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Nations Report Card For Science
quakeaddict writes: "The US Dept of Education released the Nations Report Card for Science. Compared to 1996, it seems as if we as a nation are doing worse.The site also has cool tools to see how various states performed in other subjects.. There is also a very cool interactive tool that provides a wealth of information about how well kids did in all the subjects crossed with all sorts of questions (e.g. What was Johnnys score if he says he watched 1, 2 or 3 hours of TV a day etc...)."
What do you expect in a country where many states outlaw the teaching of science in favour of mythology?
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I know most people don't care about grammar anymore, but come on folks, English is simple compared to the brainwork required for technical, scientific, and mathematical subjects. Look at this submittal and its title. There are 3 apostrophes missing--maybe this is sounding anal to a lot of you, but apostrophes are simple to remember and denote possession.
Nation's report card. Johnny's score.
If we can't teach English properly so we can communicate consistently, then what's the use of worrying about science?
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
The theory of evolution is critical to the teaching of science, especially biology. Besides being arguably the most amazing scientific theory ever, it forms the backbone of biology. Biology is simply impossible to teach unless it is tightly integrated with evolution.
The religious right has failed at the national political level, but has had great success at the local level. It is CRITICAL that we stop this trend. Their plan to remove evolution from school curriculums, or if that fails, to force the teaching of creation science (which is a ridiculous idea, to say the least) would cause unbelievable harm to science education.
Teaching people to think is the best goal of a basic science education. The theory of evolution is so important to our lives now, and if it is properly taught, biology/evolution can form the nucleus of a healthy skeptical and scientific thinking process.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Overvaluation of .com's is what killed most of them, here you see a microcosm of the american economy. Do something, or be perpared.
;(
America will not be able to sustain its present level of wealth or technological growth in the long term. Technology is the only reason we still have growth and wealth at all. It is the reason we decide to pay $7 an hour to flip burgers, while in many other countries you would get the equivalent of 2 cents an hour. The same goes for many other menial jobs that somehow people make careers out of, very little education, skill, or talent is required. This is why there are illegal immigrants en masse.
We can only support a limited number of these type of people, dependant of the creative output of the scientists and engineers. If we are in short supply of these producers, we have a definite problem.
This state has existed for a few decades, this is why you see so many asians that are scientists, engineers, and doctors. 2+ billion poor but educated and hard-working people, the few that can afford to come to america do. This trend cannot last forever, China and India are on the verge of becoming powerhouses, they have the same talent we have, X 100 for the same cost we pay for it!
This is all ignoring the fact that government won't work properly with these mal-educated people, shown by local governing bodies banning evolution. It is only a matter of time until this spreads to higher government, at which time we will filter out all important but secular information out of the internet. All scientific books will be banned because they can enable a person to question god, create explosives, toxic gases, or drugs. That is of course if current trends continue.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Yes, the Theory of Evolution is an important theory to learn, but I do not think that the teaching or not teaching of this one theory affects the outcome of these tests. I learned evolution, I learned it at a Catholic school, but from what I remember we spent maybe three days talking about it. There are other things to learn in biology besides evolution. Cellular mitosis, cellular chemistry, body systems, genetics; the list goes on. And you may argue that evolution is a required knowledge to learn all these things, but I think there is no difference in learning many of these facts whether you believe that it took place, perfecting itself over millions of years or God made it that way.
One of the things I found interesting in the detailed reports on the individual states was this. I only checked for Louisiana, where I am from, and Alabama, where I live, but both of these states that had scored below average on a whole did have increases from their scores in 1998. I look at that as a big victory for two states that have had poor educational systems, but are attempting to fix it. I need to check for Mississippi, where I went to college, now.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
The score changes from the 1996 test show only a statistical difference in the 12th grade results, and these differences are marginal at best. Even within the statistically different 12th grade results, the only statistical change was in the group that scored in the 50-percentile (a promising stat from that figure is that there was a statictically significant increase in the top performing 8th graders).
One graph that I found troubling was the one showing the numbers above and below basic proficiency levels for the 12th graders, where the numbers falling below understanding the basics increased. We can hope that this is a statistical fluctuation and not the start of a trend.
By the way, the web site is very impressive in how much information is presented from the test question to the error on the test results. My biggest beef with statistics reported in the media is that they either never give error bars, or they'll ignore the errors; they'll report political poll results as one candidate ahead in the polls even if that person is ahead by less than the margin of error (this leads to the whole topic of basic ignorance of relative risk and you don't want to get me going on that rant!).
Any agreement of a conclusion with an actual observation does not itself prove the correctness of the hypothesis from which the conclusion is derived; it simply renders the hypothesis that much more plausible. The scientific process begins when observations clash with existing theories or conjectures; then a new theory is proposed and the logical consequences of the theory (hypotheses) are subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The objective of testing is the refutation of the hypothesis.
According to Karl Popper:
- Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
- A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
- Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it.
An important characteristic of a scientific theory or hypothesis is that it must be falsifiable. This means that there must be some experiment or possible discovery that could refute the theory. When a theory's predictions are falsified, new hypotheses are devised and tested until a new theory emerges. Those theories that survive falsification are said to be corroborated and are tentatively accepted.Bush Lies Watch
My French teacher was ranting on this a few weeks ago. French students have it so tough... They have this gigantic test at the end of their senior year (and it's not a joke at all like our standardized tests) and if they fail, they don't graduate. Without a diploma, there's almost no way you can get employed but as a waitress, etc. So people end up in high school for ages, trying again and again. It's really tough, perhaps cruel, but it keeps les français at a very high standard of education.
Compared with other countries, American education is a joke. I attend a public school ranked 33rd in the nation, and I take the AP/Enriched courses whenever possible... and I still am able to slack off. French foreign exchange students soon become drunkards and party animals here - because it's such a letdown from their previous education. They no longer have to work for their grades. This cannot be sustained. We've become used to being on top of the world, but comparing the sad state of our education to that of other countries, eventually the power balance has got to shift.
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"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
As a parent, I wasn't surprised to see the dip with 5-6 hours (or more) - how are they supposed to homework? But, given what my children watch, I'm surprised it has any positive influence. Or is this a side effect of the socio-economic factors - kids whose families can afford a TV score better than those who can't? (How many families don't own a TV any more? I'd have thought that was vanishingly small!)