After Math Aftermath

Straight back from break, the seniors took a blow to the head. Math grades are passed back. If you walk through the math lounge hallway, you can hear groans, cries, and shouts from seniors that just received their math summative grades. This time, it wasn’t a two-or-three-people-messed-up type of test, it’s a two-or-three-people-did-well type of test: the grades on the math test were almost like a free ticket to the retake.

Knowing that the math test disgruntled a lot of my friends and being a victim of this tragic results myself, I decided to survey some students and Ms. Brinkman regarding this math test and the aftermath. Right off the bat, students’ and teacher’s views on this math test, in general, differ a lot. Some students thought this math test was too hard, as she stated that “it wasn’t me only who found this test hard. The concepts were there but the questions were way beyond the materials taught in class.” Especially since the tests included topics that were from last year, many students thought that “it was hard to study for the whole thing on top of the calculus unit that we just started learning.” The students were also extremely eager to reveal the major problems of the tests, saying that “there is a mismatch in the difficulty between the formatives and the summative test,” or that “the style of this test diverged from the tests we had before.” Almost all the students I interviewed agreed that if more than half of the SL math students need to retake, the test has its own problems.

Ms. Brinkman, a math teacher for IB math SL, was also dissatisfied with this result. She said that this test, in general, was “terrible, the results were terrible.” The results were not expected, “we had more retakes than I have expected.” Incorporating past units the test, Ms. Brinkman also thought that low results were going to happen, since “it has been so long.” But regarding the calculus portion, she is unsure whether “the accumulation of the different differentiation” was the reason for the results or if there is something else.

Ms. Brinkman prefers reteaching than retaking. That is, she advised students to ask before the test if there are any confusions in hopes of more good outcomes and fewer retake sessions.

A bad math grade is nothing but a slight dip in the rollercoaster ride called the senior year. Luckily, after the most recent test (the second math test of the year), people looked less dead. Hopefully, this signifies better results: a happier teacher and happier students.