Thursday, October 24, 2013

Eagle Forum On Crazy Core Curriculum Homework

Eagle Forum On Crazy Core Curriculum Homework


http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/column/checking-kids-school-assignments.html

Sixth-grade children in a history class in the Bryant School District in Arkansas (whose website brags that the district “has embraced” Common Core standards) were assigned a project to update the U.S. Bill of Rights because it is “outdated.” They were instructed to “prioritize, revise, omit two and add two amendments.”
The written assignment is full of lies, such as that “the government of the United States is currently revisiting The Bill of Rights,” that “They (presumably the government) have determined that it is outdated and may not remain in its current form any longer,” and that our Constitution can be changed by a “National Revised Bill of Rights Task Force (NRBR)” (to which students could be appointed).




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Number 14 Ugliest College Campus University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Number 14 Ugliest College Campus University of Minnesota Twin Cities Take the full tour at Travel and Leisure

America's Ugliest College Campuses

14 of 15
America's Ugliest College Campuses: University of Minnesota
Drew Geraets / drewgeraets.com

University of Minnesota,Minneapolis

Many great architects including Steven Holl and Frank Gehry have tried their hand at turning the commuter campus of the University of Minnesota from Brutalist to Pritzker Prize–worthy. It’s no small feat. Take, for example, the Coffman Memorial Building: the only feature that could make it look more industrial would be the addition of smokestacks. With 68,000 undergraduates all on one campus, the University of Minnesota is the second most populous campus in the country. “It’s simply too big,” complains one student on the Unigo.commessage board.
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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Parents with Pitchforks Angry About Common Core

Parents with Pitchforks Angry About Common Core


State ed chief urged to slow Common Core

Posted by  on October 17, 2013 in Daily, Teachers | 0 Comment
common-core-rotFrustrated superintendents and parents urged New York’s education commissioner at a meeting in Oyster Bay on Tuesday to slow implementation of the controversial Common Core curriculum.
“My daughter is not a ’1,’ ” John Castronova of Oyster Bay told Commissioner John B. King Jr., who was joined by Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Regent Roger Tilles.
Castronova, referring to the lowest test score under the new curriculum, said he fears Common Core’s high cost will imperil programs for children with learning disabilities, such as his daughter.
Other parents expressed similar concerns about the impact on programs for gifted and talented students, and English as a second language learners, and warned that low-performing schools could fall further behind.
King attended the invitation-only afternoon forum at Oyster Bay High School, but canceled a Garden City meeting open to the public that had been also scheduled for Tuesday after shouting matches erupted at recent upstate forums.
 King said his experience as a Massachusetts educator when that state underwent a similarly wrenching process taught him to stay the course. “People said the tests were going to be too hard. . . . The state remained resolute,” he said.
But Toni Labbate, a North Shore School District board member and parent, told the state officials that students are under too much pressure. “You now ask New York State public students to shoulder the weight of their school district’s reputation, their community’s property values and now their teacher’s evaluation,” she said
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

UK White Boys Now At Risk

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Sunday, October 13, 2013

New York Cancels Forum Because of Parent Anger Over Rotten Common Core

New York's education commissioner said Saturday he had called off Long Island's only Town Hall meeting on the Common Core curriculum and state testing after "special interests" hijacked the first...
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Wednesday, October 9, 2013

OECD says US Adults Lag Practical Workplace Skills

OECD says US Adults Lag Practical Workplace Skills


Notes

  • Age: In each survey across theOECD, those aged around 30 had the highest scores compared with other age groups.
  • Immigrants Immigrants performed worse than the native-born, especially those who did not learn the language of their new country as a child. But skills proficiency improves with length of stay in the host country, pointing to the important role of integration policies.
  • Math: In numeracy, or math, the U.S. scored 253, below the international average, and far behind Japan's 288. Almost one in three adults in Italy (31.7%), Spain (30.6%) and the United States (28.7%) perform at or below the most basic level of numeracy, compared to around one in ten in Japan (8.2%), Finland (12.8%) and the Czech Republic (12.8%).
  • Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. 
  • Reading: In reading, over one in five adults in Italy (27.7%), Spain (27.5%) and France (21.6%) perform at or below the most basic level, compared with one in twenty Japanese (4.9%) and one in ten Finns (10.6%).
  • Education: people with a higher educational levels scored better and earned more income. The low-skilled are more likely than others to be unemployed, have bad health and earn much less,

Reference:

  • OECD Survey of Adult Skills news release | Booklet | 

    Compare your country
    www.oecd.org/newsroom/boosting-skills-essential-for-tackling...17 hours ago
    The OECD Survey of Adult Skills is the ... levels out of five on the literacy test. But in Australia, Finland, Japan, ... Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the ...

    United States Is About Average


.Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/oecd-skills-test_n_4061097.html

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OECD Skills Test: U.S. Adults Lag In Practical Workplace Skills


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Americans performed below the international average on math, reading and problem-solving on the exam, known as the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. U.S. math skills lagged far behind top performers, including Japan and Finland. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, based in Paris, released the results early Tuesday.
"These findings should concern us all. They show our education system hasn't done enough to help Americans compete -- or position our country to lead -- in a global economy that demands increasingly higher skills," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Americans scored 270 in literacy on average, compared with 296 in Japan. In numeracy, or math, the U.S. scored 253, below the international average, and far behind Japan's 288.
In a technology-based problem-solving skills, Poland performed the worst, with an average score of 274, compared with the U.S. average of 277 and Japan's 294.
Poland, which received attention for rapidly rising scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, and Korea, also a high performer, had lower literacy skills than the U.S. on the new test. Poland and Korea had numeracy scores similar to the U.S.

.Sources





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Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Colleges That Prefer Ladies: Unfair to Men?

Colleges That Prefer Ladies: Unfair to Men? 

Are Olin, MIT, Digipen Admission Rates / Quotas for Women Unfair?

In the 90s, I wrote in Asian Week that it was easier for women to get into MIT than Wellesley. Though that doesn't seem the case any more (W=33% now), it is still the case that at some of the most elite tech schools which admit men and women in near 50/50 ratio and which will never admit they have a 50/50 diversity quota, the admit rate of women will be 2 to 3 times the rate of men, a ratio similar to that of affirmative action minority groups which colleges will also never admit that they have diversity quotas/goals/preferences even though they consistently oppose laws which make quotas/goals/preferences illegal.

Olin bills itself as a super-elite mini MIT/CalTech, but how elite can it be when half of the students have an admit rate of 70% which is higher than most flagship state universities?

Also interesting is that places like Digipen which a lot of people lump in with technical trade schools is now pretty hard to get into at ~30%. They're placing people into top video game compaines, and I'm hearing glowing reviews of Digipen hires from Microsoft managers. Northeastern which was thought of as a commuter school in the 70s is now a backup for Harvard / MIT like Boston University and harder than WPI. Both Digipen and NE are also around 30%, where Wellesley is now. One girl I knew who got into Harvard also applied for Northeastern

For the record, I got into MIT and Stanford in the 70s with a 650V 720M, my essay on the future of the F-18 Hornet was too geeky for Harvard (plus they already had Yo Yo Ma and Lynn Chang and didn't need another Asian violin player I guess). I was wait listed for Cal Tech. Closest the next generation has gotten is U Chicago, a girl on a swimming scholarship, that's now a top 10 school with < 10% admit rate for incoming class.

I don't have enough information to determine if MIT was giving preferences to Asians back then, but I wasn't far from average, and concertmaster probably helped get me in. I'm pretty sure Brown had Asians on the preference umbrella because Asians complained "quotas" when actually they just stopped getting preferences.

Acceptance Rate By Gender
Olin M=19.3% F=69.7% 1:3 (Easier than top state universities for women)
Caltech M=9.2 F=23.1 1:2.5
MIT M=7.6% F=15.9% 1:2
Digipen M=29.4 F=54.9 1:2
WPI M=55.9 F=68.6 1:1 (No bias)
Northeastern M=37.8 F=38.0 1:0

https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-762-Massachusetts-Institute-of-Technology.html
(search for other colleges under admission chances - they don't break down by race, but if they did it would show similar disparities)
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