Damned lazy teachers. Kids aren't passing tests.

As a response to some of the folks who feel that kids should be able to get every question correct ...

First, remember that the questions are vetted. If any question is answered correctly by more than 90%, it is removed from the test.

Not every kid will have taken the math courses necessary to understand every question. Some kids are not "math types". They might be artists or writers or skateboarders.

Most importantly, none of the schools is allowed to make the test count towards graduation or even report all scores on transcripts, so the kids have little incentive to succeed.

I'm not sure that the readers of this paper realize how difficult some of these questions are. How many adults can answer the following released question? What does that say about you? Why are we expecting the students to understand things that most of the adults in this population cannot?

Here's one of the "easy" questions (easy if you know it):

There is a line drawing of a pyramid with a dihedral angle of 52°. The length of each side of the square base is 230 meters. Which equation represents the height, h, of the pyramid?
A. h =115 sin52°
B. h =115 tan52°
C. h =115/sin52°
D. h =115/tan52°

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?

This one is easy, too ...
A square with a side length of 8.0 cm is rolled up, without overlap, to form the lateral surface of a cylinder. What is the radius of the cylinder to the nearest tenth of a centimeter?

Anyone?