Looks like Education Dive isn’t the only one to write about how middle school math assignments lack “high cognitive demand”; Education Week is reporting on the “study” as well.
They give an example from the study of two assignments. Assignment A is considered purely procedural, while Assignment B is considered to require more cognitive demand:
A: Factor completely, and state for each stem what type of factoring you are using.
x4 + x3 – 6x2
B: Create expressions that can be factored according to the following criteria. Explain the process you used to create your expression.
A quadratic trinomial with a leading coefficient of 1 that can first be factored using greatest common factoring. The greatest common factor should be 2x.
I find the wording of Assignment B a bit confusing but that’s besides the point. It appears that the people who did this “study” (and…
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