What can we do to help improve science education in the US?

Brandon, who just admitted I won, refuses to answer a statement made in the real world.

Well, despite his pouting, here are some answers for him.

The sole purpose would be to look at the average result for each school and provide assistance to schools whose students score well below the expected level.

1.) What about AHS where only 20 kids need retesting in English and 40 in math?

2.) The purpose of the NCLB program is to close schools.
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Any school which consistently scored very low for several years would be subject to some kind of repair process which would often involve firing some employees. An employee who consistently fails to perform and cannot or will not improve should expect to be fired.

Some systems have done this and put in commercial ventures like Edison Schools. They have regretted this almost immediately.

...What, Brandon, about for profit companies whose employees are untrained and barely educated?

Let me tell you about my experience in a fifth grade class here in Arlington three years ago. The classroom was well decorated with a bulletin board devoted to student writing. These essays were about their shoes and the writing equalled my own 8th grade class' where we wrote weekly. There were history projects on Egypt in the form of tomb mock-ups; a bulletin board devoted to Latin words and the English, French and Spanish words that evolved from the Latin; several on-going science centers featuring animals and plants that the students monitored; another bulletin board featured math. All was at a very high level.

How old are you? I can say this was superior to the teaching I received. The woman who taught there -- I met her: she was out of the class, presenting a government mandated reading test -- has taught for 25 years. The knowledge she continued to accumulate shown in that room.

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The American public education system can never perform adequately if it is exempt from any assessment or consequences for bad performance. There must be an objective process of quality control.

WHAT PART OF THERE ARE ASSESSMENTS DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? There is the national math test. There are reading tests galore, given after the teacher has made her own assessment.

WHY DO YOU THINK THESE FOR PROFIT COMPANIES ARE BETTER AT ASSESSMENT THAN A WOMAN LIKE THE ONE DESCRIBED ABOVE?

First of all, this man is not in education.

Second, he seems to disregard that it is no secret that these tests that have sprung up -- education is as fad ridden as medicine -- in the last decade ARE THE PRODUCT OF FOR PROFIT COMPANIES, CREATED BY PEOPLE WHO WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO LINE THEIR POCKETS. There was a documentary on public television about this a few years back.

And, if every student passes a test, the test may measure nothing.

Here, in Massachusetts where there actually was teacher input in the formation of the state test -- MA was the first state in the nation to do this: every other one blindly accepted the tests -- the percentage of successful passes is considered too high and a movement is afoot to make the tests more stringent.

Finally, what about the test composers -- those little business students who are just out of college and come to work daily with towels to dry behind their ears, who compose the tests by looking in the indexes of books and . . . I've written this too often to repeat.

What does that mean? Who is the "special needs community"? The teachers? or the parents?

Actually, the special needs teachers and aides here all hate what they call, "No Child Gets Ahead."

What does that mean? Who is the "special needs community"? The teachers? or the parents?

Actually, the special needs teachers and aides here all hate what they call, "No Child Gets Ahead."

Sigh!
No, I am not shooting down my own argument. These tests were called achievement tests. [/quote[

Oh! They were called acheivement tests! And they were measuring whether students were or weren't acheiving what exactly????

[quote] They did not punish the schools. This whole no child left behind thing is nothing more than a way of dismantling the public schools.

bout your own inability to offer a reason why folks who could barely graduate from college should write tests for companies looking to line to the pockets of their founders?

Brandon -- What you continually miss is that while there has always been standarized testing of the sort I took twice each year in the 1950s, the current mania for testing was created by a handful of for profit companies.

There are lots of educational scams out there today. Kaplan is one of them, imo. Another is the hiring of educational consultants to help parents place their kids in the right college. Scam! Scam! Scam! Standardized testing is another.

Why? Because the tests are so poorly written, by people without competancy that they test nothing.

The same people who champion these tests also call for more stringent teacher certification. So, on the one hand, they want better trained teachers but, on the other, they want these teachers to be evaluated via tests written by airheads and gumchewers.

And the purpose of NCLB is to close schools.

But, if 20 kids out of 1200 can not pass the English exam and those 20 kids either have educational plans or are from other countries, would you punish the entire school by taking away its certification?

...Frankly, you rattle on in such an empty headed way that I can't respond now. Will wade through the rest of your nonsense later.

Brandon -- This computer is not highlighting correctly but you've just taken me to task for insulting you but it was alright when you upbraided me for presenting a series of logical responses you just didn't understand.

Listen, kid, you need to return to the sandbox. You aren't listening and you're just writing because you have nothing better to do.

As a mother, I gave my kids subscriptions to age appropriate scientific magazines. I watched Nova with them. Maybe if more parents did those things, science instruction in the schools would be pulled along by the informed students.

Now, the teacher who offers AP physics, chemistry and honors physics and Chemistry is a graduate of MIT. I just spoke with a student teacher from the math dept who is wearing an MIT ring. If more graduates of top schools go into teaching, the standards will improve.

As for physics being boring, well, you should have spent the three years I spent with a series of kids passing through my house who could talk about nothing else but what they were learning in physics classes.

Brandon -- You must be a self possessed 17 year old. Sorry, kid, but I have argued correctly, not with pompous, meaningless sentences that ramble on. Learn to write. Learn to argue. Are you cutting class today?