What is wrong with the US education system?

[Don Shepherd]

(10-28-2014 03:24 AM)David Hayden Wrote:  It seems that someone always wants to add One More Thing to the curriculum.

Since becoming a middle-school math teacher, two of my pet peeves have been box-and-whisker plots and stem-and-leaf plots. People of my generation (age 64) have probably never heard of those statistical entities because they didn't exist in the 1960's. Younger folks may vaguely remember them from middle school, but they were quickly forgotten because they just are not used in the media. But many public school systems require them to be taught because they are included in many standardized tests, and we all know how important tests are. I refuse to teach them because a kid will never see one once he/she leaves middle school. I wrote my state Education department years ago about why these two things need to be taught, and I got a form letter, "thank you for your comments blah blah blah". We waste so much valuable time teaching meaningless things like this because some bureaucrat thought it would be nice.