Why don’t schools teach you how to do your taxes, or calculate the best rate on a mortgage. Well, more schools are taking that challenge. Students in Coppell ISD walked into class and suddenly learned their algebra lessons have more real-life uses than they first thought. NBC 5 education reporter Wayne Carter explains.
If you're not a numbers person, sometimes even if you are, high school math, can be mind-numbing.
"These are all quadratic equations and quadratic equations, they don't really make sense to anyone," said New Tech High School math teacher, Sumeen Asim.
If you're not building rockets or satellite orbits, do you really need to know this stuff? Teachers at New Tech High in Coppell ISD say absolutely.
These high schoolers are all about to get their driver's license and so their teacher has asked them to pick out a car, calculate all the costs using the algebra they've learned in class to come up with a monthly payment and call a dealership to try to make a deal.
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"It's very useful, actually. Like, I hear people all the time going, like, when are we gonna learn about taxes? School teaches me nothing? Well, I guess we are kind of learning that nothing, right now. We're teaching everything," said Kundana Boyina, a student.
"It makes it more real and like, actually matter, and that's very important. That's a big, like, new tech thing I feel we do, like, actually important stuff and things that would bring real-life skills," said Lauren Lin, a student.
There were some issues. Not all the dealerships would play along.
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"Who takes a 16-year-old, you know, in the middle of a math project seriously when they say they want to buy a car?" said Boyina.
The boys wanted to buy a $750,000 sports car, saying why not dream big until they realized those big numbers made the algebra a little harder to figure out.
But all in all, they walked away seeing how quadratic equations could help all of us, not just those building rockets.
"I think it's fun because I bring sort of like, and like, this is something that I can see myself doing the future as well because I'm definitely gonna be purchasing the car. So to get familiar with the car purchasing process and all the payments that it requires is pretty important. So I'm glad we're doing it with, like, in a fun way," one of the students shared.
"I've got learners in here who don't want to be in here because they don't like math, but at the end of day, when you give them a real-life application of it, they're suddenly realized, 'Oh, we do actually need to know the math,'" Asim said.
There was shock, that applying for credit can actually lower your credit score, all real-life lessons, mixed with the math that suddenly seemed to have a purpose after all.
