as pedantic an answer as exponentiation.
That's because the symbolic operator is implied for brevity. If we allowed implicit operators, would tetration be permitted as well? It sounds like a distraction from the class subject.
As a testing company, maybe I would advise the teacher to give a discretionary, external reward for creativity, and maybe provide an advanced lecture for those inquiring students, but for policy reasons, people just want to know if students understood the content to measure pedagogical policy. You can either ask students to write an essay (unscalable and contingent on other skills), or you could ask a question with true and false answers.
Otherwise we cannot measure the efficacy of pedagogical policy.
He asked them to do that, since that is the right thing to do where a textual question can have multiple answers depending on the context; however they refused to do so.
I would argue that is not the point of the story. The point is that this man stood up for his daughter who was being made to feel bad because she had a better answer than the other kids. You can quibble about 9^9^9 vs Knuth notation vs Conway notation (you didn't mention that one) vs some arbitrary notation you can invent, but the point is the girl was more creative than the rest of her class and was penalized for it, and her dad stood up for her.
You frame the poster as quibbling, but that's exactly what the father is doing, in a way that is both incorrect and pedantic, even if we were to follow their internal logic of using only implicit operators (why not tetration?).
Yes, the girl exercised creativity. It is the teacher's discretionary job to reward that creativity. In this case, though, the father is wrong and he myopically uses it to attack the Common Core.
It is not incorrect, since her answer entirely fulfills the text of the question. He is not quibbling. Textual questions by their very nature can have multiple answers, depending on the context the question is read in. Any system that can not accept that is broken and does nothing to educate students and merely creates unthinking rote repetition automatons. He is perfectly right in attacking that and in fact it must be attacked.
It is correct because a textual question will always have multiple correct answers. Only a very narrow mind will insist on there being only one correct answer.
Edit: Out of curiosity, and since i can't find it: How is the highest number out of three 9s written with tetration on paper?
There's such thing as a wrong answer, and it's pretty poor ethic to discuss psychology here before understanding someone's argument. I could just as well say that you are narrow-minded for not entertaining my perspective when I have given analysis for yours. Giving an argument about psychology which you don't want returned is bad faith. It shows a lack of regard for difficulty of good faith reciprocity.
You're basically arguing that (1) textual questions inherently have more than one answers [care to explain?], and that (2) therefore 9^9^9 is correct [can you explain if you think 100 is correct?], and as an additional tack-on point, you think that (3) operators are fair play as long as they're implicit, even though there's nothing mathematically special about them except for the typography.
Tetration is typographically written as the reverse of 9^9^9 on paper.
I never said otherwise, why do you state the obvious?
> and it's pretty poor ethic to discuss psychology here before understanding someone's argument.
It's pretty poor ethic to proclaim one's understanding of another's mindset as fact without having asked them if it such or them having declared it. You have no place to try and claim what her logic was.
> I could just as well say that you are narrow-minded for not entertaining my perspective when I have given analysis for yours.
I did entertain and i found it wanting, as explained above.
> textual questions inherently have more than one answers [care to explain?]
Every text is open for interpretation and its understanding always depends on any assumptions made while reading it. Be ware of assuming that your assumptions about assumptions made actually match reality.
Further, particularly in schooling, tests serve to ask whether understanding exists or not. I have repeatedly gotten full grades on problems where i applied the correct method and described it accurately, even when along the way a small oversight in numerical operations resulted in a wrong final number.
> can you explain if you think 100 is correct?
Why should i? I don't understand why you ask this. Please explain yourself if you think it truly merits discussion.
> Tetration is typographically written as the reverse of 9^9^9 on paper.
I ask why 100 is right or wrong because, in the face of 999, it's difficult to see why it's correct. And yet you think that the exponentiation of three 9's is correct in the face of the tetration of three 9's. The latter is astronomically larger than 999 is to 100, meaning that 100 is not as bad of an answer.
In the face of this, do you still wish to make, in good faith, the point that exponentiation of 9's is correct by virtue of typographic implicitness because textual answers have more than one answer? And because exponentiation (and tetration) is just sooo visually implicit it should count as "only digits"? Let's be clear that they brought in a lawyer to argue from the basis of typography.
And your last question seeks to clarify the typography of tetration. Maybe I shouldn't have said reverse. It's more like the typographic mirror, except the 9's aren't reversed (I'm afraid you're the miserly and uncharitable kind of debater, so I had to clarify that last bit about the 9's).
It's disappointing to me that even though you opened the door to discussion of how I am narrow-minded, that you are so evasive and defensive when I turn the question back, suggesting, how dare I, when I have run afoul by assuming that the young girl exercised typographic thinking?
It's late, and i honestly don't care much to get into details, especially since you obviously don't want to and even take a hostile tack to honest and simple questions.
Context matters. You're smart, i'm sure you'll figure this out eventually.
"Only a very narrow mind will insist on there being only one correct answer."
This is the ad hominem that you think as honest and simple. Anyone who disagrees with this perspective will have a very narrow mind.
Anyone could think of a trivial example with a clear answer, like, "What's 3 + 5?" And you'd be saying that anyone who thinks there's only one answer to that is very narrow minded.
I think you are missing the wood for the trees. The question as stated allowed for multiple answers to be correct. Note that exponentiation needs no 'operators' to work in a visual way, just place the two 9's in ascending positions relative to the first. That's just 'three digits'.
Now that's a clever answer. A teacher appreciative of that cleverness would have noted it and would have marked the answer correct and moved on.
To go 'to war' over something that simple at some point becomes a point of principle and if - as a parent - you let your kid down at a time like that when your kid has fought very hard to maintain a 'perfect score' then you fail your duty as a parent.
The school should have backed down immediately, then when given the choice again they should have backed down by simply marking the answer correct upon review. Finally, by making it a point of principle that they would not mark the answer correct they essentially forced the dad to choose between supporting his daughter or telling her to suck it up because 'after all, what does a perfect math score matter'. That he chose to pursue it is a-ok in my book. To 'attack the common core' need not have happened.
If the school wanted the simple answer they could have chosen to only allow multiple choice, by making it an 'open answer' they allowed for creativity and that should always be rewarded, especially in classes such as math.
I have already entertained the internal and idiosyncratic logic at play here, that implicit operators are fair game. If that's the case, then tetration is the right answer. Furthermore, the question permitted argumentation, which was refused.
Why might 500 be a wrong answer? For the same logic you might use to answer that question, I would say that tetration is a superior answer to exponentiation, even following the typographic logic that implicit operators are okay. Typographically, tetration is the reverse of exponentiation.
And I believe I addressed the broadest-perspective point of all -- that this is not an adequate launching point for an argument against the Common Core. It's shrill.
> If that's the case, then tetration is the right answer.
Sure, and whenever you're in a position to give that answer you should. But from the point of view of the girl her answer was right and 'better' than 999, and to deny her that small victory (especially with her being such a good student) would seem to me to achieve the exact opposite of what school is all about: to teach, to motivate and to reward original thinking, especially when it leads to better answers than the commonly visible ones. To dis-incentivize (I hope that's spelled correctly) that is the worst thing you could do to an otherwise motivated student.
If one wants to give an award for clever typographical thinking, then of course the teacher should consider an external discretionary reward.
If one wants to bring a lawyer to school to argue from a place of typographic visual logic, please be correct. The Common Core is right to question for the largest number possible with three digits. The Common Core implementation could say, "without operators", but then you'd have to explain what operators are and then not touch upon it again, and that becomes disconnected trivia. Otherwise, "without operators" is just there to stop another incident with a lawyer.
Self-efficacy is indeed important to a student's math success and interest. I don't think that correctly correcting a student will lead to unrealistic self-efficacy. I was being charitable by entertaining the logic of visual implicitness, which has little to do with math.
And one's self efficacy is a function of more than whether a teacher gives you an almost perfect score, if not for the accurately graded 3 digit problem. It's built by countless complex environmental feedback.
You're stuck in a groove. The whole thing could have been avoided, that is the point. But once people start digging in over something that should have just received a pass (note that it was you, not them that brought up tetration, which - unlike exponentiation - probably does not figure into their worldview of math to begin with) then you can expect all kinds of further confrontations.
The school messed up, pure and simple, everything else was just part of the avalanche that followed.
Feel free to try to out-do the world on the pedantry scale but you're not being productive and you are willfully missing the point.
You're being quite uncharitable to me by accusing me of foul or insincere behavior, though I've suggested nothing of that from you, and have responded robustly to your points. At the very least you could assume that we've failed to understand each other, but you instead assume a "willful" dishonesty.
I discussed self-efficacy. I discussed discretionary awards for creativity. I also discussed the problem from the young girl and her father's frame of discussion -- the frame of typography. You've not reciprocated with robust response. The pedantry is a point I'm making -- it's pedantry conforming to the pedantic frame they brought up. Tetration is no more the right answer than exponentiation. 999 is the right answer. The Common Core is good here.
If you're talking about how the school can skillfully avoid lawyers, then yes, that's the one point I've missed. The school can have all sorts of strategies to skillfully avoid lawyers. If that's the case, for anything which might summon a lawyer, do a cost-benefit analysis and form a school risk-averse policy. Is that the point you wanted to make?
If anyone brings a lawyer in to school, admit fault right away, and then go on teaching the same way, because 99.99% of children are going through the lesson just fine. Blogpost and HN moment successfully averted.
Whether tetration or exponentiation are the better answer, whether or not the dad should have stood by his daughter or not, none of that matters because it should have never even left the classroom in the first place, and they had multiple good reasons for doing that and none to dig in the way they did.
Once it did leave the classroom all bets were off.
I was with the dad until he started to use his daughter as a launching platform for his own personal crusade against his political bugbears. After that it became clear that he cared less about his daughter and more about his politics.
Right, he is conflating standardized testing with Common Core, a set of K-12 standards. One didn't "become" the other. It's possible to have unified standards without high-stakes testing.
K-12 standardized testing grew dramatically in recent years, notably as a result of NCLB in 2001. Throughout most of this time, each state had its own high-stakes, standardized, highly redundant tests and its own curriculum for preparing for them. (Many states followed the lead of California, Texas, or Florida -- the "adoption states." Some cities, like Chicago, had their own standards. It was a mess.) A bunch of states then got together and agreed on a common curriculum framework. Shortly thereafter, in 2009, the Dept. of Ed. rolled out "Race to the Top," which (among other things) encourages the adoption of _a_ common set of standards but doesn't specify any particular one.
In his 2008 example, the principal referred to the situation as a "standardized, nationwide test." The only one I am aware of for grade school is the NAEP, which has been around since 1969 and is not tied to funding or related to the state-specific standardized testing. More: https://www.nagb.org/toolbar/faqs.html
TLDR: Helicopter parent pretentiously humblebrags about how his daughter is the only one in the country to get a 100% on a standardized test, since no one else answered "9^9^9" (I am guessing this was a "none of the above" answer) and how he had to get a lawyer involved to make the scoring organization mark his daughter's answer correct and everyone else's incorrect.
If we allow that then I could represent a larger number with customFunction(123) and have it return (9^9^9)+1. The kids haven't learned programming? Too bad I guess. Mark that girl down to a 99 score please.
A side note, why is he bragging about "carrying a 3.82 in Biology with a leaning towards pre-med", that's not a mathematical subject. It would seem that in the end, didn't he lost the battle, because his daughter didn't follow maths all the way.
> Don't let common core stand in the way of your own children's education.
Yeah, instead let a pretentious father tell every single kid in the country they are wrong because they failed to realize a technical loophole in the question that uses something that they aren't supposed to know at that age anyway. Congratulations.
I won't envy someone with a daddy who would hire a lawyer and spend three months arguing how his daughter must have every answer marked correct. I'd feel sorry for her.
He asked them: Recognize that multiple answers can be correct and mark my daughter correct. They responded with: Only one can be correct, period. The wrong-doing is 100% with the school administration.
Also, telling children: "You're not supposed to have this knowledge." is down-right despicable on a personal level.
I agree the school behaved very poorly, but that doesn't mean the father was being reasonable.
By "not supposed to know", I mean the other students should not be penalized for not knowing exponentiation. If marking down his daughter is despicable, so is marking down every other children for not having a father who can afford to hire a lawyer for their grades.
The way I read it, he decided it's OK to give the same injustice his daughter received to every other children, because they are not his children, after all. I don't think that's the kind of parental role children needs, and I don't want to be such a parent. (Well, luckily for me, I can't afford lawyer for such matters, and my kids have no danger of having a five-week 100% streak on math problems, let alone five years, so I guess that point is moot...)
You're still not understanding the crux of the issue here. There are two possible ways to handle this:
1. A text question can have multiple correct answers.
Great, accept that, mark her as correct, everyone else too, everyone gets to be happy.
2. A text question can have only one single correct answer.
In that case she was correct and everyone else was not. Period. End of game.
--
And here's why the father was reasonable: He did offer them option 1. He did ask for that. The school administration refused it. It was their choice. They were being unreasonable, not the father.
Also, yes, marking the other children down is despicable, however this was the choice of the school, not the choice of the father. All he told them was "mark her correct". The schools response to not simply do that and actually mark everyone else down is despicable, and they deserve all the misfortune he had the power to bring upon them, and more.
"I only followed orders." has not been acceptable for a LONG time now.
A math exam in a grade school is not an end in itself. It's a tool to assess how much each student learned and how well the school system is functioning. Your choice 2 is not reasonable at all, and in fact many more parents will be angry if they're told "Your kid was marked incorrect because they didn't know something we won't teach for another two years." It will also be a very poor educational experience.
It is not reasonable at all, but it is what currently is the reality. The current school system is brokena nd unreasonable. And it wasn't chosen by the father, it was chosen by the school system. If many parents will indeed be angry, then they should, and they should be at the school system. Being angry at the father is just the short-sighted and ignorant "let's go for the closest target" knee-jerk reaction.
0 takes up more space, and therefore three zeros will be the `largest` number you can represent in terms of area. Thus, even his daughter must be marked wrong.
It's also not 9^9^9. If you are allowing use of exponentation, well there are an infinite number of other math symbols out there you can use too. BusyBeaver(9^9^9), or BusyBeaver(BusyBeaver(9^9^9)), etc.
And yes that's pointless know it all pedantry, but so is this whole post. The teacher obviously meant the largest number that can be stated without external math functions, and 999 is that.
58 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadThere is so much right with this article, and so much wrong.
Firstly, it's not the Common Core he's fighting, but the implementation of some of the testing. Assessment is hard, really hard, really really hard. Making sure someone actually knows something, as opposed to going through the motions in which they are well drilled, is nearly impossible.
But secondly, 9^9^9 is not the largest number that can be represented by three digits. There's Knuth's notation. Oh, perhaps they haven't learned that yet.
And there's the dilemma. Arguing that all the other students were wrong because they didn't use something that they hadn't learned, we can also argue that his daughter was wrong for the same reason.
Education is hard, assessment is hard, and arguments like this don't actually help.
========
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11322756
Now about whether or not it is true or not, a girl in my class was the only one to get a particular test question right (math as well). The problem was that that test had already been administered to all the other classes and nobody got it right so it was decided to drop that question from the final grading. And then she answered it right. That test comprised 10 questions, with a 'base' of 1 point for showing up so she actually scored an '11' on a scale of 1 to 10. She had to fight for that too, this stuff occasionally does happen.
He asked: Mark my daughter's answer as correct.
They said: We can either: Mark her wrong, everyone else right; or mark her right and everyone else wrong.
He said: Well if you don't want to just mark her right and everyone else too, if you can't accept that the question may have multiple answers, then do what you must.
Machinery is different from operators. We don't need to talk about other radices because digits explicitly means base-10.
Algebra is the math of symbolic logic, of objects and morphisms. I am not opposed to symbols, but rather the inclusion of operators. I also mention tetration as a cheeky answer, because I think it's as pedantic an answer as exponentiation.
Otherwise we cannot measure the efficacy of pedagogical policy.
Yes, the girl exercised creativity. It is the teacher's discretionary job to reward that creativity. In this case, though, the father is wrong and he myopically uses it to attack the Common Core.
Edit: Out of curiosity, and since i can't find it: How is the highest number out of three 9s written with tetration on paper?
You're basically arguing that (1) textual questions inherently have more than one answers [care to explain?], and that (2) therefore 9^9^9 is correct [can you explain if you think 100 is correct?], and as an additional tack-on point, you think that (3) operators are fair play as long as they're implicit, even though there's nothing mathematically special about them except for the typography.
Tetration is typographically written as the reverse of 9^9^9 on paper.
I never said otherwise, why do you state the obvious?
> and it's pretty poor ethic to discuss psychology here before understanding someone's argument.
It's pretty poor ethic to proclaim one's understanding of another's mindset as fact without having asked them if it such or them having declared it. You have no place to try and claim what her logic was.
> I could just as well say that you are narrow-minded for not entertaining my perspective when I have given analysis for yours.
I did entertain and i found it wanting, as explained above.
> textual questions inherently have more than one answers [care to explain?]
Every text is open for interpretation and its understanding always depends on any assumptions made while reading it. Be ware of assuming that your assumptions about assumptions made actually match reality.
Further, particularly in schooling, tests serve to ask whether understanding exists or not. I have repeatedly gotten full grades on problems where i applied the correct method and described it accurately, even when along the way a small oversight in numerical operations resulted in a wrong final number.
> can you explain if you think 100 is correct?
Why should i? I don't understand why you ask this. Please explain yourself if you think it truly merits discussion.
> Tetration is typographically written as the reverse of 9^9^9 on paper.
So, sub-script instead of super-script?
In the face of this, do you still wish to make, in good faith, the point that exponentiation of 9's is correct by virtue of typographic implicitness because textual answers have more than one answer? And because exponentiation (and tetration) is just sooo visually implicit it should count as "only digits"? Let's be clear that they brought in a lawyer to argue from the basis of typography.
And your last question seeks to clarify the typography of tetration. Maybe I shouldn't have said reverse. It's more like the typographic mirror, except the 9's aren't reversed (I'm afraid you're the miserly and uncharitable kind of debater, so I had to clarify that last bit about the 9's).
It's disappointing to me that even though you opened the door to discussion of how I am narrow-minded, that you are so evasive and defensive when I turn the question back, suggesting, how dare I, when I have run afoul by assuming that the young girl exercised typographic thinking?
Context matters. You're smart, i'm sure you'll figure this out eventually.
This is the ad hominem that you think as honest and simple. Anyone who disagrees with this perspective will have a very narrow mind.
Anyone could think of a trivial example with a clear answer, like, "What's 3 + 5?" And you'd be saying that anyone who thinks there's only one answer to that is very narrow minded.
I do. I can think of 2 answers right now and both are equally valid.
Now that's a clever answer. A teacher appreciative of that cleverness would have noted it and would have marked the answer correct and moved on.
To go 'to war' over something that simple at some point becomes a point of principle and if - as a parent - you let your kid down at a time like that when your kid has fought very hard to maintain a 'perfect score' then you fail your duty as a parent.
The school should have backed down immediately, then when given the choice again they should have backed down by simply marking the answer correct upon review. Finally, by making it a point of principle that they would not mark the answer correct they essentially forced the dad to choose between supporting his daughter or telling her to suck it up because 'after all, what does a perfect math score matter'. That he chose to pursue it is a-ok in my book. To 'attack the common core' need not have happened.
If the school wanted the simple answer they could have chosen to only allow multiple choice, by making it an 'open answer' they allowed for creativity and that should always be rewarded, especially in classes such as math.
Why might 500 be a wrong answer? For the same logic you might use to answer that question, I would say that tetration is a superior answer to exponentiation, even following the typographic logic that implicit operators are okay. Typographically, tetration is the reverse of exponentiation.
And I believe I addressed the broadest-perspective point of all -- that this is not an adequate launching point for an argument against the Common Core. It's shrill.
Sure, and whenever you're in a position to give that answer you should. But from the point of view of the girl her answer was right and 'better' than 999, and to deny her that small victory (especially with her being such a good student) would seem to me to achieve the exact opposite of what school is all about: to teach, to motivate and to reward original thinking, especially when it leads to better answers than the commonly visible ones. To dis-incentivize (I hope that's spelled correctly) that is the worst thing you could do to an otherwise motivated student.
If one wants to bring a lawyer to school to argue from a place of typographic visual logic, please be correct. The Common Core is right to question for the largest number possible with three digits. The Common Core implementation could say, "without operators", but then you'd have to explain what operators are and then not touch upon it again, and that becomes disconnected trivia. Otherwise, "without operators" is just there to stop another incident with a lawyer.
Self-efficacy is indeed important to a student's math success and interest. I don't think that correctly correcting a student will lead to unrealistic self-efficacy. I was being charitable by entertaining the logic of visual implicitness, which has little to do with math.
And one's self efficacy is a function of more than whether a teacher gives you an almost perfect score, if not for the accurately graded 3 digit problem. It's built by countless complex environmental feedback.
The school messed up, pure and simple, everything else was just part of the avalanche that followed.
Feel free to try to out-do the world on the pedantry scale but you're not being productive and you are willfully missing the point.
I discussed self-efficacy. I discussed discretionary awards for creativity. I also discussed the problem from the young girl and her father's frame of discussion -- the frame of typography. You've not reciprocated with robust response. The pedantry is a point I'm making -- it's pedantry conforming to the pedantic frame they brought up. Tetration is no more the right answer than exponentiation. 999 is the right answer. The Common Core is good here.
If you're talking about how the school can skillfully avoid lawyers, then yes, that's the one point I've missed. The school can have all sorts of strategies to skillfully avoid lawyers. If that's the case, for anything which might summon a lawyer, do a cost-benefit analysis and form a school risk-averse policy. Is that the point you wanted to make?
If anyone brings a lawyer in to school, admit fault right away, and then go on teaching the same way, because 99.99% of children are going through the lesson just fine. Blogpost and HN moment successfully averted.
Whether tetration or exponentiation are the better answer, whether or not the dad should have stood by his daughter or not, none of that matters because it should have never even left the classroom in the first place, and they had multiple good reasons for doing that and none to dig in the way they did.
Once it did leave the classroom all bets were off.
Welcome, overlords, etc.
K-12 standardized testing grew dramatically in recent years, notably as a result of NCLB in 2001. Throughout most of this time, each state had its own high-stakes, standardized, highly redundant tests and its own curriculum for preparing for them. (Many states followed the lead of California, Texas, or Florida -- the "adoption states." Some cities, like Chicago, had their own standards. It was a mess.) A bunch of states then got together and agreed on a common curriculum framework. Shortly thereafter, in 2009, the Dept. of Ed. rolled out "Race to the Top," which (among other things) encourages the adoption of _a_ common set of standards but doesn't specify any particular one.
In his 2008 example, the principal referred to the situation as a "standardized, nationwide test." The only one I am aware of for grade school is the NAEP, which has been around since 1969 and is not tied to funding or related to the state-specific standardized testing. More: https://www.nagb.org/toolbar/faqs.html
The math methods used in Common Core go back a while: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-...
Some specific history of the Common Core: http://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/articles/2014/02/...
Yeah, instead let a pretentious father tell every single kid in the country they are wrong because they failed to realize a technical loophole in the question that uses something that they aren't supposed to know at that age anyway. Congratulations.
I won't envy someone with a daddy who would hire a lawyer and spend three months arguing how his daughter must have every answer marked correct. I'd feel sorry for her.
He asked them: Recognize that multiple answers can be correct and mark my daughter correct. They responded with: Only one can be correct, period. The wrong-doing is 100% with the school administration.
Also, telling children: "You're not supposed to have this knowledge." is down-right despicable on a personal level.
By "not supposed to know", I mean the other students should not be penalized for not knowing exponentiation. If marking down his daughter is despicable, so is marking down every other children for not having a father who can afford to hire a lawyer for their grades.
The way I read it, he decided it's OK to give the same injustice his daughter received to every other children, because they are not his children, after all. I don't think that's the kind of parental role children needs, and I don't want to be such a parent. (Well, luckily for me, I can't afford lawyer for such matters, and my kids have no danger of having a five-week 100% streak on math problems, let alone five years, so I guess that point is moot...)
1. A text question can have multiple correct answers.
Great, accept that, mark her as correct, everyone else too, everyone gets to be happy.
2. A text question can have only one single correct answer.
In that case she was correct and everyone else was not. Period. End of game.
--
And here's why the father was reasonable: He did offer them option 1. He did ask for that. The school administration refused it. It was their choice. They were being unreasonable, not the father.
Also, yes, marking the other children down is despicable, however this was the choice of the school, not the choice of the father. All he told them was "mark her correct". The schools response to not simply do that and actually mark everyone else down is despicable, and they deserve all the misfortune he had the power to bring upon them, and more.
"I only followed orders." has not been acceptable for a LONG time now.
A math exam in a grade school is not an end in itself. It's a tool to assess how much each student learned and how well the school system is functioning. Your choice 2 is not reasonable at all, and in fact many more parents will be angry if they're told "Your kid was marked incorrect because they didn't know something we won't teach for another two years." It will also be a very poor educational experience.
0 takes up more space, and therefore three zeros will be the `largest` number you can represent in terms of area. Thus, even his daughter must be marked wrong.
And yes that's pointless know it all pedantry, but so is this whole post. The teacher obviously meant the largest number that can be stated without external math functions, and 999 is that.