News-Record.com

State education officials are considering making it harder to pass math tests.

Critics have said the state sets the bar too low. So low in fact, that "You could almost fall over it," Sam Miller, a UNCG education professor and chairman of the university's department of curriculum and instruction told the N&R in 2004. At that time, students could pass by answering just one-third of the questions.

This year's math scores have been delayed while officials go over results from a new test and decide what the passing rate should be.

At least one education watchdog group thinks the curriculum should be revamped and notes that other countries have students study algebra and geometry at younger ages.

Some have argued here that pushing Algebra earlier was a mistake; most Guilford students take it in eighth-grade now.

What do you think? Should the state look at making passing the tests harder than it is now? What about revamping the curriculum to move higher-level math concepts into earlier grades?

ADD: More math talk from another education blog, the School Zone. Scroll down to the first Sept. 13 post on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's blog. The story looks at a report that leans back toward children learning basic math facts instead of how to "think like a mathematician."