Free Republic

Substantial changes in the nation's mad cow testing system were ordered yesterday after British tests on a cow slaughtered in November confirmed that it had the disease even though the American "gold standard" test said it did not. "The protocol we developed just a few years ago to conduct the tests might not be the best option today," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in making the announcement. "Science is ever evolving." At an afternoon news conference in Washington, Mr. Johanns described serious errors in the testing in the United States on the animal, the second one found with mad cow...

New York moved to the forefront of the national standards movement in education during the 1990's when the State Board of Regents raised standards and required rigorous new tests for public school students. The policy is beginning to yield impressive results, especially in inner-city areas. But a bill in the State Legislature could strangle reforms by allowing some schools to evade rigorous state tests in favor of subjective evaluations that would make it impossible to judge student progress. The bill, which has passed the Senate and is pending in the Assembly, would extend a temporary waiver that has allowed some...

SAN FRANCISCO ---- Ten school districts statewide and three nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit against the state Wednesday for allegedly testing non-English-speaking students in English and then labeling them and their schools as "failing" under the state's implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The lawsuit, filed in federal Superior Court in San Francisco, demands that the state test its 1.6 million non-English-speaking students in a "language and form" they understand, as mandated in the federal education reform law. The lawsuit is asking the state to change the way it tests students who do not yet understand English,...

When the drug industry came under fire last summer for failing to disclose poor results from studies of antidepressants, major drug makers promised to provide more information about their research on new medicines. But nearly a year later, crucial facts about many clinical trials remain hidden, scientists independent of the companies say. Within the drug industry, companies are sharply divided about how much information to reveal, both about new studies and completed studies for drugs already being sold. The split is unusual in the industry, where companies generally take similar stands on regulatory issues. Eli Lilly and some other companies...

FRISCO – There is a Mikey Roberts in every elementary school class. He talks a lot, he can't sit still and he's pushy – the one most likely to get in trouble. His teachers say students like Mikey are often misunderstood. Mikey also is a people-oriented person with a domineering personality. Said another way, he's a natural leader. That's what a personality test said about the first-grader at Smith Elementary School in Frisco. He and 370 classmates are part of a rare pilot program designed to help teachers manage their students. ...."This helps explain the unexplainable. It tells you why...

EPA Testing 150 Lower Manhattan Buildings May 11, 2005 11:53 am US/Eastern (1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) Dust samples from 150 New York buildings in lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn are to be gathered by the Environmental Protection Agency to find out how much indoor contamination might remain from the collapse of the World Trade Center. EPA officials say the samples will determine what should be cleaned and whether to launch a broader cleanup effort. The EPA says samples will be analyzed for lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, asbestos and manmade vitreous fibers. Residents and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn...

After the failures of numerous drug candidates over two decades, an experimental treatment has been shown to protect the brain from some of the damage caused by strokes, drug industry executives and doctors said yesterday. The drug, called Cerovive, reduced disability from stroke in a late-stage clinical trial involving 1,700 people, according to the product's developers, AstraZeneca and Renovis. The companies are conducting a second late-stage, or Phase 3, trial. They say if the results, due the first half of next year, are positive, they will apply late next year for federal approval. Shares of Renovis, a biotechnology company in...

In its latest major accomplishment as an industrial power, North Korea has dug a really big hole. Usually such a hole would be filled with the bodies of starved peasants or of schoolchildren convicted of being distantly related to someone caught listening to the Bee Gees. But in this case, the hole is only metaphorically filled with such bodies, as it is thought to actually contain the infrastructure for a test detonation of one of the atomic bombs on which North Korean God-King Kim Jong-Il has spent his people's stolen resources -- while allowing as many as 1,000,000 people to...

COLUMBIA, Missouri -- Student essays always seem to be riddled with the same sorts of flaws. So sociology professor Ed Brent decided to hand the work off -- to a computer. Students in Brent's Introduction to Sociology course at the University of Missouri-Columbia now submit drafts through the SAGrader software he designed. It counts the number of points he wanted his students to include and analyzes how well concepts are explained. And within seconds, students have a score.

Signs of positive improvements in Kentucky schools are being widely reported. The number of Kentuckians with a high school diploma is up 10 percent over the past decade; more of the commonwealth’s students are taking the ACT college entrance test, with scores are up over last year; and students’ scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), a widely used standardized test, have slightly improved. The general consensus among the education establishment and the media is that recent reports illustrate a slow, steady progress for educational attainment in the state, but that much work remains to be done. For...

AMBRIDGE, Mass. IN March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits. Advertisement "It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the...

Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang’s famous mummiesM (AFP) 19 April 2005 URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived. The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades. “It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it...

God Is Up To Something Mary Lindow So? God Is Up To Something Fresh In This Season! ALL OF US ARE INDIVIDUALLY SOMEHOW BEING LED BY THE FATHER! ALONE...INTO QUESTS OF THE HEART. He is testing us sorely to see if we long for any power from the pull of glory, revelation, or any spiritual insights. I TRULY SEE HIM TESTING US ALL IN DEEPER REGIONS OF OUR SOULS THAN WE EVER DREAMED EXISTED. THIS THING HE IS DOING! IT IS A PRECISION OPERATION THAT "LASERS" AWAY EVERYTHING FRAUDULENT, EMPTY, AND EMBELLISHED! HE IS DRIVING US LOVINGLY TO SIMPLICITY, LOYALTY,...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR EVERYBODY who is anybody seems to have decided that the American high school is responsible for the failings of American students. The Bush administration, many governors and even Bill Gates have now called for radical reforms. Reflecting this growing consensus that the high school is, in Mr. Gates's words, an "obsolete" institution, the governors of 13 states have pledged an overhaul of the high school system, and more are expected to jump on the bandwagon of reform. Let's slow down here. American education is famous for inspiring crusades, and the history of the 20th century is littered with...

I Am The Change Susan Cummings I AM the Change. I AM the Opposition. I AM the Answer. I AM the Change, and it comes forth from My Plan for you. I told you that I was coming forth and shaking all things. Everything is going to change, including you. Nothing is going to be left that is not affected by My dealings and administration of this change. Everything will be removed from it’s place. Nothing will stay in it’s foundation or base, as all things are under My scrutiny and My hand. Every work will be made manifest, and...

An influential federal advisory group plans to recommend in the next few weeks that all newborns be screened for 29 rare medical conditions, from the well known, like sickle cell anemia, to diseases so obscure that they are known to just a handful of medical specialists and a few dozen devastated families. But while no one argues with the idea of saving babies, the proposed screening is generating fierce debate. The dispute centers on how useful the test findings would be. Would going ahead with the full list of tests result in more good than harm, physically and emotionally? Or...

Urging a major shift in U.S. policy, some health experts are recommending that virtually all Americans be tested routinely for the AIDS (search) virus, much as they are for cancer and other diseases. Since the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the government has recommended screening only in big cities, where AIDS rates are high, and among members of high-risk groups, such as gay men and drug addicts. But two large, federally funded studies found that the cost of routinely testing and treating nearly all adults would be outweighed by a reduction in new infections and the...

Jesseka Davis vowed last spring to do her best on Missouri's standardized tests, but filling in the ovals became too tedious. “I was bored. I filled in A, B, C, D,” said the junior at Oak Park High School. “Why try hard on something that doesn't really affect me?” Davis and her parents, Debi and Greg Davis, say she is a much better student than her standardized test scores show. “We don't put much stock in them,” Debi Davis said. “I don't think it's an accurate assessment of her skills.” Fair or not, test scores are how Davis' school and...

Teachers who failA survey of certification-test scores yields alarming results More than half a million Florida students sat in classrooms last year in front of teachers who failed the state's basic skills tests for teachers. Many of those students got teachers who struggled to solve high school math problems or whose English skills were so poor, they flunked reading tests designed to measure the very same skills students must master before they can graduate. These aren't isolated instances of a few teachers whose test-taking skills don't match their expertise and training. A Herald-Tribune investigation has found that fully a third...

WASHINGTON (AP) — At least a dozen cases of lasers being beamed into aircraft cockpits since Christmas in Cleveland and other cities are being investigated by the FBI. Advertisement The lasers can temporarily blind pilots. A cluster of incidents received wide attention between Christmas and New Year's Day, and the FBI says at least four more have occurred in the past week. Authorities have continued to rule out terrorism. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was briefing reporters Wednesday about the issue at the Federal Aviation Administration's aeronautical research center in Oklahoma City. Mineta was expected to announce new measures for alerting...