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| -Great Cultural Revolution |
| Elon Musk needs H-1B workers because math education fails our students |
| 2025-02-04 |
| [FoxNews] Nearly two-thirds of all H-1B visas are for computer-related jobs that rely on math skills When entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines with his vociferous comments supporting the H-1B visa program, the ensuing debate focused on the implications of his position on immigration. But this debate obscured the reason America even has such a program in the first place: its homegrown students are being poorly educated in math. According to federal law, the H-1B program gives visas to foreigners coming to perform services "in a specialty occupation." A specialty occupation is defined as requiring "theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge," plus higher education requirements. The program is annually capped at 65,000 regular H-1B visas, with another 20,000 for those foreigners who have earned advanced degrees from U.S. universities. Given Musk’s vehement support of the program, it is no surprise that a federal report states that in 2023, "computer-related occupations were the largest major occupational area, accounting for 65% of all beneficiaries [of the program]." In comparison, less than 1% of H-1B visas were given to foreigners in the social sciences. While much of the coverage of the H-1B debate focuses on the foreign-versus-American-worker angle, the real issue regarding H-1Bs is that the U.S. is failing to produce domestic workers with the requisite math skills required by Musk’s SpaceX and other high-tech companies. In 2024, a shocking 72% of eighth-grade students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam failed to score at the proficient level -- a full 6% increase over the 66% of eighth graders failing to achieve proficiency in 2019. Why are American students doing so badly in math? The answer lies in the ineffective math instruction they are receiving. In the early 2010s, most states adopted the Common Core national education standards, which were touted as a cure for America’s math woes. Unfortunately, Common Core turned out to be bad medicine. Common Core confused many students by emphasizing indirect ways to arrive at the right answer instead of just learning straightforward mathematical operations. For example, in multiplying numbers, children are often asked to draw pictures instead of simply memorizing the multiplication tables. Michael Malione, a professional math tutor in California, said that his students were instructed by their public schools to draw and shade different areas of rectangles when multiplying fractions, rather than simply multiplying the numerators and multiplying the denominators to get the correct answer. Requiring students to learn math this way is both inefficient and ineffective. "We’re going to draw a picture every time we’re given 10 problems with fractional multiplication, when you could do them in your head?" Malione asks. "That’s insane." Malione sees students "who are completely lost and they’re not getting the step-by-step guidance early on." Given Malione’s experience, it is unsurprising that a federally funded study found that Common Core had significant negative effects on the math achievement of eighth graders. College math professors are shocked at students’ poor math skills. One college math instructor in the Silicon Valley lamented that the lack of algebra knowledge is "the number one deficiency and its chronic." He said, "we’re not producing the kinds of students and graduates that Silicon Valley needs." Sugi Sorensen, a top engineer at famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory who also tutors students in math, urged a return to proven traditional math practices, which includes mastering the basic skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through "the memorization of math facts and procedures" so that students "can perform computations quickly, accurately, and effortlessly." Further, math topics should be sequential, "where new concepts are built upon previously learned ones in a structured, hierarchical manner," Sorensen said. Finally, Sorensen recommends that math operations such as long division "should be explicitly taught and practiced until mastery," with an emphasis on accuracy. America has nearly 50 million K-12 students. If schools use proven math instructional methods instead of failed progressive techniques, there would be less need for H-1B visas because there would be more than enough young Americans with the skills companies need. The tech titans at Trump's inauguration should lean on schools to do just that. It is time to make math great again. Related: H-1B: 2025-01-31 The case of the radical ‘Zizian’ vegan trans cult and the shooting death of border patrol agent H-1B: 2025-01-12 Steve Bannon: ‘I Will Do Anything' to Keep Elon Musk out of the White House H-1B: 2025-01-02 Welcome to the New Normal Related: Common Core 04/19/2022 Florida rejects 41% of submitted math books over CRT, other issues Common Core 11/03/2020 Executive Order on Establishing the President's Advisory 1776 Commission Common Core 04/29/2020 Study Finds 'Historic' Drop In Math, Reading Scores Since Adoption Of Common Core |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #9 They were trying to teach abstractions too early, and to the wrong people. *Warning - Anecdotal* When eldest was in 3rd grad, instead of teaching add/subtract tables, the emphasis was on conceptual math, basically Algebra concepts. To 3r graders. I went through College Calculus II, and really enjoyed math, so my kids had a good at-home tutor. Everyone else in the class checked out, so thank you for helping, was the reply to my asking how the classmates were doing. Common Core, then the Covid Protocols, have absolutely destroyed a generation's math education. There was even a gag in the movie Incredibles 2 where Dad was trying to help his son with math, "There is no new math, only math!?" I asked mine, "Do you want to learn math, or do you want to learn how to navigate the curriculum?" They chose learn math, and are now head of their class in Math now that they are in conceptual Math such as College Algebra. In short, they taught math backwards to the point the Elementary School Teachers couldn't teach, only show videos, so when students inevitably had question, the teacher couldn't answer the questions, and IMHO created a disconnect with the students and teachers, turning what were natural Elementary School Teachers into babysitters. Thanks, Department of Education! Hey Kansas, just your story, if real. OK, fair in the Age of Internet, let me do proofs: mine can make change and count it back. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2025-02-04 20:50 |
| #8 Try raising pay scales to make it worth peoples time. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2025-02-04 20:06 |
| #7 I expect Elon will address this issue eventually. Mathematical maturity takes time. Students have to keep revisiting earlier topics in deeper ways, while learning new things. They were trying to teach abstractions too early, and to the wrong people. |
| Posted by: KBK 2025-02-04 19:52 |
| #6 uh Elon No! |
| Posted by: The Walking Unvaxed 2025-02-04 15:50 |
| #5 Texas Democrat who sent his kids to private school criticizes parents who do the same |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-02-04 11:17 |
| #4 Bet they can calculate Prob under instruction Trump preparing to dismantle 'woke' department of education as math, reading scores show stunning lows |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-02-04 11:13 |
| #3 Bet they can calculate exactly how many rioters are needed at a given roadway... |
| Posted by: Warthog 2025-02-04 09:34 |
| #2 The fruits of 50 years of H-1B destroying the incentive of American students applying themselves in the STEM fields. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2025-02-04 08:53 |
| #1 The hell with H1B. Just give them a Green Card. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2025-02-04 07:44 |