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Feds Propose National Database of College Students
Dore writes "The Department of Education wants to collect personally identifiable information on all college students, including name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN. Privacy is assured. The No Child Left Behind Act, which holds primary and secondary schools accountable prompted this line of thinking. Now colleges should be held accountable. If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be."
Oh? Well, that certainly clears things up, no privacy concerns then, its not like anyone bribeable will have access to it...
You can't take the sky from me...
Crispin
No Child's Personal Information Left Behind
The US federal government has proposed creating a national database to track people?? STOP THE PRESSES!!
I mean, really... do we NEED to track every little thing someone does? How about a national database for tracking when everyone uses the restroom. We could put little sensors on all toilets to track how often they're flushed!
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
What exactly is the goal of this database?
What are their justifications?
See! With the Republicans in charge, we can be positive that States and Localities will gain strength and that the federal government's power is limite....oh, wait. Never mind.
Does America have any laws regarding compulsory education to a certain level?
If that exists and yet does not extend to college level, one has to wonder why this is being proposed.
Also I can't see any real benefits (eg. in terms of missing persons) of this scheme. Anybody would like to think up some?
If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be.
Does this sentence make sense to anyone else around here? Or rather...
This sentence make sense to anyone else around here does?
Where does it end? I mean really.. Broadcast flags are one things, but keeping tabs on every person that enters college? That's insane..
Granted not a lot of people finish college, but a great deal start.. and the idea that the government feels the need to keep track of me in yet another way is outragious..
By the time we get to college, we're in charge of making sure we succeed, not the government
Looks like ole George Orwell was off by about 20 years.
After all, aren't they the ones indoctrinating our future leaders with all this nanny-state nonsense?
No further legislation needed. (Also keep in mind we're talking about college students-- legal adults. Creating a No Child Left Behind-like database has more legal problems to consider.)
public school? i.e. community colleges- defensible.. private institutions? none of their damn business.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
If it's just to gather better statistics, wouldn't reporting data on just 5% of a college's students be enough? Of course, this would have to be the same 5% of students tracked through their whole academic careers, but that would be simple enough to do with a hash of SSN's.
If the government doesn't go for this proposal, I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Oh, well if privacy is assured.... sign me up!
This is bad move by the US Department of Education. Much of this information is uneeded. I quote from the article:
Under the new system proposed by the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education, each student enrolled in college would have a computer record that included name, address, birth date, gender, race, and Social Security number. It would then track field of study, credits, tuition paid, and financial aid received and would follow the student if he or she transferred or dropped out and later reenrolled.
Why does name, address, birth date, gender, race and Social Security have to do with this obstensible goals? An anonymous survey could be effective to gain whatever information they can possibly hope to gain from this system. They seem to be concerned with transfer students, but these could just be tracked without private information being encoded in a databse! This is a rediculous move, and probably just another move for a more complete database of civilian's private information.
Perhaps some staticians could shed some light on what this study hopes to achieve, and why personal data is required?
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
For once, I think that this is a good idea... We all pay for the public schools, whether we like it or not (through taxes). When it comes to colleges, we pay it voluntarily - so we can obviously go there. If the school is below par, and the only one around - the consumer is the one who is screwed...
Dont they do this with all Foreign Students already? especially the "questionable ones" I suppose this is just including the American Citizens also. Make it a nice secure system. At least know one would be able to access it for anything important. It just shows name + address etc. What if they start including grade information and allow access for companies to verify who you are.
N/T
they are preparing for the draft
Kind of makes you wish we were back in the Reagan era, when abolishing the Department of Education was in the Republican platform.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
As long as
1. It's searchable by name, location, major and gender
2. It includes pictures
3. You can rate each person
I say we just grow up, be adults and die.
This is not a part of the draft. They already have Selective Service registration. This is an attempt to keep an eye on foreign nationals in college with the added bump of keeping an eye on everyone in college. So will your school do it? Bet your ass compulsory membership is tied to getting fed money. Smile! Smile! Smile!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
This is an expansion of santa's database of child locations I bet, since anymore the age that you are not a child keep going up and up, I guess santa has decided that college students are children who need toys on christmas, this is very good news for all of them
Remember to make your wish lists now before it's too late, then email them to santaclaus@northpole.com
Signatures are so 90s
what's the point of this database again? i can't see any (even illegitimate) use for this. there would be no information here that isn't easily obtainable elsewhere.
How about they keep a database of college students who don't contribute to their friggin' group projects? That'd benefit students a lot. I, for one, got sick and tired of doing the work of 2 or 3 people all by myself during college. It even happens in grad school!
Just because we were/are/will-be insane while we're in college, doesn't mean there's anything to fear. Although your typical professor assigned to teaching an undergrad class might like the sound of that, if they locked all the undergrads up, there'd be nobody around to buy their textbooks.
So unlike New Freedom for Public Schools, New Freedom for College will be a self-limiting phenomenon.
Aren't colleges accountable anyway? No Child Left Behind is a good idea, in spirit, to keep our required, public education system to a reasonable level. College is not required. It's pretty easy, if you don't "make the grade" you fail, and they kick you out. As far as the quality of information provided at these schools, well, that is another topic since probably all but 3% of colleges try to do anything but produce mediocrity. I don't think this is anything but a thinly veiled attempt at gathering more information on people however they possibly can.
It makes sense, when you think about it. How many people who voted for Bush could possibly be affected by this scheme?
[o]_O
http://www.thefacebook.com/
So, how does that hold up with the large number of private schools that take government money and have to meet certain educational criterion?
I mean, I'm not happy about *any* of this as a Libertarian, but...
Once you start taking the cash, hard to say no - something the States have already learned from the Feds.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be."
You're right.... if my tax dollars were not being given to many students to help them pay for college.
However, when my tax dollars go towards grants and scholarships to kids going to college, then I deserve to know that money is going to a worthwhile cause. Yes, this means that if Little Johnny needs his $2000 per year to attend a university, I must know that he's passing his classes and doing well. I have a serious problem with my money being sent to a kid who spends his time partying than actually getting an education!
If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be.
although college seems to be the norm today, it's still not as simple as high school to get through. if you made it to college, you still have to be responsible enough to get through it without partying too much and learning to study and take responsibility for your actions.
maybe I'm slightly off-topic, but geez, why can't people just let the rest of the people take care of themselves? why do we always need agencies 'helping' us when we don't ask for it? elementary and high school is ok... but once a person is of age to go to college, even if there ARE a lot of immature college students out there, they should be expected to begin to learn to take care of themselves.... bleh. I'm only 25 and I feel so old saying these things...
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
Having over 6 teachers in my immediate family and once concidering the profession. no child left behind is a useless inititive. Why have a program that looks great but puts requirements on schoool programs without giving them the funding to reach said goals. The problem has never been documenting who gets behind, but ensuring that the school budget gets funded and passed before you fund prisons and roads. getting back to the problem why doesn't the government solve the public school problem before they take on colleges.
Oh, the government will have its due for the money it gives to (almost all) private schools.
They already collect this data for most students, though the Financial Aid system. .001% of students that are independantly wealthy.
While the current system only gathers data on middle class and poor students, it's not going to be a huge shift to collect data on the
What percentage of college students didn't use federally subsidized loans as part of their package to pay tuition? The government already has all of this data. Hell, are you saying that the social security, census or internal revenue services don't already have this data?
Sure, tracking the actual education aspects are new, but perhaps I'm missing how the government knowing I dropped out of college is a gross invasion of my privacy.
Excuse ME, sir, but Subject Line Troll does not include n/t markers in his posts. Your poor attempt to imitate him is offensive, please go away.
/nt
My RepubliColleagues are all in favor of this. Their rationale includes such favorites as 'We need to know who the arabs are that we are teaching' and 'If they don't have anything to hide then they won't object to it.' Anytime I hear a comment start with 'We're at war, it's ok to...' it's usually not ok.
''An incredible potential exists for confidential information being used inappropriately" under the proposal, said Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government relations at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
hmmm....
nah, probably just people over-reacting.... (and that's just 1.4 million)
seriously though, i can understand the desire for this amount of data to better analyze the education system. somehow, though, this whole thing sounds unnecessarily dangerous to me.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
When I graduated high school, they asked me if I got into a college somewhere. And then they put that into a book or something. Maybe the yearbook. Don't remember.
If you're already tracking high schools for this program, and I assume they're asking how many of a school's students graduated and how many didn't, why not just ask them the number that got into college and the number that didn't? They could even ask which colleges to figure out more stuff.
I don't see much of a problem providing demographic information to help provide analysis on this. But I don't really see the need to track a child's educational progress so tightly. If a specific child is not sent to college, is the government going to do something for that child?
"If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be."
If this is true, then why is there affirmative action to get into college and for hiring, even when job candidates have degrees?
Oh, wait, you were referring to the grammar...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
...oh..wait.. maybe not.
Maybe this is a A Good Thing(tm), so we can help them find their way home.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I have a friend that teaches in the New York City school district as a teaching fellow. They bring in recent college graduates and assist them in becoming teachers. Why? Because few people want to do the job.
He loves teaching. Through high school he coached younger kids in soccer. He has a rare gift for it.
He hates his job. There aren't books for the kids. There isn't paper for the copiers - unless he buys it. Basically, he has no materials for the majority of the classes he teaches.
His school is being punished by NCLB. They have reduced funding because they have not met minimum test score standards. Why haven't they? Because their students come from poverty and the school itself is underfunded. There are four computers in his classroom - no mice or keyboards, all broken and never replaced. How can you expect the students to be serious about education when you're not serious about giving them one? They know its a joke - they know rich kids go to schools with books and paper and they have nothing.
If you fail to meet minimum testing standards, you are given a bit of money, as any NCLB proponent will point out. This money is for basic math and reading courses. Funding for nearly all other programs is revoked. This means that teachers begin teaching for the test as to try to get their funding back. Teaching for tests is short sighted and ultimately doesn't teach the higher order thinking needed to advance in life.
He is not a teacher but a disciplinarian. He is forced to spend his time with problem students rather than helping and rewarding the good ones.
While NCLB has the nice ideal of encouraging better schools, it ultimate takes money away from those that need it the most. It further emphasizes the lack of access to education that the poor suffer.
This might be semi off topic, but I think people should know waht NCLB is like from the inside.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
It would seem to me that part of the benefit of college is that you learn how to grow up and register for classes, show up, deal with administration, etc. I made it through college, and now i have a job. What is next, no worker left behind? the Gov can call me every morning at 7:00a.m. to make sure i didnt oversleep? What we need is more personal accountability, not more Government!
Not only is this consistent with the nightmarish "big brother is watching you" trend raging in the US, but the fact that "race" is still considered to be a valid identifiable information is shocking.
I mean, shouldnt it be "ethnic background", since the scientific community univocally rejects the concept of "race" as a dangerous social construct?
pass me those sparticles will ya?!
Privacy is for Old People
What happened to keeping track of politicians?
I seem to recall that it was that shady lot people used to be concerned with keeping tabs on.
I thought the Republicans were for small government? I mean, by today's standards Nixon was a freaked out hippy liberal. It it so onerous that one or two people might rip off the system, that we must all be subjected to this sort of nonsense?
Vote Quimby!
... that colleges are hotbeds for that "learning" stuff and should be monitored carefully. Some colleges might even be teaching evolution!! For shame! No wonder these messed-up students are the main instigators behind protesting the wholesale auctioning of our environment to Asia. The little monkeys are startig to think for themselves. And we can't have that sort of nonsense.
If we have a handy list of all students, we know whose door to smash in at 2AM the night after the big protest and haul off to Guantanamo.
-----
p.s. I'm Happy! First day on Linux (Debian Gnu/Linux) and Firefox! This OS ROCKS!! APT ROCKS! Firefox ROCKS!! Try it!
http://www.livejournal.com/
That school should be compulsary up to 18, not that it is already, and this law would help encourage more schooling. The logic doesn't seem very good, but I think that what he meant.
Almost every university I know of sends a copy of your grade card to parents if they're paying for the schooling and request the updates.
Government does subsidize higher education, saving students billions every year.
These are our tax dollars that they're shipping off to universities and I think we (the tax payers) do have a right to know what's being done with it.
If a university has a 75% drop-out rate should they be funded the same as, less then or more then a university with a 5% drop-out rate? That's worthy of debate, something not possible without this data.
Every time you fill out a job or college application, you have to fill out a bunch of stupid pieces of paper with information that you shouldn't have to know, like your name, birthdate, and so on. Maybe this database could lead us down the path to greater efficiency, but in the end it will probably be more of a benefit to private corporations, which would have more use for it than the government.
The majority of people with a Bachelor's education voted for Bush, as well as the majority of people with a HS education.
Kerry did better amongst the non-educated (HS drop-out) and the highly-educated (graduate degree).
Feel free to make your own conclusions, but here are two I might suggest:
In case it wasn't obvious, I fall into one of the two camps for which the majority voted for Kerry. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Pretty much if you're in college, the G.O.V has your number.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I think the poster meant that the law would encourage the raising of the age of compulsary education. Obviously the poster has a problem with keeping his verb tenses straight, so maybe he has a point
...that I went to college to escape my parents' watchful eye.
Thats it enough! I am moving to Canada... wait I'm already here phew...
:-)
See you all here next year? always room for more geeks
(get in before the draft as Canada now has an agreement to return draft dodgers)
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
as you cah see i have responded as an AC , why because googling my name gets way to many hits some from a disscution board from lucent modem back in 94 . but as an oldtimer (not to this site) I have watched my and my cildrens rights eroded to the point of absurtity, now they want my college GPA King George and his accolites can kiss my @ss. I think it is time too move to canada where the right to privacy is not simpley that you are the only one not allowed to see YOUR data, want a real shocker, the next time you go to the doctors office and they hand you all the forms READ THEM, you will find that Any government official from president to dog catcher can request them and the hopital or clinic must give them up with out Your permission or a court order!!!!
My wife is a nurse and when i wait for her to get out of work I kind of listen to them and check out the profesional journals; I saw an artical about a doctor who stood on client, patient confidentiality and he went to jail, but I dont remember what mag it was or the issue, but I will not go to the doctors anymore!
... an educated, informed citizen is far more dangerous to theocracy than a thug with a gun.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Last time I checked, there is already a college student tracking system in place, run by the federal government, and one that you voluntary subscribed to... I'm talking about FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, not to mention FSA, the Federal Student Aid repayment portal. Because to get a loan and repay it, you give your name, your SSN, your address, etc...
From congress's documents on the web, in 2004 there are an estimated 15.9 million students in the US, of which 6.6 million students receive some sort of federal aid, at roughly $52 billion. I wouldn't be surprised if they had many millions more names on file, for those that applied but were denied funding....
I imagine someone in government now wants to tie individual student performance back to monies received -- you could then mine the data for attempts to defraud the government, or those that are doing their students a disservice by routinely pushing out lower quality education. The first step is to get a handle on just how bad the problem is.
We keep hearing about all these threats to our civil liberties, but how do we take action to prevent them from passing? Who do we contact, and what do we say? What's the best way to raise a poopstorm?
of spending tax dollars on something. You stick your mouth in the government trough, and the government sticks its microscope up your ass. And enough with the "private" colleges. They get much (and in a lot of cases, most) of their money from various government handouts, whether it's research funding, tax breaks on land and buildings, government-subsidized or -guaranteed student grants and loans, or a ton of other sources. You take the Man's money, the Man is gonna get his money's worth out of you.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
What a bunch of stupid responses here. "To improve accountability". "RTFA". Nonsense. RBTL (Read between the lines).
My bet is that the primary goal here is to track down draft-age men and women; specifically those who were smart enough not to enter into the draft database by voluntarily registering.
Another clear goal is to make it easier to keep tabs on dissendents. Colleges are usually the first place where protests happen; so it makes it a lot easier to identify and keep tabs on the troublemakers.
My, the government sure is going all out to gather and centralize all this data about the people it supposedly represents. I wonder what for?
dpomery@cuc.edu
The idea is in good taste, hoever in reality it will never work. Mostly people that do not go to college are people that do not care about life, do not care about work, do not care about anything. The ghetto kids that abuse teachers in school and smoke pot are mainly of concern here. They are going to be high-school dropouts and never get anywhere in life. I would not want to spend my tax money on them, and anyway, they dont want it spent on them.... But for ligitimate kids, its perfectly fine...
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
Is there a draft of the rider/bill?
Who sponsors it?
Where will the funding come from?
This is always a good start to finding where the money leads and why they really want this database. But I only saw lobbyists in the article.
When a Ball Dreams, It Dreams it's a Frisbee.
The government isn't exactly one single thinking entity. Dick Cheney doesn't sit behind a desk making every decision that runs the country. This is an initiative by a specific educational department that thinks they are doing the right thing by gathering good information. It was well intentioned and not some malicious plan by Big Brother to take all your info. I thinks the ability for abuse is too large to allow, but perhaps we should all be a little more open minded as opposed to turning this into a flame war. Maybe an intelligent discussion as opposed to Bush bashing and conspiracy theories might be tried, its a crazy idea I know, but maybe, just maybe.
the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland security are getting together, as ungovernment-like as that may be, i.e. turf battles, etc.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
And in 2 generations, everyone alive has been tagged...
In 3, it becomes accepted as normal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As someone who fills out a FAFSA every year, and just applied for a Federal Loan not five minutes ago, I've already given the Department of Education all of that information twice in the last six months. While not everyone will do so, I'm sure most students will fill out a FAFSA, even if they don't get any subsidized aid.
Seems to me that the Federal Gov't already has all of this information and needn't waste any more taxpayer dollars trying to aquire it again.
Note that I'm not trying to justify their attempts at data-collection (far from it, actually), I'm just pointing out that they already have that information for most of us already.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
Any male under 26 is registered for the draft. OK, that's a lot of non-college students, but who cares.
Anyone receiving federal financial aid is probably in a database somewhere.
Since 9/11, and probably before, most or all foreign national students are in some kind of database.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), how could they even use this data? Basically they COULD collect the data, but the only folks who could gain access to it would be other educational agencies, or armed forces recruiters. Does anyone know if they are planning an amendment to FERPA to allow the FBI/CIA/etc to access student records as well?
So, now when your teacher says: "This will go on your permanent record", she won't be joking.
Almost everyone that's posted seems to think that they government is in no way entitled to this information.
The government spends billions every year on Higher education.
When I invest in something I expect to see measured results, on a regular basis. Don't you? So why is it unreasonable for the Gov't to expect this?
Furthermore, as a TAXPAYER, *I* am entitled to see statisitics about the performance of universities that I HELP FUND.
I might also find this information useful when choosing a University.
No x10^53. NO!
You are not the customer.
I think we should counter by demanding an openly accessible database of elected officials, government employees, and government contractors. Data should include salary, work history, who made campaign contributions to whom, and other data relevant to running the government.
Also, I'll happily contribute my own entry from my (brief) period as a government contractor.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
As a former public school teacher, I can tell you that by the time they're 16 they're plenty able to cause trouble. And if they want to drop out, it's very unlikely that forcing them to stay in will cause them to learn anything. The only reason to keep them in would be as a public-funded baby-sitting service, and I can think of better ways to spend our tax money. Sometimes I think that we should let them drop out in 9th grade (I taught 9th grade physical science - a general/remedial level science course - my last year as a teacher, and it was no coincidence that it was my last year. I have a tremendous amount of respect for teachers that keep at it year after year after year.). However, some of the kids in 9th grade, might actually straighten up. Those who are 16, however, are very unlikely to straighten up by 18. Once they've been out in the "real world", there is a slightly greater chance that they will see the errors of their ways, in which case they can go to night school and/or get their GED.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
no message inside
Here in the Netherlands, information about all college/university students (including date of birth, gender, nationality etc.) is kept track of by the national agency which takes care of providing our monthly study financing to us. Every higher education student gets this; it partially depends on the income of your parents (I hear you screaming, "AAGH - do they even keep track of that?!). For me it's slightly more than 100 euros per month; by comparison, the tuition fee is about 180 euros a month, independent of the university.
I have never heard anybody complain about privacy concerns; pretty much the only problems arise when you don't get your study financing and it's a pain to deal with the bureaucratic mess which is this agency.
..but college students are left behind. Primarily because a lot of them are not actually interested in college. I mean, getting into school has more to do with money than ability; and getting out has more to do with a couple of hazing rituals and a nice certificate. Not that there should be some trackable database, but as far as I can tell, there already is: the social security number. For public schools, this is already accessable. Sounds like someone in the Department of Education wants to do statistical analysis with information that is already out there. (Just ask a credit card company that says you're pre-approved and they'll (without your help) send you a filled out application: name, date of birth, address and social security number.)
My college is required to collect information about all foreign students and report it to Homeland Security.
This sparked some internal debates regarding if we should comply. The Dean of Students quickly made it very clear that part of our job is to comply with all federal, state and local regulations and that any noncompliance would be dealt with sternly.
"No child left behind", while good-intentioned, was a bad idea, and this would be an even worse idea. "No child left behind" is not improving education, if anything it's making it worse by trying to hold teachers accountable for whatever the students do. Presently anyone can get through high school because the school systems are making sure no one fails. Which translates to "you pass no matter what you do because we don't want to look bad."
If the concern is whether tax money is being well spent, then secondary school should not be mandatory. Stop wasting money on students that don't want to be there. That's where tax money is really wasted. Plus, students (and, depending on their age, the parents also) should not be told by the government how to run their lives. The students that have no interest in school can drop out and, if they choose, go back later, but it degrades the educational experience of willing students to keep them there.
I know high school teachers who fear for their jobs if they fail too many students, regardless of how deserving the student is of the F.
I fear the same thing for colleges, if they too are going to be made *accountable*. A college degree will be worth about as much as a high school degree. What would it be like to have colleges fearful of failing students? Professors should not fear their jobs for failing students who deserve to fail.
Obviously the poster has a problem with keeping his verb tenses straight
He must have been required to get educated by the American school system.
The more education you have, the more likely you are to actually think about what the federal government is doing. That makes you a problem by definition. Clearly, the government needs to keep track of people like that. They need a list of people to round up as soon as habeus corpus gets suspended during the next national security emergency.
I think I started out to be sarcastic with this. The more I look at it, the less sure of that I am.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
That's OK they already track me - it's true, check out http://www.sevis.net/
is to refuse to claim membership in a "race" when you are dealing with colleges -- on anything but the census you have the option of a "Prefer not to respond" or "other." No sense dabbling in 19th century protoanthropological (or perhaps even pseudoanthropological, depending on whom you ask) misinterpretation of ethnicity anyhow, is there? The only thing that racialism helps is racism, and the only people who benefit from it are racists. It has no biological significance, and class (Is Bill Cosby really intrinsically worse off than the white guy under the bridge downtown, or otherwise different in any way that class won't explain?) and occasionally ethnicity (a very dynamic variable) seem to be perfectly fine explanations for behavioral patterns.
"Personally identifiable information on all college students"? Yeah, we already made our own, and its called The Facebook [http://thefacebook.com/].
Just log on to Gnutella, Kazaa, Morpheus, BitTorrent, etc...
Didn't you notice?
a plausible reason for this is the upcoming draft. It's gonna happen, people.
plus, a bonus for stalkers - get a low-level govt job and gain access, probably for life!
Let's hope they draft young republicans first.
Better Dead Than Red (State)
At the university where I teach, there is an employment rule preventing dicrimination based on physical or mental ability. Yup, I said mental ability. Welcome to this side of the academic looking glass.
> I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.
Educated people, on the average, are able to think critically.
Educated people, on the average, are less swayed by patriotic-sounding FUD.
Educated people, on the average, are harder to control.
Ergo, we should keep close tabs on people who wish to get an education.
If we know what they study, how successful they are and their personal and financial data, we could decide whether we prefer to use them for our purposes, ignore them or make them quiet. We would also know what leverage to apply.
There, you have your reason. Happy now?
Colleges are dens of unpatriotic and subversive activity, and there is no doubt that the government needs to take a more active role in stamping out possible terrorist sympathizers operating in the liberal sanctuaries of our major universities. This database will definitely help law enforcement and homeland security officials to quickly and efficiently crack down on suspected terrorist sympathizers in the universities, and help to protect all regular Americans from terrorism. After September 11, we know what happens when we let our guard down against terrorists, and we know that we have a responsibility to give law enforcement officials the tools they need to fight terrorism wherever it lurks.
The original poster was a child left behind in the Clinton era.
[cut to sign saying STREET LEVEL. Cut to outside, a boy is being interviewed]
BOY #1: I'm sixteen. I'm old enough to marry and have children, but I can't drink in pubs. When will the government realize the young adults are mature and responsible people?
[cut to second boy]
BOY #2: I'm sixteen, right? I can join the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy, but I can't drink in pubs. When will the government, right, realize that young adults have a valid contribution to society?
[cut to third boy. He snorts from a gum glue bottle and appears dazed before he speaks]
BOY #3: A lot of people think that young adults are violent! Well, how would you feel if you were old enough to have intercourse with the partner of your choice, but yet you could not drink in pubs? Huh?
[cut back to studio]
BAS: There you go. That's the problem. What do you do of an evening if you're a young adult and can't go drinking about in pubs? [cut back to the house. Rick is still watching the programme] Now, what I think is that if the kids are united we will never be divided...
[Rick angrily kicks the TV in]
RICK: [to Mike] DID YOU SEE THAT? DID YOU? THE VOICE OF YOUTH! THEY'RE STILL WEARING FLARED TROUSERS!!! WHY DON'T YOU TRY A BIT OF POETRY, YOU HIPPIES!!
My mother is a lead teacher for special education and has told me that this act applies to her children as well. Some of these children have IQ's below 60, and the school is held responsible for all of them (not just a percentage), passing the standardized tests.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Does anyone else think the only solution to most of our problems is to stop taking federal money?
1. If you accept federal money, you have to track all of your students personal information and send it to Washington D.C.
2. If you accept federal money, you have to run national tests on your students make sure they meet standards set in Washington which may have little or nothing to do with the needs of your region.
3. If you accept federal money you have to limit the number of billboards on your roads, your drinking age, safety laws, etc... etc...
Anyone else see a theme to all of these problems?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
It's probably going to be used to track terrorists doing specialized degrees at universities.
(While we're picking on sentences...)
..."
...?" is a self-referencing question (probably not on purpose), so while it makes sense, it doesn't do what you want it to.
The quoted sentence is rather obtuse, but the point is clear: leave behind further attempts at monitoring citizens. To make it less obtuse, it could be written like this:
"... you were not left behind; further attempts
Your mangled version of your first question (which is otherwise fine... mostly) does not make sense (ergo, my subject...).
"Does this sentence make sense
"... to anyone else around here?" implies that you (or someone in the immediate vicinity) understood "this sentence". If it is you who understand it, there's no need for an appropriately-aimed question...
Oh, and if you take off the 'does' from your mangled question, you end up with an implied 'does' in the proper place. Not that 'proper' grammar allows for that...
Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
Here in Finland and other countries in northern Europe we have a long tradition in collecting everything in databases. University students get into several databases which include personal information like name, age, parents, social status, cell phone number. Actually everything but hair color.
I just can't see any problem. There is no privacy to lose any more. Why should I care about federal registers while credit card companies know everything I buy, my ISP knows where I spend my time and those smart fellows who keep closest APT repository online know my favorite editor. Probably I couldn't even do moon shine without getting into dozen registers.
We are filed way beyond anything my glorious filehappy homeland can imagine.
Isn't it nice?
Mental health screening? What a way to kill a colleges art department...
No Citizen Left Unwatched
Coming soon to a Congress near you! (Only available within the US.)
Soon, the ever diminishing freedom that we have will be completelly gone. They're tracking and keeping data bases of students now. Where/when will this end? Nowhere/never. Is the government afraid of college students? Nazi germany started cataloging the jews before they send them to concentration camps. It is complete and utter bullshit to say that selling our freedom in name of security is the right thing to do. Post-spt11 pro-american (the country in this case, not the people. I love the people.) bullshit. Stop being cattle, people. OmG. Oh yeah. Something that amazes me whenever I think of it: In the USA you can give your life for the fatherland (enlisting in the military, 18 years)before you can legally buy alcohol (21). :P
People were drafted to die in vietnam before they could buy alcohol. This is ridiculous.
Land of the free? Not free as in beer and not free as in freedom. *erhm. Where's my tinfoil hat?*
I got no karma to lose..
Oh, man, that is the WORST attempt at flamebait I have EVER seen, and I have seen alot.
You fail it. Better luck next time.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
exactly. politicians dont need to actually solve problems to get votes, they just need to make it look like theyre solving them (but really just making it worse...)
I think it is about time for some sort of a millennium rights or privacy amendment to the constitution. Grass roots, hello?!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I've been looking for a reason to drop out of college!
I am full of goo... black evil goo
The plan is simple.
First, you make participation with this database mandatory.
Second, you single out particularly "low" achieving colleges using this database and force them into a government made program of study, threatening to cut funding if they do not cooperate.
Third, you make public comments about how much those initial colleges improved, and make a powerful push towards getting all colleges to accept this plan, again threatening to cut funding if they do not cooperate.
Fourth, you gradually weaken the college curriculum until it is impossible to get an education there.
Fifth, you sit back and enjoy yourself, having made colleges just as pathetic as high school now is.
Public schools aren't benevolent; they're designed to erode the minds of their students and to prevent them from becoming strong and upstanding individuals. Colleges, however, aren't quite there yet - and the Department of Education wants them there.
Did you actually RTFA?
....
The idea is to see how schools perform by tracking student movement between schools. So yes, one needs to have the person identifiable in order to assess whether they left school A and never returned to school or left school A to attend B.
Do black students drop out of College A or do they just transfer from College A after their first year? One of those means that College A is doing a bad job of serving those students, the other may mean that it is doing a good job of serving those students by preparing them to go to the more prestigious College B.
How would one track such things without "private" information?
And what is the big deal again? If you went to college, your probably filled out a FAFSA and the DOE already knows about you, this just would be actually useful information. "But someone might use the information for EEEEVIIILL!" Please, Google is a bigger threat to your privacy. "Someone might use this information to steal my identity!" Yeah, either that or steal your wallet, or go through your trash, or pull it from your bank records, or your insurance policies, or your credit card company, or your credit raiting file, or you video club membership, or your
I can see why colleges are freaking out. They will be held accountable like the public schools are. I would too if I was them. Obviously, a blank check is much preferrable to this kind of oversight.
sick of this FUCKING bullshit. Our govt is turning into big brother.
RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT, AND NO GOD DAMN 1/100000000000000000000000000000000 TERRORISTS SHOULD CHANGE THAT.
GEORGE BUSH I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL YOU MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE.
We are all already tracked by SSN and our .
.
.
drivers licenses and any bills in our names
If you check out any bounty hunting software
these are some of the gravy tracking points
Anyone that wants to track you can do so with
little effort
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
private institutions? none of their damn business.
As far as I know there are only two or three private colleges that do not accept federal funding (Hillsdale College in Michigan, Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and Patrick Henry College in Virginia). I graduated from Hillsdale in 2002 and so this fact falls close to home, but you can see these other sources for verification.
This brings us back on topic, should the federal government be able to keep tabs on its investment? Maybe the better question is should the federal government be funding (read controlling) nearly all of the higher education in the nation? Seeing as only 3 colleges are run without federal money, which I would like to find anyone who gets funding without strings attached.
court decision
I see a far more sinister motive here...raise your hands if you think the government sees our colleges and universities as breeding grounds for future terrorists caught up in the free-thought environment where the open exchange of ideas is not only tolerated but encouraged?
<doffing tin foil hat>
As long as it includes a picture and you can filter it by a/s/l!
"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds !"
the guy who posted the parent is a moron
Isn't it a bit late to be worrying about The Government tracking us by our Social Security Numbers? If anything, this database would be redundant, we are already tracked by Big Brother via our SSN.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
... the government promises not to do anything bad with the list?
Now, however, there is a movement in Washington, particularly among Republicans, to demand greater accountability from universities in exchange for the federal support they provide.
That ummm, who provides?
I don't want a university system that it tied to the agenda of our federal officials.
There is a cost to not monitoring individuals and I for one am willing to pay it.
1) if you can't get into the curriculm directly (think: ALL EDUCATED LIFE FORMS OBEY "X"), just call it something to appeal to paranoia 2) make database of upcoming minds being programmed 3) profit! I mean Control! wait wait, PROTECT!
//de ~ 9cimi
means that no child gets ahead either. Everyone gets the same piss-poor crap. This sounds like communism to me.
I would argue that because so many children are not "left behind" in high school that more students end up getting left behind in college. The lower the common denominator in college, the worse-off the classes end up being. You end up like I did, in classes on books as simple as Homer's the Odyssey spending 50 to 120 minutes a day discussing "what happened" rather than "what does what happened mean?"
Some children are meant to be left behind, and you're not going to weed them out with more testing. These tests are useless in teaching students to think critically and with an apt amount of abstraction to prepare them for college. All that I've seen these new policies instigate is a lowering of the bar for college academics and the quality of an education. A Bachelor's degree means nothing to me and will mean nothing in the future if it's as easy to get as it was and is currently.
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
makes me wonder when they are going to add what job this person got & how long did the keep it. I can't see the govt stopping on just that - what is next??
Smile - things could get worst
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The database should really only be used for tracking foreign students, especially the ones that come over here from China where there's not a lot of control over the activities of individuals inside the country (and a lot of opportunity for them to go other places without much oversight).
The biggest threat right now is from foreign terrorists and there's a lot of anti-American sentiment/activity in foreign student groups around the world. It's a breeding ground for Al Quaeda recruits and if we can catch them before they join up, it will be easier for Homeland Security/CIA/FBI/etc. to stop them from killing more innocent Americans.
You're welcome, cocklover.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Well, the pen is mighter than the sword; so it only seams reasonable to stop letting literate people on airplains for posessing such a dangerous weapon.
More.
At least if the drop out rate is related to academic performance and not (say as with a place like Bob Jones U.) to susceptibility to propaganda. Too many universities these days are focussed on retention over anything else leading to A's for All.
> from the getting-drafty-in-here dept.
I'm sending _my_ kids to the school of hard knocks.
It's easy to coast through 4 years of college.
If the government is looking to track performance (and not just how many people can graduate with a liberal arts degree), they'll need standardized tests in college.
Otherwise, a tough professor with a lot of people quiting his class but graduating a few, highly educated people will look worse than someone who graduates everyone, even if they can barely tie their shoes.
"collect personally identifiable information on all college students, including name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN."
What about a "appeared recently in 'Gilrs Gone Wild?'" flag?
So the short answer to your question is: there's some percentage funding that makes a school no longer private, but I don't know what it is.
More sound and fury. As long as coeds are willing to sell their dignity on the latest GGW Spring Break for a T-Shirt, then I don't think there will be much to worry about. Don't all colleges already have your information? Some even have smart card ID's.
You mean the school would have cared that I wasn't attending class and playing Civ II for 8 hours a night. Sweet I might not have failed out then. Brings a whole new meaning to the calulator attendence that some physics classes were taking.... Ah, the sweet 5 dollars for sitting wide and using TWO calculators on the pop quizes.
Yes, I agree. With China economically ascendant and the US hooked on Asian debt relief, it will be helpful to know the names of our future bosses.
Privacy is going the way of the buffalo. Whatever college you are attending already has all that info, as well as any scholarships you applied for. The Feds also have the info if you used to FAFSA to apply for financial aid. All that info is also on your taxes, social security, credit info, loans, (for us guys) Selective Service cards, voter registration, driver's license, passports, visas, etc etc. I don't see one more database as a big deal. You're already being tracked. Time to get tin foil pajamas.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
SEVIS is already here. Granted, not everyone will trigger a recors to be sent to INS, but those who fit the terrorist profile we're looking for. Strangely, I find that this seems to violate the fed's own FERPA laws....but I guess they could break thier own laws....
Gorkman
This is about the stupidest "news" item I've seen. What's next? "DMV Wants Photographs of All Drivers"? People, no college in this country will admit a student without this information, and its all already in a national database: The department of education keeps this information for prospective financial aid applicants.
Yea, GW is micromanaging the Department of Education now....jeebus people, put on your tinfoil hats for a while.
And my fingerprints have both arches and whorls, and as such are supposedly the easiest type to differentiate. She thought she was doing me a favor, what if someone snatched me (a beautiful little while child - no really I was cute as hell when I was little, something bad must have happened) and sold me to the turks or something!? But basically now I can never commit crimes without gloves. Curse it all! Hopefully no one will start collecting dna samples on a regular basis any time soon or I'll really be screwed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I get a kick out of paranoid statements about someone freaking out over the slightest bit of monitoring of their daily life. It reminds me of a person who thinks that their soul is stolen if their picture is taken.
It's about time that we old farts not trust anyone under 30 again.
The top-level poster has no idea what they are talking about.
Part of the current act is that public schools are mandated to turn over personal information about students to armed forces recruiting so that no child will miss out on the oportunity to die in bushes fucked up war for oil. Parents who dont want their childern contacted must opt-out in order to keep their childerns from being inundated with calls and glossy pamflets.
The effort to create this database may be in response to the recent judgement that universities can deny access to military recruiters because of discriminatory practices against gays. This overturned a 1994 a defense authorization bill that allowed the goverment to withhold funding from public institutions that denied access to recruiters.
The hopeless war in iraq is making it more difficult to recruit a new generation of jarheads. Retention is down so they were forced to make do with a back door draft in order to retain enough personel to maintain our insufficient forces in iraq & afganastan. If bush starts a third war against Iran(with large oil and natural gas reserves), launched from our spiffy new bases in Iraq, we will need to dramatically increase the number of military personel beyond what can be build using volenteers. This new database will come in handy when the National Freedom Expanders Act is passed to compel military service unless you happen to be in a rich an powerful family in which case reporting for Patriot Duty is optional.
We have the best government that money can buy.
...And it's about time. As we all know, college students are WAY more likely to be dangerous left-wing radicals, and coule wreak havoc on society as we know it. This measure doesn't go nearly far enough as far as I'm concerned! (*tongue firmly embedded in cheek*)
Why does it seem more and more every day like the good ole' US of A is becoming more like pre-WWII Germany or post-WWII East-bloc?
Just incase no one else has mentioned this American patriot's opinion.
4 .htm/
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/quote0
They also want to tag people at birth..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Banks whore your information around like theres no tomorrow, sure they keep it in the company but when Citibank owns the whole damn country everyone everywhere knows what you're doing, they get the info from parent companies. You have no control over who services your students loan, the company giving away my identify in this case was http://www.brazosgroup.com/, someone I have never heard of and certainly didn't authorized to service my loan. I would feel much more comfortable if Uncle Sam safeguarded this info and acted like a proxy to these shithead companies.
You neglect to consider the possiblity that students are not interested in their education *BECAUSE* of teachers with attitudes like the grandparent or whoever that jackass is.
Anyone who thinks that just letting them drop out in 9th grade is a great idea should not be a teacher. Yes, we should force them to go to school until 12th grade, and yes the teachers should find a way to communicate with their students, not abandon them.
As I've said before, it's easy to teach the 'smart kids' who 'want to be there'. The real challenge in being a teacher is getting through to the ones who have trouble.
You're the one being the elitist prick, fucking troll.
In the UK, all foreign students from countries deemed "a bit dodgy" are required to register with their local police station. For this pleasure, they are charged are 34 pounds and are required to notify the police of any change of address, otherwise face a 5000 pound fine. One wonders why the police are doing the duties of the immigration service.
Maybe the Automatic Immigration and Crime Policy Generator is becoming a little too bit realistic.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It would be absolutely no different had the other candidate won.
Neither of the major party candidates had any amount of privacy on their platform and congress really runs the show anyway.
I think they are using those rules for this administration as well...welcome to America.
"Sorry we would like to hire you but here in 1992 you were in a chemistry lecture class (of about 300 people) with the nephew of a known terrorist."
When you transfer to the new school, it should send a memo to your old school (since your new school will need to know where you've been in the past) a memo saying "J. Doe SSN 123-45-6789 has just enrolled at Alfa Better University. Please remove him from your dropout records and place into your transfer records. Thanks."
After a few years, it will all average out, and numbers will be much more accurate. No new people get your information, and schools will have better numbers to report to the feds.
On a side note, if you fill out a FAFSA the department of education has all the information they want to include in this database already.
(P.S.: Not all Republicans like this kind of shit, and those of us who don't are trying to convert the rest.)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Also, as much as you instictively want to protect them from the big bad world, going too far could really screw them up. The super-sheltered kids I know are almost to the individual annoying, and have difficulty adjusting to new environments (i.e. college).
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
I would be shocked if there is a college in America that doesn't already have all this information on every one of their students. I would also be shocked if any college would, when push came to shove, refuse to give this information to the Federal government should they want it.
So why not let them use it for purposes that might actually do some good?
Your conception of teaching is shallow. It is a job, first of all other things. Second, it conveys a potential for social duty fulfillment as all other jobs do-past this point it is the understanding of the early human that determines what conclusion is made on responsibility. Either, to those who foolishly or wisely depending on your own views, believe children are not responsible for the responses that they make think the teacher is responsible for everything. The others, and as I would argue, the practical, recognize the distribution of responsibility to student as well as the teacher-duty.
Sorry, most (if not all) of those evil glossy pamphlets come from the Selective Service database, which all males are required to register with when they turn 18.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Because things are going so well for freedom and democracy that you lefty scare-mongers have to resort to hyperbole, that's why.
Yes, but there may be more to this than you think.
... they basically stole it, and not just from the U.S. But, it's a hell of lot easier to come here and ferry knowhow home that it would be from a lot of other places: we're pretty much a goldfish bowl in that respect. I'm not demeaning the engineering prowess of China's technologists, per se, but let's face it: they came a very long way in a very short time and didn't do it all by themselves. They bootstrapped themselves from our hard-earned investments and are now using it against us in what amounts to economic warfare. Not the actions of a friendly trading partner, or even a good neighbor, internationally speaking. A lot of Slashdotters hold America accountable for its brand of economic imperialism, but China is proving to be even more formidable in that regard. Once America has been brought to its knees ... the rest of you better watch out. Economic imperialism may be the least of your worries.
Terrorist threats aside, there is a lot of stuff being blatantly ripped off by Chinese students and professional technical people. China is "economically ascendent" (i.e. "becoming a high-tech society") but they sure as hell didn't do it all by themselves: neither did Japan for that matter. We gave Japan their head start after the Second World War but we made no such gift to China
I know a company where a Chinese engineer was hired during development of a significant piece of technology. He worked there until the project was completed, then stole the prototype and flew home to China the same night and gave it to a manufacturer on the Chinese mainland (where it turned out he was still employed.) Frankly, that should have been an international incident, but I assume the management of that company didn't want the embarrassment. I know several other similar cases (I was in and out of a lot of places as a consultant for many years.) Obviously Chinese immigrants to the U.S. aren't much of a terrorism threat (the Chinese engineers I know are generally damn good, but are hardly terrorists), but I certainly do see some of them as being very capable (and culpable) with regard to industrial espionage.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They need personal data to see whether someone who leaves one college will transfer to another. It sounds like each college provides its own data, so the only way to fix this problem is to unify all the data. Without personal information, all that you'd have is lists of how many people left school and how many people enrolled. You'd have no way of seeing whether people transferred to another school or just dropped out, and you'd (theoretically) have no way of seeing whether someone was returning to school late or transferring. Race and gender probably would show whether affirmative action programs, etc. are working and whether the government needs to focus on the needs of specific groups. The part about using someone's address kinda scares me, though. There's no reason why they need that... although if they have someone's SS# (as they'd have to; there are a bajillion Joe Smiths out there that need to be tracked uniquely), they'd probably have his/her address on file anyway.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
You mean like The Facebook?
How is this different from The Face Book? It seems most college students are already more than willing to provide their personal details.
My server
Well, now I'm DEFINITELY not going to college.
The Department of Education wants to collect personally identifiable information on all college students, including name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN. Privacy is assured.
...and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be
If Privacy is assured - if there are properly constructed laws to keep this data from being mis-used, what is the concern? It is just a collection of data. It holds no intent. With no will of its own, it cannot harm you.
If you are concerned that a collection of data will be TURNED against you, your problem isnt the data, but those who would wield it.
Simply, if you USofAmericans cant trusted the government/buracracy/judiciary to uphold the safety-clauses, shouldnt YOU ALREADY have a fucking problem.
This is why I am so astounded at politics in America. If you are so certain that a database of College students will be exploited -- even with promised to the contrary -- you are far FAR behind the curve on your problem.
Some soon day, you Yanks are going to have to consider, with true objectivity , the state of politics in your country.
There's already a National Directory of New Hires. This is supposedly to locate "deadbeat dads". Enforcement against employers is weak. But it's there.
Here is CNN's national exit poll results. The first results I saw were those of Ohio, which had a similar trend, but did not quite get high enough for graduate degree for Kerry to actually beat Bush. (I.e., graduate degree favored Kerry more than bachelor degree only, but still favored Bush more - in Ohio.) I suspect that if the graduate degree were broken down further into Master's and Doctorate, Master's degrees would still go for Bush and Doctorates would go to Kerry. That is, however, merely a supposition.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Uh, no. They don't need to know your name address or SSN.
Let me explain,
The claim is that this db would be to track university performance. As you said, they want to track student movements between universities. Data which uniquely identifies a specific person is _not_ necessary.
An orange student with a 3.4 GPA transferring from university A to univ. B, has always been, and will always be an orange student with a 3.4 transferring from univ. A to univ. B. If you're interested in the transfer rate between schools, then that is what you measure. It doesn't matter what the students name is, because you aren't tracking the student. You're tracking changes in the student body of the given university. Tag whatever other kind of data you want on there, race, age, GPA, unit totals. The university knows how many times you've transferred schools, all of this information is there. You don't need to identify who it came from to track it.
Nice try. And great analogy at the end.
Someone might break into your house or car if you leave it unlocked, but they could smash your window or pick the lock to, so what's the point of locking your doors?
The less available your information is, the less likely it is to be stolen. The simple fact that your information might be stolen through some act of carelessness does not mean that you should take no precation at all.
Did you remember to TBYS? (Think before you speak)
But people have been attending university for a long time. Waaaaaay back when, like 1990, people didn't consider it a 'waste of paper' because there was no other way.
...as if colleges and universities didn't already compete openly and directly with each other. As if there weren't already more college ranking organizations out there. Heck, there's even overt competition between all the different rankings out there. And as if the federal government has done such a good job with the (insufficiently funded) No Child Left Behind Act that it's got extra resources lying around just waiting to be applied to higher education.
recognize the distribution of responsibility to student as well as the teacher-duty
true, the 'practical' may argue this, but the 'educated' would argue that the synapses and firing mechanisms in the brain of a person under 21 are still unformed and fire completely differently to an adult, imparing their ability to judge and reason...just because they can look and talk like adults, doesn't make it so...which is why the legal term 'minor' exists.
I agree with the idea of ten times the guidance counsellors. I had the good luck to have an excellent guidance counsellor and now know how exceptional she truly was. I would also recommend hiring twice the teachers, at least for the general/remedial high school classes. In each of my classes of approximately 32 kids, about 5 were determined miscreants, 5 more were willing accomplices, 10 to 15 were easily influenced, and only about 10 to 15 actually cared about their grades. Only about half of the kids had parents who cared about their grades, as well. I felt that I was able to reach a couple of the kids who were inclined to be trouble-makers, but there was no way I could reach all 5 of the determined miscreants. Other, more gifted teachers had somewhat better luck, but smaller classrooms would have gone a long way.
Basically, I felt that my job in those classes was to be a disciplinarian and not a teacher.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
On the front cover of the New York Times, they cannot say "Bush just eliminated protections of the environment. This is a really stupid idea." This is because on Page 1, the people expect the facts, not the author's point of view.
They can, however, state on Page 1: "Bush eliminated protections for the environment" and then on the Op-Ed page, where opinions are encouraged/expected, state "Bush's cut of Protection X is stupid because..."
Or, if Michael simply can't hold it in, he can do what a New York Times journalist might do, and take the opinion of an expert: "Bush cuts enviromental protections. Ralph Wiggum of the EPA states that these cuts will have 'horrible impacts on the grizzly bear population.'" Michael could have said his gripes about Steam and quotes IGN/Gamespot or anyone else. But... not himself. That is unprofessional. Take any journalism class and you'll learn that on day 1.
If a university has a 75% drop-out rate should they be funded the same as, less then or more then a university with a 5% drop-out rate? That's worthy of debate, something not possible without this data.
... is there *any* way we could determine a university's dropout rate without the "name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN" of every student who has ever attended?
OK, I'm thinking
Thanks for the 'think' advice. That was a good idea. If you don't mind, though, I'll keep the tin foil until you can explain any reason to store individual rather than aggregate data for each school.
If you tie funding to a single number, then schools will only work to improve that number. Look at what happened in Texas (under Bush) when they did this for middle and high school.
In this case, it's likely schools will just make it more difficult to drop out. This is most easily done by passing students who shouldn't really pass. Is that what you want?
Sure, my SSN is constant, but my address has changed three times in the last year. I am absolutely positive this database will never stay updated if they choose to archive college students' addresses.
On the other hand, I think this database would be insanely easy to build; my university already has all this data and I'm sure most other institutions of higher learning do as well. Last year some of our school's security was compromised and there was a big to-do about how we all had to report the incident to all the major credit report companies because the people who did it hadaccess to all the tools they needed for identity theft.
Perhaps the Department of Education is planning to hijack the credit cards of irresponsible students who don't check the charges as carefully as they should, to pay for No Child Left Behind.
Why couldn't the school that a student transfers -to- simply put "transferred from" and the school they came from?
Subtract the total number of "transferred from's" in a given year from the number of "dropped out", and you have the true number of dropouts.
This requires personally-identifiable rather than aggregate statistics because...?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Furthermore, I said that they should probably not be allowed to drop out in 9th grade, because I realized that several of the kids I had could still be reached, and I nearly killed myself trying to reach those kids. The stress it put on me was too much for me to handle, which is why I said that I have extreme respect for those who can handle it. (Unless you have tried it, you have no idea how difficult it is.)
You are correct that it's easy to teach the smart kids who want to be there. My first year of teaching I taught Physics and AP Chemistry. There were some challenges (smart teenagers are still teenagers), but I found it rewarding. My second (and last) year of teaching was when I taught classes containing several students who didn't want to be there. In those classes were also children who had mental handicaps. The children with mental handicaps were a joy to work with. The children with behavioral handicaps were not. Furtheremore, they interfered with my ability to reach the children who did want to learn. (Btw, the children with behavioral handicaps typically were 'smart kids'.) Having a mother who teaches special education, I appreciate that different children have different needs. However, when you have 32 children in one classroom, a few trouble makers can make your job impossible unless you have a gift which I do not possess.
I know that my attitude was not always perfect, but I guarantee you I cared about all of the children in my class. All of them.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Is there any way to crack down on this international IP infringement? Can the manufacturers of products using stolen intellectual property be forbidden to sell/export their product to the USA?
This reminds me about and article I recently read about a Jeep made by Mitsubishi during WWII. The Japanese got their hands on a captured Aerican Jeep and instantly fell in love with it. It said "WILLYS" on the front and "MITSUBISHI" on the side. I believe after WWII several companies were granted permission (a license?) to legally manufacture these vehicles.
This is interesting, but not nearly as bad as the Russians. One of my favorite stories (though I can't verify it) is about Russians copying a toy model of a Submarine. They built a full scale submarine based on a plastic toy. They included a part on the bottom of the submarine which no one could explain what it's purpose was. It turns out the part was designed for the model's stand to be attached to!
Well, I suppose I see the point if they want to extend this to the typical college student extracurricular activities: namely drinking.
College Student: Get me a beer!
Bartender: Sorry fella, the federal database says you just had 10 beers at the bar down the road. You've had your limit...
Yes, this could be tradgedy for us all.
Obviously intended as flamebait, but such a database exists: SEVIS - Student and Exchange Visitor Information System
The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is a web-based system for maintaining information on international students and exchange visitors in the United States. Administered by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
SEVIS is designed to keep our nation safe while facilitating the entry and exit process for foreign students in the United States and for students seeking to study in the United States.
To Americans today, "keeping our nation safe" is synonymous with trusting government to act in our best interests. How have so many failed to learn the lessons so clearly taught by our nation's founders, that the government is the enemy of liberty?
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
yeah it's called Facebook:
www.facebook.com
And how do you think the US amounted to anything? Yup, by flounting international copywright and patent law. In the early days, the US ripped technical feats off, and sold un-royaltied literature at cheap, cheap (warez-ed) prices. That is how countries get started.
So get off your high horse, because that is how all industrial nations (except britain, who had the first mover disadvantage...go read your economics books) started.
As to the rest of your xenophobic post...wow, you really don't get how the world works. Or has worked for the past couple of centuries.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
If you have filled out a FAFSA or applied for a loan the Department of Education already has all the information. Part of my job is making sure the mandatory reporting gets sent to DOE. That is on top of other federal reporting, IPEDS, FISAP, etc. Granted most of the reports are general statistics, as the article mentioned, however there is a more information that is required to be reported than most people realize.
What exactly is the benefit of having top notch international graduate students?
They tend to become top notch American employees. And even if they don't, the research they do while here disproportionatly benefits American interests.
I don't have time to research this myself, but I suspect Sun Microsystems was not the only company in the US founded by a foreign student to do great things for this country...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
And, admittedly, letting them drop out probably isn't one of them. I guess what I'm afraid of, is forcing these kids to stay in school without actually addressing their problems.
As you can see from previous comments I got a lot of flak for "not caring" about my students, etc. I did care very much, and I think they actually felt that. Perhaps (as one poster might have suggested) I was too nice to them. I am not a natural disclipinarian. I was required to take several education courses, few of which actually were pertinent to my situation, but one of my wife's psychology courses (behavioral analysis) probably would have helped me the most. (She took it after I quit.) Anyone who has not read Karen Pryor's "Don't Shoot the Dog" should.
Anyways, I agree that a co-op program would help several kids. Adding more guidance counselors (and perhaps psychologists/psychiatrists) would also help. Reducing classroom size would definitely help. I don't think that standardized testing, at least as it's currently implemented, helps. And, of course, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I worked in a school that was on the verge of being inner city (transient students, there was a shooting in the school the first year I was there, at least one of my students was in my 9th grade class as a condition of her parole - which I only found out about because she subsequently violated that condition - I have no idea how many other kids in my class were on parole since those records are blocked). It was also the high school that I graduated from, so I had a really strong desire to make it work. Unfortunately, I discovered that I did not have the requisite talents to work with children with significant behavioral disorders.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
we should just 'leave some behind'. Dammit, this whole idea that one is not educated if one does not have a college degree causes more social problems than people not having the damn degrees.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
As a student who graduated taking primarily honors classes not too long ago, while in a position in the school where I had the trust and respect of the majority of the teachers in the school, I have to say it flows both ways. I'm personally friends with many of my former teachers, and communicate with them on a semi-regular basis. You are correct that some teachers wouldn't be bothered by letting the trouble students go off and forage for themselves. However, you fail to realize there are teachers that DO in fact care, and care deeply for what they do. It takes an incredible willpower to deal with the remedial/lower level classes, and maintain sanity. Granted, there are students in those classes with genuine learning disabilities, and these are the kids a teacher will most likely cater to, within their power. The flip side is the students that don't care either way, and run off to toke up in the bathroom between and during classes, with a flagrant disregard to any human decency. No matter how much a teacher tries to reach out to that certain type of student, the farther the student slips away. I know a few teachers who are very caring, dedicated teachers, but in dealing with students who would literally rather die than sit in a classroom, it can be very unsettling and disturbing. In that sense, there's only a certain amount of emotional and professional resources that can logically be spent on said type of student. For some teachers, the threshold is considerably lower than others, but every teacher has a point where there is no more that can be done. In the case of the great-grandparent, I believe it was crossing that threshold which told him he couldn't be a teacher any longer. It wasn't because he was unwilling to mentor the students, but because the students simply did not want to have any part of it, and I know how painful that can be. As an example, I had an IPS teacher my freshman year of high school. She was the nicest lady you'll ever meet, comforting but firm voice, well educated and enthusiastic about her subject. Every day she would show up with a new idea/lesson plan to convey the excitement of physics and chemistry. One day we were performing a lab experiment involving some chemicals we couldn't dispose of down the lab table drain. One student picked up a half full beaker of this substance, and made the motion to pour it down the drain. The teacher saw this, and told the student not to dump the beaker. The student looked at the teacher with a wry smile, and deliberately dumped the contents down the drain. The next year, the teacher didn't return to my school. I spoke with her later in the year and asked why she didn't return. She said too many incidents of sheer disobedience and flagrant disregard for lab rules in all her classes tipped her over the edge of what she could handle without flipping out.
I know there are teachers that simply do not care, and do their job for nothing more than a paycheck and benefits, but usually these types of teachers can be identified by the grades of the class as a whole than by individual students. The good teachers try their best to accomodate every student, but there are some who simply do not care, and never will. The more you force them to stay, the more trouble they will become. Counselors can only do so much to prevent aggressive behavior, but even that's not the responsibility of the teacher. Great teachers are in short supply these days, and I hate to see great teachers turned sour by a few sickly students who just don't give a damn.
Please, leave me here, behind. I feel safer when you're in front of me.
Sincerely,
Jame
...to discourage protesting at college campuses that I can possibly think of.
The blatant powergrab is sickening.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
1. Identifiable information of all fliers around the United States
2. Identifiable information of all college students
Chances are, they will eventually have personally identifiable information on every citizen in the United States.
Anyone else remember the promises that the SSN was NEVER to be used as a default National ID? Looks like the government's playing the shame game again, and someone needs to call bullshit before it gets even more out of hand.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
Sounds exactly like what the US was doing to the UK during the Industrial Revolution.
Go fuck yourself.
Anyone got any more information about what private schools recieve how much federal funding?
What?
Here's a topic where its worth posting as an AC...
As an ex-programmer for a university, and then a major player in the higher education software application market, I have been involved in the creation of the REAL existing student tracking database. It is NOT FAFSA, and it DOES contain personal identification data. Any institution that receives grant or loan money from publically funded programs is REQUIRED to identify and report EVERY student enrolled at least once per enrollment period (semester/quarter). In the industry it is known as the Federal student loan clearinghouse. Its stated purpose is to insure against fraudulent applications, receipt, and use of student loan and grant monies. I assure you that the folks running the show weren't qualified to design the collection system, nor are they sophisticated enough to use it to track your association to terrorist organizations (except if you count U.C. Berkley to be one). I can also assure you that they HAVE prevented the federal loan and grant programs from funding your 7th-year freshman roommates sports-car purchase. Dont ask me to count how many times I've seen the junior with the 1.2 G.P.A. drop out in the third week of the semester and try to withdraw the $20,000 of student loan money they thought no-one would notice. Before you take to much pride in your tin-foil hats, ask around and find out how much they have collected from ex-students who CLAIM to be full-time students so they can delay the repayment of thier $60,000 in student loans. There are MILLIONS of reasons why both public and private instituions are willing to give this information up, and every single one of them has to do with making sure the federal funding of higher education doesn't look like the $300,000 toilets the pentagon uses to flush taxpayer money away.
Well, USA is fighting a "terroisom war" and Iraq is quite a mess, with a possible invasion of other "rogue countries" like North Korea.... so the college student database is a great aid to draft people into the army.
Well, unlike Nam's time, people who is smart enough getting into college will also be drafted to the military. Military needs a lot of electrical engineers and programmers too.
The 'educated,' using your own terminology, recognize instead that responsibility extends to every human, this includes the young human. Is there another point of objection to the proper sharing of responsibility for the student's eduction between the teacher by teacher-duty and the student by duty to repay or make use of the resources alloted for his or her own benefit?
(2) It feeds our skilled workforce. Many people who are educated here elect to stay. If you agree that top-flight people are worth having around, than this is good.
(3) It facillitates idea exchange. Folks at school learn from each other, sometimes more than fromtheir professors. I can't think of a downside here.
(4) It builds international connections. People who went to school together tend to stay in contact. They make business deals, diplomatic relations, and generally help countries understand each other.
If that really isn't enough for you, look to history for what happens to nations that become myopic. Don't think it won't happen here, unless you're prepared to explain how the U.S. is different from every other empire in history.
I forget what 8 was for.
...name, phone number, and address as well.
This act REQUIRES your child's high school to give your child's name, address and phone number to military recruiters. Unless you opt out.
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/news/nochild.htm
I think he just forgot that xenophobia is only OK when it's against the United States.
you're missing the point...brain scans have proven that a human being under 21 does not process information the same way as an adult...in every sense of the phrase, they are mentally handicapped when compared to an adult...a primary example is the stimulation of visual creativity when asked questions that would normally spur memory retrieval...especially when those questions relate to topics of cause and effect. So while you, as an adult, are aware of cause and effect from memories you hold, and underdeveloped brain doesn't access memory, but instead tries to visually imagine the impact of the cause and effect with no reference material to base assumptions on. What I find amazing is that someone who would normally think it inconvievable to make a handicapped person responsible for their actions would quite happily make a teenager responsible, where they suffer from similar disorders just at varying degrees.
Science has proven that teenages brains DO NOT FUNCTION PROPERLY...how can you impose the very adult concept of reciprocality on a brain that can't comprehend it. That would be like me (an australian) berating a frenchman for not knowing who RM Williams is.
archive myspace and livejournal? At least it would save the taxpayers a pretty penny.
sig not found
Think of your credit report. It contains your personally identifiable information and who you paid (didn't pay). It determines to a large degree how much your car, house, and other large ticket loans will cost you. It also tells employers if you are responsible with your money. They even sell your contact information for prequalification to lending institutions and other financial service providers. Social Security has your SSN, IRS has your tax records, now DOEd. will have your education credentials. When you tie all of that information together, you get a nifty profile. All that is needed is your wrap sheet if you have one. Once we implement a national sales or consumption tax (to replace the Income Tax), they will have your spending patterns/habits as well.
Privacy? Ha! It isn't a "Right" such as the Freedom of Press, Vote, Peacable assembly, etc. Rather, it is an "interpretation" of the 4th amendment, that allows for "privacy" to be protected.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
As near as I can tell, the only DB never searched by the current US law enforcement people is the list of registerd gun owners.
My dear fellow, you're acting as if paying taxes entitles you to some form of control over your fellow citizens. Whatever gave you this ridiculous idea? You pay taxes to live in a civilized society, one in which education is prized as a badge of human endeavor that benefits the larger community. Think on that, would you; and steer clear of the noxious temptation to imagine that you somehow have deed to the privacy of others. Paying taxes is a banal necessity, like death. Yet it hardly ennobles voyeurism.
If a university has a 75% drop-out rate should they be funded the same as, less then or more then a university with a 5% drop-out rate? That's worthy of debate, something not possible without this data.
Wrong; it's entirely possible without building an intrusive, Hooveresque database.
While you go on about your imaginary "rights" and preach performance-based funding, you're missing the point. The highest value in this argument--and especially in the context of government registries in a nation notorious historically for the abuse thereof--is privacy. That you are eager to have the government reduce privacy is bad enough; but do not ask us to be lemmings with you.
Um, I'm 26 and I just made it to college (not because Im stupid, it was a money thing) but I will tell you that I had no calculus in high school and the kids that are here are smart, and I'm a little bit lost (not in calc, that class is easy). What I am saying is "I WAS LEFT BEHIND, AND I BUSTED MY ASS TO GET HERE!"
but there's nothing wrong with this.
You're arguring about the government having your Social Security Number in a database. This is a number that was CREATED BY A GOVERNMENT DATABASE. It's in THOUSANDS of databases.
It's not like just anyone can browse or even HACK INTO the IRS, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc that contains all this info (plus a lot, lot more) and it's not as if this Departement of Education database would be any less secure.
Lemming? Please.
its Big Brother. At the vary least such a registry would enhance the reach of the draft when the Bush league resurrect it.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I was not adequately clear. The physical state description is understood and recognized as central to your point; on purely scientific basis I would have you question the source of that information-though it has no relation to the point I argue. It is solely that on social basis that the individual student is responsible along with his or her instructor for his or her own learning of the material taught. The teacher-duty is to be willing to make this effort and to take all practical measures for the clear communication of the material. The student, whatever the age, is obligated to learn that material as the resources so consumed have been expended for his or her own benefit and to provide advantage for the student formerly ignorant of the specific matter taught. Where the student was not ignorant of the matter, it need not have been taught unless to correct an inaccurate understanding.
How long would the processing of such a thing take? Most U.S. gov. items take at least 3 weeks. If you wanted to change schools, would you have to wait a month for approvial?
This sounds like more "Big Brother" (not always bad).
I'd rather not. Before you get too offended, I am a college art student.
Even though men must register with selective service, there is no registration for draftable women and no ongoing tracking if you move after you register. This database could change that.
If you ask me, the government has had these databases in effect for a long time already.. virtually all data out there is at their disposal. They just want to make it formal so it's easier to collect information and use it arbitrarily, and they don't have to be sneaky about it. Or maybe there's some seemingly innocuous provision of the pending legislation that unlocks a lot more freedom on their part to do things with the data they have, or for example, cross-reference grades and class schedules with existing profiling databases.
The potential for abuse here is rather enormous. Since they can arbitrarily put people on the "no fly" list with no notice, no reasoning, and no recourse, they could identify administration-unfriendly students by their choice of classes or academic agenda and punish them. It would not be that far out to contemplate such a thing happening. The US did this to the Panamanians when they invaded under Reagan.
though I do feel that my attitude could be better.
Nevertheless, I encouraged all of the students in my class to put forth effort, even one who threatened my life. (This was before Columbine, and although I reported his threat to the administration, nothing was done about this particular student. Keep in mind that this threat was made in front of the entire class, so I was very concerned that he would follow through with it in order to save face. Turns out he was just blowing off steam, but I didn't know that, and I have no idea how the administration could have known that.)
I notice that you never claim to have spent time on the other side of the teacher's desk. Despite my current "attitude", I do not put the blame on the students, but rather on the system. Students who are arrested are returned to regular classrooms where they, more often than not, prevent other students from getting the education they deserve. Some of these students are sent to alternative schools, but not nearly enough, IMHO. Before becoming a full-time public school teacher I was a substitute teacher for two years. I spent a significant amount of time at an alternative school and found that it had a system that worked quite well - but only for students who were motivated to stay out of trouble. Since this school was only for students 16 and older, teachers were allowed to send trouble-makers of any kind out of their classroom. If a student was sent home three times in a quarter, they were kicked out of the school. (I'm not sure what happened to them then, but it must not have been good, because all of the students in the classes I subbed for were motivated to behave.) I had some of my best experiences in that school. Btw, this school also had some advanced students who were choosing the non-traditional route in order to graduate early, but I never taught any of those courses.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You're only the millionth person to post that to slashdot, wanker.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Cut the budget for the National Science Foundation while spending money on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other inane ideas. This will eventually kill basic research and hence the flow of new jobs to replace the 400,000 IT jobs lost in the past three years.
FreeSpeech.org
this is like China was in her 80's...
Just curious, does that mean very soon, the government could legally pass this information to RIAA/MPAA without any nay say from the colleges?
We can't stop now, Karl Rove's database is HUNGRY.
--
make install -not war
And Bush cries about Democrats embarking on pork barrel spending? The Department of Education doesn't need to get their hands in this. There are already companies out there who are doing it: they're called student loan companies. I'm sure you've heard of them (i.e. Sallie Mae, the biggest one ever!). They know everything about you, and they'll track you down if you try to run and hide. They make sure to know when you graduate, because that's when they start getting paid!
College students should worry about their privacy, because I know that Sallie Mae outsources their service/call center, and current laws are vague about the legalities of this. Imagine all your personal information accessible halfway across the world by god knows who? Sure the internet does this already, but how secure is Sallie Mae's systems? If the government wants to spend dollars where it's worth it, then spend it on auditing Sallie Mae and their practices, to ensure that students are treated fairly.
Linux at home
Does anyone else see how this information could be used to incite conservatives already bent on federal money used in public health education spending (like touting condom usage, etc.)? How do you think conservatives would take the news that XX% of students receiving Federal financial aid are learning in college that Roe v. Wade was the right decision? I'm only thinking of a few points here, but you get the picture.
Linux at home
"No Child Left Behind When We Reinstate The Draft," they mean.
if you disagree, read this before you respond.
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
It's a standard plasticized flier with outlines of the various employment laws, of which some deal with disabled people (note that disabled is taken to include everything from mental to physical).
Employers have to display the current year's version in a employee-visible place.
To make you all feel a little bit better (or a little bit more paranoid) there already exists a non-governmental organization called the National Student Clearinghouse. Higher education institutions alredy voluntarily submit student information (in keeping with FERPA) -- it looks like the main difference is performance oriented. No classes and grades, and not even complete major information until you receive your degree. It is actually quite useful for institutional researchers -- but those are not the sorts of people that you need to worry about.
Look, there are some genuine irrationalities in the way that Federal support for higher education works right now, and some of what's described sounds like a genuine effort to address that. This was covered in detail in the Chronicle of Higher Ed last Spring, I think. So let's not break out the tinfoil hats too quickly.
On the other hand there is something insidious about assessing an institution's success by its ability to process students and pass out degrees. Sometimes college students really should leave for a couple of years and get a job before finishing, or transfer, and some students are going to fail. I teach in a state university and there's constant pressure from the legislature to admit more students -- politicians understand that getting degrees is popular. So you move toward essentially open admissions. Some of those students have poor skills -- not necessarily their fault, but for some reason public education has not served them well. So either you lower standards, or you flunk more of them out. I deal with students in tears, students spending money and time to get degrees for which they lack requisite basic skills. So just as current Federal policy is producing kids who are good at taking standardized tests but little else, the pressure now reaches higher ed to churn out grads who may not have learned a whole lot.
If India eats our lunch it's our own damn fault.
... for those who abuse this database.
Tag lost or not installed.
As long as they also keep track of when those grad students shower, and inform them the expiration date for their courtesy shower.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
no. fuck that. that's all I have to say.
aren't they the ones indoctrinating our future leaders with all this nanny-state nonsense?
I dimly remember 'nanny-state' being used as an epithet by conservatives against liberal thinking (as espoused by college professors among others) back in the early 90's, but here we see the conservative-led government, like an overbearing parent or nanny, is attempting to increase its interference and surveillance into the lives of the youth.
Of course, this is nowhere near as ridiculous as to hear someone support the current administration and 'small government' in the same sentence- but this is par for the course, these days.
Since most K-12 students are already in effective state custody; they already have a way of keeping tabs on them. Also, when you get a job your employer files an I-9 and then later either a W-2 or 1099 -- so they're tracking all the other age groups already. Oh yea, and then what about the good old driver license and national driver licence registry? Government's like that elephant....
this should be easy to compile, shouldn't it?
Thanks. I was wondering about that.
"The No Child Left Behind Act, which holds primary and secondary schools accountable prompted this line of thinking."
.. Kerry lost, deal with it.
This is conjecture and completely FALSE. RTFA, and you'll see that it is completely independent of the Bush policy for progress in the matriculation process. Stop hating on Bush
Face it. With Dubbya getting another four years (with no worry about re-election) and the massive "mandate" that 3 percent win gives him, the rats with some shread of honesty getting fired...oh, excuse me, "Needing to spend more time with family", this sort of thing is just the tip top of the cespool. Far worse things are happening without any public fanfare.
One comment made over and over again is how well this administration stays "on message". That's a fancy way of saying that we get what we're told, Faux News won't permit any thing else to be aired, and the rest of the (neo-con called "liberal") media too scared about losing all their corespondents white house press credentials, we won't hear of anything Karl Rove doesn't want us to hear about.
If Rove says the next big music craze is after dinner flatulence, then we're going to be hearing farts on Clear Channel. Oops. Too late.
And yeah, you neo-con far right wing nut barbarian, I AM an embittered Liberal Democrat. Better thank that God whose word you don't live that you have an evil like me to "fight", or you'd dry up and blow away for lack of anything better to do.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
It's different. The guvmint is eeeevil ! Corporations are inherently good. Corporations are our friends !
Actually, the US still leads most of the world in terms of the volume of money thrown at science. A quick example, your neighbours to the north (note the extraneous 'u') here allocate about $70 million a year for dedicated cancer research. We're a country about 1/10 the size of the US, which spends $7 Billion a year in the same area - that's more than your fair share (or we're just really underfunded here -- or a bit of both). Either way, when you look at postdoc studies, the US is one of THE places to go still - NIH, NCI, etc.
I myself will probably find myself there for a few years, but you can damn well bet I'll head back up North afterwards, for healthcare and school for my kids. And no neocons.
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
I agree with your comment. As far as privacy is concerned, once the government has any information with respect to a given transaction or arrangement, (especially if it's related to a transaction that has NOTHING to do with the government in the first place), the privacy is GONE. To assure something that isn't there in the first place is complete bunk.
My sister-in-law also teaches special education for children with low IQ's (50). The NCLB Act requires her to fill paper work each day that takes her about one-hour and a half (she has about 30 kids in her class). She is also mandated to give them standardized test, which of course they fail.
None of these kids can read at the 3rd grade level and likely never will. As with regards to intellect they will always be left behind, regardless of all the posturing by politicians.
There is no expectation these children will ever improve their test scores, yet the taxpayers are penalized by spending money on such nonsense.
This is why I have been investing in child testing companies. They are making a fortune. This is what the No Child Left Behind Act is really all about anyway (of yes, of course these vendors know they are expected to provide a kickback if they expect to get their contracts renewed). Its all part of the game.
If you haven't figured this out, well you've just been left behind.
In Bush's America, progress stops YOU!
As far as I know, public universities are required to keep and make public a directory of their students and faculty. At least, that's what I was told when I asked why my school's LDAP server is wide open for spammers to harvest e-mail addresses.
in california at least, there is a law
that prohibits colleges from using social security numbers as a student id
this shit is not gonna jive with california law
The way I see it all these tracking systems do is give more power to those who know how to exploit them. Hell, keep it up. Gives me incentive to study computer science in more depth.
Re: sig: not unless that post gets modded up as interesting and not modded down as redundant.
Not as bad as France. France probably has the worst Data collection on its citizens, but they don't call out as much as we Americans...so where is this going then?
Well stems cells ARE a moral issue.
I'm not really opposed to using them, but considering that you need to stop a life to get them, I feel that the ones gathering them at least should have an obligations to heavily support living siblings (financially or medically) of the embryos that get killed.
It should be a bit like a farmer saving some seeds from the crop to grow more of it, thus helping the crop to spread.
Unfortunately, I think that many abortions today take place in very young mothers or mothers who just want no kids, so these conditions that I find fair are really hard to put into place. Especially since many of these mothers would keep their embryos if the money went to support them instead of into stem cell research.
Another approach would be, when fertilizing in vitro, to split the initial zygotes into half, and implant one half while keeping the other half for stem cells, which would also serve the donor perfectly.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Some shit about copy-pasting and re-editting.
More than mere navel gazing.
Well, yeah, you should be grabbing your consitutional firearms, proclaim your constitutional freedom boldly, and use your constitutional right to march against Washington in what is becoming absurdly apparent as the worlds' largest nation of hipocrites and political suicide-runners. Do above, or lose your other constitutional rights, then again you don't seem to care and your vote just recently tells us you're fucked anyway. Yes, I'm trolling but there's a very important message here anyway. The US is getting fucked anyway. The material and social standard the US once enjoyed is being whittled away, rapidly, by a completely dysfunctional political system wherein only a real 30% of US citizens hold the power in what was supposed to be the world's strongest democracy. Now, book up the next generation of literate people so that their opinions can be safely monitored and catalogued. Dissention will not be allowed. Long Live "Our Leader", and a big fuck you if you happen to think the US is rotting up from the inside. I'd like at least one point for having a sack of nuts large enough to not post this anonymously. Peace out.
What the FUCK?? Land of the free my arse. Is America going to let that happen???
For that reason alone, when America gets involved in anyones' business, be it for good reasons or bad, people don't trust them. It would be different if America didn't abuse the trust of other nations.
Feds no longer have hard time finding dates.
If you combine data mining with lonely guys with limited girl experience, yet keen data manipulation skills, you can,erm, add up the numbers, or smell the coffee.
Wait...
select * from hot_college_chicks where tits='34b' and eyes='brown' and legs='nice' and interests LIKE %music% or interests LIKE %shooting-people%
rows 0
*sniff*
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Jesus, look who's fucking talking
I couldn't decide whether mute modding down was better than commenting on this. Either you're trolling or I don't get your perspective. So I'm asking for some clarification.
Maybe I don't understand the World Trade Organisation (WTO -- we are talking about the same thing, right?) like you do, but I understand it to be an organisation lobbied by governments to open up unfettered trading opportunities among countries.
I don't see how such an organisation will ever end up stopping a nation of people being autonomous and governing themselves. I'm confused by your words: it seems that you see this event happening. I also don't see how this organisation would stand between you and free speech: there's financial interest in the media continuing their jobs. Also, you're the end consumer of all of this, and can write to your service providers (energy, media, politicians) to make your complaints heard and your stance accommodated.
With increasing global trade, there needs to be some organisation that helps make sure that this goal of sustained economic growth is reached. But also, there needs to be some organisation that makes sure that all the countries in the world have an opportunity to play their part in the global economy.
At the moment I oppose the WTO's treatment of developing nations. Essentially they force developing nations not to compete with established nations by means of withdrawing World Bank debt relief or World Bank finance. I think that the richest countries in the world can alter their production methods to allow the developing nations a foothold to join the party. Apparently, diversity in economic markets helps spread the risk of investment, and opening up new nations to invest in is a good thing.
Can you please explain what you mean about WTO governance?
And can you please tell me what this WTO thing has to do with free speech?
Thanks for your time. Help a confused person here...
Its called Felles Systemet (The shared system), and it makes many processes in the education sector VERY much more efficient
Outsiders, especially those from the USA think that this is a potentially bad idea, because it is a threat to negative freedom, however these types of system, merely distribute information to people who have access to it already in a more efficient manner.
Ironically, because the system becomes so much more efficient, the total number of people with access to this "private" information decreases
coupled with research restrictions (e.g., stem cells).
There are no restrictions on research with stem cells in the United States. The restriction is on what the federal government will use taxpayer money to fund. Right now the federal government will not use tax revenues to pay for research projects using stem cells from embryos. They can get tax money for use on other types of stem cells or other types of more promising research work, but not stem cells from embroys. If they want to work on stem cells from embroys, researchers can pay for it themselves or get non-government groups to pay for it.
As no one really knows whether or not stem cell treatements will actually work, I don't think this restriction actually matters. Even if it does work, the U.S. still funds enormous amounts of university research in dozens of fields. Missing out on one potentially patentable biological device or process probably won't kill the U.S., as much as its critics might like it to.
By the way, biotech firms sucessfully duped California voters into passing a $3 billion bill to fund stem cell research from California taxes.
My other first post is car post.
It's supposed to be:
bust='34' and cup_size='b'
It just doesn't make any sense to do it any other way.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
When the U.S. got started there was no international patent or copyright law. British inventions were protected by export controls with very large criminal penalties.
Dickens argued for copyright protection in his american tour of 1842. This was an industrial America energized by the introduction of steam power, the railroad, and the telegraph. Much of this development financed in London. 1860 would be last year in which the rural population held a bare majority. We are not talking third-world here.
The pirating of foreign works was hurting american authors. Why pay at home for what you can steal from abroad?
We saw this coming. And 51% of American Voters didn't care.
The cynic in me wants to laugh.
The realist in me wants to give up.
The optimist in me wants to grin and bear it.
The revolutionary in me wants to blow shit up.
That's right. All your base.
... a national database of everyone is proposed.
Though it appears the guy pushing for it has abused his power in office to get his lovers nanny a vesa to work in the UK fast-tracked for aproval... hopfully that combined with the fact he's been having an affair anyway should be enough to push him out of goverment and give us back some hope of liberty.
As a college student, I am against this. They know enough information about is with just our SSN. That's all they are gonna get. What about the thousand other privacy advocates that do not want to be included, where is the provision for that? Back when I was in High School, teachers knew who was doing well and who wasn't. The good teachers took it upon themselves to help the students who needed it. the bad teachers only helped the good students, in order to make themselves look good. It's sad that most teachers just aren't what they used to be...but who's to blame, the individuals, or the teachers who teach them? Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows?
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
These disturbing ideas remind me very much of how things were conducted back in Nazi Germany. This can only be a joke. However, it might be a good idea to write your representatives that you are opposed to revive such ideas before it is too late.
You'd be amazed at the number of agencies that do data collection on a typical university. We have a full-time person here at a 750-person college just to do "university research". In other words, research on our university. Dropout rates, percentage of students that graduate in 4 years, current majors, etc etc etc. We've got to be able to produce all of it for a variety of groups, the most important for us being SACS, our accreditation agency.
Our education department just underwent their accreditation review last month. (Seperate and in addition to the SACS review) They had to be able to cough up every single piece of paperwork on every student teacher for the past ten years.
I once wrote a grant that asked, among other questions, the percentage of our students that were international, veterans, gay/lesbian and even disaster victims. I threw up my hands at the last one- I've got not an arsing clue what that even means.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
and I had several students tell me that after they had gone to college. I was not, however, a good disciplinarian, which is what the general/remedial students required. I truly loved teaching, and plan on doing it again. However, the next time I am teaching, I will be teaching college students, for which few discipline problems (of the nature I experiences) exist.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"...that is how all industrial nations (except britain, who had the first mover disadvantage...go read your economics books) started."
I wouldn't dismiss the case against England so fast...
Once upon a time, you know, there were these rich countries heading big Empires with colonies worldwide (Spain, Portugal, Netherlands) and this other island-country just putting itself together after centuries of internal struggle and war with his neighbors the French. Yep, that'd be England.
What did they do? Foster and Support THIEVERY (aka piracy) as an elevated institution. For decades they just stoled what they wanted from their rich neighbors. I mean, that fully qualifies for, in today's words, a "rogue nation", doesn't it.
Not that i have anything against the brits. It's only that EVERYONE has these things he'd like to delete from their past.
I don't have a sig.
Demonstrate that we ever had any privacy. The days before massive databases were also the days before credit cards and faceless megacorps that could care less who you are as long as you pay on time. If you weren't a hermit or a pioneer, your doctor/banker/grocer/etc. all knew you personally. People who *didn't* know you personally wouldn't take significant risks with you until they did, or until they'd checked you out with "respected members of the community". The whole town knew who you were, and if they didn't like who you were, it was time to find a new town.
We probably have more real privacy today than ever before. Some people seem to want total anonymity, and that's never existed.
Why those evil American assholes. Afterall we did NOTHING to help the British, French and the rest of Europe in World War 2. Get a clue.
"lessons so clearly taught by our nation's founders, that the government is the enemy of liberty"
Would those be the same founders who set up a government for us? It seems there's another lesson here.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. (and who scored this 'insightful' anyway?) While China assuredly has its industrial spies, China's economic ascendency has its roots in global capital. While you might name a few 'spies' who stole prototypes, I can list off just about every Fortune 500 company that has manufacturing facilities in China -- and the Chinese didn't steal those -- big (formerly U.S.) companies went there to exploit cheap labot markets and gain competitive advantage. Both China and U.S. were in favor of this; U.S. because it would promote capitalism (down with Communist system), and the Chinese knew it was a benificent trojan horse. I hear quotes from Chinese industry something like this: 'We were happy when the factories came. We knew in the beginning we would only be doing labor; but we knew that eventually we would learn enough from the Americans that we could then run our own factories, develop new technologies, and market our own products. It was a growing phase we had to go through, but we knew it would be best in the long run.' Any stories of industrial espionage are severely overhyped in comparison to the huge amounts of capital investment knowingly and willingly brought to China's shores.
And a question: what were 'our' hard-earned investments doing in China? Sitting there gaining 0.5% interest? I think they were there taking advantage of cheap labor. From your post, it almost seems that our hard-earned investments should've been working harder to keep the Chinese worker locked into lower-paying jobs with little chance of economic advancement. And if that's what you think 'your' capital investments will always do, then apparently you don't know that capital has no master.
Lets be honest, all the political initives didn't start by asking, "how do we make the system better?". They start by asking, "How do I get more bri... *COUGH* campaign contributions?"
By most objective measures the US K-12 system is struggling, yet listen to any local or state school official. Even here in SC (where we can be 50th in test scores and still have the education superintendant run for higher offfice!), the officials are jumping though hoops to try to say that it's not so bad and things are actually going well. "No problems here, just send more cash!"Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
You neglect to consider the possiblity that students are not interested in their education *BECAUSE* of teachers with attitudes like the grandparent or whoever that jackass is.
Then they need to get over themselves. Fail the class, take it again. School at home. Bite the bullet and attend class. Whatever, take some *fucking responsibility*, that was my point.
You, go ahead and keep blaming the teachers for students who don't want to be there. I admit that some teachers are *not* qualified to teach because of their attitude. The blame can fall on either students or teachers in that case.
That doesn't invalidate my point, that learning is the responsibility of the kid and that kid's parents. If not one, then the other. If you're going to make the "kids have broken brains and shouldn't be given the responsibility" then the responsiblity shifts to parents BEFORE teachers.
Boy, I must have been hanging around a bunch of kids in high school with extra-broken brains, because they all realized that shitty teachers and poor cirriculum was no reason to drop out, and that finishing school was the only obvious thing in life.
Btw, I was making nearly 23k a year, thank you very much. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
US goverment already has that database for international students in US. Now they are planning for the next move. I don't see anything wrong with that, because after all all men born equal, right?
So, since the data that will be collected is useless in determining performance, why do they want to collect it at all?
select * from
collegestudents cs
join travelhistory th on cs.ssn = th.ssn
join librarybooks lb on cs.ssn = lb.ssn
join votingdistrict vd on cs.ssn = vd.ssn
join homelandsecurityprofile on cs.ssn = hsp.ssn
join medicalinfo mi on cs.ssn = mi.ssn
join creditcard cc on cs.ssn = cc.ssn
join incometaxdata it on cs.ssn = it.ssn
join employmentdata ed on cs.ssn = ed.ssn
join echelon7data on cs.ssn = e7d.ssn
join cellphonehistory cph on cs.ssn = cph.ssn
where cs.firstname = 'yourfirstname'
and cs.lastname = 'yourlastname'
and hsp.threatrisk = 'high'
and th.locations = (select distinct locations from axisofevil)
and e7d.redflag = 'yes'
and cph.called = (select distinct callers from
terrorists)
If no one has any privacy, then no one will have the privacy in which to abuse anyone else's lack of privacy. Privacy is a stop-gap tactic for use in situations where an imbalance of information and power exists. If everyone can potentially find out what anyone else is doing and a fair system exists for the redress of injustice, there is no need for privacy. The trick of course is doing away with the imbalance of information and power.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
(After getting the grant :^)
So, OK, we now track everyone from the crib to the coffin. Great, then only the bad guys are 'outside' the system. And if the bad guys want 'in' to the system, then they just forge someones identity, (I believe that the dead from the 9/11 event can testify to this).
There is ample information on the trends of governments that use totalitarian methods on its people. And there is ample information on governments that use few methods of control on its people. I would say that by helping our neighbors, world wide, and not alienating them will we, as a people, as a government, as a planet, move forward. And no, I'm not running for a political office; I can get an honest job.
If the desperately paranoid want to feel better, then they could spend money on developing a mind reading device that can be used as far away as one meter, that the suspect will not know its being used, and the suspect will not be negatively affected by the use of this device.
Had to submit this as parts...keep getting those inane "500" errors with long posts:
Your questions have a fallacy embedded within them that assumes people will be honest with themselves about "job satisfaction", "quality of life", and "satisfaction with intangibles".
I've generally come to the conclusion that pretty much everyone, rich-educated or poor-not, has about the same number of problems. When we feel like we've eliminated one problem, there's a brand new one to take its place. Okay, so someone has a 4-year degree (education problem solved). They now have five to ten years of unsecured loan payments sucking at them like a parasite (oops, new problem). Their friends went to a two year school for nursing, get paid just as much, have about the same amount of responsibility at the workplace, have about the same amount of political BS to deal with, but have a head start financially.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Another problem created by universities is that true knowledge and intelligence are taken for granted and rarely adequately rewarded. Of course, there is the occasional star engineer who can't be swept under the carpet, but most of the time good work is lost on co-workers and management. It's like pushing a boulder uphill for eternity.
Money and the social consequences of money create further problems. So, a person has money and starts a family. What of the children who are well educated, well dressed, and live in the best neighborhoods who, then, have to come to terms with the blatent inequities in their classroom? School is hell for these children, and their parents are very likely in denial about it.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
The idealism that drives people towards money, education, and "success" all too often leaves them ignoring the other important things that make families and communties work well. They end up alienated from themselves and their own families, and they end up alienated from the communities, no matter the illusion put forth by social gatherings and club memberships.
Having lived in the USA my whole life observing people urban, rural, rich and poor, the happiest people are not ambitious but they make the base effort to get by financially while reserving the rest of their time enjoying their families. They are also not afraid to tackle problems as a family, because they don't have to hide behind a veil of status or wealth.
Okay, that's it.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
What does any of this have to do with "maximizing return on investment and shareholder value", by using "outsourcing and immigration of technical professionals"? It's all about short-term profiteering and perceptions. Get with the program, citizen ... lest you show up on a Homeland Security list that you really don't want to be on, hint hint.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
. . . writing and debugging ass-recognition software.
However, embryonal stem cells might be needed for research into the workings of the natural proces of growing stem cells into different tissues and shapes(organs).
To adress the "just use them argument", I think it would be fair to grant the fetus that which can be done: full support for his siblings, even if it means in-vitro-fertilization so he can have siblings.
Re:abortions due to medical reasons.
This reports differently, that many abortions can be traced back to financial problems; Note that financial help also increases "support" and social acceptance.Though I guess the sample is far from perfect:
http://www.richmonddiocese.org/ojp/ojp125.htm
I don't think of financing some mothers as doing industrial scale embryonal stem cell harvesting, but only for mothers selected through a kind of lottery, and used firstmost for research, then for the rare cases where embryonal stem cells work better than adult stem cells (also cf. reversine).
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I seem to recall that Socrates was reported as saying (by his disciple, Plato) to another orator something to the order of: "Why should any man interested in learning pay you to hear you talk?"
I feel basically the same way about my college degree.
I hardly know where to start, but I'll start with the beginning of your post:
No, I think that those who are trouble makers at the age of 16 are unlikely to change their ways by being exposed to two more years of a system they have already been exposed to for 10 years. I agree with your sentiment that tossing them to the wild is probably not the best thing for them either. However, if my only choice is between getting rid of the worst 5 trouble makers to save the other 27, or losing more than half the class...
I don't see them as babies, but as students with behavior disorders that I am incapable of treating in the setting I was provided. Money would be better spent on treating these behavior disorders in a more appropriate setting. Granted, just letting them drop out might not be the best solution. (Although as another poster pointed out, some students drop out in order to pursue possibly better options. Should we prevent them from making that choice, even if we believe it is not the right choice in the long run?)
Actually, if we could isolate the bullies from the rest of the students, then the "trenchcoat" students might not have felt so helpless that they were willing to throw their life away. Granted, nothing is ever that simple, but I'm trying to look out for the teased kids here, not make their life worse.
I know, I was there. Same high school as a matter of fact, and I was one of the teased, nerdy ones, so I have a special place in my heart for them. I don't believe that I truly allowed myself to become "jaded" until after I left. I internalized the problems of my students and it caused me tremendous pain. I am able to talk about it flippantly now, nearly 10 years later, and do say things that I don't necessarily feel, which might have given you a misrepresentation of what kind of person I am. (However, I've re-read my post, and I think you're projecting a lot of your experiences, or things you've read, on to me.)
I wonder if you know how true that is? Have you spent any time on the other side of the desk? Do you truly understand how difficult it is?
I admit that my suggestion that we let them drop out was overly simplistic. Given the choice between forcing them to st
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This reports differently, that many abortions can be traced back to financial problems
Insensitive clod! Don't you realize that the dire financial straits and stress of being a parent constitute a health problem?
*sigh* And I wish I were more joking when I say that... The definition of "medical risk" when it comes to abortions ranges from ectopic pregnancies to weight gain.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
parental involvement has the greatest effect on their child's education. Money, teachers, schools, while important, are all secondary effects.
If you have children and you want them to succeed scholastically, you must be involved in their education.
In my case, in grade school, high school and even college, I was a complete slacker, because I was a child with poor judgement and my parents didn't push me about school and schoolwork (the divorce didn't help things either).
The only reason I have any education at all is that my parents did provide me with the complete line of How and Why books and an encyclopedia when I was very young (4-8 or so) and those enflamed my love of learning for learning's sake.
What you have to do is deputize the smart troublemakers and use them to help teach everyone else. Don't ask them true/false questions which have absolute answers which only involve them for a few seconds and make them look stupid if they get the answer wrong. Ask them open ended questions that make them think and respond in detail and then use those answers to further the discussion.
Granted this taxonomy doesn't work very well in Mathematics, but for all the Liturature, Arts and Social Sciences classes it works very well. The physical sciences can also use open ended questions when you approach science from an scientific inquiry and/or engineering point of view instead of a rote memorization of facts point of view. Think about it, which would be more interesting to your students: explaining sodium's extremely low negativity and how it will replace hydrogen in water or throwing a chunk of sodium in a swimming pool?
Please delineate the xenophobic aspects of my post. So far as I can tell, there aren't any. I'm wasn't objecting to anything Chinese because it's Chinese, I was objecting to a systematic pattern of behavior that I've personally witnessed on numerous occasions, and that I find offensive regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator.
... I think the United States has contributed enough original material to the world's knowledge base to be free of charges of stealing anyone else's know-how. I got news for you: America amounted to something because people from all over the world came here to be free to exercise their intellect and powers of creation, something that was often denied them in their countries of origin. So yes, I suppose you could say we "stole" something from the rest of the world, but only because the rest of the world didn't know how to take care of its best and brightest.
So. According to your somewhat warped view of history, just because many nations have built their industrial base upon stolen technology and ideas, it's therefore incumbent upon the United States to accept this kind of behavior? That, in fact, we should continue to jumpstart a nation that has proven to be anything but an ally? That is, in fact, the largest totalitarian state on the planet, with a state ideology diametrically opposed to our own? Put it this way: we don't owe them anything. If high-tech industry is something important to the Chinese government and the Chinese economy, let them earn it or steal it somewhere else. Or pay for it. Otherwise, it's just another massive chunk of expensive foreign aid that America can ill afford. It's really easy to say, "that is how all industrial nations started" if you happen to be one of those nations trying to get started. But the established industrial powers are not required to give the wannabes a goddamn thing.. So get off your high-horse and start realizing how much the United States has given to the world (and still is), and that we have no obligation whatsoever to continue. This isn't a joke: our own economic capabilities have been severely compromised because of this kind of activity and our own people are suffering for it.
And don't try to compare pirated novels with major industrial tech worth billions. And so far as technical feats go
I have nothing intrinsically against anyone of any nation. Hell, I'm your typical white American engineer and my girlfriend is Nigerian (just earned her citizenship, actually.) So xenophobia (or bigotry, which is what you are really trying to infer) is not a part of my makeup. But I can see what is going on around me and make certain observations. And if you happen to be Chinese I didn't intend to offend (and don't care one whit if I did) but that's how I see it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There already is such a database.
I am a foreign student. The Dept. of Homeland Security maintains a database called SEVIS. My school is required to keep them updated with the following information (from ice.gov):
* Name
* Place and date of birth
* Country of Citizenship
* Address
* Status (full-time, part-time)
* Date of commencement of studies
* Degree program and field of study
* Practical training, beginning and ending dates
* Termination date and known reasons
* I-20 and application for I-20
* Number of credits completed per year
The information needs to updated pretty much instantaneously whenever it changes.
/usr/share/morlock
There was a day when you could, with reasonable trust, assume that the transaction you were about to engage was between you and the other party, and no one else. What I buy at the grocery store, how many movies I see, whether I spend $500 or $5000 on a wedding ring says NOTHING about who I am. It's purely my business. However, massive information pipelines being built where there are many collection points, and a few central repositories. Out of this comes an infrastructure that grows to rely on this information (credit reporting, for example), and out of this grows a dire (but seldom observed) need to make sure the data is accurate. Those who maintain these repositories gain all the benefit, with no risk or accountability. If the information happens to be incorrect, fixing it is next to impossible.
And to address your analogy - they might know me, but they only know what *I* choose to tell them, unless they've taken extraordinary means to locate other information. The way things are headed, I have no control over who knows what, or why, unless I take extradordinary measures to prevent the information from being collected in the first place. The burden has shifted 180 degrees.
"There was a day when you could, with reasonable trust, assume that the transaction you were about to engage was between you and the other party, and no one else."
That day must be from prehistory. One or two hundred years ago, if you bought a hammer at the local store, the storekeeper might actually volunteer the information to some of his other regular customers just by way of making conversation, and nobody would think it was improper. And if someone turned up on your property dead of a hammerblow the next day, a lot of folk would think they knew you did it and might tell any of their acquaintances so, *especially* if you were habitually secretive about your affairs. Today our privacy laws may be inadequate, but they are 100% stronger than what our ancestors had.
And yes, what you buy and how you use your time tells a lot about what you consider important, which is a big part of "who you are".
I deny, also, that e.g. credit bureaus get all the benefit thereof. You and I benefit from a system that gives remote strangers the assurance to extend us credit. You can do thousand-dollar deals with people on another continent whom you've never met before and never will meet, and they will deal with you, because you have a trusted introducer: the lender, who trusts you only because of what the credit bureaus know about you. The relationship is out of balance, but that can be fixed without junking the entire system.
Furthermore, you might be shocked to learn what casual acquaintances know about you despite your best efforts to keep it to yourself.
And last, very often the real problem is not what people know about us, but what they do not *know* yet think they do.
> And don't try to compare pirated novels with major industrial tech worth billions.
ok, how about Samuel Slater?
> I suppose you could say we "stole" something from the rest of the world, but only because the rest of the world didn't know how to take care of its best and brightest.
and the same ills could not be said of america today?
Samuel Slater
- SOL tests are administered in grades 10 and 12
- All children (including special ed) must be tested.
- Special Ed. children can be assigned to any grade level.
I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn that all special ed students in her school are assigned the grade level 11 for their entire stay at her school. An "unfortunate" side effect is that the special ed students are never tested. C'est la vie, eh?"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
The department of education requires that all colleges maintain rosters of students with SSNs for financial aid purposes. If you've filled out a FAFSA lately, your tuition office will ask you for your SSN in order to retrieve the info on you. California law (a) does not trump federal law (even though, constitutionally, it ought to be able to), and (b) does not prohibit colleges from collecting this information.
You're talking about measuring rate - but then you're talking about measuring quality. The two are not related.
All it does is measure the graduation rate.
A college with lower requirements for graduation will graduate more students than a college with higher requirements (on average).No we cannot.
All we can tell is that Sally graduated college.
She might have taken a junk liberal arts degree and barely passed.
Meanwhile, someone from a different high school gets better grades and is better prepared for college, but he chooses a far more difficult college and program. He learns a lot, but cannot complete his program so he drops out and gets a vendor certification and goes to work.
He would still be better educated than Sally, and if he had chosen her path, he might have graduated also.
Measuring the rate is meaningless.
Two people from the same high school can be identically prepared for college, yet one graduates because he took an easy program at an easy college and another drops out because he chose a harder program at a harder college.
Therefore, you know nothing about how well prepared they were.
If all you're measuring is rate, all you know is rate.
And rate can be affected by too many things.You could do that.
But how would you go about determining the cause of the 20% graduation rate? Hmmmmmm?
If you say "standardized tests in high school", then you've just invalidated you claim that rate tells you anything because we already have standardized tests in high school.
Measuring graduation rate means measuring graduation rate.
That is all it measures. Nothing more (as you seem to believe).Looking at the schools the students will go to will give you nothing more that a list of the schools the students go to.
How will that tell you why one high school has 20% college graduation and the rest have 60%?
Hmmmm?
Looking at the degree programs will tell you what degree programs are available.
How will that tell you why one high school has 20% college graduation and the rest have 60%?
Hmmmmm?
Looking at the grades will not tell you anything UNLESS those tests are standardized.
Go ahead and tell me what comparing two different, non-standardized tests will tell you about why one high school has a 20% college graduation rate and why the rest have 60%.
In fact, you can even use all FOUR of the factors you've mentioned.
#1. College graduation rates
#2. Which schools
#3. The degree programs
#4. The grades (on non-standardized tests)
Go ahead and explain how those factors would indicate WHY one high school
You're defining "tough schools" based on graduation rates.Now you're defining "touch subjects" based upon graduation rates."For other reasons". Nice. So your measurement is completely worthless then.I'm sure you cannot because of the simple fact that you do not understand either statistics or control groups.
Now, with standardized tests, you wouldn't have to guess at whether it was "tough schools" or "tough subjects". You'd KNOW.
All electrical engineering students would take the same, standardized, tests. You'd SEE which schools taught the information.
That would TELL you which high schools prepared their students better because you'd see the test scores of the students through high school and through college.Wrong.Wrong.Wrong.
You see this as just collecting data and THEN seeing if you can fit some reason(s) to it.
Wrong! You determine what you want to measure FIRST and THEN you determine how to measure it.
All you're doing is measuring college graduation rates and GUESSING about which MULTIPLE factors could cause the numbers you're seeing.
That's BACKWARDS.
And in the end, it tells you NOTHING.
As in your replies, you do not KNOW what the cause is. All you're doing is guessing what "could explain it".
Which means the data you've gathered has not put you any closer to finding the cause than you were when you started.
Which means the data you've gathered is worthless.
I have.
"You're defining "tough schools" based on graduation rates."
Nope.
"Now you're defining "touch subjects" based upon graduation rates."
Wrong again.
" Now, with standardized tests, you wouldn't have to guess at whether it was "tough schools" or "tough subjects". You'd KNOW."
Like hell you wouldn't. Test scores would still depend on the college attended and the subject studied.
" All electrical engineering students would take the same, standardized, tests. You'd SEE which schools taught the information."
Except all colleges have different curriculums, as stated before when you were not paying attention. Plus we are not measuring how well the students take tests, we are measuring how prepared they are for college. And you still have no way to compare students majoring in different subjects. See why your method sucks now?
" You see this as just collecting data and THEN seeing if you can fit some reason(s) to it."
Yes, that is generally how scientific experiments work. Would you prefer to come up with a reason and try to fit the data to it.
" All you're doing is measuring college graduation rates and GUESSING about which MULTIPLE factors could cause the numbers you're seeing."
Educated guesses, yes. So what? I never said we would get an absolute measure of how well the school is preparing students for college. But just because information cannot be quantitatively measured does not mean it is useless.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
You are confusing that with pseudo-science. Like gathering info about how Bigfoot can remain hidden. Hardly "educated". Again, you have yet to show how the college graduation rate gets you any closer to identifying problems in high schools. Then why collect it?Bullshit.
There are two forms, quantitative and qualitative.
You are measuring quantitative data (the rate of college graduation).
But then you're trying to use that quantitative data to make a qualatative statement.
Too bad, but it doesn't work that way.
Again, all you're measuring is rate, but you think you're measuring quality.
Maybe you should take some statistics classes, yes?
For the last fucking time, I never said that any of this would provide a definitive evidence of how the school is doing.
"Oooh. It seems that I was the one that first brought up that point"
Look at your link again, the fact that different curriculums would screw up your testing idea is mentioned, but not by you.
"Under the scientific method, first you form a hypothesis which can be falsified and then you develop an experiment to test your hypothesis based upon that."
No, first you observe hehavior. Then you make up a hypothesis explaining that observation. Have you never taken a science class?
"But then you're trying to use that quantitative data to make a qualatative (sic) statement. Too bad, but it doesn't work that way."
Actually it does. Peyton Manning has thrown for 41 touchdowns. That is from quantitative data. From that, I conclude that he is most likely a good quarterback. That is a qualitative statement.
Your post sounds like you took an intro to stat class and you now think you have a full understanding of the entire field. I hate to break it to you, but no you don't.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Well... you obviously don't understand basic economics and libertarian ideas.
First off, if government schools were abolished the US (state/local/fed) could cut TRILLIONS of dollars from governmental budgets. This would in return be passed along to tax payers and the economy would be flooded with TRILLIONS of extra disposable income!
Since we all know how wasteful and ineffecient the government is, this money could be used for private education. Don't believe me? I grew up in Florida (near Orlando). I lived in Seminole county and during my senior and junior years of hs (1999-2000) the county's cost to educate me was just shy of $12,000 a year! The private school down the road didn't charge that much, much less the local community college. The point being there was a LOT of waste and the education wasn't even as good as lower cost facilities that were non-gov.
In regards to the "Worthless" comment - I have not read that page and unfortunately do not have the time to although I bet it would be an interesting read. A couple of points on that however, just because one man of one state LP calls lower income people "worthless" doesn't mean that everyone with libertarian ideas feels that way. For example I understand that there will always be those that are lesser than others because that's the way the world works. I also know that libertarian ideas, limited government, a strong free market economy, and personal responsibility will raise the standard of living for everyone in said society. I am not a crass person, I made a point of feeding the homeless for 15 years in downtown Orlando once a month so it's not like I ignore the idea of lower income people. I do think however that in a free market economy everyone has to pull their own weight and not rely on that of the government to help them; maybe that is what the author was trying to say, I dunno. Private charity is a different issue altogether.
Have you ever read any of the economic studies from www.Cato.org ? If not you should - most economists agree that less government involvement is best.
Libertas in infinitum
Seems you're wrong.Nope. First you come up with a hypothesis. Otherwise, you don't know what to measure.
But that's been your problem all along. You can't tell the difference between quantity and quality.No you cannot. Not without knowing how the other quarterbacks perform.
If he throws 41, but the average for the rest is 500, then he's a pretty poor quarterback.
You cannot make a quality statement based upon a quantity data point. Too bad, so sad for you.
LOL. There is no such thing. Statistics are by definition quantitative. I thought you had taken a course in statistics.
"Nope. First you come up with a hypothesis. Otherwise, you don't know what to measure."
No. You cannot make up a hypothesis unless you have some observation for it to explain. Read the fucking definition of the word.
You need the observation first genius. Didn't they teach you that in your high school science classes?" No you cannot. Not without knowing how the other quarterbacks perform."
Fine, include their performance. Thats still only quantitative data, and you can make a qualitative statement about it.
Seriously, what level of statistics have you taken. You are constantly bragging about your great "education" in the manner, yet if you have taken a single course above the high school level you need to demand your money back.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Seems you're wrong, again.
This is just another way of keeping people from entering the USA on student visas and dropping out of sight; if they vanish from the student database without leaving the country, they can be marked for pickup for violating the terms of their visa. Without a list of students, you can't do that.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Statistic:
Quantitative:
Qualitative:
Now statistics may measure qualitative things, like how many of the cars are blue. But the statistic itself (such as 13% of the cars are blue) is quantitative.
Also, in case you are wondering, your test score measurement is also a quantitative measurement. Johnny got 89 of the questions correct. See that is a numerical measurement. A quantitative measurement. Understand?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
It seems you are confusing the dictionary definition of what a "statistic" is with the practice of the science of statistics.
Whether you are doing that in an intentional effort to confuse the issue or not does not matter. What matters is the fact that I have presented a link to a page about the actual science of statistics and how the variables can be either Quantitative or Qualitative.
All you have are dictionary definitions for those words.
Here's another free clue, you learn about a science by learning the science, not by trying to play with a dictionary.
In statistics, the data is either quantitative or qualitative. As I have shown on the page I linked to.
Thats more than you have.
" In statistics, the data is either quantitative or qualitative."
Yes, the data can be either. However, the statistic itself is by definition quantative. True experts in the field can understand the difference between the two. You clearly do not fall in that category.
You have yet to disclose what this "high level of education" with regard to statistics you have. I have to assume you had some 2 day stat lesson in your middle school science class. Your inability to correclty define commonly used words like "qualatative" and "quantitative", combined with your ridiculous (and since refuted) assertions like "qualatative observations cannot be found from quantatative data" just serve to back that up. If you have taken anything beyond that I would be surprised, and if you have taken anything beyond the high school level I'm afraid you should ask for your money back. Either you learned nothing or your professor had no clue what he was talking about.
I on the other hand am days away from graduating with a degree in mathematics. I'm not about to listen to some dumb kid who doesn't even know what a statistic is try to lecture me on a subject with which he has a demonstrated ignorance.
Some people are idiots. Some think they know everything about a subject. You are unfortunate enough to be in both categories.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
And that is more accurate than your dictionary definitions.
#1. The material presented is "very basic and over simplified overview of the field".
Yet you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
#2. The material is presented by a "biologist" and not a statistician.
Again, you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
In order to refute my points, you'll have to come up with something better than a dictionary.
#1. The material presented is "very basic and over simplified overview of the field".
Yet you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
#2. The material is presented by a "biologist" and not a statistician.
Again, you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
In order to refute my points, you'll have to come up with something better than a dictionary.
Again, your complaints seem to be:
#1. The material presented is "very basic and over simplified overview of the field".
Yet you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
#2. The material is presented by a "biologist" and not a statistician.
Again, you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
In order to refute my points, you'll have to come up with something better than a dictionary.
Maybe they should teach debate in that high school you're attending. Then you would know better than to try to trap someone in an "ad hominem (circumstantial)" ploy. http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/attack.htm
Looks like you lose on BOTH points.
But your repeated refusals to support your use of a dictionary as a reference over a text about that subject while you are demanding info about my past shows that such was your goal.Use the URL I gave you.And there you are wrong. For I have substantiated every one of my claims with a verifiable reference that was not merely a dictionary.
Your position would be correct if I had ONLY stated that I was an expert and that such-and-such is true because I said it.
Much as you continually attempt to do with your claims of graduating soon.
My claims are supported by the referenes I have given. You either refute the references or you lose.
Your PREVIOUS complaints were:
#1. The material presented is "very basic and over simplified overview of the field".
Yet you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
#2. The material is presented by a "biologist" and not a statistician.
Again, you seem to prefer a dictionary as your primary reference.
Since you couldn't address those, you decided to switch to an ad hominem attack. Just as I predicted you would. Yeah. You won't believe how many times I see people talking about things the could do if they wanted to. Personally, I prefer to stick to reality and facts.
The facts are that I have presented more references that are not dictionaries while all you have are claims about your education, ad hominem attacks and the eternal "if I wanted to, I could do
Whatever.
And I pointed out that a dictionary does not refute a text on the subject. Since you are unable to provide supporting material from anything more than your claims or a dictionary, my reference still stands. Too bad.Yet there has to be at least one link (quantity) to a reference. All you've been able to do is link to a dictionary.
I've linked to an actual text on the subject.
Yes, quality is more important than quantity and you have not provided any quantify of quality links.If it is questionable, then refute it with something more than a dictionary and your claims about your education.
That's all that you need to do.
Yet time after time you've been unable to do so.
If I was wrong, it should be very simple for someone of your advanced education to provide a link (not a dictionary) clearly showing where I was wrong.
I've done that to your claims.
Why do you have such a problem doing that with mine?
You'll have to give specific pages and quotations and how those refute the points I have brought up.
I'll even help you with that. The original discussion was about college graduation rates and high school preparation for college.
I said that measuring college graduation rates (when paired with high school test scores) did not tell you anything about how well the high school prepared the students for college. Without standardized tests in college a high college graduation rate can indicate "easy" courses while a low college graduation rate can indicate "hard" courses.
You claimed that I was wrong.
Again, my position is that measuring college graduation rates (when paired with high school test scores) did not tell you anything about how well the high school prepared the students for college. Without standardized tests in college a high college graduation rate can indicate "easy" courses while a low college graduation rate can indicate "hard" courses.
Don't go setting up strawmen that are easy for you to disprove.
My position is here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131283&cid=11
No you did not. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131283&cid=10
If you feel that I am wrong about that, please post a link and quote where you said such.
You have continually stated that multiple factors be considered in addition to the college graduation rates.
I said that if any of those "multiple factors" were standardized tests, then you were supporting my position.
You have never specified what "multiple factors" you'd be measuring. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131283&cid=10
Nice try with the lies and the strawman. But I expected as much from you.
Feel free to post a link to where I have said that.And you refuse to state what those "other factors" are because you know that they would be standardized tests which would support my position and invalidate your's.
Great. Now it's gone full circle and you still cannot specify what those "other factors" are.No, you haven't. HOW will you measure the "difficulty of schools" without standardized tests?
HOW will you measure the "difficulty of courses of study" without standardized tests?
Without standardized tests "grades recieved" are meaningless.
And so on and so forth. Been there, gone over that. You still cannot answer the most basic questions.
I'll see what you can come up with on Monday.
Therefore, accourding to your logic, I am a better quarterback than he is.
Which is the flaw in your "logic".
I'll wait to see what you post on Monday.