Only 22% of California 8th Graders Pass National Science Test 580
bonch writes "22 percent of California eighth-graders passed a national science test, ranking California among the worst in the U.S. according to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The test measures knowledge in Earth and space sciences, biology, and basic physics. The states that fared worse than California were Mississippi, Alabama, and a tie between the District of Columbia and Hawaii. 'Nationally, 31 percent of eighth-graders who were tested scored proficient or advanced. Both the national and state scores improved slightly over scores from two years ago, the last time the test was administered.'"
Makes no sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see states like Mississippi, Alabama doing poorly because they are run by Republicans and republicans hate spending money on kids. (Yes I just heard a guy on MSNBC say that last night.) But California is a Democrat-run state. Their students should be the best and brightest and most well-funded. Like Democrat-run Maryland. Hmmmm.
(Note: I'm being sarcastic. I think Democrats suck just as badly as Republicans. None of them know how to run anything.... not the schools, not the MVA, not the Amtrak, nor the post office.)
The definition of insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Refer to Einstein's famous quip.
This news will undoubtedly be used as the basis for calls to shovel more money into a broken system despite decades of funding increases failing to show results, all the while modest Chinese budgets are sufficient for creating public K-12 education which outranks us.
The public schools have become a jobs program contaminated by labor politics.
We can't reward success without screaming from those who fear being held accountable for their failures.
We can't make better use of technology and automated learning because of perennial votes for make-work teaching positions.
The whole thing stinks, the public doesn't understand the system stinks, and poison politics will prevent the problems from being corrected.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, you're assuming that test competency is a good thing. That assumes the test is fair, reasonable and actually has something to do with the student's knowledge base. Given what we know about standardized tests, a bit of skepticism is in order.
That said, the bottom feeders being the states we assume to be be bottom feeders when it comes to anything other than actually eating does give one pause.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think Democrats versus Republicans is a relevant issue. California's scores may be skewed by poor test scores in large urban areas, which the superintendent touched on in the article, and that's a hot-button issue no politician seems to be willing to tackle.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see states like Mississippi, Alabama doing poorly because they are run by Republicans and republicans hate spending money on kids. (Yes I just heard a guy on MSNBC say that last night.) But California is a Democrat-run state. Their students should be the best and brightest and most well-funded. Like Democrat-run Maryland. Hmmmm.
(Note: I'm being sarcastic. I think Democrats suck just as badly as Republicans. None of them know how to run anything.... not the schools, not the MVA, not the Amtrak, nor the post office.)
Not only is it a statement on the fallacy of the superiority of "progressive" regimes in schooling, but in funding as well. Utah spends far, far less per pupil, and gets much better results. Success in education comes from, first and foremost, an appreciation of getting an education, and second, the willingness to work for it. You'll get better results with a single, good teacher with nothing but a piece of chalk and a chalkboard, teaching a class of eager students, then you will with any expensive computerized, state of the art classroom that's been staffed with some guy waiting for his retirement age and a class of kids that don't give a damn.
Standards mean competition. (Score:2, Insightful)
Competition means pressure to achieve, and that means some people won't do as well as others.
We need school choice vouchers so some people can rescue their kids from a _permanently_ and irretrievably broken system.
(It's heresy to admit it's broken and that given the REALITY of the public DEMANDS which broke it, that it WILL NEVER be fixed.)
Vouchers would allow secularists who value education to rescue their offspring from the mediocrity of public schools and from frequently toxic public school students. (I was so rescued and fortunate enough to finish my education in good boarding schools.)
Vouchers would also allow Superstitionists to send THEIR kids to religious schools, but that's actually a good thing since it rescues publics schools from them.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not republican or democrat... but perhaps the data really requires a more careful analysis rather than just pointing fingers to the other side.
It's the taxes, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
When California passed laws limiting property taxes, local funds for schools decreased. They were never fully replaced with state funds. The problem is, sadly, democracy driven by greed. In California, laws can be made by referendum - direct voting by the people, who voted to keep their money and to hell with the school systems. I don't blame them. I have no children and don't particularly want to pay to school any, but this is the result.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, well if it was on MSNBC then it must be true.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an absolutely terrible thing to say. I'm not a teacher, but i do support a better public school system. You can't automatically assume that all public schools are terrible and directly accuse teachers or board members. There are many public school in the nation which can give an amazing education, many of the best schools in the nation are public.
Re:Quick! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do creationists really have much of a foothold in California? I wouldn't have expected that to be the case, but I wouldn't know. It seems to have the reputation of being a fairly liberal state though.
As much as I may dislike the Christian Right trying to inject their belief system into public education, it's not like the Right (or any subset of it) has a monopoly on ruining education with their ideas and beliefs.
It seems to me that the coddling don't-hurt-their-self-esteem attitude that is churning out kids that have screwed up expectations, inadequate educations, and a distorted view of their own competence is a product of a subset of liberal thinkers.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine. Then don't expect my tax money to implement laws to protect you from having the rest of your money taken away from you by someone else because they want it.
Lets all devolve into a bunch of people living in armed compounds telling everyone else to fuck off. You don't get roads, you don't get electricity, you don't get laws, you don't get nothing that you can't get and keep yourself by force.
See, in your system, you want someone to help pay to enforce your rights, and you want to opt out of paying to help anybody else. Which means as long as you get what you feel you're entitled to, everyone else is on their own. Why should my taxes pay to preserve the rights of the rich?
It's not so much "society" and "civilization" as it is a collection of armed camps.
I sincerely hope you get the opportunity to experience life the way you think it should happen. I bet someone will decide you've got a pretty mouth.
All you drooling idiots who whine about the taxes being forcibly taken from you at gun point seem to conveniently forget there's a lot of those services you do make use of ... take those away, and you can have something like Somalia or the inside of a prison. Bet that would be fun.
Re:Standards mean competition. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Until last year, California had a law that required all tax hikes to have a 2/3 majority of vote of the various representatives.
For decades a Republican Minority slowly strangled California's finances in to the mess you see today. Of course, it's easy to sell not raising taxes. In California we're a greedy bunch. That's our fault.
If you've ever been to a California school it's not hard to see that they're criminally underfunded. My high school had ancient, falling apart buildings. I had text books from the 50 and 60s. You can blather about waste, but you're full of shit with your anti-education agenda. Our school could barely cover the necessities, but we had great teachers. We sent bright minds to MIT, Berkley, and other high education institutions... But we were the last. The very tail-end of Gen X. Those that came after us, frankly, are fucked.
Went there for our 10 year reunion. The place is just a hole now, a shell. All of the good teachers are gone, and place is even more run down than before. As far as I can tell, the school is just a pen where they teach them some standardized test, then let them go. Taking money away and screaming "Accountability" won't fix a fucking thing.
No child left behind has killed a generation. We'll be taking care of our younger brothers and sisters in the future because they won't be able to do it themselves. If I were elected, I'd have the perpetrators of NCLB publicly executed.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's the taxes, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
> I have no children and don't particularly want to pay to school any...
That's pretty short-sighted of you. Who do you want to perform surgery on you in 30 years? Even if you're in perfect health, would you rather your neighbors be educated and employed, or uneducated, unemployed, and prone to break into houses?
PS: Lots of people with no kids paid for your schooling...
As always... (Score:4, Insightful)
That 40% contains varying degrees of ability to speak, read, and write English but it is safe to say most of them will be at a disadvantage when taking a test in a language they are not fluent in.
That being said, we (California) still have crappy public schools and this is still a huge problem. However, it isn't just a problem of bad science education, it is also a language barrier problem.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. There is no benefit to you at all from living in a country with an educated population. None.
You can bitch and whine all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Until you have parents willing to (a) help their kids outside of school (b) become involved in helping their local school succeed and (c) make their children accountable for learning it won't matter what the curriculum is, how much teachers get paid, or what the facilities of the school system are like. You simply cannot spend 3-4 instructional hours a day spread over a class of students for half the year (180 days), then give them no assistance outside of that and expect any significant fraction of them to succeed.
Yes, there are motivated students. Yes, there are fabulous teachers. Yes, coming to an open, inviting, and technologically advanced facility makes for a positive atmosphere.
We help my daughter every night with her homework. She's just at the end of 4th grade, but there are parts of her math that my wife knows how to do, but doesn't know well enough to teach. I'm pretty lousy at my local history (I didn't grow up here, but I was never a history buff anyway). Between the two of us, she has all the tools she needs to succeed. I cringe at a couple of the kids in her class that don't get any help on their homework; it makes me feel awful for them because I know how difficult some of the concepts were for my daughter, and how we might have spent an extra hour (or three) working though problems so that she understood them. For a 9 or 10 year old confronted with a completely foreign concept and nothing but a 30 minute class discussion and two (sometimes poor) examples it's got to be frustrating beyond belief. In two years time, I expect those kids will be in the bottom groups, failing these national tests, and not caring any more because they don't have the resources to be able to make it. Don't even get me started on the kids who parents take them on mini-vacations when they get out-of-school suspension because the parents figure if they have to take off work they may as well have some fun. Or the ones who blame the teacher when their kids get poor grades.
The problem isn't the system, or the money, or the tests...it's the parents. All the money and great teachers and fabulous facilities do is set the stage for learning. If the parents can't do their part, it will - by and large - be wasted.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, sir. The free-marketeers forgot entirely that their wonderful market is held together by governments which set laws decreeing how it should operate (health & safety, limited liability, tax law, inspections etc). I suspect this is why most of them want government to be for 'enforcing property rights' - i.e. 'protecting my shit, screw everybody else'.
If you want a close to home example of what free markets turn into without rules & intervention then look at your local drug-dealers. In theory you have a bunch of people with the same goal (making money), avoiding the same problems (the police, fights with competitors). Hence you should get a nice free-market consisting of thousands of small actors all competing to give the best possible drugs while trying not to attract any attention from law enforcement.
In reality there's a ton of violence and the markets tend to be run by a few large players selling tainted crap who just happen to be the most sadistic or ruthless. Everyone else works for them or takes a bullet.
When you point this out to libertarian types they say 'Oh thats easy. Legalise drugs, take the profits out of it. Perform purity checks on the merchandise.'
So when that particular market fails to do what it should they want the government to reset the rules. Much like how the free market in illicit hooch gave way to a regulated market thus dropping alcohol-related gangsterism.
I know someone is going to post tons of stuff about drugs crime and profits and all that, but they'll be missing my point. Drug-dealing is an unregulated market that anybody irrespective of class or capital can enter. As such market theory would dictate the participants would behave themselves & compete via a good service, but they don't. Drugs make large profits & are sought-after, but the same can be said for iPads. Pretty sure Steve Jobs never had any of his competitors shot and thrown in a dumpster or sent Apple Store employees round to poor neighbourhoods offering 'free' tech if the local teenage girls work the streets for them...
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The Unions are the problem that stop advancement.
They are more interested in protecting their jobs, than making changes that help the students (such as firing bad teachers, or eliminating permanent employment via tenure). You can see the excellent ABC 20/20 documentary called "Stupid in America" on youtube. There's also a sequel produced for FOX which updates the older 20/20 report. And then a "part 3" sequel to the sequel.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:0, Insightful)
That's the point. He passes muster, but the content is hollow.
We let out kids grow up without critical thinking skills. It leads to things like believing in angels, buying magnetic bracelets, watching Fox News, and scapegoating innocent parties for your own problems.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate these kind of reports because it'll likely just force teachers to "teach the test" and not the material/reasoning/importance/usage beyond what the test requires...
Re:National Science Tests (Score:4, Insightful)
The "simple facts" are a pre-requisite for the rest. How can you whine about being unable to teach anything else but the basics when you clearly haven't even covered the basics?
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2, Insightful)
For decades a Republican Minority slowly strangled California's finances in to the mess you see today.
No, spending has strangled California. For example the financial crisis ushered in by Democrat Gray Davis, it was not a weak economy it was spending. Revenue was actually up but Davis increased spending *way* beyond this increased revenue. He literally undid much of the financial discipline previous fiscally conservative governors had shown. For example he gave raises to some public unions that were huge, equivalent to the sum of what all previous governors had "denied" them. The legislature had been Democrat controlled for many decades and was perfectly happy to go along with this. They are the governor were bought and paid for by the same public unions.
If you've ever been to a California school it's not hard to see that they're criminally underfunded.
Wrong. You are confusing funding with what makes it to the class room. The problem is California is that little funding makes it to the English, Math and Science classrooms. Too much money is diverted into politically correct programs and too much money disappears into administration.
... but we had great teachers ...
Agreed, but the teachers are not running the educational system. That is the core problem.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Test competency in the sciences for an 8th grader probably is a good thing. From the article:
I have trouble believing that questions like these are somehow unreasonable, unfair, or biased against black/hispanic/asian kids, or somehow socioeconomically biased. These are fairly basic science questions, and there are some fairly clear boundaries between right and wrong answers. If your kid cannot answer these questions after taking courses which are supposed to teach the answers to these questions, I think it's safe to say that there's a rather large disconnect between the educational system's goals and its outcomes.
We can argue the merits of standardized testing, and "teaching to the test" until the cows come home, but if your school system has adopted the test as a measurement criteria, and structured its curriculum around that test, and still achieves remarkably low results... something is wrong.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:4, Insightful)
The "simple facts" are a pre-requisite for the rest.
No, they aren't. The "rest" is the logic and reasoning that makes those facts make sense, without which students lack a framework to put those facts into in an organized manner.
No shit (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no children, and cannot imagine I ever will (I didn't like kids, even when I was a kid). However I gladly support taxes for education. Why? Well to put it simply I don't want to die poor. I want this nation to continue to get richer and more prosperous and for that to happen we must have an educated populace.
There are all sorts of specifics as to why an uneducated populace would make life suck from the simple like your surgery example to the complex like social unrest and revolution due to an underclass. The long and short of it is I want none of that, I want a good life and that requires that others have a good life and THAT requires good education.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Well the unions are made up of teachers, so obviously the problem with schools is the teachers. The solution must be to get rid of all the teachers and surely grades will improve? Unions may or may not be part of the problem, but they're hardly *the* problem. Most teachers want their students to succeed. It reflects well on them and means one of the largest choices they've ever made in their life has actual meaning.
Unions are probably part of the problem, but it's more likely to actually be the poor relationship between the school administration and the union and it generally takes two sides to feud. Of course, that relationship might be soured by a lack of resources provided to the school by the region or state.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:4, Insightful)
The "simple facts" are a pre-requisite for the rest.
Not in the sense you're saying. I can have you memorize the most seen test dictionary words so you'll know the various definitions when they appear on your tests. Or I can teach you latin roots so you can devise the meaning of most words without having seen them before. Math and science are easier: if you have the theory of something, you can generally divine specifics as necessary. Granted, 8th grade math tests only touch upon the most basic algebra, but as long as the students have a simple understanding of equations and the most rudimentary math, they can figure things out. I'm not saying kids are going to be able to plot a bicycle jump from two unequal platforms, but they'll be able to answer: 3x+5 = 20. Solve for x.
The only place you need to truly memorize things (in the 8th grade) is history.
Re:National Science Tests (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad private schools get better, or die.
Or reject or expel students that make them look bad.