School boards are fighting back against high stakes testing

You seem to have trouble accepting facts when they don't match your politics.

It is a political argument you are making which is why you are putting down anyone who disagrees including educators themselves and education experts who have spent the time studying and doing research.

I am a software engineer working on a speech recognition application. In my job I write and document algorithms. I use linear algebra, O-notation and Hidden Markov Models regularly in my job. I also have a physics degree where I studied highly mathematical subjects from electrodynamics to quantum mechanics. And it is true that once you finish one or two years of school, you calculate very little.

You have never met me. The fact that you are willing to make a personal attack simply because you disagree shows that yours is not a logical argument, but a political campaign.

I do not see either the politics or the personal attack you refer to. A disagreement is not an attack.

Read the quoted section above. I take the attack of my understanding of mathematics and engineering as a personal attack (seeing as I am an engineer who relies on mathematics). I didn't take offense to anything he said up to that point. He also used the said my ideas were "sophomoric" which is also crosses a line into the realm personal attack.

An engineer who can't calculate or quantify a specification is no engineer. A mathematician who can't deal with numbers is no mathematician. (I'll agree that, in some sub areas of abstract or Boolean algebra, one can deal with objects other than numbers, but such areas represent but a small subset of the body of mathematics). Even the most fuundamental principles of physics require known numerical physical constants for their expression. Indeed some of the greatest achievements of physics have involved the accurate determination of the numerical values of these physical constants.

Saying that an idea you advanced in a conversation is sophomoric is merely an (accurate in this case) description of the idea you advanced. I made no reference at all to your character or other attributes.

You appear to confuse disagreement with conflict and assault - and to be unwilling or unable to back off from an assertion that, on more than a casual examination is seen to be falacious and trite. Not very scientific.

To be even more particular with respect to your original argument, deriving the quadratic formula required understanding complex numbers, an area well beyond the understanding of seventh graders. However having them learn and accept the formula and discovering that it produces values that indeed are demonstrable solutions of the quadratic equation enables them to begin studying the commections between real numbers and points on a line - a necessary foundation to trigonometry. After they have learned that they can readily go on to deriving the quadratic formula. One has to start somewhere and this is a time honored sequence for aquiring a real understanding of these ideas.