Finally, some sanity in the Education Wars!

Algebra II Drives Dropout Rates and Is Mostly Useless. Here’s a Plan for Getting Rid of It.

For most people the only time they use any math higher than simple math is when helping their children with homework. The problem is the STEM myth, the idea that all children have to do to make a good income is major in STEM, get a job, get paid! But that only works if the child has any aptitude for math. Most do not, and it shows in the drop out rates. 

Even more oddly, classes the student likely needs are seldom taught at all. Statistics provides a necessary understanding of how things interrelate. But even STEM professionals are often incompetent in this area.

John Ioannidis's paper, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False shows just how devastating this lack of knowledge has been with respect to our scientific research. Here is a less academic and more accessible article, Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. 

If it is true that 80% of our nonrandomized studies, and 25% of our Gold Standard studies are bunk, we have a problem. And a significant driver of  this problem is that the researchers have a less than adequate understanding of statistics. Well, and myriad other biases! But the statistics problem seems strange, in STEM nearly everyone must take calculus, so they must understand statistics, right? Wrong. They simply do not understand it sufficiently to keep them from making incorrect interrelationships between things in their research projects. We required the wrong thing and for no discernible reason.

We have failed our children educationally for decades, we need to get a handle on this issue, and begin to unwind the problems today. Changing math educational requirements would be a good first step.