The list of food ingredients on one side of the sheet looks more like a recipe for a cooking class. Then you're going to have to decide on a reasonable price per cookie to come up with a profit that will pay for the trip to Paris. The test's demands have caused schools throughout the region to rethink how they teach math and to increase the amount of math they require of every student. A few of Ms. Roy's students let out quiet sighs as they examine the five involved questions they must answer before reaching a solution. The students mill about the room negotiating whom to work with.
Boys cluster with boys, and girls quickly seek out other girls.
Despite these feelings, the two girls pull out paper, pencils and graphing calculators and begin to attack the problem. Ms. Roy reminds them to show on paper how they solve the problem and, when they're finished their calculations, write a paragraph about the process. For the next 80 minutes, the 21 students will puzzle out this lengthy problem, which requires them to build algebraic equations to solve for unknown quantities and graph equations to determine when costs of cooking batches of cookies equal income from selling these cookies. The MCAS test is loaded with word problems that require a knowledge of algebra to solve what may not first appear to be an algebra question. It also demands a comfortable grasp of geometry, probability, patterns and data manipulation.