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Only 22% of California 8th Graders Pass National Science Test
bonch writes "22 percent of California eighth-graders passed a national science test, ranking California among the worst in the U.S. according to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The test measures knowledge in Earth and space sciences, biology, and basic physics. The states that fared worse than California were Mississippi, Alabama, and a tie between the District of Columbia and Hawaii. 'Nationally, 31 percent of eighth-graders who were tested scored proficient or advanced. Both the national and state scores improved slightly over scores from two years ago, the last time the test was administered.'"
Are known to the state of California to cause cancer.
I can see states like Mississippi, Alabama doing poorly because they are run by Republicans and republicans hate spending money on kids. (Yes I just heard a guy on MSNBC say that last night.) But California is a Democrat-run state. Their students should be the best and brightest and most well-funded. Like Democrat-run Maryland. Hmmmm.
(Note: I'm being sarcastic. I think Democrats suck just as badly as Republicans. None of them know how to run anything.... not the schools, not the MVA, not the Amtrak, nor the post office.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Those subject areas generally do not lead to profitable careers. So, if california really has the best interests of its students at heart, they are emphasizing human resource management and finance instead.
And 100% of bonch sockpuppets fail the shill test.
At that low of a %, they are only "among the worst"
Refer to Einstein's famous quip.
This news will undoubtedly be used as the basis for calls to shovel more money into a broken system despite decades of funding increases failing to show results, all the while modest Chinese budgets are sufficient for creating public K-12 education which outranks us.
The public schools have become a jobs program contaminated by labor politics.
We can't reward success without screaming from those who fear being held accountable for their failures.
We can't make better use of technology and automated learning because of perennial votes for make-work teaching positions.
The whole thing stinks, the public doesn't understand the system stinks, and poison politics will prevent the problems from being corrected.
And banned public-employee unions from forcing people to join and from collective bargaining.
There's something fundamentally wrong with a forced membership public-employee union turning around and using its dues to fund a political party that wants bigger government.
Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse....
They certainly aren't helping.
Who needs so called facts when you have Jesus?
Make the tests easier: Everybody wins!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Learning science helps teach critical thinking and one of the greatest threats to the status quo governments we have in place today is a population of critical thinkers. I often bemoan the fact that I never participated in the drug culture of my youth and fried my brain to the point where I'm too apathetic to care and cannot suspend my sense of disbelief in what I see around me. It's all too depressing and, if you think about it, you know that we're well on a path to a new world order with no room for free thinkers except as artists used to distract the masses from the real problems. And I'm not talking about global warming or population control.
I live here.. look, money doesnt fix this.. The politicians and unions have crafted to a fine art the urgent plea "Money for schools - the kids!"
But guess what? teacher pay goes down.. Secondly, look at the facts on the ground.. lots of people having lots of babies that dont do well with reading writing and arithmatic. You can argue about it all you want, but its true. So instead of wasting air telling me I am misguided, how about a society that is relatively free and fair, aside from people's science skills..
>> Nationally, 31 percent of eighth-graders who were tested scored proficient or advanced
May-b our kids is just to dang stoopid.
When so many Californians believe that their new electric meters are going to be giving them cancer ( http://stopsmartmeters.org/ ), this is comes as no surprise at all. Also, crystal healing and homeopathy.
Can someone post the test here. I think it would be really interesting to see what percent of Slashdot readers can pass the test.
One thing that the article doesn't discuss is what kind of test it is. If it's a knowledge based test, then the score is probably interesting on a standalone basis. If, on the other hand, it's like the ACT science test was when I took it (a while ago, admittedly), it's really more of a reading comprehension test that happens to focus on science-based material.
A purely knowledge-based test obviously favors students who have been taught the topics, in which case the official's comment stands and the test isn't really a useful metric of California's performance as a whole (provided they cover earth and space science eventually).
On the other hand, if it's more of a reading comprehension test over science-based material, and the scores aren't aligned with the scores on a general reading comprehension test, it reveals something about California students not being able to their reading skills to scientific material in a general manner.
Competition means pressure to achieve, and that means some people won't do as well as others.
We need school choice vouchers so some people can rescue their kids from a _permanently_ and irretrievably broken system.
(It's heresy to admit it's broken and that given the REALITY of the public DEMANDS which broke it, that it WILL NEVER be fixed.)
Vouchers would allow secularists who value education to rescue their offspring from the mediocrity of public schools and from frequently toxic public school students. (I was so rescued and fortunate enough to finish my education in good boarding schools.)
Vouchers would also allow Superstitionists to send THEIR kids to religious schools, but that's actually a good thing since it rescues publics schools from them.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Apple may want to stop touting that it's products are designed in California.
When California passed laws limiting property taxes, local funds for schools decreased. They were never fully replaced with state funds. The problem is, sadly, democracy driven by greed. In California, laws can be made by referendum - direct voting by the people, who voted to keep their money and to hell with the school systems. I don't blame them. I have no children and don't particularly want to pay to school any, but this is the result.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
California State Politicos (on both sides - mostly Dems) are beholden to the teacher's unions. Hence why they spend a shit load on education and don't get much value.
Unfortunately, all one has to do to distract the general public from the issue is to bring up a distraction issue - using something that pisses off the Social Conservatives works best (Smaller government! Unless it has to do with what goes on in the bedroom or women's reproduction; then government MUST be involved!).
Just think how fast the problem could be solved if people voted and became as politically active as when the gay marriage vote came up - Prop 8, was it?
Nothing wiiil change. Even when California's kids are placed in with Alabama and Mississippi's kid's.
Yep, I'm curious on the content and how well I'd do.
From TFA:
If you want to see something that is a fairer guide to academic achievement, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is a much better guide. Iowahawk used it to take down a weak argument about ACT/SAT scores during the public kerfluffle about the efficacy of union vs. non-union teachers.
Dog is my co-pilot.
By the time my generation hit the schools we were in the age of "it's okay, just do your best" which children are smart enough to realize means "slack off and claim it's your best". I'm nearly thirty now, so this doesn't come as much of a surprise -- we're starting to see the kids of the folks a half decade older than me transition from middle school to high school.
I wonder what Benjamin Spock would say.
Knoweldge of biology, physics, etc, tends to lead one to a life of low-paying and extremely frustrating work.
By avoiding those subjects, california is doing its students a favor.
We talk talk a lot about income distribution, health stats, longevity, teen pregnacy... etc.
Who wants to bet the 22 percent that passes the national science exam doesn't have most of these problems?
Now, having determined that there is correlation between many different negative demographic stats. What is the cause? Really?
Fix it.
It isn't education because they're getting the same education as the kids that do well.
It isn't school lunches because those are the same too.
What is it? Go through all the correlating factors and isolate the cause.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Curious here as well. Any time Christian Science Monitor posts one of their mini tests (my favorite recent ones were "Are you smarter than an atheist?" and "Could you pass the naturalization test?") I'm all over those. I like tests, unlike the majority of Americans. I'm also a total nerd and science geek, though, with my RSS plugged in to Discover Blogs...
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The educator says
"We don’t want every child to become a scientist, but we want them to be prepared to make that choice if they want.”
That's only a small part. the big part is that living in a society dependent on gadgets without a basic understanding of science causes problems. ....
Like fear of 'chemicals' like hydrogen. (But likeing water.)
Or fear of harmless things with a bunch of wires.
Or not being able to sort out real science from fake.
Or
The US is being left behind the rest of the world, and especially what most Americans consider third-world countries. Brazil is really flying up the ladder in terms of what it offers the world. They import almost nothing and are a rising economic power in the region. Same goes for some EU countries like Poland and Croatia.
Americans are too worried about entertainment. I'm thankful to have actually been taught in schools. I graduated in the mid 80s and they still taught back then. Now schools "teach" the kids how to pass the standardized tests. They don't really teach. Very few places even teach critical thinking skills, cause and effect, how to use semi-colons, etc. School has become a place to spend the day -- a club where you may be presented with useful facts. There are exceptions, but they are woefully few.
It is true that the right doesn't like to spend money on education unless they can control the curriculum. Here in Texas a couple of years ago, the entire state body that decides on what's to be taught went right wing. New books were immediately ordered that presented the right wing revisionist history. Science is almost anathema in Texas schools because of the fundamentalists. Kids know more about celebrities than they do about how cells reproduce. Most kids I've met in Texas at family get togethers and such are grossly misinformed and generally put on airs of "it's funny that I'm a dumb ass" and will likely spend four years in a college and still learn nothing or end up going into the military where they will truly learn nothing.
Computers were hailed as ushering us into the next phase of better living, where we would have access to just about any tidbit of information. While this promise has largely come true, education uses computers wrongly when teaching. Americans schools both K-12 and higher still teach by rote. This is so wrong. Look at Asia where kids are taught to actually think through and reason things out based on potential cause and effect.
We are losing the STEM battle big time and we don't give a damn as long as American Idol is on... I really thank God I'm not a teen in today's America.
Do creationists really have much of a foothold in California? I wouldn't have expected that to be the case, but I wouldn't know. It seems to have the reputation of being a fairly liberal state though.
As much as I may dislike the Christian Right trying to inject their belief system into public education, it's not like the Right (or any subset of it) has a monopoly on ruining education with their ideas and beliefs.
It seems to me that the coddling don't-hurt-their-self-esteem attitude that is churning out kids that have screwed up expectations, inadequate educations, and a distorted view of their own competence is a product of a subset of liberal thinkers.
Who needs space science when we have American Idol? OMG, did you watch last night's show?! I couldn't believe she totally did that! lol!!!! I'm gonna be on Idol someday and be a rock star. If that fails, there is always The Voice or America's Got Talent. Gotta go, playing Angry Birds now.
But at least we're gonna have a super-cool high speed rail link between SF and LA! Right? Right?
I don't know about anyone else, but that number should be above 50%, or even 60%, period. Under 30% is downright terrifying.
Part of on overall event where science is being attacked by many groups. Heartland, several churches, pundits.
"It seems to me that the coddling don't-hurt-their-self-esteem attitude that is churning out kids that have screwed up expectations, inadequate educations, and a distorted view of their own competence is a product of a subset of liberal thinkers."
well, you are wrong, but keep letting the media dictate your views for you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Really? You mean Democratic state majorities in both legislative houses dating back to at least the Gray Davis administration were figments of my imagination? And, whew, that Arnold Schwarzenegger! What a government cutter!
Dog is my co-pilot.
Coff.
Dog is my co-pilot.
San Fran & it's surrounds are very liberal. The rest of the state, not quite as much. Not that I think that has *anything* to do with the test results.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Question is how many know how to apply for welfare and know how to speak spanish...
I think we are headed to a new Dark Ages, much like Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Instead of being caused by strictly by a hardline Catholic church, this one will be a combination of religious and political division, the insatiable desire to consume media with no redeeming value and the idolization of fame. You only have to look to the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and anyone on the Jersey Shore.
Then again, maybe I'm just getting old.
You can look at questions here: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrlsx/search.aspx?subject=science
Also, there's a little sample test: http://nationsreportcard.gov/science_2011/sample_quest.asp
Our per-pupil spending on public schools has quadrupled since 1962 (inflation-adjusted, the nominal increase is over 25 times). Yet, only 30% of 8th-graders nation-wide can read properly, and about as many have a firm grasp of science. Obviously, we aren't spending enough money, are we?
we be president now
Thanks for mentioning those. I'm going through the naturalization one now. I was a little bit disappointed at the "atheist" test to see that the average score of my demographic -- Protestants -- was a mere 16 points out of 32, but I acquitted us well with a score of 31 (rather than taking a guess, I put "Don't Know" for the only one I didn't know for certain). I thought the questions were fairly trivial, to be honest, and was surprised that even the best-scoring demographics failed to average more than about 20. That's not exactly very comforting.
So where does it come from?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
That 40% contains varying degrees of ability to speak, read, and write English but it is safe to say most of them will be at a disadvantage when taking a test in a language they are not fluent in.
That being said, we (California) still have crappy public schools and this is still a huge problem. However, it isn't just a problem of bad science education, it is also a language barrier problem.
a child's education. Since California is composed of so many illegal immigrants who can't even speak English, let alone Add and Subtract, it's no wonder so many kids are falling behind!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
85% of California students speak fluent Spanish [PDF]
Related? Unrelated? You be the judge.
California is dominated by gullible morons chasing nothing but consumerist dreams.
All the school children are too busy to learn anything because they spend all their time being beaten up by thugs, or being thugs (yo mah name iz t-DIGGS yo i so thuggin, dont any yall frontin, i gots 7 bitches preggo last WEEK, i gots 2 be a thug dats what mah pops iz he be mackin dem bitches, just waitin fo dat handout yall white muthafuckas OWES me yo, best pay up fuckaz 'fo you get dat grill busted yo).
If California were a computer I'd nuke the fucking hard drive and start over with a system that doesn't glorify incompetence and societal dysfunction.
Perhaps you might be inclined to provide some evidence of this?
After all, the "science being attacked by many groups" thing should affect all States equally - it's not like the "attacks" are local to California and DC.
So, what makes both California and DC different from Massachusetts? They all lean left, DC spends more per kid than MA, which spends more per kid than CA.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
How many Slashdot readers who have no faith in their passing would take the test? The school test is required, posting it on the Slashdot comments section will only draw interest to those who think they will pass.
Virtually all of them. My kid is in 8th grade and I am familiar with the material. Not everyone here would get 100%, but passing it is well within the skills of anyone with any science background at all. Someone who couldn't pass this would have no interest in 90% of what slashdot posts and would not spend time here.
Everyone is so worried about kids hurting themselves, physically or emotionally, that they aren't allowed to do actual science anymore. We assume that science is too hard so we dumb it down. Chemistry classes don't even have chemicals anymore. At this point, I think we need to expect more out of our students and let them prove how intelligent they can be if we don't hold them back or get in their way.
Sorry, rather liberal myself, but I don't think that one is pure media. The "try your best and get good marks even if you did a bad job" is a fairly liberal attitude, although an extreme case. Then agian, the extreme conservative case could defeat a child and make him or her think that he or she can do nothing, and give up.
Both are problematic. However, it's only in rare/bad schools/classes where you will see either extreme. Even without the extremes, pushing to hard towards one of these, could hurt the mental and emotional growth of a child (the liberal side leading him/her to be unable to handle criticism, or perceived failure, the conservative side leading towards a perception of self-worthlessness that can't be overcome).
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
This isn't surprising, given that 5 out of 4 people have difficulty with fractions.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Until you have parents willing to (a) help their kids outside of school (b) become involved in helping their local school succeed and (c) make their children accountable for learning it won't matter what the curriculum is, how much teachers get paid, or what the facilities of the school system are like. You simply cannot spend 3-4 instructional hours a day spread over a class of students for half the year (180 days), then give them no assistance outside of that and expect any significant fraction of them to succeed.
Yes, there are motivated students. Yes, there are fabulous teachers. Yes, coming to an open, inviting, and technologically advanced facility makes for a positive atmosphere.
We help my daughter every night with her homework. She's just at the end of 4th grade, but there are parts of her math that my wife knows how to do, but doesn't know well enough to teach. I'm pretty lousy at my local history (I didn't grow up here, but I was never a history buff anyway). Between the two of us, she has all the tools she needs to succeed. I cringe at a couple of the kids in her class that don't get any help on their homework; it makes me feel awful for them because I know how difficult some of the concepts were for my daughter, and how we might have spent an extra hour (or three) working though problems so that she understood them. For a 9 or 10 year old confronted with a completely foreign concept and nothing but a 30 minute class discussion and two (sometimes poor) examples it's got to be frustrating beyond belief. In two years time, I expect those kids will be in the bottom groups, failing these national tests, and not caring any more because they don't have the resources to be able to make it. Don't even get me started on the kids who parents take them on mini-vacations when they get out-of-school suspension because the parents figure if they have to take off work they may as well have some fun. Or the ones who blame the teacher when their kids get poor grades.
The problem isn't the system, or the money, or the tests...it's the parents. All the money and great teachers and fabulous facilities do is set the stage for learning. If the parents can't do their part, it will - by and large - be wasted.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
5 sample questions here:
http://nationsreportcard.gov/science_2011/sample_quest.asp
all questions for grades 4,8,12 here:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrlsx/search.aspx?subject=science
5/5 for me
San Fran & it's surrounds are very liberal. The rest of the state, not quite as much. Not that I think that has *anything* to do with the test results.
The state is "liberal" overall. Geographically "liberal" regions may be very small but that is where the vast majority of the population resides. The "conservative" regions are relatively sparsely populated.
California has a bicameral state legislature, a senate and an assembly. For the last 42 years the California state senate has been exclusively controlled by the democrats, and the democrats have controlled the assembly for 40 of the last 42 years.
Maybe we should follow the liberal model on this and throw a bunch of money at the schools.
The more you spend, the better the education, right?
I know, because I'm from Wisconsin, where the governor is "attacking" the schools
by cutting spending.
After all, the top nine states were all colder than the tenth. There's something to be said for a nice cozy classroom when it's freezing outside.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Actually, 85% English learners Speak Spanish . And not everyone is English learner.
Personally I like the naturalization test. I helped one of my buddies become a US citizen (studying for it and knowing our history) and most naturalized citizens probably know more about our governmental structure than most US citizens who were born here.
Time to offend someone
It is both trivial and profound to note that our educational problems will be solved when the math team has the same prestige as the football team.
Wow... those are extremely easy. Even the ones marked "hard" were easy. This is what we expect from 8th graders?
I'd actually expect a bright kindergartner to have the logical capability to figure most of them out, with minimal amounts of prerequisite facts they might not have memorized yet, and prompting to get their thought process onto the right track. (Not telling them the answer, obviously, but guiding them through the process through which the correct answer is found.)
Note that, IMO, teachability (critical thinking and logic) is more important and fundamental than catalogued, memorized, facts, which is why I'd permit them that level of coaching. By 8th grade, I'd definitely expect them to have learned the facts necessary to solve them with no assistance, given only the amount of information presented in the questions themselves.
But, hey, what do I know, I only aced the Science/Reasoning section of the ACT with a perfect score on that sub-group.
22% of 8th graders in California are Asian ;)
When I was a kid, I was self-motivated to learn as much as possible and to take the challenging classes. Taking the challenging classes meant I tended to get the teachers who were also motivated and enjoyed what they were doing. My parents weren't involved in my education. They didn't need to be. I don't think they talked to any of my teachers even once. Am I really in the minority?
Atheist here. Scored 31/32 on the religious one. Eeeeeeeasy! However, the Christian Science Monitor seems to have something of a mathematical problem saying 31/32 is 97%.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
If the test was given in English, then everyone who took it was an English learner, and, unless they've stopped learning, is still an English learner.
The problem appears to be that they have defined "English learner" as "child who spoke a language other than English at home prior to learning English". That is not what "English learner" means.
I, for one, would appreciate if people writing English would write in such a way for fluent English readers to understand what they're saying.
If you have ADD or dyslexia read the first question CAREFULLY. Apparently I think water is HO2 -_-
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...without a sample/example exams to see what they are failing at.
Chemical Engineering PhD here. My parents never pressed me hard and my grades were generally so-so until college (and even then for some classes). I had something most kids today don't have: an independent life. Before I was eight there were three more mouths to feed plus the two already older than myself. Proverbially, I was kicked from the nest at three or four when most kids may not leave until eighteen (and, emotionally, never). I learned how to struggle with material, how to fail, and how to succeed. When we had a stupid diarama or take-home project, the result brought back was entirely my own. At best, I was given a ride to the hobby shop or somewhere for supplies. If I failed a test, the shame was mine alone. We didn't even need to get them signed.
It would have NEVER occurred to me to even ask for homework help. If I didn't get long division, the burden was on me to work through the material until understanding came. I learned how to learn. Perhaps you teach that???
I don't doubt that parents are important. I do doubt that they are, in any large or personal respect, to blame.
It's california, kids want to become hollywood weirdos there, not physicists. They want to make the bufoons in front of a camera, earn millions, get drugs, have trashy tattoos, drive luxury cars and show the middle finger to paparazzis on a daily basis. That's their ideal life, at least for the majority of them.
But they shouldn't be blamed for that, it's just one of the (many) shameful consequences of the capitalistic system: actors make more money than scientists, so people want to become junky hollywood weirdos instead of being interested in physics.
P.S.: no inter-state rivalry intended, I'm german.
Anyway, here's a few less-impressive but still revealing facts:
41% of public school students in California live in homes where the most frequently spoken language is not English. [1].doc
English fluency rate in the LA school district has risen from a mere 16% in 2001 to an unsatisfying 49% in 2005. [2]
What would Jesus do?
"An ignorant, fearful public, is a loyal, compliant public. Mwa-hah, Mwa-hah, Mwa-hah-hah-hah!" -- Fox^H^H^HGOP HQ
They used to have a no-nonsense school administrator in Michele Rhee.
No nonsense?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/education/22winerip.html?pagewanted=all
Hmm.. I'm a Christian, believe in God, generally vote Republican, and I routinely scored in the top 1% of the US on the standardized math and science tests. Don't let your media delivered Liberal radicalism cloud what may be left of your common sense.
Naturally if 50 states scores are tallied then one or more will by tied for first and one or more will be tied for last place. It had to be somebody! Why is this news outside of California?
Maybe the actual numbers are news? 22% seems awfully low as does 31%. Then again, without actually seeing the contents of the test they are meaningless. I remember one class I took in college where 22% was in the B range after the curve was applied because it was just plain hard! Granted, when I was in school none of the standardized tests seemed difficult at all but 20 years later what do I know about the tests that 8th graders just took? My gut feeling is that these numbers show an appalling lack of knowledge but nothing I see proves it.
Given that is hasn't been, we may have the answer already.
That's an easy one. Geography, mostly. Because of all the agriculture resulting from its climate, California has a lot of immigrants (both legal and illegal) coming from Mexico who do not speak English very well when they get here. In particular, the percentge of illegal immigrants (by definition, first-generation) per capital is higher in California than any other state in the U.S., and by a very sizable margin. (Hover over each state's raw number to see the per capita figure.) Therefore, the number of children who are simultaneously learning science while still learning English is higher than anywhere else in the U.S. As a result, there are more kids struggling, who need more individual attention, which means the schools cost more while producing lower test scores.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
âoeWe just donâ(TM)t teach enough science,â he said. âoeIn elementary school, science education is often just an hour a week.
In California, eighth-grade students are only taught in physical science, not in Earth or space sciences â" another reason why they would
If you see the problem, then hell, do something about it. Forget about wars and stuff, teach the kids, there's not much being more important than that. Ever.
I didn't grow up in the US. When I was 6 grader, I had 2 chemistry, 2 physics, 4 math, 1 biology class each week (among all the other stuff). I have 2 universiy degrees and a phd. Another 4 of my 8th grade-classmates also have phd degrees. Go figure.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Clearly this is because we're not investing enough in our childrens future. If we just invest more money, it will solve the problem. We'll be able to hire more administrators, and everybody knows more administrators means more jobs and better test results! Sorry folks, the public school system isn't there to teach kids. It's a jobs program for adults.
Unfortunately, I think for many religious people, going to church is a social club, and scholarship of one's faith has fallen by the wayside. That's why creationism is so worrisome to me: it doesn't just represent ignorance of biology, but a general anti-intellectual movement - so much so that people don't bother learning about the precepts of their own faith.
I got 30/32 on the "Are you smarter than an atheist?" test, for the record.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
but 31/32 is 97% (to 2 significant digits). Unless you are a c programmer. Then 31/32 == 0.
Why round the figure to 97% Why express it as a percentage at all?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
It has been a lot of years since I was in school, but back then in CA it was pretty common for teacher to declare on the first day of class that if you tried, they would not fail you.
Irreducibly complex? I know...sry
I have no children, and cannot imagine I ever will (I didn't like kids, even when I was a kid). However I gladly support taxes for education. Why? Well to put it simply I don't want to die poor. I want this nation to continue to get richer and more prosperous and for that to happen we must have an educated populace.
There are all sorts of specifics as to why an uneducated populace would make life suck from the simple like your surgery example to the complex like social unrest and revolution due to an underclass. The long and short of it is I want none of that, I want a good life and that requires that others have a good life and THAT requires good education.
I think this one has to be laid at the feet of progressives rather than liberals (the groups overlap but aren't identical). Self-esteem was supposed to more important than learning the facts. However, it appears that these self-esteem programs were based on flawed research. The original research indicated that self-esteem was highly correlated to success, I'm not sure how it got turned into self-esteem causes success (rather than success causes self-esteem), but that was the conclusion pushed by the author. This is a case of progressives seizing on a new, unproven, idea and it turning out to be wrong.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I skimmed the Slashdot comments to see if the test was a good test, or what it measured, or sample questions... and all I saw was bickering over Republicans, Democrats, and Mexicans. (Slashdot is usually better than this actually: such discussions rarely reach 4s and 5s) So I looked at the comments on the article and they are the same, just blaming rednecks and teacher's unions.
It seems that the general public cannot discuss the subject of schools or tests rationally. So how can we teach our children to think rationally? I am in awe.
One thing that seems to be missed is that we are talking about 22 vs 31. The 31 is an average, so their are probably some 23s, 24,s as well as some 50s and 60s. It may suck to be at the bottom, but if the test is what we decide is the bar to for competency, we are failing as a nation. It's like an argument at the Special Olympics where the kids are calling each other retarded.
Oh, and I would also add that because of the extra time and expense educating them, there's less money and time for everyone else, so even if you factor out all the recent immigrants from the testing pool, they can still have an effect on the education of the general population. This makes any sort of statistical compensation very difficult, and makes various states' numbers hard to compare usefully.
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The standards are just simple too high. its just too hard. I saw we dumb down the rest of society to match.
And not everyone is English learner.
Many of the students in California aren't English learners... or English speakers.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
Ushering our well-educated children into a future in which, as adults, they cannot find jobs, would be harmful to them, no?
I am pretty interested in protecting MY job too. If that means that somebody else's kid might have to work a little harder on his own initiative to protect HIS job, so be it.
There are creationists here, and just as weird as non-creationist Californians, but they don't have a hold on the school board or local governments here like they do in other states. Still, it only takes one asshole family of creationists to throw a fit that their religious rights are being oppressed by their kids hearing the word evolution. As a liberal, I'm wondering why you lumped creationists in with the right. Even the Christian right seems unfair.
I'd question whether coddling much of a problem in education as opposed to, say, parents having to work longer hours due to the war on the middle and poor classes.
Interesting, I found the official "naturalization self test" and tried 15 questions, I got 14 correct. I briefly lived in New York for 6 months about 7 years ago and I'm a sporadic follower of US politics, but I can't believe my score could be better than the average American. I found some of the questions and answers rather simplistic though.
I'd be shocked if more than quarter of the jobs in the US actually required an 8th grade education or higher.
But then I once met a recent American High School graduate while backpacking in Europe who believed "Independent" was a US political party...
From TFA:
[quote]Scores from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show that too few students have the skills that could lead to careers in the field, educators said.[/quote]
Wrong; I read this statement and think there are many fields where these persons might find a career. We still have quite a large agricultural footprint and them 'maters will still need to be picked.
[quote]...many students have the skills requisite to work in a field...[/quote]
There. I fixed it.
I'm not sure what experience everyone else had, but until my freshman year of high school, pretty much every science class I took was a complete joke. All of the assignments were essentially basic reading comprehension exercises that involved absolutely no use of any kind of critical thinking or experimentation. TFA said they were asking questions about the periodic table on the test. I can personally attest that the periodic tables in my grade school and middle school were nothing but decorations. We never used them or talked about them. All of the real effort was put into English and Math, because those were the two areas that the state (Arizona in this case) routinely tested us on. Science was virtually ignored.
If you are aware of history and have a background on US government it is pretty simple but as you mentioned below there are an awful lot of individuals in the US who are absolutely clueless. I have seen a number of people (doesn't matter which side) who believe that the president has absolute power and should be able to rule by dictate. Toss in some more esoteric stuff like the US constitution being the supreme law of the land and they look at you like a deer in headlights. These people would have a hard time naming the 3 branches of government let alone being able to tell which house must originate any legislation that deals with taxing or spending. When my buddy passed his naturalization test his comment was that it was really easy but yet it appears that a large fraction of natural born citizens would fail it.
Time to offend someone
Oh, they can't pass a test? It could be worse, since I don't find tests to be all that important. Especially with all the rote memorization and teaching to the test going on in US public schools. Too much emphasis is put on testing and grades, and No Child Left Behind worsens this. Critical thinking seems to be lacking.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
They certainly aren't helping.
You're right! When was the last time a god-believer invented anything useful!
I'll now go back to using all these things that atheists invented! All these many, useful things.
To be fair if the person was from Minnesota that might actually be true. There is an official party (3rd largest by vote counts) in Minnesota that is called the Independence Party of Minnesota from which one of our more embarrassing former Governors came from. Granted it isn't a national political party or even that large of a political party but there it would at least be understandable.
Time to offend someone
The woman was pathetic at her job. Fire and brimstone with nothing substantive.
This isn't a real test. It's the kind the teacher told you to take but didn't affect your grade. I was a decent student but whenever we had one of these I just marked whatever and them daydreamed.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Hewlett-Packard would appear to have the same problem, as my HP-48GX returns 0.96875 for 31/32. This is 97% to the nearest percent.
Notice, I did say a "subset" of both conservatives and liberals. You see, I do not assume that all conservatives are ignorant radical Bible Thumpers or greedy sociopaths. I realize that there are some conservatives out there that even make arguments worth merit.
Unlike yourself, who seems to have bought into the conservative propaganda regarding "liberal media", "liberal radicalism", and the lack of common sense by those with left sympathies.
She was from Hawaii, but maybe they have something similar..
Why round the figure to 97% Why express it as a percentage at all?
If you had faith in math, you wouldn't need to ask that question.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
It would be interesting to know how the test was carried out though. If it's through a phone survey, I can certainly see a large percentage of that being due to other factors such as stress, kids running around, etc. Has anyone carried out the test on natural born Americans in the same conditions that immigrants take the test?
Remember, in our public school system there are no loosers!
We can't hold them back due to poor scores, they need to stay with their peers.
We can't play a sport like kickball, where there could be a losing team.
We can't discipline the children for lack of respect to authority.
We can't expect the students to speak English.
Teacher tenure - you can get stuck with a bad teacher for quite some time.
Budget cuts.
Teachers having relationships with student.
No prayer in schools.
List goes on and on why the system is messed up.
Unfortunately, I think for many religious people, going to church is a social club, and scholarship of one's faith has fallen by the wayside. That's why creationism is so worrisome to me: it doesn't just represent ignorance of biology, but a general anti-intellectual movement - so much so that people don't bother learning about the precepts of their own faith.
I got 30/32 on the "Are you smarter than an atheist?" test, for the record.
I've commented here so I can't mod you up.
A Presbyterian pastor once said "Science tells us how God did it, the Bible tells us why." It does seem that many Christians view their church as a social club rather than a way to study their faith. And that seems to fall over into their political beliefs as well. You don't have to be a Christian, or even believe in God, to read the history of the old testament and see that even when people start out with good intentions they still end up doing horrible things to each other. Yet apparently many Christians think we shouldn't burden corporations with those pesky regulations because, hey, they'll do what's right and those regulations will just kill jobs.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
What!? We can't have that, lets throw some more money at it, that will fix it right up... Right?????
Mexican Creationists do. White Creationists do not.
It's not so much that it's wrong, it's that it's not the only factor. It's easy to see even on individual basis that berating a child won't make them succeed anymore than saying good job when they've produced an incorrect answer. The truth like most things in life, lays somewhere in the middle. You have to be able to tell a kid he or she has done something wrong or incorrectly but you should take their feelings into account when determining the best approach which of course is not the same for every kid.
That is the root of the education system, with standardized tests and lawsuit happy parents thinking that treating every child the same is the best approach. Some kids need tough love, some kids are harmed by tough love, without the ability to adjust tactics accordingly there will always be kids that slip through the cracks.
Just end public education. Seriously.
Every time the government gets involved in something, the cost goes up and the quality goes down. Fact.
"but what about the children", yeah, what about them? Forced to spend their youth in what amounts to government indoctrination camps, from which they emerge with broken spirits, a traumatized brain full of of useless facts and no ability to reason whatsoever. The perfect slaves.
and the subject is given extra emphasis, so putting body text in the subject line helps to increase the visibility of content.
As is often the case with many things, the ostensible purpose and the actual utility of the subject field differ.
I'd just like to point out that Jerry Brown is a lifelong Democrat, and I bet he'd be shocked that you think he's a Republican.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
...that we gave you both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Percents are a way to express a fraction in a standardized way to allow for easy comparison to other fractions. Which is bigger: 29/32 or 51/56? It's hard to recognize which is bigger or how close they are because they have different denominators. If you express everything with the same denominator, it's easy to compare. We live in a decimal dominated society, so people just collectively decided that 100 is a good regular denominator for everything. Occasionally, some smart alec will express something as per mille.
Look at the 10 states that did best. Almost all are rural: Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia.
Texas and Montana did better than NY or CA?
Time to ask, 'What and who were tested?' I suspect the sample was far from uniformly distributed across all US 8th graders.
only 22% of students in California public schools are proficient in english. This is not hyperbole. The city down the street has enforced bilingual education (which means spanish and english) for all students. If you don't like it transfer your kid out of the district. Teachers pensions (get a 401k like the rest of us you greed sob's) also contribute to the decline of funds available to teach students.
Not to mention the 50% drop out rate in Los Angeles. The schools are the first causality of illegal immigration.
Possibly. I know Alaska has an independence party that runs on a platform of Alaska becoming it's own country. They claim that the vote that was held for Alaska's admittance to the US was incorrect in that it didn't allow all the options. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a similar movement in Hawaii especially since they were their own kingdom and I know a lot of natives there are still bitter about that. The Minnesota Independence party doesn't run on a platform of Minnesota as it's own country but as independent from the Republicans and Democrats.
Time to offend someone
That I don't know.
Time to offend someone
From the sample test questions:
1. Only 54% of students know that water is H2O (i.e. 2 hydrogen, 1 oxygen)
2. Only 54% of students know that all cells need energy. The remainder thought that all cells produce sexually *or* all cells make their own food *or* all cells move from place to place. (i.e. a failure to understand the meaning of "all cells" vs. "some cells")
3. A bright spot: 72% of the students could see from a picture that the collision of the Eurasian tectonic plate with the Indian plate results in the Himalayas increasing in height each year. I'm skeptical that their wrong answer "Volcanoes erupt periodically" is really wrong. They certainly did millions of years ago when the plates first collided. Are they done errupting? Define periodically. Not too many students were confused by this but it still seems like a bit of a test fail to me.
4. Only 15% of students can read about a lame experiment full of biology jargon like "larva" and "pupa", interpret some data, determine which of 6 possible conclusions are supported by the data and write a coherent sentence or two supporting their answer. Basically only 15% of the 8th graders are capable of passing a job interview question for any kind of "thinking" job.
5. Only 53% of students know that the sun is the source of the energy that drives the weather on earth.
Yes, but you have to realize that if you do actually try in elementary school it's basically impossible to fail. I mean if you really tried your best in 3rd grade and still failed? Probably you have an undiagnosed learning disability. I've had professors in 400 level classes say the same thing at the beginning of the semester...and when they handed out Fs at the end it was because some students obviously didn't try! Of course by "try" they meant actually do the homework, study for the exams, takes notes in class...if you actually do all that how can you fail anything? If you stumble into class late with a hangover, take one page of notes in a 90 minute lecture, copy the homework from your girlfriend and then go to a bar the night before the exam you are going to fail and the teacher (and everyone else) knows exactly why: you didn't try.
If you want to look at the country with the best school system on international tests, look at Finland's highly-regarded system. The short of it: no standardized tests, lots of social support at schools, and - what to me is the most interesting - teachers are members of a very highly-regarded professional class. Compare that to the US view ("if you can't do, teach," "the way to improve schools is to divert funding away from them and make them teach to the tests"), and the reasons for the difference become pretty clear.
I don't think I have ADD or dyslexia, but I made the same mistake.. if they had showed images of molecules, I would've been fine.
And, the physics side of me, as soon as I saw an option "they move from place to place" I knew that must be correct, it's true of prison cells and terrorist cells, even... if a cell is born, it moves at least during that process, even if you're doing things from the reference frame of the cell..
Especially compared to "They need energy" which is a completely worthless answer. It's like saying "They need mass." Is it true? well, I don't know what their needs are, it would depend on their goals.. but energy, as an integral of force? Depends on reference frame?
"These three rocks, what is true about them?" a) "Energy made them" .. It makes energy like some sort of aether, or religion.
Energy is not some abstract mana, unless you're a rogue in warcraft.
No surprise there. And it has nothing to do with 1) parents 2) teachers 3) democarst 4) republicans. It is a racial thing. You see, most of the White and Asians are leaving Mexifornia to the blacks and indians. That lowers the IQ of the students greatly. Don't believe it? Check out the average IQ of a Hatian person. It is 67. Wonder why? Well, what race are 95% of Hatians? guess. And then you have the Mexicans. They are all just a mixed race bunch of indians. Not from India. They are indians like aztecas, mayans, toltecs, olmecs. Or their descendants. With a pinch of white Spanish blood thrown in. So you can be sure that their IQ isn't much better than blacks. With such a low IQ among the remaining citizens in Mexifornia, it isn't surprising that the children of such low IQ mixed races can't fathom anything about science nor math either.
it is all about race. you don't see asian immigrant kids struggling when they first arrive. because they have great genes. take a look of the racial makup of mexifornia from the last census. tells you the whole story. mexicans, guatamalans, salvadorans, hondurans, are the top countries of origin for students. and they are almost all mixed race indians mayans, aztecs, and all the other prehistoric peoples of central america. their brains have not evolved past the 8th or 9th century.
massachusetts is largely european whites. DC is largely blacks. california is largely central american agricultural indian mestizos (white/black/indian but mostly indian)
all those states you cited above that did best in testing, have a preponderance (ie: majority) of people of WHITE RACE. DC has more than 50% BLACK RACE CA has more than 50% central american mixed race mestizos of predominantly INDIAN RACE.
I am searching and following links all over the place and I can't seem to find the full list for all the states. Just the top and bottom states. Anyone know where I can find it?
Thanks!