Higher education in decline

[Ishmael]

Sorry Ish but you're dead wrong on this one. SAT math tests reached a 36 year high & verbal a 16 year high in 2003. I believe this is the 2nd time I've posted this.

• The College Board

(AP) -- The nation's high school class of 2003 achieved the best score on the math section of the SAT exam in at least 36 years, while students' verbal scores hit a 16-year high.

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.

The math and verbal sections of the SAT are each graded on 200-800 point scale. A total of 897 students in the United States had a perfect cumulative score of 1,600 this year.

Overall, some 1.4 million students in the class of 2003 took the SAT during their high school career. The nonprofit College Board said 36 percent of those taking the test were minority students, up 6 percent from a decade ago.

"Higher SAT scores, a record number of test-takers, and more diversity add up to a brighter picture for higher education," College Board President Gaston Caperton said in a prepared statement.

"While we certainly need to make more progress, the fact remains that we are clearly headed in the right direction."

This year's average math scores are the highest the College Board could document under the current scoring system. The earliest figures date from 1967. The SAT was first given in 1926.

Advanced courses
The College Board said the higher scores were due to increased enrollment in advanced math and science courses such as physics, precalculus, calculus and chemistry.

The president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics credited teaching methods that make math meaningful.

"(Students are) looking at problems that don't just involve pure calculation and computation-type of mathematics," said Johnny Lott. "They're looking at real-world problem solving."

Female test-takers also have improved notably in math over the last decade, with their average scores increasing 19 points to 503. Male math scores have gone up 13 points over the same period of time to 537.

Higher SAT scores, a record number of test-takers, and more diversity add up to a brighter picture for higher education.
-- College Board President Gaston Caperton


Females also averaged 503 on the 2003 verbal exam (up a point from last year), while males averaged 512 -- a jump of 5 points from 2002.

The board said 54 percent of the test-takers were female and 46 percent were male.

SAT scores play a role in the admissions process at 80 percent of the nation's colleges and universities.

Along with the ACT, the country's second-largest test-maker, the SAT has come under fire from critics who maintain high schools and colleges place too much emphasis on standardized entrance exams. Others contend the tests are unfair to students coming from poorer school districts.

Results from both tests this year showed the gap between the scores of white students and non-Asian minorities continues to persist.

To stress the importance of language skills -- verbal scores have improved by seven points compared to a 16-point jump in math proficiency over the last decade -- a mandatory essay will be introduced as part of the SAT exam in 2005.

While high school students have participated in more college preparatory math and science classes since 1993, the board found that enrollment in English composition courses dropped from 79 percent to 66 percent.

"Rigorous preparation in this area is crucial for students' success in college and beyond," Caperton said.



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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

I suggest you go back and re-read my post. It still stands.

Ishmael

 

[Ishmael]

I do not see how teaching to pass standardized testing promotes anything but memorization. Anyone can memorize if they hear and/or see the same thing over and over again. It takes thinking to do something with the data memorized other than just regurgitating it back out or recognizing it from a lineup of 4 to 6 choices.

I agree and disagree. Is that obtuse enough?

There is a part of learning that is by rote. Certain basic priciples that are used as tools for later problem solving. Knowing how to divide up a bushel of apples is of little use if you can't add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Spelling is another subject that is learned more by rote. Punctuation, etc. Like having a hammer and saw before you start a carpentry project.

Testing is the only means we have to determine whether an individual has reached a certain level of competence or not. It is a measure of both the student and the teacher.

Teaching the test has always been the norm. To the point of being ridiculous, I don't think anyone should expect a test concerning nuclear shell energy levels in a contemporary literature class.

I understand your point here. But I believe education is a series of steps. Provide the tools, show how they're used, repeat. Then introduce problems and show how a few are solved. Then test problem solving. There is also the argument that 'problem solving' should be tested seperately. I think there's some validitiy to that argument.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

The only Dr. Williams I've ever called was an eye doctor.

If you don't see it, maybe I should give you his number.

So basically, you've accused Dr. Walter E. Williams, economics chair at George Mason U, a name-caller, but offer no proof...

It must be professional envy.

He get to pontificate on National Review and the NYTimes and you're stuck with Lit.

 

[*******]

If you're going to be consistent, then you should probably have chosen the term "devolved." Which is what I said. Which means you agree with me. See? That wasn't hard now, was it?

No "de-evolution" would be going back to the days when getting a HS diploma was all that MIGHT be required to do mind-numbing factory work which is about the era our current system was created in based upon a German model. It was designed to turn out good workers, not great thinkers. Now, if you had mentioned DeVry, you may have scored a point ot two with me, but colleges now train workers for a new age, not thinkers. It's why I went.

Back then, guys like you went to colege because you DIDN'T want to work, that's the way you do it, let me tell you guys ain't dumb, maybe get a blister on your little finger, maybe get a paper cut...

I lost the tip o' my finger doing real work!

 

[*******]

No. On parts of the FCAT you will lose points for injecting previous knowledge. On some portions of the reading tests students will be asked to compare 2 different passages. These passages will most likely not be alike, but the content may be similar.

For example students may read a newspaper article about clouds, then a poem about clouds. The students will be asked to compare the forms and not the content. So how will memorization help?

I have ALWAYS scored in the 98th to 99th percentile on standardized tests...

I am no genious or great thinker.

I am just really good at taking tests.

I "aced" the English part of the SAT...



There are dozens of Wibawaws on this board that will tell you in no uncertain terms what kind of an idiot I am...

Marxist
Pookie
DCL
Laurel
sigh
.
.
.

 

[*******]

Hey, hon, I use a calculator a dozen (usually more) times a day, and not to make money. I use it to save lives. Ishmael, I don't have time to roll it out by hand. When we're in the crunch, seconds count, and if I make a math error, or take too much time to figure out an elimination constant, people die; it's that simple.

Yes, I'm capable of doing the numbers by hand, but because I can estimate an answer before I start, I can recognize at a glance if the answer that comes out of my calculator is reasonable or not. And I always punch the numbers through twice because it's easy to make a mistake when you're hurrying. Luckily, doing it twice (or even five times) with a calculator is still far quicker than doing it once by hand, so that's a luxury I can afford. If my two tries don't match, I do it again until I can duplicate the results.

And you know, every time there's been a mistake, it's been my mistake, from simply tapping in a number wrong (which is why I always do it twice). Otherwise, my calculator has been flawless through hundreds, probably thousands of calculations, and it's a small TI scientific job that works off room light and costs about 20 bucks in any store. I trust it implicitly. It's in the pocket of my lab coat always.

It takes me ten seconds to tap out a drip rate for a CCU nurse. It would take me ten minutes to do that by hand. That, quite literally, is the time I save, and that's for simple algebra, like ratios and concentrations and such. If you want me to calculate an aminoglycoside dose based on estimated clearance, half life, volume of distribution, rate constants and so forth, it'd take me half a day for every dose using just a pencil and paper (hell, I'm not even sure I could raise a number by the inverse of the product of a constant times natural log by hand; if I ever get a couple of days to work on it, I'll let you know). Give me a calculator and I'll get back to you in ten minutes. Or give me a software program for calculating doses and you can just wait a minute and I'll print it out for you, and give you three different dosing options, with estimated peaks and troughs for each to boot.

Now which option do you suppose the doctor, who's just asked me the question, would prefer I choose?

Calculators are a tool, just like sliderules were a tool, just like long division is a tool, and learning how to carry the number is a tool when adding figures in a column. Every one of those tools was developed so that we could manage numbers greater than the number of fingers on both hands. No tool is necessarily better or worse than another, but some are a hell of a lot faster, and in my line of work, I don't have the luxury of time that apparently you have in yours.

If there's a problem, it's most often not with the tool. It's with how the tool is applied. You don't drive a screw with a hammer, and you don't force teachers to have kids do kindergarten lessons on a computer when they're reading at a first grade level.

I'm an absolute proponent of using calculators and computers in schools. To me, not teaching kids how to use them is the same as not teaching kids long division, or not teaching them how to write. I do understand that there's only so much time in a school day, but how can we choose to not teach something that virtually every workplace in the country will soon require as basic knowledge?

It's about establishing a firm foundation in mathamatics and reasoning in school. I don't even want my mechanic doing math long-hand, but it would be nice if he understood how to derive a square root. We used Algebra in the frame shop of the autobody shop in the dealership I worked for. Good ol' A*A+B*B=C*C

 

[*******]

Maybe you're autistic?

Not to suggest you are, but I heard an adult autistic speak once and he said that back in his college days at the University of Michigan, he used to fail math tests because he just wrote down the answer to each question and handed in the tests after ten minutes or so. When the prof told him he had to show his work, he asked, "What work?".

The human brain is fascinating, isn't it?

That describes me and standardized government testings...

In weather school they nicknamed me sponge becauseit looked like I was paying no attention what-so-ever but whenever they tested us, I was top gun (weather balloon, really. I am SO full of hot air...).

Now we had radars and could get Pireps on ceilings, but they still trained us to determine clud height based uopn obeservation alone. Radar, being based upon electricity, can go down.

 

[*******]

... and when a hurricane comes ashore, you ain't gonna get any Pireps either!

 

[*******]

...
The real issue at hand is the overspecialization pressures from business. Turns out becoming a tool is really easy when you only know how to do one thing. It is pretty sad how much actual learning gets left behind when people overspecialize in one field. The university system is not really meant for that, honestly if one wants to learn a specific task going to classes to get information about that task is a pretty shitty method. The point of universioties should be to educate people. It is too bad that it has become a competency screen instead of a place where serious students go to learn. All of that said, the university system is still decent at doing its job of educating those who want to be educated.

Yeah, right.

Overspecialization bad for evil business and good for the profs who are as pure as the driven snow...

RIGHT!

 

[Ishmael]

Back on topic

Phony 'ethics'
Thomas Sowell

December 10, 2004

Two apparently unrelated stories that appeared in newspapers on the same day are in reality not nearly as unrelated as they might seem. One story appeared under the headline, "High School Students Debate Steroid Ethics." The other story had the headline: "Economic Time Bomb: U.S. Teens Are Among Worst at Math."

We have known for a long time that teenagers in Japan scored much higher on international math tests than American teenagers do. But did you know that teenagers in Poland, the Slovak Republic, Iceland, Canada, and Korea -- among other places -- also score higher than our teenagers? Out of 29 countries whose teenagers took a recent international math test, American teenagers ranked 24th. Americans also scored near the bottom on tests of general problem-solving.

What about the ethics of using steroids? Kids can talk about this at home or on the streets or just about anywhere. What about the ethics of using up precious school time for such chatter when there are serious deficiencies in our children's ability to measure up to international standards in an increasingly competitive international economy? Presiding over classroom chatter is no doubt a lot easier than teaching the Pythagorean theorem or differential calculus. But teachers who indulge themselves like this, at the expense of their students' future, have no business conducting discussions of "ethics" about athletes using steroids -- or any other ethics issue. Jason Giambi may have done some damage to his own career, and to George Steinbrenner's pocketbook, by taking steroids. But that is nothing compared to the damage done to schoolchildren whose time is frittered away talking about it when there is serious work that remains undone.

With all the outcry about the "outsourcing" of American jobs, especially in computer work, there has been relatively little said about the importing of brains from foreign countries to do mentally challenging work here because the brains of our own students have simply not been adequately developed in our schools. For years, most of the Ph.D.s awarded by American universities in mathematics and engineering have gone to foreigners. We have the finest graduate schools in the world -- so fine that our own American students have trouble getting admitted in fields that require highly trained minds.

A finer breakdown of American teenagers' test scores shows that while white and Asian American students meet international standards in math, blacks and Hispanics fall well below those standards. Those students who are already less fortunate have the most to lose by turning classrooms into chatter sessions. The children of affluent and well-educated parents can learn a lot at home, even if the schools waste their time on "activities" and "projects." But the kid from a low-income family in the ghetto or barrio usually has just one shot at a decent life -- and that shot is in the school. Teachers who fail to equip these youngsters with mental skills send them out into the battles of life unarmed.

Teachers who think they are doing something good for those kids by sympathetically dwelling on racial grievances are giving them chips to carry on their shoulders instead of brainpower in their heads. Is anybody going to be more employable with a chip on his shoulders? Is anybody more likely to be work hard on improving himself when he is led to believe that his problems are caused by other people? The message that gets through to many minority youngsters is that you are a chump for trying when The Man is not going to let you get anywhere anyway. Those minority students who still try hard are often accused of "acting white" -- and that accusation can bring anything from social ostracism to outright violence.

Schools that give easy grades are setting their students up for a very hard life without the skills to compete. Instead of giving students and their parents a realistic picture of where they are, while there is still time to do something about it, schools are passing the job of confronting reality on to employers who get these youngsters when it is usually too late. Yet schools think they are teaching "ethics" when their whole abdication of adult responsibility is profoundly immoral.

And there part of it is.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

Just another African-American name-caller who is OFF THE PLANTATION of Liberal Learning...

 

[*******]

WTFawk!

I'm a registered Democrat now!

Another nigger, another Uncle Tom who doesn't know his place...

 

[*******]

If it weren't for whitey and affirmative action, he'd have no column...

Fucking Lapdawg!

 

[*******]

Now, the University I attended, a lot like the Clinton Cabinet, was woefully short of black professors...

ZERO!

Now Indian and Chinese, we had by the boatload!

 

[Ishmael]

If it weren't for whitey and affirmative action, he'd have no column...

Fucking Lapdawg!

You're having fun with this. I wonder how many are getting it?

Ishmael

 

[*******]

Not HamletMachine!

We did have niggers once we jumped up to a 1A basketball programme...

They were segregated in a special building where they could major in topics like Sports Administration. Again with all white liberal professors from the black studies department.

When I first saw that, I thought, when did we return to sorcery as a science?

 

[Hamletmaschine]

So basically, you've accused Dr. Walter E. Williams, economics chair at George Mason U, a name-caller, but offer no proof...

It must be professional envy.

He get to pontificate on National Review and the NYTimes and you're stuck with Lit.

Sweetheart, Lit is where I come to fuck around and play. Where I do my pontificatin' is a whole 'nuther arena.

You can enroll in my persuasion course. I'll teach you all about name-calling, and all the rest of it. You, too, will learn to separate legitimate arguments from propaganda. Mr. Williams tosses around labels like a real pro, I'll give him that. He's not quite as entertaining at it as busybody, but if he keeps working on it, maybe one day he will be.

No "de-evolution" would be going back to the days when getting a HS diploma was all that MIGHT be required to do mind-numbing factory work which is about the era our current system was created in based upon a German model. It was designed to turn out good workers, not great thinkers. Now, if you had mentioned DeVry, you may have scored a point ot two with me, but colleges now train workers for a new age, not thinkers. It's why I went.

Thanks for supporting my point. Again.

 

[*******]

Dude, I already studied verbal Judo with Dr. Thompson...

 

[*******]

Now, he was a helluva an educator.

Former thug turned cop turned professor turned English chair turned nationally recognized consultant.

He was the one who challenged me to go to college and got me started reading literature. He preferred the Russian writers while I turned on to Hesse and Grasse...

 

[*******]

And a pretty good MArtial Artists too, I might add.

A guy like you could NEVER have gotten through to a guy like me...

 

[Guest]

So exactly how is narrowing the curriculum so that you only learn things relevant to your job (as you see it) going to solve this problem of administrative salary hikes and other things you feel are a waste of funds?

I have a completely different take on education: schools for years have been ensuring that students do not ONLY learn what is relevant to their chosen career in order to provide (what I think) is a more valuable education. I do not see educational institutions solely as job factories. Perhaps things are too restrictive at your univeristy; at mine while you are required to take courses not directly linked to your major they do not pinpoint specific courses. The different subject areas are split into A & B categories with the student required to pick two from each. A couple of courses in two languages are also required.

Edit: It seems to me as if you are taking your annoyance at dealing with subjects you don't enjoy or have an interest in and using it as the scapegoat to explain a larger problem in many universities. The problem with scapegoats is that there are never the source of the problem. If the curriculum is narrowed, they may simply raise the price of other things (for eg. the classes you need) and the hikes continue and the new buildings are built. And so it continues.

I daresay you've missed my point entirely on this one. My point was simply that instead of cutting the unnecessary projects, the superfluous administrative costs, and the board of control's many pay raises, universities pass the costs off their students in any way possible. When they can't raise tuition any more for fear of public outcry, they find other ways. They require more classes, they require on-campus living, they require meal plans, and whatever other ideas they have.

The screwing of the students isn't the cause of the unnecessary spending, it's the other way around

Saying, "well, college is expensive and they'll just raise the price on something else if we stop this," is horseshit. It's time to stop giving these assholes free reign to continually raise tuition and fees through the roof, and an additude like that just allows it to continue. This thing has spiralled out of control, and I, for one, have had enough.

 

[Hamletmaschine]

And a pretty good MArtial Artists too, I might add.

A guy like you could NEVER have gotten through to a guy like me...

Yeah, that's what they all say. At the end of the day, you'd want to suck my dick just like the rest of 'em.

You have some odd conceptions about what I do and how I do it. It's pretty funny reading what you and Ish have to say about college today and people like me. Sort of like reading those early explorers' accounts about the strange, monstrous beings they encountered.

"Here be dragons" or maybe "Here be democrats"

Funny shit. Keep it up.

 

[sigh]

There are dozens of Wibawaws on this board that will tell you in no uncertain terms what kind of an idiot I am...

Marxist
Pookie
DCL
Laurel
sigh
.
.
.

Ha! So you think. Take me off that list, please. I stopped believing your sleight of brain tricks long ago.

Idiot you are not.


What the heck is a Wibawaw anyway?

 

[sigh]

Yeah, that's what they all say. At the end of the day, you'd want to suck my dick just like the rest of 'em.

You have some odd conceptions about what I do and how I do it. It's pretty funny reading what you and Ish have to say about college today and people like me. Sort of like reading those early explorers' accounts about the strange, monstrous beings they encountered.

"Here be dragons" or maybe "Here be democrats"

Funny shit. Keep it up.

*chuckling*

I don't think I've told you how good it is to see you posting regularly again. I missed your style.

 

[Ljbonobo]

Hey Sigh,

In your earlier post you forgot to mention why knowing the exact aminoglycoside dosage could be life threatening.....Its effects were two questions on my pathophysiology exam on tuesday...Unfortunately I know I answered them wrong. But now I won't forget them.