Schools roundup

7 Comments

  • Due to pressure and caterwauling by certain groups, it seems that any standardized test judged as difficult or challenging is by definition racist.

  • NYC and Praxis exams. They will get what they have sown.
    Can’t make future competent teachers out of students taught by incompetent teachers. Yet in the name of diversity, we must tolerate incompetent teachers who are measured incompetent by an objective measure of their subject knowledge.

    Even the phrase disparate impact is a nonsensical lie. The impact is identical for all groups; those with mastery of the subject pass, those without do not. It may be that some minority groups pass at lower rates (and why is it no one wants to talk about some minority groups passing at higher rates, like asians). The cycle of poverty seems to be firmly rooted in good intentions of a liberal approach to social problems.

  • Some among the cynical have suggested it a deliberate policy encouraging a culture of dependency which ensures a reliable base of voters to maintain their political power. While there are certainly anecdotes supporting such a view, I am unprepared to to embrace it.

    Anecdotally, I’ve also heard that 70% of FL teachers graduated in the bottom 1/3 of their class. If true, it provides an alternative explanation as to why standardized test scores might continue to suffer. Similar statistics seem to get tossed around in other states. My understanding is that it relies on this old study. Study and those like it, but I’ve never given the study a serious critique.

    For my own part, my public schooling was atypical for reasons I won’t expound upon here (beyond identifying that I was part of a pilot program for the vast majority of it), and thus my personal experiences must be discounted.

    • I don’t know about Florida, but I know of another state university where, at least a while ago, the average SAT/ACT scores of students in the school of education (they admitted undergrads separately to the different schools) were substantially lower than in the other schools.

      • That is certainly consistent with the study I linked to, and others I’ve seen like it. The Teacher’s Unions, of course, loudly proclaim that SAT/ACT scores are poor predictors of future teacher performance (of course they would), but given the results of our public education system over the past few decades at least, I no longer find the Teacher’s Union policy recommendations to be credible.

  • On the Amherst expulsion story:

    The accuser seems to have admitted to performing Oral sex on the defendant while he was clearly ‘incapacitated’ (using what seems to the the university’s definition if not the legal one) by alcohol.

    Why was SHE not brought up on charges?

    • Why was SHE not brought up on charges?

      Because that would continue the thousands of years hegemony and oppression of women by the corrupt patriarchy. Or something.

      Besides, intoxication does not excuse possession of a penis.