Pages

Thursday, September 05, 2013

Silk purses and sows ears.

Watchdog, second item, here. A quote:

ANOKA-HENNEPIN TEST RESULTS

Speaking of test results, Another batch of standardized test results have come in for school districts, including Anoka-Hennepin.

The big news is that grade 3 through 8 reading scores for this year are based on a new, more vigorous test based on the Common Core, a new national curriculum.

Education officials have dismissed the major drop off [sic] in test scores as simply the result of basing scores on a harder test.

[...] It's not hard to leap over low bar[sic]. Unfortunately, global economic competition doesn't award a "tallest midget" ribbon. You educate your citizens to compete or you fail. It's that harsh, no matter how hard the liberals protest life's unfairness, all the way from the classroom to the athletic field to the boardroom.

There is no two class system in the global arena, no class "A" system to drop to if "AA" is too hard.

[... omitted data; begin pedantic panic mode]

Every single grade level in the district saw a double-digit drop in proficiency. So why hasn't the mainstream media asked why the previous test was so easy? Why was the bar set so low?

Every percentage point drop represents students previously labeled "proficient" in reading who are now below the proficiency line.

[...] The dumbing down of America has certainly touched every school district in Anoka County.

We're also relieved to discuss something other than homosexual issues in the district.

There's much to do [sic] to make these schools truly competitive in a global economy.

The first thing would be to get rid of a teachers' union that protects the incompetent and resists attempts to make teachers more accountable for the results they deliver.

[...] It's great to see improvement vis-a-vis other Minnesota districts, but that's still a tallest midget analysis.

[...] It's one thing to beat the scores out of Brown County. It's another to beat the scores out of Bavaria.

We can't be satisfied doing well against intra-state districts. We need to strive for excellence as measured against international competition, where we are still woefully weak.

By international standards, American kids are middle of the pack in reading and science while they are below average in math.

When Polish kids are smoking U.S. kids on reading scores, it's hard to brag.

It is dog-easy. Blame the teachers. Blame "the liberals." Perhaps the wrong people, dumber ones, are reproducing in greater numbers. Michele and Marcus Bachmann had five children, and are religious fundamentalists vs. being attuned to evolution and global warming worry. But one example does not prove much. Perhaps it is that dumber people move to the Anoka Hennepin district. Perhaps it is time to throw out the TV, and take back the iPhones. Perhaps Korean and Bavarian young people do their text messaging in complete, grammatically correct sentences.

Perhaps it is time to realize that parents have a great impact upon value systems of their children and if the parents are disrespectful of intelligent well-educated neighbors then expecting the children to value education and to work at it is - what - whimsical?

Perhaps the Watchdog is making too much "to do" about a situation where winnowing at higher levels than K-12 is the reality. Perhaps the Watchdog knows all this, but just has dog-stupid bias against unions and liberals. The world is full of possibilities.

But the genetics of things, children inheriting their parents' genetic character, and not their teachers', needs to be a part of proper analysis and behavior, in the training of one's watchdog.

Teaching the dog what to watch for and to bark about (such as ending sentence fragments with prepositions). If you start with a watchdog that can only see from its right eye, having only a right oriented world view, perhaps it's a doomed beast. One doomed to be drawn to the inflaming of passions via stale rhetoric, more than by logic.