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Some day soon, teams of Case High School sophomores could be sitting in a Racine movie theater and thanking President Bush.In an attempt to boost the number of students taking the state's standardized test this week, Case High School will be handing out movie passes to every 10th-grader who completes the battery of exams.It's just one of many efforts, which include a TV giveaway at another school, to improve student performance and participation on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations, or WKCEs.In many Wisconsin schools, the testing began for fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders last week and will continue until Nov....

<p>Only one-quarter of students tested in a fitness exam met the state's standards, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell announced Thursday.</p> <p>Students in grades five, seven and nine were tested using the "Fitnessgram," an assessment formula that measures students' aerobic capacity, body composition, muscular strength, endurance and flexibility.</p>

'Caring' cheaters Posted: October 31, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com If you still think there is hope for the nation's government school system, revelations about a number of New York teachers made public this week should change your mind for good. The news is quite appropriate for Halloween – because it's scary. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Associated Press uncovered records showing that 21 New York teachers between 1999 and 2002 cheated "on behalf of their students" when administering standardized tests – tests that were designed to demonstrate student progress in critical areas of learning. According to the report,...

Rosa Park Parents Blame Testing, Not School By MATTHEW ARTZ (10-31-03) Berkeley school district officials are preparing for discussions on an administrative overhaul for Rosa Parks Elementary School, after standardized test scores released last week showed that student performance declined. “It behooves us to start looking,” said Carla Bason, BUSD’s manager of state and federal programs. No administrative shakeup is imminent. Most parents taking their children to school this week said it was the standardized testing system, not the school, that was really failing the students. Results of the latest rounds of tests mandated under President Bush’s No Child...

Whereas over 80% of Americans support external, high-stakes, standardized testing as the best method for determining what students are learning; discovering their academic deficiencies, so that they may be remedied; and in deciding whether to promote students from grade to grade; you’d never know it, to listen to the socialist, establishment media or the progressives and constructivists who have taken over university departments of teacher education and the nation’s public schools. One such progressive is Kevin Kumashiro. Kumashiro, who is the “director of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education, a resource center for educators, leaders, students and advocates base in California,”...

AUBURN - A gym teacher's tests of fourth- through sixth-graders' body fat at Webster Intermediate School have triggered complaints by parents who say some children were upset and embarrassed by the results."It didn't give any explanation," said Jane Clavet of the slip of paper her sixth-grader received. "It just gave a number. You're fat or your not," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston.The furor began about two weeks ago when gym teacher Mary Jo Hodgkin measured students' body mass index, or body fat compared to height and weight, using new laser equipment that the school system had purchased...

Source: American Psychological Association Date: 2003-10-20 Renorming IQ Tests Due To Flynn Effect May Have Unintended Consequences WASHINGTON -- The steady rising of IQ scores over the last century – known as the Flynn effect – causes IQ tests norms to become obsolete over time. To counter this effect, IQ tests are "renormed" (made harder) every 15-20 years by resetting the mean score to 100 to account for the previous gains in IQ scores. But according to new research, such renorming may have unintended consequences, particularly in the area of special education placements for children with borderline or mild mental...

The superintendent of a Massachusetts school district who failed a required English literacy test three times and put two dozen teachers on unpaid leave for failing a similar exam has passed on his fourth try. Wilfredo Laboy, a native of Puerto Rico who moved to the United States when he was a child, faced the threat of losing his $156,560-a-year job if he didn't pass the Communication and Literacy Skills Test by December. The Lawrence Eagle Tribune reports Laboy got his latest test results last night but would not discuss them publicly. Lawrence, Mass., Mayor Michael Sullivan told the paper...

<p>If kids in New York high schools are cheering Wednesday's decision to lower the passing grade for state Regents tests, it's no mystery why.</p> <p>They're kids!</p> <p>State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, who recommended the change, and the state Board of Regents, which OK'd it, have no such excuse.</p>

On Saturday, when 600,000 high school students open their SAT test booklets, one question they won't find is: Why are they required to complete this key college admissions exam within three hours? The correct answer: Because the tests always have been strictly timed. Yet the College Board, which administers the test, concedes the time limit isn't intended to measure how students perform under deadline. Rather the restriction merely serves a logistical purpose. Providing more time would complicate efforts to book rooms and protect against cheating. Because the College Board is wedded to a stopwatch system, it places unnecessary time pressures...

Ignore, please. I'm just bored so I thought I would try to figure this out. Wait a minute if this works, any of yall want to talk about Baptist stuff?

New York State's education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, said Wednesday that the state would loosen the demanding testing requirements it has imposed for high school graduation in recent years, including the standards used to judge math proficiency. Mr. Mills's announcement followed the release earlier in the day of a report on the debacle of the Math A Regents exam in June. The report, by a panel appointed by the Regents and Mr. Mills, said the state's effort to establish rigorous math standards was deeply flawed and needed to be overhauled. The panel found that the state had given math teachers...

HOME SCHOOL STATISTICSThe following study can be found in its entirety at: http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/rudner1999/Rudner1.aspAbout the studyBob Jones University Press Testing and Evaluation Service, the largest home school testing service in the nation, provides Assessment services to home school students and private schools on a fee-for-service basis. In Spring 1998, 39,607 home school students were contracted to take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS, grades K-8) or the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP, grades 9-12). Both the ITBS and TAP are published by Riverside Publishing Company and were developed after careful review of national and state curricula and standards.BJUP certified...

When I was in high school, the honor roll was dominated by beautiful young ladies. The homecoming queen and her princesses were always near the top of the list, as were many of the cheerleaders. Why was it that the prettiest girls in the school were also the smartest? Well, they weren't. Appearance, personality and the ability to fit in socially often gave these girls an advantage over equally able peers when it came to getting good grades. Likewise athletic, outgoing, middle-class guys tended to get better grades than their less socially-adept classmates. Because of hidden (and difficult to overcome)...

Exams test educator integrity Emphasis on scores can lead to cheating, teacher survey finds By Aimee Edmondson edmondson@gomemphis.com September 21, 2003 The stories she'd heard about cheating started to make sense when Kim McCrary Marsh's eighth-graders asked for answers during annual achievement tests. "My students asked me, 'Are you going to help us on the test a little bit like So-and-So did?' " said Marsh, a former Trezevant High School history teacher. These days it's not just students who feel pressure to cheat. Marsh and other teachers in Memphis and Shelby County tell stories of adults taking shortcuts on the...

School exam chiefs are to remove all risk of failure from key national tests by replacing the current F for "fail" grade with an N for "nearly". The changes, which have been condemned as "politically correct twaddle", include instructions that markers are to grade maths exam answers as either "creditworthy" or "not creditworthy" instead of correct or incorrect. Guidelines explaining the changes were sent by the Government's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to the markers of this summer's national curriculum exams. The instructions cover English, maths and science exams at key stages one, two and three, which are taken by seven,...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Government scientists conducted an underground nuclear materials experiment Friday at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The subcritical experiment, dubbed Piano, involved detonating high explosives to chart the behavior of plutonium in a non-nuclear explosion. It did not trigger a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, NNSA spokesman Kevin Rohrer said. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California completed the test at 1:44 p.m. in a cavern 960 feet below ground, Rohrer said. No abnormalities and no surface damage were reported at the vast site, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas....

U.S. to conduct subcritical nuke test Thursday Thursday, September 18, 2003 at 02:04 JST WASHINGTON — The United States will conduct a subcritical nuclear experiment at the Nevada test site on Thursday, for the first time since Sept 26 last year, the U.S. Energy Department said Tuesday. It will be the 20th such test since 1997 and the seventh since President George W Bush took the office in 2001. The tests have been strongly criticized as undermining the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (Kyodo News)

In 2003 the median score for whites on the ACT was 21.7. (The ACT test is scored on a scale of 0 to 36.) For blacks, the median score was 16.9. Thus, on average, blacks scored 13 percent lower on the ACT than whites. The good news is that while the median score for whites remained the same, the black score increased by 0.1 point. However, the bad news is that the racial gap on the ACT test has been expanding over recent years.The median scores for both blacks and whites had remained the same for three years from 1997...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretarySeptember 6, 2003 President's Radio Address      Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This month, as students across the nation are starting a new school year, parents, teachers and principals are starting to notice a difference in America's schools. The No Child Left Behind Act that I signed into law last year is raising standards for student achievement, giving parents more information and more choices, requiring more accountability from schools, and funding education at record levels. The premise of the No Child Left Behind Act is simple: all children can learn, and the only way to...