Subject: for the list
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:35:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: "W. Stephen Wilson" <wsw@chow.mat.jhu.edu>
To: dmd1@lehigh.edu

Don, for the list,  Steve

Dear Colleagues,

I have been drafted into the (K-12) math wars and
will be on a panel in mid October related to this.
I would like to present some data about the cost
of students not being prepared for college but
am having some difficulty coming up with it.  It
is possible that some of you may either have the
data I want already or can get it fairly easily.

If students are not prepared reasonably well then
they don't get into Johns Hopkins so the data
I want isn't available here.

I know that many places, especially some big state
universities with liberal admission policies, have
a lot of students in courses with material which we
believe should have been mastered in high school.
What I would like to know is:  How many of these
students ever satisfactorily complete a full year
of real college level math?

The ideal data set for me would be something really
simple like:  We have 7,000 students this fall taking
remedial math, algebra, or pre-calculus, and history
shows that about 70 of them will finish a year of
calculus.

The point which I want to make is that if a student
doesn't learn high school math in high school then
they have a math handicap which is rarely overcome.

Anyway, if someone has some useful data along this
line then I would appreciate hearing from them.

Sincerely,

Steve

W. Stephen Wilson                   (410) 516-7413
Department of Mathematics      FAX  (410) 516-5549
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218               wsw@math.jhu.edu

http://www.math.jhu.edu/~wsw/