The second that any standardized test stops measuring ability & starts measuring knowledge.. you end up with teachers who teach to the test.
Yeah, and as soon as you test abilities instead of knowledge, the teachers' union claims you're neglecting the fundamentals. In other words, shrink their classes (=less responsibility+increase demand), raise their salaries (but not so much that teaching becomes a viable alternative to industry, that would increase supply), give them more "in-service" days, lower their retirement age, and increase their retirement pay...
But don't tell them to change what or how they teach!
There is nothing wrong with teaching dictated by a test so long as the test represents what the students should know and the capabilities they're supposed to demonstrate. The problem with many tests, the SAT in particular, is that they only test a small subset of the skills and knowledge we expect high schoolers to have, and often in highly contrived circumstances. These are both evidences of invalidity, which is all-too-often overlooked by test developers and users.
Michele de Montaigne said that if you want to know if a pupil has learned you have to watch him live his life. Unfortunately, that's not always possible. Testing is the best system we have, and there is almost two centuries of theory and research to back it up (from classical test theory to generalizability theory to item response theory). Still, it remains one of the least studied, and most misunderstood concept in public education.
I'd give you mod points if you weren't already at five.
As a graduate student, I usually go through three or four drafts before I get something I feel confident turning in. Whether it's an assignment, part of a comp, or an article, I always expect some revisions will be requested by the rater. I've gone through six post-submission revisions on one paper before.
Writing in a compressed timeframe should not be about literary quality, but about the effectiveness of communicating an idea. Sometimes the IM-speak "rotflmao" communicates more meaning than anything else.
Yes, but in AA, you can never be the terrorists. Your team always appears in US issue clothing, and the enemies in hoods and masks. Obviously, it can't be used for training terrorists then.
But there is also the point that (for some) education is a worthy pursuit in and of itself. It's value is intrinsic instead of instrumental.
Since I began my PhD studies, I have worked (all expenses paid) on three continents, including taken my family on a semester-long assignment to Europe, and influenced national policy. I'm actually putting off defending my prospectus for a week because I have to meet with the National Academies to finish up a report with them. Because I've made the right connections (and I would like to think I'm proficient at my work), I'll leave school with very little debt (I'll owe about as much on my car as on my student loan).
If I had to go into industry and I never used my advanced degree for anything in the professional world, I would still consider my graduate work worthwhile. In fact, I would still consider the last six years of my life the best of my life.
That said, I do know a great deal of PhDs who are, in fact, morons.
I was once a graphic design major, but I got fed up with the attitude of "designers" and relegated it to a minor instead (I had enough credits at that point).
My design background, which was colored by engineering, had emphasized working within the boundaries set by the project and/or needs of the client. You're right that many web site designers feel that form is all that matters, functionality be damned.
In fact, many graphic designers (who would be better called "visual artists") feel that to bend their visual presentation to any other variable is a form of prostitution.
We'll see if this ruling forces come changes to the field, the same way the ADA long ago changed the interior design field.
PS - I know there are many good, even great designers (both on and off the web) who are not as described above.
I'm working on a project with a committee from the National Academies. Specifically, we're evaluating a facet of education (can't say too much, NDA etc.), but we still have a representative from Shell Oil in the bunch, along with several "independent consultants." That's just the way it works.
Now, I believe, every single one of them is qualified to be there, but I have doubts about potential biases. It could be the same with this Elliot - She could be qualified, but be representing MS rather than the nation at large.
But also, notice the principle objectors to the new language came from places like MIT, who have invested a lot in "open*". That's a bias too.
Another thing: It is not surprising that Elliot claims the language just slipped by her. She said, "It was certainly never brought up in any of the meetings," even though she voted for the draft as is. The first time I consulted on a governement project, I was so nervous, I read all of the material in the briefing book before the meeting. (I read some of the papers twice.) When I got to the meeting, I found that most of the participants (who were well above my pay grade) hadn't done more than read the table of contents. They asked questions that would have been answered by even a cursory reading.
It's like in Fahrenheit 911 when the senator says, "Son, we don't actually read the laws we vote on."
So, it's perfectly reasonable that Elliot voted with having totally read the draft, and then had to practically admit to it when it came out that her bosses were rightfully not satisfied with it.
As a horrible cyclist, I completely agree with you. When some guy with shaved and chiseled legs blows by on his $5000 rig, I kid myself, "Hey, if I had the time to train and the money, I could do that."
The GP just needed to add the parents' attitude. It's not the student who would care that someone works harder than they do, it's the parents (and I am one) who can't stand the thought that their child is somehow lazy. That would mean that the parents aren't teaching their kids to work hard, etc.
It's much easier for parents to pass off the success of other children as a natural gift.
(I'm excepting children with special needs of course.)
When I was working at a storage systems facility owned by a large company, which it later sold to another large company, there was an on-site accident that landed an employee in the hospital.
Suddenly, we were policed for over-the-top compliance on every perceived OSHA requirement, greatly slowing down our productivity. For example, even though it wasn't policy, we were no longer allowed in the cleanroom without steel-toes shoes, etc.
Then we finally found out the details of the accident. It seems a portly man was in a cherry-picker, changing a light bulb in a warehouse. When he leaned over the controls to disconnect one end of the light bulb, his belly moved the lever and raised the platform on which we was standing. Of course, he was now squished between the ceiling and the control, and unable to turn off the lift.
Now, this was a serious accident, and resulted in pain and downtime for the employee in question. But his steel-toed boots didn't save him, so what was the point in making engineers where them in the cleanroom?
Getting back to the topic, I know there is a lot of accidents on construction sites. I have family members that have been seriously injured working construction, but most of those are from falls, not from saw-related incidents. So, would there be a better use of the time/money than on table-saw safety?
I also take issue with TFA: "Here we had an unbiased government agency saying these saws are unreasonably dangerous," Gass says now. "So, yes, I did feel somewhat vindicated."
Anyone who's worked with the US government knows there is no such thing as "unbiased". The best you can do is balance the biases.
(Statistics from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) A memorandum from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in June, 2006 states that "over a 10-15 year lifetime of a table saw, it would generate societal costs of $2,600 to $3,100" from blade contact injuries. Such saws typically have initial costs ranging from about $100 to $300.
Again, what about other safety issues? Is this the best use of regulatory funds?
(Bias aside, how much of the $2600 "societal costs" goes to funding studies to see how much they cost?)
It is such animportant element, you see, that duration of time. I consider twelve hours a substantial measure. So I ran along the drive and upthe steps and into the house, but did not see either Mrs. Iobserved:Your Excellency is not easily satisfied. And I marvelled, and said:How comes it that I have hitherto been deaf to these distressfultones? Il passe sur la route, mais toujours en sens inverse. For a mental state such astheirs, appetency rather than instability is the right word. Which reminds me that the old adage about let us eat and drink, forto-morrow, etc. Mais odonc est la vie, sinon dans le peuple? They lamented dismally among themselves in many tongues:How I suffer! Take that little one on Lzards, for instance;or, in the other volume, the bizarre Joies Noires.
NPR covered this issue this morning and had a guy from project Gutenberg read a few sentences like this. I have a degree in literature (I know, shocking), and I thought to myself that this would qualify as good dada.
"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.
2006.07.25 DenverChannel malsaid "unorthodox" as "suspicious". rectify.
There are about three good comments in this discussion that are along these lines, but yours is the best.
It seems Hawkings question is really, how do we keep our "world" (planet, society, etc.) as stable/stagnant as possible. That won't happen. It never has.
We may well face some drastic climate changes in the next 100 years (many are certain about that), but the human race has faced that before and survived by wearing mammoth hide or migrating. We may face ravaging disease, but we've seen that too. War? Yep. Will the population decrease at some point in the next century? Probably. We've been due for a correction for some time now.
About the only forseeable event we haven't already survived is global radioactive contamination. However, the odds of that happening - and leaving no habitable corner of the world where humans can survive long enough to reproduce - are slim.
Will you or I survive the next hundred years? Most likely not. Will our children? Most likely. Will some human? Almost definitely.
When Nasser became president, he sought someone less intelligent than he to be the vice president. He found Sadat. Sadat did the same and found Mubarak.
Mubarak still doesn't have a vice president.
I heard that joke in the El Maadi district of Cairo.
I heard about the study earlier in the week, and I realized a) I don't need close friends (as they define it) and b) I do have "meaningful" discussions online about "important" matters.
On point A, I know there are others (my wife being one of them) who crave human interaction with like-minded people, and require vicinity as part of their definition. For those people, I hope this study opens avenues to help them compensate for this need in our ever-closing world.
On point B, I think those who will suffer the most - as our "connected" world makes us more and more disconnected from those around us - are those who do not know how to (or can't for other reasons) leverage the technology to remain connected and to find friends.
Political infighting seems to have dropped an interesting and respectful program from the books.
I wouldn't call it "interesting". Any social researcher knows this is an effective method to circumvent Institutional Review Boards.
For example, if I wanted to record how students are using a certain web-based system, and then publish my findings, I would need to get IRB approval and have each student agree to an "Informed Consent" document.
Instead, a third party, such as the system provider, can gather the data (which they do not intend to publish), and then pass it to the researcher in an anonymous form. This requires no oversight.
If the researcher wants to group uses of the system by anonymous "user", the third party will hash the names or other IDs of the users before giving them the data.
The issue with the Feds doing this with telephone numbers, is that each provider would have to agree on the same identifier for each phone number.
AP: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?
Lucas: The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it.... I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
The second that any standardized test stops measuring ability & starts measuring knowledge.. you end up with teachers who teach to the test.
Yeah, and as soon as you test abilities instead of knowledge, the teachers' union claims you're neglecting the fundamentals. In other words, shrink their classes (=less responsibility+increase demand), raise their salaries (but not so much that teaching becomes a viable alternative to industry, that would increase supply), give them more "in-service" days, lower their retirement age, and increase their retirement pay...
But don't tell them to change what or how they teach!
There is nothing wrong with teaching dictated by a test so long as the test represents what the students should know and the capabilities they're supposed to demonstrate. The problem with many tests, the SAT in particular, is that they only test a small subset of the skills and knowledge we expect high schoolers to have, and often in highly contrived circumstances. These are both evidences of invalidity, which is all-too-often overlooked by test developers and users.
Michele de Montaigne said that if you want to know if a pupil has learned you have to watch him live his life. Unfortunately, that's not always possible. Testing is the best system we have, and there is almost two centuries of theory and research to back it up (from classical test theory to generalizability theory to item response theory). Still, it remains one of the least studied, and most misunderstood concept in public education.
I'd give you mod points if you weren't already at five.
As a graduate student, I usually go through three or four drafts before I get something I feel confident turning in. Whether it's an assignment, part of a comp, or an article, I always expect some revisions will be requested by the rater. I've gone through six post-submission revisions on one paper before.
Writing in a compressed timeframe should not be about literary quality, but about the effectiveness of communicating an idea. Sometimes the IM-speak "rotflmao" communicates more meaning than anything else.
They are. It goes both ways I think: http://www.americasarmy.com/
Yes, but in AA, you can never be the terrorists. Your team always appears in US issue clothing, and the enemies in hoods and masks. Obviously, it can't be used for training terrorists then.
No, that's why I plan to stay in Academ. ;)
True.
But there is also the point that (for some) education is a worthy pursuit in and of itself. It's value is intrinsic instead of instrumental.
Since I began my PhD studies, I have worked (all expenses paid) on three continents, including taken my family on a semester-long assignment to Europe, and influenced national policy. I'm actually putting off defending my prospectus for a week because I have to meet with the National Academies to finish up a report with them. Because I've made the right connections (and I would like to think I'm proficient at my work), I'll leave school with very little debt (I'll owe about as much on my car as on my student loan).
If I had to go into industry and I never used my advanced degree for anything in the professional world, I would still consider my graduate work worthwhile. In fact, I would still consider the last six years of my life the best of my life.
That said, I do know a great deal of PhDs who are, in fact, morons.
I wonder what the creative artists at gOOgle could come up with for their logo for October....
Anyone else seeing the GTA: Vice City Stories banner ad on the right of the summary?
I was once a graphic design major, but I got fed up with the attitude of "designers" and relegated it to a minor instead (I had enough credits at that point).
My design background, which was colored by engineering, had emphasized working within the boundaries set by the project and/or needs of the client. You're right that many web site designers feel that form is all that matters, functionality be damned.
In fact, many graphic designers (who would be better called "visual artists") feel that to bend their visual presentation to any other variable is a form of prostitution.
We'll see if this ruling forces come changes to the field, the same way the ADA long ago changed the interior design field.
PS - I know there are many good, even great designers (both on and off the web) who are not as described above.
I'm working on a project with a committee from the National Academies. Specifically, we're evaluating a facet of education (can't say too much, NDA etc.), but we still have a representative from Shell Oil in the bunch, along with several "independent consultants." That's just the way it works.
Now, I believe, every single one of them is qualified to be there, but I have doubts about potential biases. It could be the same with this Elliot - She could be qualified, but be representing MS rather than the nation at large.
But also, notice the principle objectors to the new language came from places like MIT, who have invested a lot in "open*". That's a bias too.
Another thing: It is not surprising that Elliot claims the language just slipped by her. She said, "It was certainly never brought up in any of the meetings," even though she voted for the draft as is. The first time I consulted on a governement project, I was so nervous, I read all of the material in the briefing book before the meeting. (I read some of the papers twice.) When I got to the meeting, I found that most of the participants (who were well above my pay grade) hadn't done more than read the table of contents. They asked questions that would have been answered by even a cursory reading.
It's like in Fahrenheit 911 when the senator says, "Son, we don't actually read the laws we vote on."
So, it's perfectly reasonable that Elliot voted with having totally read the draft, and then had to practically admit to it when it came out that her bosses were rightfully not satisfied with it.
As a horrible cyclist, I completely agree with you. When some guy with shaved and chiseled legs blows by on his $5000 rig, I kid myself, "Hey, if I had the time to train and the money, I could do that."
The GP just needed to add the parents' attitude. It's not the student who would care that someone works harder than they do, it's the parents (and I am one) who can't stand the thought that their child is somehow lazy. That would mean that the parents aren't teaching their kids to work hard, etc.
It's much easier for parents to pass off the success of other children as a natural gift.
(I'm excepting children with special needs of course.)
This was covered on the local version of KBBL, and the commentary was spot on:
"These guys are in serious need of a girlfriend."
Yours are good points, but you can go too far.
When I was working at a storage systems facility owned by a large company, which it later sold to another large company, there was an on-site accident that landed an employee in the hospital.
Suddenly, we were policed for over-the-top compliance on every perceived OSHA requirement, greatly slowing down our productivity. For example, even though it wasn't policy, we were no longer allowed in the cleanroom without steel-toes shoes, etc.
Then we finally found out the details of the accident. It seems a portly man was in a cherry-picker, changing a light bulb in a warehouse. When he leaned over the controls to disconnect one end of the light bulb, his belly moved the lever and raised the platform on which we was standing. Of course, he was now squished between the ceiling and the control, and unable to turn off the lift.
Now, this was a serious accident, and resulted in pain and downtime for the employee in question. But his steel-toed boots didn't save him, so what was the point in making engineers where them in the cleanroom?
Getting back to the topic, I know there is a lot of accidents on construction sites. I have family members that have been seriously injured working construction, but most of those are from falls, not from saw-related incidents. So, would there be a better use of the time/money than on table-saw safety?
I also take issue with TFA:
"Here we had an unbiased government agency saying these saws are unreasonably dangerous," Gass says now. "So, yes, I did feel somewhat vindicated."
Anyone who's worked with the US government knows there is no such thing as "unbiased". The best you can do is balance the biases.
(Statistics from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) A memorandum from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in June, 2006 states that "over a 10-15 year lifetime of a table saw, it would generate societal costs of $2,600 to $3,100" from blade contact injuries. Such saws typically have initial costs ranging from about $100 to $300.
Again, what about other safety issues? Is this the best use of regulatory funds?
(Bias aside, how much of the $2600 "societal costs" goes to funding studies to see how much they cost?)
It is such animportant element, you see, that duration
of time. I consider twelve hours a substantial measure. So I ran along
the drive and upthe steps and into the house, but did not see either
Mrs. Iobserved:Your Excellency is not easily satisfied. And I marvelled,
and said:How comes it that I have hitherto been deaf to these
distressfultones? Il passe sur la route, mais toujours en sens inverse.
For a mental state such astheirs, appetency rather than instability is
the right word. Which reminds me that the old adage about let us eat and
drink, forto-morrow, etc. Mais odonc est la vie, sinon dans le peuple?
They lamented dismally among themselves in many tongues:How I suffer!
Take that little one on Lzards, for instance;or, in the other volume,
the bizarre Joies Noires.
NPR covered this issue this morning and had a guy from project Gutenberg read a few sentences like this. I have a degree in literature (I know, shocking), and I thought to myself that this would qualify as good dada.
I bellyfeel your doubleplusgooder comment.
"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.
2006.07.25 DenverChannel malsaid "unorthodox" as "suspicious". rectify.
There are about three good comments in this discussion that are along these lines, but yours is the best.
It seems Hawkings question is really, how do we keep our "world" (planet, society, etc.) as stable/stagnant as possible. That won't happen. It never has.
We may well face some drastic climate changes in the next 100 years (many are certain about that), but the human race has faced that before and survived by wearing mammoth hide or migrating. We may face ravaging disease, but we've seen that too. War? Yep. Will the population decrease at some point in the next century? Probably. We've been due for a correction for some time now.
About the only forseeable event we haven't already survived is global radioactive contamination. However, the odds of that happening - and leaving no habitable corner of the world where humans can survive long enough to reproduce - are slim.
Will you or I survive the next hundred years? Most likely not. Will our children? Most likely. Will some human? Almost definitely.
...they release OS X Liger.
When Nasser became president, he sought someone less intelligent than he to be the vice president. He found Sadat. Sadat did the same and found Mubarak.
Mubarak still doesn't have a vice president.
I heard that joke in the El Maadi district of Cairo.
I heard about the study earlier in the week, and I realized a) I don't need close friends (as they define it) and b) I do have "meaningful" discussions online about "important" matters.
On point A, I know there are others (my wife being one of them) who crave human interaction with like-minded people, and require vicinity as part of their definition. For those people, I hope this study opens avenues to help them compensate for this need in our ever-closing world.
On point B, I think those who will suffer the most - as our "connected" world makes us more and more disconnected from those around us - are those who do not know how to (or can't for other reasons) leverage the technology to remain connected and to find friends.
This was actually the computer I took to the dorms my freshman year. Yep, 30 lbs.
The sad part is that I'm still in school.
Political infighting seems to have dropped an interesting and respectful program from the books.
I wouldn't call it "interesting". Any social researcher knows this is an effective method to circumvent Institutional Review Boards.
For example, if I wanted to record how students are using a certain web-based system, and then publish my findings, I would need to get IRB approval and have each student agree to an "Informed Consent" document.
Instead, a third party, such as the system provider, can gather the data (which they do not intend to publish), and then pass it to the researcher in an anonymous form. This requires no oversight.
If the researcher wants to group uses of the system by anonymous "user", the third party will hash the names or other IDs of the users before giving them the data.
The issue with the Feds doing this with telephone numbers, is that each provider would have to agree on the same identifier for each phone number.
Oops. Read title *before* hitting submit. /me bangs head.
No one's pointed out his name is, "Beeker" yet?
AP: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?
... I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore.
Lucas: The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it.
Source (9/15/2004)