You know NCLB must be a steaming pile if its defenders are having to resort to this sort of garbage to prove it’s working:
The public school advocacy group Center on Education Policy released a new report today, titled “Has Student Achievement Increased Since 2002?” Its answer is “yes,” based on relatively worthless high-stakes state-level testing data and on the more esteemed National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). For reasons known only to the report’s authors, they make no use of the available U.S. trend data from either the PISA or the PIRLS international tests (though the CEP study mentions PISA results for a single point in time, it ignores the changes in that test’s scores over time.)
Do you really need to read the rest? You know what it means when someone won’t talk about a standard metric of education quality.
As it happens, U.S. scores have declined on both PISA and PIRLS in every subject and at both grades tested since they were first administered in 2000/2001. In the PISA mathematics and science tests, the declines are large enough to be statistically significant, that is: we can be confident (and disappointed) that they reveal real deterioration in U.S. student performance. In mathematics, our score has dropped from 493 to 474, causing us to slip from 18th out of 27 participating countries down to 25th out of 30 countries. In science, our score fell from 499 to 489, dropping us from 14th out of 27 countries to 21st out of 30 countries.
Government. Making us ignorant one billions dollars at a time.
One of the sites I got seriously sidetracked on while in Australia was Sporcle, which has lots of internet quizzes. I became obsessed with learning some of them. Back in high school, I had to know all the countries in the world and their capitals. So it was fun to relearn them, since geography has changed quite a bit since then. Who knew Ethiopia was now three countries?
The one I really got mental on was the periodic table. This was also something I learned in high school and something that has also changed significantly. I can now consistently name all 118 elements. But what was cool was learning how I learned them. You can break the elements down into groups for easily memorization. My groups were:
The unnamed elements. Ununbium to ununoctium. Easy if you know how these things work.
Elements named after people or places. Einsteinium, curium (which reminds me of radium), bohrium, dubnium, lawrencium, nobelium, mendelevium, fermium or americium, francium, europium, lutetium, darmstadtium (background in German helps with the spelling). This take time but is easier if you know about physics and geography.
Elements named from mythology. Uranium, neptunium, plutonium (an easy sequence for an astronomer). Thorium and promethium.
Elements with similar names. The T elements — thallium, thulium, tantalum, tellurium, technetium. The R elements — ruthenium, rhodium, rhenium, rubidium, radium. Niobium and neodymium.
Elements I work with. These are elements used in a lot of astronomy papers. Yttrium (and from it, ytterbium), europium (if I missed it earlier), barium, calcium, magnesium, titanium, strontium, vanadium, thorium, actinium, iron, CNO.
Elements normal people work with, as in digging up from the ground. Iron, lead, silver, gold, copper, tin, chromium, cadmium, palladium, platinum, aluminum, silicon, nickel and tungsten (which always made me think of the tungsten-carbide drill rant in Monty Python).
Poisons — arsenic, selenium and mercury (the latter reminding of gallium, which is also a liquid at room temperature).
Things that are in my vitamins. Magnesium, calcium, potassium, zinc (always reminded me of zirconium). Or things people consume (lithium) or don’t consume (sodium) for health reasons.
The noble gases and the halogens, which all have similar names.
The final ones were through wrote memorization. There’s simply no way to mentally trigger a memory of praseodymium or dysprosium without memorizing it.
McArdle has a great post about the arrogance of graduate students.
But I have to agree with some of her commenters. This is a far more common attitude among social science grad students than physical science ones. I know my share of arrogant physicists and astronomers, but the ratio is much smaller. The reason is because science itself is very humbling. I think I’m pretty smart — the test scores say so — but grad school sometimes made me feel like an idiot and nature always does. There’s nothing to take your ego down like having a paper turn out to be complete bullshit — or seeing a paper by a respected peer turn out to be bullshit. Nature has a way of proving us wrong over and over again. It’s difficult to think you know everything when you are confronted by your ignorance on a daily basis.
I’ve posted enough on the anti-vaccination idiots over at Right Thinking. So I’ll link here to one of Orac’s latest posts on their nutbaggery.
You know who I feel sorry for? The deluded parents of kids with autism. Late-onset autism is a terrible thing and devastating to parents. They are desperate to find an explanation — just as people with cancer are. In come this anti-science anti-industry scare-mongering luddites. They throw them a rope — it’s vaccines that ruined your kid’s life. And parents, being parents, grab onto it desperately. They embrace what is, let’s be honest, a far left agenda that blames greedy corporate interests for the “epidemic” of autism. They sell themselves to political opportunists.
I can’t blame the parents. They’re the victims. But I can blame the pseudo-scientists and political advocates who are milking others’ misfortune for fame, fortune and a sense of self worth. What does it tell you that the leading spokeswoman for the “Green our Vaccines” garbage is a dim bulb celebrity whose fame and fortune is fading in direction proportion to the sinking of her bustline?
Our stupid War on Drugs ruins another good life. But hey, if she wanted to live in housing, she should have turfed those troubled kids to the streets.
Is it just me or is there something a bit racist in the desire of rich westerners to keep uncontacted tribes out of contact?
More education dumbassery. Let’s not let smart kids get ahead of everyone. It’s not like we need smart people to solve our society’s problems or anything. We’ll just elect Obama and everything will magically heal.
A must-read post over at the science-based medicine website on how alternative medicine people try to change the rules in midstream:
Science is simply a set of rules of investigation. The biggest rule of science is that we have to test our ideas against reality. We can’t just make stuff up and then assume we are right – we have to subject our guesses to observations that have the potential of proving them wrong. Scientific observations must be recorded objectively so that we don’t have to rely upon flawed memories. Outcomes need to be specified ahead of time – we cannot decide at the end of an experiment which results prove our hypothesis. Outcomes should be quantified as much as possible, and as objectively and unambiguously as possible.
…
Today there is a political/ideological movement within medicine and health care to change the rules after the fact. The purveyors of many sectarian methods of treatment and unscientific belief systems of health and illness have not succeeded at the fair rules of science. So now they want to change those rules. They want anecdotes to not only count but to trump rigorously controlled observations (that is, when the anecdotes are in their favor). They was to reinterpret the placebo effect after the fact as if it were a real effect. They want to count only those experiments that confirm their beliefs and ignore or reject those studies that reject their beliefs.
Being educated adults they have much more sophisticated language to express their childish desire to alter the rules.
Andrew Weil wants to relabel anecdotes he favors as “uncontrolled clinical observations.” This is a way of getting to choose after the fact which observations count, rather than letting the rules of science decide.
Dr. David Katz from Yale’s “Integrative Medicine” Program wants to allow for “a more fluid concept of evidence.” This way modalities he favors, such as homeopathy, that have failed by the generally accepted rules of science can still win with his more “fluid” rules.
When studies of “alternative” modalities are negative, proponents want to change the rules after they see the results. They claim that the “sham” acupuncture was giving a real effect too, or that the numbers in the study were too small, or that homeopathy cannot be tested with the same methods as cookie cutter drugs, or that a statistically insignificant trend in their favor should count even though the rules say they shouldn’t. Of course, when the outcome is positive, then these same rules are just fine. Heads I win, tales you lose.
The Arizona Appellate Court struck down the school voucher program, buying the argument of the union that because parents can used vouchers at religious schools, this violates the separation of church and state.
The ruling hinged on whether the vouchers in question can be considered aid to private and religious schools, because Article IX, paragraph 10 of the Arizona Constitution forbids the use of public money for that purpose. Choice advocates argued that the aid is being given to families and that the schools only benefit indirectly. The court found that while families are indeed aided, so too are the schools. However much I want all children to have access to a choice of independent schools competing to serve them, I find it hard to disagree with the court’s conclusion.
I find it quite easy to dispute this particular brand of child-destroying propaganda from the teachers’ unions. Let’s just extend this nonsense to its logical conclusion. People receiving welfare can not donate to a church. People in Section 8 housing can’t have services in their homes. People on Medicare and Medicaid can not go to religious hospitals.
Mayor Bloomberg wants a gag order on the Constitution. Tell me again why this idiot is bruted about as a Presidential Candidate?
A lovely inspiring personal story from Ed Morrissey.
No one is going to question the evil of apartheid. But a $400 billion lawsuit against companies that did business in South Africa? I smell a fat contingency fee.
Pure brilliance from Peggy Noonan on Hillary’s refusal to face reality.
Man, I hate the sugar companies. They are the biggest reason I could never be in Congress. The first thing I’d do is call in some of the sugar fat cats, show them a picture of a starving kid in the Philippines or the Dominican Republic and ask them to justify their rich subsidies and import restrictions.
A friend of mine used to live in Hawaii. He moved out because not only were his property taxes high to account for sugar growers being exempt, the smoke from the burning cane was giving his kids asthma. The sugar companies need to be just taken out and shot. It’s an industry completely dependent on government largesse.
Yet another example of why I hate Big Education. Anyone who oppose scholarship for poor kids needs to be drawn and quartered.
Here’s a list of reasons that won’t work. More to the point, OPEC isn’t restricting production right now; pretty much everyone is working their capacity flat out. Hillary Clinton wants to sue OPEC for not producing oil from wells they haven’t drilled yet. Next: a lawsuit against Ford for not building us the cool flying cars we were promised in The Jetsons. I WANT MY FLYING CAR!!!!
Is it a dead cat bounce or are we avoiding a recession? We should know in just a few years.
The myth of organic food. It’s amazing how widespread ludditism is.
More environmentalist bullshit. Mass transit? Bad for the environment. They’re to foist one of these things on Austin right now, which is going to go over like a gay pride parade in Salt Lake City.
A very scary post on the search of ET life. That we aren’t finding it may indicate intelligent species are likely to destroy themselves. I’m thinking of the Large Hadron Collider. The “degree in astrophysics” part of my mind knows it’s safe. The “scared of nothing” part is worried.
Elliot Spitzer’s whore is all class. She’s suing Girls Gone Wild because she lied about her age to appear in a video at age 17.
Demographers are projecting 1 billion Americans by 2100 by … wait for it .. . taking current trends and extrapolating them out. This is the same method that has led them to consistently massively overestimate the population of the world for the last century. Must be nice to work in a discipline where being so thoroughly wrong doesn’t hurt you.
I’m visiting the folks in Atlanta. That means internet access is intermittent. So … while I’m working on some longer posts in the queue … linkorama!
Stephen Bainbridge has a good take on the “Worst. President. Ever.” stuff. It’s way to early to judge Bush. And I would certainly rate Buchanan and Johnson lower.
This has got to be freaky — a man is trapped in an elevator for 42 hours.
One of the problems with the “climate change” crowd is that they assume that whatever the climate was in, say, 1975, it was ideal. I don’t think they’ve invested enough thought into this. If higher CO2 levels mean milder seasons and better harvests, that’s not a bad thing.
Still, this bit of logic from Indur Goklany is a bit dumb. It is a fact that human prosperity has increased in line with CO2 levels. But it’s also a fact that my weight has tracked my personal income (well, until recently). That doesn’t make being overweight good for me. I just haven’t felt the consequences yet. The question isn’t whether high CO2 levels are hurting us today. It’s all about the long term.
I must admit, that the gastric appendectomy story freaked me out when I first heard it. But if it means you can get over appendicitis in a matter of hours, I’m all for it.
Do we really need to prosecute people for looking at children? Really? You know, we already have stalking laws on the books.
A truly alarming account of how far cops are going to get DUI convictions. A must read.
The unions show their concern for the education of poor people by fighting scholarships. Nice.
Are we really in a recession? Alan Reynolds isn’t so sure. I think we are in a recession but there is no question that the media is making it seems worse than it is. After all, the Dems could take the White House this year. Must parrot the party line. More from George Will here
Megan McArdle’s random thoughts on the credit crunch are better than most people’s organized thoughts. A must read.
$95,740?. For some reason, I have my doubts. This must include only tenured professor level positions, not grad students and postdocs. My salary, as of May 1, will be … let me see … carry the four … $0.
A hint for the enterprising criminal. If you rob a place, they are unlikely to hire you.
So how much are we spending on education in this country? The census bureau is fudging the numbers.
Only with the compliance of our stupid worthless media could the murder of a pro-free-trade union leader become a rallying cry against free trade. What the hell is the media’s job?
A great comment on the anti-free-trade pandering going on in the Keystone State.
Yes, poor Pennsylvania, staggering under a 4.9% unemployment rate (February 2008). Poor Pennsylvania, with a per capita income of a mere $36,680 (2006 data), ranking only 18th in the U.S. A free-trade pact with mighty Colombia (2006 income per capita, a whopping $2,740) would surely blow a huge hole in the Keystone State’s economy.
Hillary Clinton, Josh Marshall, and a lot of other “liberals” should hang their heads in shame at this disgraceful “Fuck the Latinos” campaign strategy.
American Airlines is having a bit of a problem as a good portion of their fleet is grounded while some wiring problems are corrected. And why are these wiring problems being corrected? For safety, of course. So the Fox News Channel cameras head to an airport to get the reaction of some of the passengers who were inconvenienced by the delays. In short order they stumble onto some bleached blond who says: “They’re not thinking about us at all … the passengers. I’m never going to fly American again.”
Hey, you twit .. .these delays are for safety. Your safety. It is precisely you they are thinking about when they inspect these airplanes. Next time take the damned bus.
Actually, I would guess a lot of Americans would rather the plane fall out of the sky than be late.
A must-read on the food crunch. There was as book some time ago that argued that no famine in the last thousand years has been the result of drought. All resulted from dumb or evil governments.