The perceptive journalist doth address the *Future* of
IQ-75 DAFNhood:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/oct03/175561.asp
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It's almost an article of universal faith among people
involved in
the world of teaching mathematics: In today's world and in
the future,
it is and will be important for almost every adult to be
able to
do math to succeed in life. [ - lots more good background
SNIPPED - ]
...the argument for being literate in math - being
comfortable with
the kinds of things that crop up in the everyday life of
millions
of people - is powerful. Competence in math can open the
door to
high-paid jobs; the technology of our times increasingly
means people
are operating computers or working in settings where the
foundation
is built on math; our daily lives lead us to call on math
for every-
thing from understanding a tax bill to following the news
to figuring
out what 30% off on a pair of shoes means [ -more good
stuff SNIPPED-]
That the discipline and reasoning of math strengthen your
thinking
in general. As Roger Huberty, a veteran teacher at Case
High School
in Racine, put it, any attempt to strengthen math skills
is effort
well-spent because "people who are really good at math
tend to be
REALLY GOOD AT EVERYTHING." [ -even more common sense
stuff DELETED- ]
**[now comes the really hard Factz_of_IQ-75_OOW_Breeding
Life]**
The gap between the students who perform well and those
who don't has
been the focus of increasing attention, in large part
because the gap
has such strong economic and racial characteristics.
For example, in the 2000 NAEP results, 35% of white
eighth-graders were
rated as proficient or better in math, up from 19% in
1990. But the
figure was 6% for black eighth-graders, up just one
percentage point
since 1990.
In Wisconsin, the gap between black and white students in
math is huge.
At the 10th-grade level, 23% of black students were rated
as proficient
or better in math, in testing during the 2002-'03 school
year; for
white students, the figure was 76%. At the other end of
the scale,
40% of black students were rated at the "minimal"
proficiency level,
the lowest category, compared with 10% of white students.
[...]
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