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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.
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.
Of course, you're assuming that test competency is a good thing. That assumes the test is fair, reasonable and actually has something to do with the student's knowledge base. Given what we know about standardized tests, a bit of skepticism is in order.
That said, the bottom feeders being the states we assume to be be bottom feeders when it comes to anything other than actually eating does give one pause.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Can someone post the test here. I think it would be really interesting to see what percent of Slashdot readers can pass the test.
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.)
Not only is it a statement on the fallacy of the superiority of "progressive" regimes in schooling, but in funding as well. Utah spends far, far less per pupil, and gets much better results. Success in education comes from, first and foremost, an appreciation of getting an education, and second, the willingness to work for it. You'll get better results with a single, good teacher with nothing but a piece of chalk and a chalkboard, teaching a class of eager students, then you will with any expensive computerized, state of the art classroom that's been staffed with some guy waiting for his retirement age and a class of kids that don't give a damn.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm not republican or democrat... but perhaps the data really requires a more careful analysis rather than just pointing fingers to the other side.
Some relevant data here (per pupil spending):
US average - $10499
Alabama - $8870
California - $9657
Mississippi - $8075
You'd be surprised, but California is really not spending a lot on their kids either. The places that are spending a lot:
DC - $16408
New Jersey - $16271
New York - $18126
Alaska - $15552
Vermont - $15175
Source: US Census.
I am officially gone from
You are leaving out the fact that untill about a year ago Calironia was actually run by Republicans. With the exception of the bay area and LA, California actually votes republican (not saying Democrats are any better, just pointing out the data).
Put down the crack pipe. The California state legislature has been Democrat since I can remember. The last time their electoral college went to a Republican was 1988. Schwarzenegger was the Governor, but he was far from being a right-winger and often called a RINO. Except for a small 2 year period, Democrats have controlled the State Senate for years. And LA and the Bay Area make up a majority of the POPULATION of California. Not necessarily the land area.
sudo make me a sandwich
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.
Fine. Then don't expect my tax money to implement laws to protect you from having the rest of your money taken away from you by someone else because they want it.
Lets all devolve into a bunch of people living in armed compounds telling everyone else to fuck off. You don't get roads, you don't get electricity, you don't get laws, you don't get nothing that you can't get and keep yourself by force.
See, in your system, you want someone to help pay to enforce your rights, and you want to opt out of paying to help anybody else. Which means as long as you get what you feel you're entitled to, everyone else is on their own. Why should my taxes pay to preserve the rights of the rich?
It's not so much "society" and "civilization" as it is a collection of armed camps.
I sincerely hope you get the opportunity to experience life the way you think it should happen. I bet someone will decide you've got a pretty mouth.
All you drooling idiots who whine about the taxes being forcibly taken from you at gun point seem to conveniently forget there's a lot of those services you do make use of ... take those away, and you can have something like Somalia or the inside of a prison. Bet that would be fun.
Vouchers aren't going to help. The public school systems aren't broken, its society that is broken. Kids who are individually motivated and have parental support will do great in any school environment. Kids who lack motivation but have parental pressure may be forced into rebellion in their later teenager years or college, but they'll at least do well in grade school. Kids who have motivation but lack parental support are the ones who are trapped in the school system, and their parents won't take advantage of things like vouchers. And the kids who lack motivation and lack parental support will eventually drop out because we have no support system for them. Any increased funding needs not go to vouchers, but instead to parental education to encourage the unmotivated parents to be more involved in their children's lives.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
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
While i'm from MA, and I'm quite happy that my state is tied for first... but... 44%????? Only 44% of the kids tested passed the test, and it somehow tie for FIRST among the nation? If this was a test, then all 50 people (state) in the class (country) have failed. This is not good news :/
So, basically there isn't a nationally recognized standard for sciences, so the test is really not remotely fair.
Right. There is no benefit to you at all from living in a country with an educated population. None.
You imply that spending more would help. Let's have a look at the ranks of the states you mention, and add in their rank (by average score on the science exam):
Alabama $8870 - rank 49
California $9657 - rank 47
Mississippi $8075 - rank 50
DC $16408 - rank 51 (by a *huge* margin)
New Jersey $16271 - rank 24
New York $18126 - rank 34
Alaska $15552 - rank 26
Vermont $15175 - rank 3
North Dakota and Montana, with the best results, both spend less than average amounts per pupil.
There are plenty of studies that show that throwing money at schools does not help. The single best thing you can do to improve most schools is to hire good teachers and fire bad ones. There is a strong *inverse* correlation between states with good education and states with strong teachers' unions. California is a prime example, as is New York (rank 34 on the list).
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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
The Unions are the problem that stop advancement.
They are more interested in protecting their jobs, than making changes that help the students (such as firing bad teachers, or eliminating permanent employment via tenure). You can see the excellent ABC 20/20 documentary called "Stupid in America" on youtube. There's also a sequel produced for FOX which updates the older 20/20 report. And then a "part 3" sequel to the sequel.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Test competency in the sciences for an 8th grader probably is a good thing. From the article:
I have trouble believing that questions like these are somehow unreasonable, unfair, or biased against black/hispanic/asian kids, or somehow socioeconomically biased. These are fairly basic science questions, and there are some fairly clear boundaries between right and wrong answers. If your kid cannot answer these questions after taking courses which are supposed to teach the answers to these questions, I think it's safe to say that there's a rather large disconnect between the educational system's goals and its outcomes.
We can argue the merits of standardized testing, and "teaching to the test" until the cows come home, but if your school system has adopted the test as a measurement criteria, and structured its curriculum around that test, and still achieves remarkably low results... something is wrong.
That's a good thing.
No it is not! And I say that as a fiscally conservative Californian.
Governments have a natural bias to raise taxes and run up debts. So it is reasonable to require a super-majority to do these. But the problem in California, is that we require a super-majority just to pass a budget, even if that budget is restrained and balanced. That just leads to permanent gridlock, and since we are heading off a fiscal cliff, locking the steering wheel in place is not a good idea (hows that for a car analogy).
Every school teacher I have ever spoken with on the subject agrees: involved parents generally mean good students, uninvolved parents make for taxpayer-funded daycare until age 18.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
I call bullshit on the teacher's union correlation. In fact it is the states with the lowest scores that do not have binding collective bargaining.
Five states do not allow collective bargaining for educators, effectively prohibiting teacher unions.
Those states and their SAT/ACT rankings are as follows:
South Carolina â" 50th
North Carolina â" 49th
Georgia â" 48th
Texas â" 47th
Virginia â" 44th
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/03/5-states-where-teachers-unions-are-illegal-have-the-lowest-test-scores-in-america/
And in general studies show a small positive correlation.
http://shankerblog.org/?p=1941
Of course correlation is not causation, and in this case I really doubt it is a factor either way,
The only factor that really counts is the economic status of the parents.