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CA: Hit the books, juniors
Mercury News ^
| 10/01/02
| Editorial
Posted on 10/01/2002 7:40:36 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Edited on 04/13/2004 3:29:47 AM PDT by Jim Robinson.
[history]
THE majority of California's high school juniors have some cramming to do if they expect to graduate with their class in 2004.
On Monday the state released the results of its first mandatory high school exit exam, and only 48 percent have passed both the math and English language arts portions.
(Excerpt) Read more at bayarea.com ...
TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: calgov2002; california; davis; education; juniors
In fact, if there is good news in the exit exam results, it is that the state is finally focusing on the needs of high schools. On Monday Gov. Davis signed two bills creating new pilot programs at high schools.DUMP DAVI$
GO SIMON
To: NormsRevenge
"Whatever you call it, more than half the state's high school juniors need it to some degree."
It is called "Spin Doctoring" and it was perfected by the Clinton administration.
Take really bad news and make it look like everything is just fine.
"Educators don't like to talk about remedial education;"
There is an education failure stop the tripe and admit the schools are in terrible shape!!
Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers!Vouchers! Vouchers!
To: NormsRevenge
But the results are not surprising either. State educators set the bar high.BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!
3
posted on
10/01/2002 8:09:48 AM PDT
by
Lizavetta
To: Lizavetta; All
A friend of mine got her hands on one of these exit exams. She couldn't pass the math portion despite being a math tutor in college. I would like to get my hands on a copy, just to see how hard this thing actually is.
To: NormsRevenge
It's particularly disturbing that only 30 percent of Hispanic students and 28 percent of African-American students passed the test.No doubt due to white racism.
No word on how Asian students did on the test...
To: NormsRevenge
Let's see... If I recall correctly Goobernatorial Candidate Davis' three highest priorities were "Education, Education, and Education."
We misunderstood. It was really "Re-Election, Re-Election, and Re-Election."
To: NormsRevenge
I wonder if we added up all of the time spent in standardized testing for those kids for all of the years they had been in school, and used that time for actual education, how well they would have done? As a former California teacher, I am willing to bet that even the time it takes to administer the exams for the No Child Left Behind assessments would be enough.
But then again, testing is easier than teaching. That's why the government (regardless of party) only encourages more testing. Do you want to account for every child? Then give the teacher the chance to work with the child's individual needs by reducing class sizes. Then no child will be left behind.
To: Brainfodder
The quality of the teacher makes a big difference. Whining about the time spent testing is a red herring. I've seen horrid results from a math teacher with only 10 students. I've personally taught college classes with up to 60 students with excellent results. Frankly, I think we need to test the TEACHERS first and ditch the incompetent ones. Testing the students against a standard exam exposes the teachers who are not doing the job.
I observed 3 general types of students. The top performers need little more than a nudge in the right direction with guidance on material to study and testing to discern accomplishment. The middle tier requires a directed effort to drill and reinforce. The middle tier tends to successfully replicate the skills taught in the classroom and nothing more. The bottom tier doesn't want to be in your classroom. They are present because it is required by government mandate or matriculation requirements. Teaching a pig to sing is more productive.
A class generally only moves as fast as the slowest person in the room...if the teacher is cognizant of how all the students are performing. Given that limitation, I favor academic segregation of the students into the 3 general tiers. That permits the pace of the class to correspond to the ability of the students to progress. If you have students with the "deer in the headlights expression" or "bored to tears", you need to evaluate why.
8
posted on
10/01/2002 1:08:08 PM PDT
by
Myrddin
To: TheSpottedOwl
Well, how are they going to expect the students to pass it? Can their teachers pass it? Can Gov. Davis pass it?
9
posted on
10/01/2002 3:28:13 PM PDT
by
ladylib
To: Myrddin
Given that limitation, I favor academic segregation of the students into the 3 general tiers. That would require admitting that:
1) IQ exists and matters.
2) People are not all intellectually the same.
3) If the three general tiers track closely with racial differences, racism is not the reason.
All three concepts are anathema to the educrats - ergo, your plan will never be considered.
To: ladylib
This another reason why vouchers are so important. I don't know what the heck is going on, and yes I'd like Gray Davis to take that test >:(
To: TheSpottedOwl
A friend of mine got her hands on one of these exit exams. She couldn't pass the math portion despite being a math tutor in college.If your friend were a California resident you could begin to understand the magnitude of the "educational system" problems in that state.
An example of a math tutor in college who isn't competent in 10th grade math would be just the tip of the iceberg in the California system.
To: Amerigomag
Have you taken the test? How do you know it's 10th grade material?
14
posted on
10/01/2002 8:30:53 PM PDT
by
Mo1
To: Mr. Jeeves
The educrats are the problem. All three points need to be admitted and addressed. I get very tired of the boiler-plate news report that runs every year citing the "achievement gap" between "white/asian" vs "black/hispanic" groups. Vast sums of money have been wasted trying to "fix" this problem. Intellect can not be improved by simply mixing intelligent and dull students in the same room. The accomplishments of the intelligent students are throttled to the pace of the dull ones. Intelligent and dull students exist across the racial spectrum albeit not with the same distributions. The unfixable achievement gap will be a source of racial strife in academia, business and society forever. The current attempt to drive all of society to the lowest common denominator is an inexcusable consequence of the claim that "all men are created equal". It is time to recognize that falsehood.
I wish I had more time to address the issue, but I have a fairly complex voice recognition/speech synthesis and call control task to finish today. The geospatial database element just boiled down to some XML parsing and linguistic synthesis of driving directions into text that can be processed by the text to speech algorithms. Back to work!
15
posted on
10/02/2002 9:14:16 AM PDT
by
Myrddin
To: TheSpottedOwl
Students who had to take the Masschusetts high-stakes test protested in front of the Massachusetts state capital. Then they found out where the governor's offices were. Then they actually pursued him (Gov. Celluci at the time) and told him they wanted him to take the test. He escaped by a back door. What a chicken sh--.
16
posted on
10/02/2002 4:00:20 PM PDT
by
ladylib
To: Myrddin
Actually, California does test the teachers, as do most other states. This includes teachers who transfer in with credentials from other states. This test is written by the same good folks who write and revise the ACT, the SAT, the pSAT, and the MCAT and is divided into mathematics, reading, and writing examinations. For higher level classes, such as Advanced Placement, content specific tests are required as well. Questions include multiple choice, open ended mathematics, and two writing samples. If you don't pass the test, you do not qualify for certification regardless of past experience or training. All of this is beyond the required degrees in content area and classes in education.
Colleges require no such testing for their faculty. Nor do most of them require any training in educational theory and psychology. They merely require content knowledge. This is why colleges tend to be lecture courses rather than interaction based. Lecturing to motivated students is easy. If they don't understand the lecture, they will read the books or find help. Try it with freshmen high school students and see how they perform.
Teaching a college class is quite different from High School. In a college class, you only have students who want to be there (or have a vested interest in being there), and those students are only the ones who have passed high school classes acceptably. Colleges get to select their student population. High schools do not. Nor can they turn away students who are high as a kite, haven't eaten in two days, show up unprepared, are disruptive to the class, or have failed previous courses. It is on these kids that class size is based when you connect funding and standardized tests, not the college students.
I definitely agree that the teacher makes a huge difference to the course. But the teacher's personality comes across in designing a course based around the needs of the students in the class, the demands of the curriculum by industry and higher education, and the needs of the community. Anything else is just the difference between an entertaining speaker and a dull one, and has little real bearing on learning.
I also have observed the three tier effect with classes, but the last 50 years of inclusion studies lead us to believe that separating these students doesn't improve any of them. It eliminates the opportunity for advanced students to learn through educating peers, and it removes yet another source of assitance from the low end students, their classmates.
You were right about the fix, though. The teacher has to assess these students and provide for positive, educative experiences for all students as individuals. How do you do that with a class of 35? Especially if you have 5 of these classes in a day?
To: Brainfodder
I agree that the college students are mostly a self-selected group of high school grads. The bottom tier generally drop the class in preference to taking a GPA wrecking grade. The public schools are stuck with compulsory attendance.
My son took 5 AP classes in high school. He scored a "5" (best possible) on the exams. His teachers were clueless. The reason he did so well is that he ran tutoring sessions for the classes 3 nights a week for the students who really wanted to learn the material. Every kid in his sessions achieved a 4 or better. Most of the class failed with scores of 2 or less. That calls into question the merit of the current screening process for the teachers.
Is it possible that the persons conducting the "inclusion studies" had an agenda? I've seen a value in mixing experience levels in a Scout troop. The older scouts mentor the new ones and develop leadership skills in the process. That model doesn't apply in a public school classroom. It is a regimented exercise with a single instructor teaching a group. There is no mentoring relationship. The students are presumably all at the same level of experience and intellectual capacity. It's a bad presumption.
When I attend high school in the early 70's, we did have classes with low, middle and high performers. The speech and debate classes had high performers competing against other schools at local, regional and state levels. At the other end of the spectrum was the "zoo" English class. It was full of dope smoking dullards. The PE teacher was assigned to babysit the zoo English bunch. It was an intellectual match made in heaven :-)
18
posted on
10/03/2002 6:05:39 PM PDT
by
Myrddin
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