‘Accuracy’ Versus Reality

* Re “Teachers’ Pay Raises,” Ventura County letters, Nov. 12.

There are at least 50 teachers in the Conejo Valley district who may have flunked the CBEST [California Basic Educational Skills Test] exam that ostensibly provides the system with qualified teachers.

In regard to computing their rate of salary increase, the teachers posed the riddle: When does 8.12% equal 10.24%? The smart answer would have been: It depends.

However, their answer chose to ridicule the newspaper reporter for allegedly “cutting freshman math class on the day the teacher taught how to compute averages.”

The teachers’ letter gave the reporter (and the rest of us) a flawed tutorial via a word problem concerning calculation of a simple average salary for one case: The current year for a hypothetical teacher earning $100 per month. For this period of analysis and based on certain fallacious assumptions, the teachers’ arithmetic is actually correct.

However, reality goes far beyond the one-year time frame of this word problem. Unless the teachers will accept a starting base salary of $108.12 per month for next year--and I do not think they will--their argument falls apart.

From available data it is reasonable to assume that the hypothetical second half-a-year salary of $110.24 per month will be the base salary for the teacher at the beginning of next year. Thus, the current year base salary of $100 per month will have increased 10.24% for next year, although the hypothetical teacher will only net 8.12% for this year. Thus, your reporter was correct--in the long run with its multiple future periods.

As a parent in the Conejo Valley holding advanced degrees in business and a CBEST certificate, I find that the situation implied by the teachers’ fuzzy thinking underlies a more serious concern. The so-called riddle frames the wrong problem--a situation not unusual in bureaucracies and politics. The public may conclude that this group of teachers is able to teach simple arithmetic computations such as averages, but they appear to be incapable of teaching mathematical analysis, context and perspective or end-to-end critical thinking. These skills are critical for our children to solve the correct problems correctly--not the wrong problems correctly--in the competitive environment of the global economy.

A key fact illuminated by this current environment is that many issues such as this one, while not overly complex, cannot be explained simply in 25 words or less. We would do well as a people and a nation to realize this fact and quit dealing in sound bites and photo ops.

Reality, life and mathematics are not that simple.

BRUCE GIBBY

Thousand Oaks