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This is for teachers. I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math, but is otherwise a good candidate. B

This is for teachers. I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math, but is otherwise a good candidate. But should someone who fails the math proficiency test be a math teacher? Probably not. Society should try to match everyone with jobs which they are capable of doing, teaching is a good job. We shouldn't unnecessarily exclude people from doing A just because they lack the skills for doing B. Here is examples of what is on the test: https://cpl.oise.utoronto.ca/course/mathematics-proficiency-test/ https://cpl.oise.utoronto.ca/course/mathematics-proficiency-... Video discussion of the test questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7fnPD_c7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7fnPD_c7w

jhgb 5y ago
> I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math I think it is a big deal if any teacher isn't great in math, aside from perhaps PE instructors. Considering how much our whole society is supported by math nowadays and how much the average person sucks at math, perhaps teachers who suck at math are not very good role models for children?
- watwut 5y ago
  It really does not matter. It does matter, whether math instruction is good.
- matbilodeau 5y ago
  PE instructors were the worst discriminators. They gave out grades based on physical performance. Looking at old class pictures, the lowest percentile could be easily identified (also corresponding to the last picked when building teams). I hope this has changed.
  - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    I thought you were joking at first, but looks like you are not? What else would PE grades be based on if not on physical performance?
    - 14 5y ago
      Well though I somewhat agree, a lot of kids do not have parents who care or know better and may be on poor diets that cause obesity. Also some kids just don’t have the genetics. The grades should be based on effort applied at whatever skill level those kids are at. How do you grade effort? I don’t know but expecting a kid who comes in 100lbs heavier then other kids and expect him to run the same pace as some hyperactive kid really isn’t fair.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        > The grades should be based on effort applied at whatever skill level those kids are at. Are you suggesting that PE should have different grading procedures than other subjects (which reward measured results, or at least in my school did)? Or are you even suggesting in general that all subjects should be graded like this (and for example someone really bad at math but "trying really hard" should actually be getting A's and B's)?
        matbilodeau 5y ago
        You are mixing physical and mental checks. If I think really really hard about moving a 20lbs ball on 40m I doubt it will budge. If I repeatedly punch a sudoku puzzle it will not solve itself.
        jhgb 5y ago
        Actually, I'm not. We definitely had outcome-based (not effort-based) grading for both physical and mental disciplines in my school.
        matbilodeau 5y ago
        We had this too. It somewhat frustrated me to be able to understand the theory and apply it but not being "good" enough in the eyes of the PE teacher. Excellent grades in other subjects though, just didn't see the fun in running after a ball or the worth of investing time and effort at being faster or better at it. College change that. PE was stil mandatory in the cursus but was more oriented towards a healthy lifestyle. Benefits of physical activity, research on muscle development and training methods, what consists of a healthy diet, how to enjoy physical activities and include them in your schedule etc. Oh and in primary school, teachers would go in the teachers lounge to smoke while they were given a break by us being in PE.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > Considering how much our whole society is supported by math nowadays and how much the average person sucks at math, I would have finished this sentence perhaps that’s significant evidence that the average person doesn’t need to be great at math.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    No, this would be significant evidence that the average person doesn’t need to be great at math only if you knew for a fact that an alternative universe society with people being better at math had merely comparable societal outcome.
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  PE teachers in the UK also teach another academic subject as a sort of standby....so no
darepublic 5y ago
Sure but the document explains the rationale as follows: > The Divisional Court found that the Math Proficiency Test had an adverse impact on entry to the teaching profession for racialized teacher candidates So the concern is that the tail is wagging the dog -- in the sense that trying to have a certain mix of teachers from various backgrounds drives the requirements instead of requirements being guided by what students need from their teachers
- bluecalm 5y ago
  Yup, misunderstanding of basic math strikes again. I thought it's a joke when I first seen an argument like "X race does worse at Y therefore Y is racist". Then I thought it's some kind of running joke. Then I've noticed some people are serious about it so I assumed they got fooled by the running joke. Apparently it's no longer a joke and it's used to dictate policies. Pretty scary situation. The dumb are winning with the dumbest of arguments and now you can't even test for it to prevent it :)
  - bjt2n3904 5y ago
    This is precisely Kendi's antiracist rationale. 1. Every policy either is racist, or antiracist. There are no neutral policies. 2. "Racialized" teachers are unable to pass a math test in order to be eligible for the job. 3. Because the policy does not produce an equal outcome, the policy is therefore racist. Add on top of that, the Smithsonian's ridiculous publication, suggesting that things like objective truth and math/science are concepts of "Whiteness", and this is the outcome. Harrison Bergeron would like a word.
    - bluecalm 5y ago
      I remember when it started appearing and the narrative was "it's just a fringe, no one sane thinks like that" but apparently suddenly it's accepted argument in the court of law. I mean, this is Idiocracy materializing. You can't have any kind of discussion if the other side doesn't get basic reasoning right. It's one thing to disagree about values but if we can't even use very basic reasonings it's completely hopeless.
treeman79 5y ago
My wife kept failing math proficiency test. Despite having been a successful teacher for many years. Finally I started testing her myself and realized she knew nothing about math. Maybe 2nd grade level. She grew up in Canada and said math wasn’t really taught. Spent months training her up to a middle school level. We moved states and she took test. No math questions on it…
- b112 5y ago
  She grew up in Canada and said math wasn’t really taught. It think she's covering for a lack of paying attention. Or maybe she's young, and standards have really slipped? Because otherwise no.
  - whitexn--g28h 5y ago
    My son is in grade 2 math is definitely taught. At this point he’s already doing pre-algebra using perimeters of polygons. I think they will start angles by the end of the year. I was in Ontario middles school about 20 years ago and even the easiest math course you could take in grade 8 involved basic trigonometry.
    - watwut 5y ago
      I don't know about Ontario, but here People can skate by. I used to tutor. Quite a lot of kids missed something simple somewhere in the beginning and then were skating by having passable but not good grades. Not understanding what is taught, but getting enough points. The tutoring consisted of going beck few years and teaching them basics again. They improved, but school never did that "maybe this person now can learn the thing he/she missed 3 years ago".
      - jpittis 5y ago
        This idea of missing something simple really speaks to me. I remember “factorization” not clicking for me for the longest time in public school. My grades slowly got worse, until the right teacher came along and explained it in a way that clicked. I proceeded to have a successful math focused education in high school and university. I wonder if part of it is that kids are at the mercy of what their teachers want to teach / the curriculum. I think kids often know which things they struggle with… they need help articulating it, and then someone to work with them through it.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math, but is otherwise a good candidate. The test covers the grades 3-9 math curriculum. Not having that kind of basic math literacy is pretty big barrier to being able to evaluate, much less teach, Social Science materiak at the secondary level (the only level where you would likely have a dedicated Social Science teacher.) And subjecting students to that kind of incompetence—as those from already-disadvantaged backgrounds will be the least likely to have a home environment that counterbalances it—is a far bigger force institutionalizing racial disadvantage than the test itself ever could be.
- Jap2-0 5y ago
  Agreed, particularly at a secondary level at least a basic understanding of math concepts is important both in general and in social studies - graphs and statistics are what first come to mind. And if they're not at the secondary level, they're probably supposed to be teaching math.
thrower123 5y ago
I would expect an eighth grader to ace a test of this variety. We expect too little of people. The bar is too low.
- coffeefirst 5y ago
  An 8th Grader might pass it. But I would probably fail without serious preparation because I haven't solved an algebra equation, used trig, or done any real math by hand in 20 years. Disuse is not incompetence. Now, they could make every history/language/music teacher try to relearn all these things in order to pass the test and forget it all again, but it's hard to believe it's not a big waste of everyone's time and energy. Perhaps we expect too little of people, but there's nothing wrong with specialization.
  - pbourke 5y ago
    PEs, architects and lawyers all need to pass standardized tests in order to enter their professions. You have to study for these. Expecting preparation is not the end of the world.
- contravariant 5y ago
  I would expect a professor of mathematics to get at least a few wrong because of awful phrasing and gotchas.
raverbashing 5y ago
Humm looking at the sample test, the questions are easy, but the presentation and wording is awful "She has 100m of plastic edging to encloses a circular garden." Hard to believe they let this slip through.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  The question was written by another teacher, one that failed English?
- pbourke 5y ago
  These are poorly worded questions. Half the issue with “word problem” test questions is that they assume a cultural context or knowledge. The questions should explain themselves more (what is edging?) or choose a better context.
  - matbilodeau 5y ago
    Well Google gave me the answer to "what is edging" and I doubt this has to do anything with math.
    - pbourke 5y ago
      You typically don’t have access to Google when you’re taking a test. The onus should be on the test writer to ensure that what is tested is math knowledge and not math knowledge + some random facts about gardening.
      - matbilodeau 5y ago
        Reminds me of calculus, all I seem to remember from college is that growth rate of a wolf population. And the hearing LIMIT from a high pitched voice.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Yeah, apart from the terrible typography, which seems to be mandatory for these kinds of test, there are plenty of terribly phrased questions as well: > 7. A number cube is labeled 1 to 6. [...] What's wrong with the word 'die'? > 12. There is a linear relationship [...] What type of variation is this relationship and what is its initial value? What on earth does 'variation' mean here? As far as the answer key is concerned the answer should be 'A partial variation with an initial value of $50.'. Which makes no sense to me whatsoever. > 13. A rectangle has an area of 5^𝑥2 + 15𝑥 square units. Determine expressions for the length and the width of the rectangle. Surely that depends on your aspect ratio? It could be sqrt(5x^2 + 15x) for both. Also their answer key lists the area in question 4 in cm for some reason, if you're going to use units at least use the right one. And you just know someone is going to be anal about question 8, since the answer key doesn't list the exact value '100m/pi' but the approximate 31.8 m. Also I hope they got a calculator otherwise the answer to question 15 which involves trigonometry is downright unfair.
matbilodeau 5y ago
The samples look like grade 9ish math. It's about understanding rules and how those rules can be applied to solve a problem. When starting a teaching career you don't always get a full-time, one subject schedule; it's more like covering sick leaves or temp contracts depending on schools needs. Having this test is useful since the College certifies that its members , even if they are specialized in a given subject, can understand the basics of other high school subjects. Imagine how it would suck if you come across the "not my job, not my problem" when asking a school teacher for help.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
prvc 5y ago
The first section of the exam does not cover specialized, esoteric knowledge. Deficiencies in basic reasoning extend to other areas of knowledge as well, and it seems unconscionable to allow those who suffer from these to teach.
14 5y ago
But in social studies there is math that gets discussed. We had percentages for sure when discussing politics for example. My social studies is ever old but we definitely had some portions that had some math involved.
stackedinserter 5y ago
Based on the tests examples it's not about being great at math. Being able of divide one number by another or find area of a parallelogram is just a sign that that person is reasonably smart and functional in modern world. The test is so basic, it's shame that teachers pushed it up to court. Just a random pick from samples: > Nada is landscaping her front yard. She has 100m of plastic edging to encloses a circular garden. What is the diameter of the garden? We seriously expect teachers to not know about the Pi number?
II2II 5y ago
Just a note on the test you're pointing to: > Learners wishing to enroll in the Mathematics - Intermediate Additional Basic Qualification course may take this test in lieu of official transcript(s) showing proof of successful completion of a minimum of two full university degree credit courses or the equivalent in the teaching subject. Ontario teaching licenses have qualifications for various grade levels and subject areas. This qualification is intended for people who intend to teach mathematics in grades seven through nine, and the sample test questions reflect that. I very much doubt this test is the one referred to by the courts. If it is, the qualification would be irrelevant (assuming test results reflect the ability to teach a subject competently).

jhgb 5y ago

> I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math I think it is a big deal if any teacher isn't great in math, aside from perhaps PE instructors. Considering how much our whole society is supported by math nowadays and how much the average person sucks at math, perhaps teachers who suck at math are not very good role models for children?

watwut 5y ago
It really does not matter. It does matter, whether math instruction is good.
matbilodeau 5y ago
PE instructors were the worst discriminators. They gave out grades based on physical performance. Looking at old class pictures, the lowest percentile could be easily identified (also corresponding to the last picked when building teams). I hope this has changed.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  I thought you were joking at first, but looks like you are not? What else would PE grades be based on if not on physical performance?
  - 14 5y ago
    Well though I somewhat agree, a lot of kids do not have parents who care or know better and may be on poor diets that cause obesity. Also some kids just don’t have the genetics. The grades should be based on effort applied at whatever skill level those kids are at. How do you grade effort? I don’t know but expecting a kid who comes in 100lbs heavier then other kids and expect him to run the same pace as some hyperactive kid really isn’t fair.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > The grades should be based on effort applied at whatever skill level those kids are at. Are you suggesting that PE should have different grading procedures than other subjects (which reward measured results, or at least in my school did)? Or are you even suggesting in general that all subjects should be graded like this (and for example someone really bad at math but "trying really hard" should actually be getting A's and B's)?
      - matbilodeau 5y ago
        You are mixing physical and mental checks. If I think really really hard about moving a 20lbs ball on 40m I doubt it will budge. If I repeatedly punch a sudoku puzzle it will not solve itself.
        jhgb 5y ago
        Actually, I'm not. We definitely had outcome-based (not effort-based) grading for both physical and mental disciplines in my school.
        matbilodeau 5y ago
        We had this too. It somewhat frustrated me to be able to understand the theory and apply it but not being "good" enough in the eyes of the PE teacher. Excellent grades in other subjects though, just didn't see the fun in running after a ball or the worth of investing time and effort at being faster or better at it. College change that. PE was stil mandatory in the cursus but was more oriented towards a healthy lifestyle. Benefits of physical activity, research on muscle development and training methods, what consists of a healthy diet, how to enjoy physical activities and include them in your schedule etc. Oh and in primary school, teachers would go in the teachers lounge to smoke while they were given a break by us being in PE.
tshaddox 5y ago
> Considering how much our whole society is supported by math nowadays and how much the average person sucks at math, I would have finished this sentence perhaps that’s significant evidence that the average person doesn’t need to be great at math.
- jhgb 5y ago
  No, this would be significant evidence that the average person doesn’t need to be great at math only if you knew for a fact that an alternative universe society with people being better at math had merely comparable societal outcome.
jimnotgym 5y ago
PE teachers in the UK also teach another academic subject as a sort of standby....so no

darepublic 5y ago

Sure but the document explains the rationale as follows: > The Divisional Court found that the Math Proficiency Test had an adverse impact on entry to the teaching profession for racialized teacher candidates So the concern is that the tail is wagging the dog -- in the sense that trying to have a certain mix of teachers from various backgrounds drives the requirements instead of requirements being guided by what students need from their teachers

bluecalm 5y ago
Yup, misunderstanding of basic math strikes again. I thought it's a joke when I first seen an argument like "X race does worse at Y therefore Y is racist". Then I thought it's some kind of running joke. Then I've noticed some people are serious about it so I assumed they got fooled by the running joke. Apparently it's no longer a joke and it's used to dictate policies. Pretty scary situation. The dumb are winning with the dumbest of arguments and now you can't even test for it to prevent it :)
- bjt2n3904 5y ago
  This is precisely Kendi's antiracist rationale. 1. Every policy either is racist, or antiracist. There are no neutral policies. 2. "Racialized" teachers are unable to pass a math test in order to be eligible for the job. 3. Because the policy does not produce an equal outcome, the policy is therefore racist. Add on top of that, the Smithsonian's ridiculous publication, suggesting that things like objective truth and math/science are concepts of "Whiteness", and this is the outcome. Harrison Bergeron would like a word.
  - bluecalm 5y ago
    I remember when it started appearing and the narrative was "it's just a fringe, no one sane thinks like that" but apparently suddenly it's accepted argument in the court of law. I mean, this is Idiocracy materializing. You can't have any kind of discussion if the other side doesn't get basic reasoning right. It's one thing to disagree about values but if we can't even use very basic reasonings it's completely hopeless.

treeman79 5y ago

My wife kept failing math proficiency test. Despite having been a successful teacher for many years. Finally I started testing her myself and realized she knew nothing about math. Maybe 2nd grade level. She grew up in Canada and said math wasn’t really taught. Spent months training her up to a middle school level. We moved states and she took test. No math questions on it…

b112 5y ago
She grew up in Canada and said math wasn’t really taught. It think she's covering for a lack of paying attention. Or maybe she's young, and standards have really slipped? Because otherwise no.
- whitexn--g28h 5y ago
  My son is in grade 2 math is definitely taught. At this point he’s already doing pre-algebra using perimeters of polygons. I think they will start angles by the end of the year. I was in Ontario middles school about 20 years ago and even the easiest math course you could take in grade 8 involved basic trigonometry.
  - watwut 5y ago
    I don't know about Ontario, but here People can skate by. I used to tutor. Quite a lot of kids missed something simple somewhere in the beginning and then were skating by having passable but not good grades. Not understanding what is taught, but getting enough points. The tutoring consisted of going beck few years and teaching them basics again. They improved, but school never did that "maybe this person now can learn the thing he/she missed 3 years ago".
    - jpittis 5y ago
      This idea of missing something simple really speaks to me. I remember “factorization” not clicking for me for the longest time in public school. My grades slowly got worse, until the right teacher came along and explained it in a way that clicked. I proceeded to have a successful math focused education in high school and university. I wonder if part of it is that kids are at the mercy of what their teachers want to teach / the curriculum. I think kids often know which things they struggle with… they need help articulating it, and then someone to work with them through it.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math, but is otherwise a good candidate. The test covers the grades 3-9 math curriculum. Not having that kind of basic math literacy is pretty big barrier to being able to evaluate, much less teach, Social Science materiak at the secondary level (the only level where you would likely have a dedicated Social Science teacher.) And subjecting students to that kind of incompetence—as those from already-disadvantaged backgrounds will be the least likely to have a home environment that counterbalances it—is a far bigger force institutionalizing racial disadvantage than the test itself ever could be.

Jap2-0 5y ago
Agreed, particularly at a secondary level at least a basic understanding of math concepts is important both in general and in social studies - graphs and statistics are what first come to mind. And if they're not at the secondary level, they're probably supposed to be teaching math.

thrower123 5y ago

I would expect an eighth grader to ace a test of this variety. We expect too little of people. The bar is too low.

coffeefirst 5y ago
An 8th Grader might pass it. But I would probably fail without serious preparation because I haven't solved an algebra equation, used trig, or done any real math by hand in 20 years. Disuse is not incompetence. Now, they could make every history/language/music teacher try to relearn all these things in order to pass the test and forget it all again, but it's hard to believe it's not a big waste of everyone's time and energy. Perhaps we expect too little of people, but there's nothing wrong with specialization.
- pbourke 5y ago
  PEs, architects and lawyers all need to pass standardized tests in order to enter their professions. You have to study for these. Expecting preparation is not the end of the world.
contravariant 5y ago
I would expect a professor of mathematics to get at least a few wrong because of awful phrasing and gotchas.

raverbashing 5y ago

Humm looking at the sample test, the questions are easy, but the presentation and wording is awful "She has 100m of plastic edging to encloses a circular garden." Hard to believe they let this slip through.

AdrianB1 5y ago
The question was written by another teacher, one that failed English?
pbourke 5y ago
These are poorly worded questions. Half the issue with “word problem” test questions is that they assume a cultural context or knowledge. The questions should explain themselves more (what is edging?) or choose a better context.
- matbilodeau 5y ago
  Well Google gave me the answer to "what is edging" and I doubt this has to do anything with math.
  - pbourke 5y ago
    You typically don’t have access to Google when you’re taking a test. The onus should be on the test writer to ensure that what is tested is math knowledge and not math knowledge + some random facts about gardening.
    - matbilodeau 5y ago
      Reminds me of calculus, all I seem to remember from college is that growth rate of a wolf population. And the hearing LIMIT from a high pitched voice.
contravariant 5y ago
Yeah, apart from the terrible typography, which seems to be mandatory for these kinds of test, there are plenty of terribly phrased questions as well: > 7. A number cube is labeled 1 to 6. [...] What's wrong with the word 'die'? > 12. There is a linear relationship [...] What type of variation is this relationship and what is its initial value? What on earth does 'variation' mean here? As far as the answer key is concerned the answer should be 'A partial variation with an initial value of $50.'. Which makes no sense to me whatsoever. > 13. A rectangle has an area of 5^𝑥2 + 15𝑥 square units. Determine expressions for the length and the width of the rectangle. Surely that depends on your aspect ratio? It could be sqrt(5x^2 + 15x) for both. Also their answer key lists the area in question 4 in cm for some reason, if you're going to use units at least use the right one. And you just know someone is going to be anal about question 8, since the answer key doesn't list the exact value '100m/pi' but the approximate 31.8 m. Also I hope they got a calculator otherwise the answer to question 15 which involves trigonometry is downright unfair.

matbilodeau 5y ago

The samples look like grade 9ish math. It's about understanding rules and how those rules can be applied to solve a problem. When starting a teaching career you don't always get a full-time, one subject schedule; it's more like covering sick leaves or temp contracts depending on schools needs. Having this test is useful since the College certifies that its members , even if they are specialized in a given subject, can understand the basics of other high school subjects. Imagine how it would suck if you come across the "not my job, not my problem" when asking a school teacher for help.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

prvc 5y ago

The first section of the exam does not cover specialized, esoteric knowledge. Deficiencies in basic reasoning extend to other areas of knowledge as well, and it seems unconscionable to allow those who suffer from these to teach.

14 5y ago

But in social studies there is math that gets discussed. We had percentages for sure when discussing politics for example. My social studies is ever old but we definitely had some portions that had some math involved.

stackedinserter 5y ago

Based on the tests examples it's not about being great at math. Being able of divide one number by another or find area of a parallelogram is just a sign that that person is reasonably smart and functional in modern world. The test is so basic, it's shame that teachers pushed it up to court. Just a random pick from samples: > Nada is landscaping her front yard. She has 100m of plastic edging to encloses a circular garden. What is the diameter of the garden? We seriously expect teachers to not know about the Pi number?

II2II 5y ago

Just a note on the test you're pointing to: > Learners wishing to enroll in the Mathematics - Intermediate Additional Basic Qualification course may take this test in lieu of official transcript(s) showing proof of successful completion of a minimum of two full university degree credit courses or the equivalent in the teaching subject. Ontario teaching licenses have qualifications for various grade levels and subject areas. This qualification is intended for people who intend to teach mathematics in grades seven through nine, and the sample test questions reflect that. I very much doubt this test is the one referred to by the courts. If it is, the qualification would be irrelevant (assuming test results reflect the ability to teach a subject competently).