Free Republic

<p>The College Board, which owns the nation's most popular college entrance exam, said Tuesday that this year's high school graduates had an average cumulative score of 1,026 points on the SAT, up six points from 2002. Both the average math (519) and verbal (507) scores were up three points from last year.</p>

Parasoft CEO Blames SoBig On Arrogant Software Industry Leadership August 22, 2003 (3:29 p.m. EST) By Keith Ferrell , TechWeb News Sharply criticizing complacency, arrogance and immaturity in software industry leadership, and blaming those qualities for the SoBig virus's successful march through the world's computers, Parasoft CEO Adam Kolawa delivered a rant Friday that included an offer to show the industry how to cure its errors. The head of the privately held software development solutions company said that the industry's policy of tackling program bugs at the latter stages of development cycles is self-defeating. By that point in the development...

<p>August 21, 2003 -- Hundreds of Chinese immigrants are under investigation for allegedly hiring imposters - with far better English skills - to take their graduate-school admissions tests, Manhattan prosecutors said yesterday.</p> <p>Five students - the tip of the iceberg - are already in custody in the alleged scam, facing identity theft and forgery charges that could put them behind bars for up to seven years.</p>

<p>The chilling reality is that children who have trouble reading at the end of third grade will continue to have difficulty through school. The question is how to help them.</p> <p>Twenty Upper St. Clair elementary pupils, 10 from the fifth grade at Boyce Middle School and 10 from the third grade at Eisenhower Elementary, will be part of a countywide project to answer that question.</p>

(CNSNews.com) - When both school teachers and even a local school superintendent cannot pass legally required English fluency tests, as was the case in Massachusetts recently, taxpayers and students end up the losers, critics told CNSNews.com Thursday. "It's obviously a ridiculous situation. Here's the guy in charge of education (in Lawrence, Mass.), and he can't even pass an English literacy test," James Lubinskas, communications director for U.S. English, Inc., a group dedicated to making English the official U.S. language, said. Jim Boulet, executive director for a similar-minded group, English First, agreed, saying the situation highlights what has been wrong with...

<p>In New York City and other large cities, high school students are increasingly being expelled &#8212; not for bad behavior, but because administrators think they will fail standardized tests. These students are not considered dropouts. That would look bad for the public school system. Rather, they are called "pushouts." The students are usually offered alternative programs, where they can earn a General Educational Development (GED) diploma. However, GED teachers have said that most pushouts never even get a GED. Such developments are the antithesis of modern public education goals that seek to leave no child behind.</p>

School tests breach UN convention, envoy claims Will Woodward, education editor Monday July 14, 2003 The Guardian The government is breaching the United Nations convention on children's rights by imposing a targets and testing regime in English schools that ignores their needs, a UN representative has warned. In an interview with the Guardian, Katarina Tomasevski, special rapporteur on the right to education for the UN commission on human rights, said she believed the British government was in technical breach of the convention. Article 29 says education should be "directed to the development of the child's personality, talents and mental and...

College Board Scores With Critics of SAT Analogies By Paul Pringle Times Staff Writer July 27, 2003 The SAT is to college admission ... " ... As a root canal is to a dentist?" said Peter Lee, 16. He and several other weary-looking high school students had just emerged from a four-hour SAT prep class in Glendale. "As a root canal is to a patient?" suggested Emin Gharibian, 17. Neither of those worked for Anthony Kwon, 16. "As a root canal is to pain," he said. Pain is typically the refrain when college-bound youngsters jaw about the SAT. But some...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sat27jul27,1,1810756.story?coll=la-home-headlines   College Board Scores With Critics of SAT Analogies By Paul Pringle Times Staff Writer July 27, 2003 The SAT is to college admission ... " ... As a root canal is to a dentist?" said Peter Lee, 16. He and several other weary-looking high school students had just emerged from a four-hour SAT prep class in Glendale. "As a root canal is to a patient?" suggested Emin Gharibian, 17. Neither of those worked for Anthony Kwon, 16. "As a root canal is to pain," he said. Pain is typically the refrain when college-bound youngsters jaw about the SAT....

We will start testing nuclear bombs, says defiant N Korea (Filed: 27/07/2003) US fears that declaration could be prelude to an atomic attack, writes Julian Coman North Korea has raised the stakes dramatically in its confrontation with the United States by privately threatening to conduct its first underground nuclear test, it emerged yesterday. A senior official of the hardline Communist regime warned in New York that his country would take counter-measures, "for example, a nuclear test", if the US did not ease pressure on his isolated country. The warning, by Han Sung Ryol, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United...

<p>The District's schoolchildren are the worst writers in the country, a national report says a month after the same students were ranked the nation's worst readers.</p> <p>D.C. fourth-graders scored 18 points below the national average of 153 points on writing assessments last year, with more than one-fourth lacking even basic writing ability, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) said in "The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2002."</p>

A decade after Florida began focusing on writing skills, the state's fourth-graders are among the nation's best young writers. Florida had the fifth-highest percentage of fourth-graders writing proficiently, according to results of the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The state's eighth-graders ranked 11th. Florida showed some of the biggest increases over time, and some of the biggest gains among minority students. The scores, released Thursday, were touted by Education Commissioner Jim Horne as evidence that Florida's school reforms are working, and that the focus on writing skills is paying dividends. Still, only a third of Florida's students are proficient...

<p>California high school seniors will not need to pass a high school exit exam to earn their diplomas in 2004 and 2005, but state officials have promised the new requirement will return for the Class of 2006.</p> <p>The state Board of Education decided unanimously Wednesday to put the exam, a key element of the state's accountability system, on hiatus for two years.</p>

US identifies nuclear testing range in North Korea By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 02/07/2003) American spy satellites have found what looks like an advanced nuclear testing range in North Korea, it was reported yesterday. An intelligence assessment, which has been shared with Japan, South Korea and other East Asian nations, identifies a previously unknown range of the type needed to produce a nuclear missile warhead, the New York Times said. The satellite images from the Youngdoktong area appear to show tests of sophisticated conventional explosives, designed to simulate a compact nuclear detonation. Intelligence officials in the United States have...

Every child born in the UK could be genetically screened and the data stored to plan their future healthcare under government proposals for a massive expansion of genetic testing. John Reid, the new Secretary of State for Health, said the UK was on the threshold of a revolution in healthcare. "Increasing understanding of genetics will bring more accurate diagnosis, more personalised prediction of risk, new gene-based drugs and therapies and better targeted prevention and treatment," he said. The controversial proposal for testing newborn babies was announced in a White Paper that promised £50m to expand the ability of the NHS...

DUMBING DOWN OUR SCHOOLS A Public Agenda 2001 survey that found 86 percent of parents thought there should be a basic skills or more challenging test in order to receive a high school diploma, while only 12 percent thought it a bad idea. Yet, sensitivity to social injustice has led to a fear of failure and to a policy of minimal measurement in our nation's schools, says Pete du Pont (National Center for Policy Analysis). This in turn has led advocates to attempt to block high school graduation tests. o In New York, 25 different organizations, from the teachers unions...

Parents hearing recent news reports about ''exit exams'' that high school seniors must pass to earn a diploma probably assume they're a bad idea doomed to a well-deserved death. In Massachusetts, where 4,800 seniors were denied diplomas for failing the mandatory tests, state authorities had to quash a rebellion among superintendents planning to give out diplomas anyway. This month in California, state school officials retreated from a plan that would have denied diplomas to tens of thousands of students likely to fail exit tests, which now won't be used until 2006. And Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been hounded by...

<p>Reading skills of Arizona's fourth- and eighth-graders are scraping bottom compared with the rest of the nation, according to a national report released Thursday.</p> <p>Results from the 2002 Nation's Report Card on reading show Arizona's fourth-graders trailing the national average by 12 points.</p>

School administrators across New York State are charging that the Regents exam in mathematics offered this week was far too difficult, and that a huge number of high school seniors may be barred from graduating next week because they failed it. Though many districts have not finished tabulating their scores, superintendents, principals and math department heads are reporting preliminary results that some described yesterday as "abysmal," "disastrous" and "outrageous." "Kids have walked out of the exam in tears knowing they are just not graduating," said one veteran assistant principal in Brooklyn, adding that officials from other schools had been deluging...

The NAEP (National Assesment of Educational Progress) 2002 Reading results were released yesterday. Department of Defense Schools are very good indeed, and seem to almost eliminate the racial gaps in reading, particularly the Hispanic one. It should also make it clear that members of the armed forces seem to be either peculiarly intelligent, or they breed intelligent children. California does very badly, BTW, and Texas does quite well, particularly for Hispanics. % over basic DOD schools 8th grade - Black - 80 Hispanic - 85 White - 92 US 8th grade Black - 54 Hispanic - 56 White - 83...