Declining
Quality Of Education -- Declining Test Scores -- Main Article by Karl Loren
Declining
Quality Of Education -- Declining Test Scores -- Main Article by Karl Loren
Reading achievement among the nation's 4th graders—including the lowest-performing of those students—is showing signs of progress after a decade of state and federal initiatives to improve instruction in the early grades.
But the performance of older students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is not so promising, with the scores of 8th graders stagnating over the past four years and those of 12th graders declining, according to the latest results released here June 19, 2003.
High school seniors turned in an average score of 287, a small, but statistically significant drop from 1998, and a 5-point drop from a decade ago. (source)
The Destruction Of American Education -- Article by Karl Loren
Psychology has a noble heritage. I'm fond of telling the story about St. Thomas Aquinas -- the man I think could be called the first "psychologist." Click here for my article on him. In 600 short years we went from the Devout St. Thomas to the Devil in Dr. Wundt!
Why was St. Thomas called on by his Pope to become a "psychologist?" Aristotle was famous for proving that God existed by using Science and Logic -- these were tools not used by the Catholic Church -- and the Church was losing membership because Aristotle appealed to more and more people.
The Pope, seeing this vast competition to the power of the Church, (unofficially) appointed St. Thomas Aquinas to be the first official "psychologist" -- "psyche" being "soul" and "gist" meaning the "study of." [Source]
Drug users are not good risks as students. They fail! The teacher or supervisor takes a loss at HIS failure to teach, but the problem is that the student arrives on course with a body that distracts him from study activities. I, Karl Loren, refuse to provide any of the eCourses offered on this web site to any person who is currently taking any illegal street drug or who is taking any psychiatric drug. The psychiatric drugs are actually worse than most street drugs.
The Wrong Relationship Cause Of Study And Health Problems -- Article by Karl Loren
One of the worst drugs is Ritalin -- supposedly used in schools to "help" students, this drug always makes a person a worse student. Other drugs do this also. See my article on this, here. I consider any parent who allows his child to receive Ritalin to be guilty of child abuse -- this is a wrong relationship (with the parent) that makes the child into a failed student.
In addition to drugs there is another huge factor in health and study.
The truth of the matter is that all poor study experience and diseases and illnesses, and every type of health problem has some sort of "relationship" problem that comes first. This wrong relationship could be right now, in present time, or it could have been many years ago. Most often it was actually the very teacher you trusted to teach you.
The Catholic Church, in those years (1200 AD), believed in "symbols" and thought that the common man should accept without understanding, what the Church had to say about God and the spirit. God, for the average Catholic resided in the symbol of the crucifix on the wall, or the other ornaments.
Aristotle, unknown today by most, taught that God existed and could be understood by man -- that man did NOT have to just accept blindly what the "elders" taught. Socrates taught much the same, but didn't try, as Aristotle did, to put "science" into his spiritual philosophy.
God to Aristotle is the first of all substances, the necessary first source of movement who is himself unmoved. God is a being with everlasting life, and perfect blessedness, engaged in never-ending contemplation. [Source]
Teaching -- by
L. Ron HubbardIf one wishes a subject to be taught with maximal effectiveness, he should:
. . . .
9. Treat subjects as variables of expanding use which may be altered at individual will. Teach the stability of knowledge as resident only in the student's ability to apply knowledge or alter what he knows for new application.
The study concepts presented on this web site are based on the discoveries and writings of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard.
No Child
Left Behind -- ActThe No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (No Child Left Behind) is a landmark in education reform designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of America's schools. President George W. Bush describes this law as the "cornerstone of my administration." Clearly, our children are our future, and, as President Bush has expressed, "Too many of our neediest children are being left behind."
With passage of No Child Left Behind, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--the principal federal law affecting education from kindergarten through high school. In amending ESEA, the new law represents a sweeping overhaul of federal efforts to support elementary and secondary education in the United States. It is built on four common-sense pillars: accountability for results; an emphasis on doing what works based on scientific research; expanded parental options; and expanded local control and flexibility.
Since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act first passed Congress in 1965, the federal government has spent more than $321 billion (in 2002 dollars) to help educate disadvantaged children. Yet nearly 40 years later, only 32 percent of fourth-graders can read skillfully at grade level. Sadly, most of the 68 percent who can't read well are minority children and those who live in poverty.
The good news is that campuses in cities and towns across the nation are creating high achievement for these same children. If some schools can do it, then all schools are able to do it.
The Facts
About...State Improvement Lists
Caught as they have been, in terrible results with their teaching technology, the individual States have each invented their own way of hiding the truth -- often by deliberately producing confusing reports on their results. Thus, the reports received from the individual States have NOT been adequate to allow any national report card to be prepared. That has changed with the "No Child Left Behind" Act.
This page presents some of the inconsistencies and inadequacies of the individual State reports.
Standards have gone from controversy to necessity. Americans now support higher academic standards in record numbers.
Americans understand standards are the road map to reform. They provide guideposts for academic achievement. They clearly tell students and parents where they are going.
No Child Left Behind requires each state to establish its own unique set of standards for reading, math and science.
The Challenge: Too many schools are not showing academic progress. Unfortunately, the current system hides failing schools.
The Solution: Set clear goals and timeframes; give parents information on academic achievement; and provide choices if their child's school continues to be identified as in need of improvement.
My five year old just started kindergarten. His teacher tells me that he has a short attention span. The tasks she mentioned take about 30 minutes of attention. I think that is a long amount of time to spend on one task at his age. What is normal for a five year old?
Karl Note: There is probably no greater evil within the subject of "education" than the claim that there is a medical disease called "attention deficit disorder." In fact the whole subject of "attention span" is covered in thousands of books by so-called experts who have no clue as what is involved.
The conscientious use of proven study methods can help students to improve their mastery of subject materials and to improve their grades. Becoming familiar with subject materials is not the same as learning them. In a physiological sense, although LEARNING involves understanding, it is initially mostly a matter of REPETITION. The more exposure students have to their subject materials, the greater their chances of retaining and using that information. The more times a neuronal circuit (pathway) is excited (used) in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) the more that circuit is facilitated (remembers).
The average score (on a 0 to 300 scale) for fourth-grade students in public schools in the nation was 153 and for students in central city schools was 147.
The average score (on a 0 to 300 scale) for eighth-grade students in public schools in the nation was 152 and in central city schools was 143.
NAEP Reading Scores: Progress Mixed With Decline
Reading achievement among the nation's 4th graders—including the lowest-performing of those students—is showing signs of progress after a decade of state and federal initiatives to improve instruction in the early grades.
But the performance of older students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is not so promising, with the scores of 8th graders stagnating over the past four years and those of 12th graders declining, according to the latest results released here June 19, 2003.
Breaking Tasks Into Meaningful Chunks
This material is full of foolish psychological educational pap! Nonetheless, the word "chunking" seems to have arisen from such a source. Since I use the word "chunking" I want to acknowledge the probable original source, but make it clear that my use of the word depends on an entirely different concept than is presented at this link.
Attention Deficit Disorder -- The Invented Disease
Another example is below, where the "Q2 Energy Spa" is claimed to realign the "bio energetic levels in water that is then used by the cells of all living things." There is no possible definition of "realign" that would fit with this usage. The word has NO definition as used in this phrase! This I call "psychobabble" -- the deliberate use of a word that has meaning, by itself, but which has no meaning that fits within the usage that is presented.
When education is the topic, test scores are almost always part of the debate. Over the past two decades, achievement test scores have been cited, variously, as sure and certain signs of U.S. educational decline or as indicators that particular types of reform are "working."
In a recent article, RAND's Daniel Koretz drew upon a body of his own and others' research to sort out how the reform debate has used test scores, what has really happened to them and why, and what the answers imply for future debate.
These are the two drastically opposing views presented in this article.
Standards-based accountability improves student performance by providing incentives and focusing attention and resources on the children and schools that are failing.
Alternatively: high-stakes assessment is a plot perpetrated by the political elite on disadvantaged children, who are being pushed out of school, denied real opportunity and subjected to a test-focused curriculum so narrow as to be meaningless. The gains claimed by proponents are shallow or illusory.
Inflated Test Scores Caused By the "No Child Left Behind Act.
Even though this bill is 1100 pages long, it really is a very simple bill. The model of improvement it presupposes is this: you assess student performance using measures that you think are sufficient to summarize what kids have learned over a long period of time; you set very ambitious targets for improvements in scores on those tests; you require continual improvement; and then you reward and punish.
This is precedent-setting at the federal level, but it is nothing new. It's the culmination of a 30-year trend in assessment policy. Much of what's in the bill reflects developments at the state level over the past 10 to 12 years: there is virtually nothing in the bill's assessment provisions that has not been tried before by at least one state.
Here is the group that is well recognized as one of the greatest barriers to the improvement of study in America --- The National Education Association.
Why do they oppose the "No Child Left Behind Act?"
Because this Act starts the process of making schools, and teachers, accountable for successful results -- not just putting in time and drawing a paycheck.
There are millions of teachers who probably do want to see better results. But, they are so stuck in the failures in their past, their own failures, that the can do nothing now but justify their teaching techniques, and blame the government for not giving them enough money. That is the usual claim, although there are more.
Senator Kennedy Statement on Second Anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act is still the right reform for our schools, requiring higher standards, better teachers, and real accountability for schools for the performance of all children. But in the two years since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, the Bush Administration has cut its funding, reneged on promised resources for better teachers and smaller classes, and worked to divert millions of dollars to private school vouchers.
The Bush administration's new education plan requires schools to prove that their children are learning math and reading, and are closing the achievement gap between white and minority children. Already, states are reporting that thousands of schools aren't meeting minimum learning goals and now face an array of sanctions.
Companies that sell to the schools -- from test publishers to tutoring services to teacher-training outfits -- say business is booming as troubled districts turn to them for help.
The 2001 law, championed by the Bush administration, calls for all public-school students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Schools must make steady progress toward these goals. They face penalties if they don't continually raise their proportion of proficient students, both overall and within various racial and other categories. Schools that miss milestones can be required to pay for outside tutors and let parents transfer children elsewhere. But a school faces no penalty if top students tail off as long as they remain proficient.
To abide by the law, schools are shifting resources away from programs that help their most gifted students. Because "all the incentives in No Child Left Behind are to focus on the bottom or the middle," says Stanford University education professor Michael Kirst, "reallocating resources there makes sense if you want to stay out of trouble."
WSJ, January 8, 2004: Bush Pitches Education Initiative, Raises Funds In Tenn
West View has 180 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Most qualify for free lunches under the Title I program. Yet the school is recognized "as one of the most improved schools in the county based on its achievement tests," said Russ Oaks, spokesman for the 52,000-student Knox County school system.
Teachers said students at West View Elementary School saw the president's visit to the school as a reward.
In reading, language, math, science and social studies, West View's students have made strong gains in the past year, he said. Forty-seven percent of Tennessee's schools failed to meet the No Child Left Behind achievement standards, but West View met every one.
Both standards and freedom have merit. Both have been shown to work in practice and theory. Both are enormously popular with the American people (although not with many "professional" educators). But our two political parties agree on just one of them. Both espouse standards and can find common ground on testing and accountability. Thus the bipartisan base for the farthest-reaching federal education legislation in decades, the No Child Left Behind Act. While this measure is closely associated with George W. Bush, it is the descendant of Bill Clinton's "Goals 2000" plan and its passage owed much to support by Democrats Ted Kennedy in the Senate and George Miller in the House.
Messrs. Kennedy and Miller are also responsible, however, for radically restricting other Bush proposals that offered choices to parents and flexibility to states. Those sprang from the second big reform idea -- freedom -- which Democrats view as enemy territory. Thus No Child Left Behind is almost entirely about standards. So are state education-reform schemes that emerged from Democratic legislatures or bipartisan "consensus."
WSJ, Dec. 31, 2003: Usual Elitist View: Less-Privileged Impeded by Rigidity of 'Standards'
Karl: Here is the usual warped view of the "professional educators" who have so long held our students hostage to poor teaching technology and union bribes to politicians. Each being IS responsible for his own condition -- no collective group can steal that responsibility from any person. Yet that is exactly the theme of the elitist educators -- that the "school" is totally responsible for the child's learning, while the child has no responsibility. This is the socialist state in the making.
Politician: "Messrs. Finn and Bennett's notion incorrectly assumes that the test scores of a school are correlated with test score improvement for students who attend the school. To truly understand the implications of this is to understand that standards are the enemy of education freedom and advancement for the less-privileged. Totalitarian states hold students accountable through standards, free states hold schools accountable through measures of academic gain and rated excellence by parents, students and teachers."
"Totalitarian states hold students accountable through standards, free states hold schools accountable through measures of academic gain and rated excellence by parents, students and teachers."
Generally those who study the behavior of web browsing people realize that this is not unusual. They will often click on dozens of links in just a short while -- for whatever reason they do not often stay with one page or even web for very long. In the chart below almost 80% of the visitors spent 10 seconds or less on the web!
Definitions For The Word "Blue"
All by itself this one word has entries in a web-based dictionary I often use -- entries from 13 different dictionaries or other sources. Just one of these sources, American Heritage Dictionary, has noun, adjective and verb types of definitions. There are also slang and idiom meanings that include the word "blue."
