City College of the City University of New York (CUNY) is a manhattan gem. Founded in 1847, it offered free tuition until 1976 giving the poor access to top quality education based on academic merit alone. Its graduates include 9 Nobel Laureates, Colin Powell and Jonas Salk.
A few days ago, Princeton PhD and City College math professor Stanley Ocken produced a report detailing the fact that of 200 CUNY freshmen tested, 90% of them could not:
Solve for x:
x 2 = 9
(The answer is 3)
And 66% of those CUNY freshmen could not:
Write 3/8 as a decimal.
(The answer is 0.375)
70% of CUNY students come from New York city high schools. Is your city doing any better? Internationally our kids are #34 in math according to PISA. A solution may be to change the way math is taught all together.
