More Fun from Houghton Mifflin

So unprofessional!

First of all, this is a problem from regular 8th grade Pre-Algebra.  These kids have never seen a graph like this, yet they are expected to interpret it without any background information.  Can you?  Way too advanced in my opinion.

BUT, best of all, the students are supposed to find that the square root of 4 = 2.  But there is no 2 on the x-axis!  So even if they do understand what to do (doubtful), and line up their rulers perfectly, they cannot read the answer on the x-axis because it's not there!

Why are they so incompetent?  They are frustrating the very kids they want to help - the ones who try hard and want to learn.

Tenmarks Sucks! (Sorry for the strong language)

MISLEADING PICTURES AND WRONG ANSWERS

This is how an angle, measured in radians, of 5pi/6 should look:

And this is how the folks at Tenmarks drew it:

They made it larger than 180 degrees, instead of smaller than 180 degrees.  Big difference in Geometry!  

AND, they asked for the difference between arc BD and arc BC.  Now, every geometry student knows (and you would think the writer of this question would know too!) that arc BD is the small one, starting at B and going to clockwise to D. When you figure out what that one is, it turns out that it is also 5pi/6 !!  Of course, it doesn't look anything like the other one with the same measurement.  

BUT, it gets worse.  The answer they want is actually for the arc that starts at B and goes counterclockwise, through C, to D.  Every geometry student knows that you call that one:  arc BCD. Otherwise, there would no way to differentiate the two.

BAD, BAD, BAD.  

Garbage from Tenmarks

This comes from a website called Tenmarks, which is being used as "on-line homework" by many public schools.

Ok, it says that it's "not drawn to scale", but come on!!  Look at the segment that is labeled 2 units and the segment that is labeled 10 units.  How is this geometry education?

Never mind that fact that, in geometry, students should have a drawing and pencil so that they can mark measurements.  Geometry tests on a computer are simply not the same!

This is just one of many companies that quickly put out "Common Core Aligned" support material.  The rushed material, never scrutinized, is truly sub par.  To these companies, making the work challenging means: make it hard and tricky.  

This is not the SAT folks!  Leave "hard and tricky" to them.

No wonder the students this year seem so disillusioned!