Is Our Children Learning?
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But there is good news, said the state school’s superintendent: South Carolina is seeing great progress in some areas. “We are ranked No. 1 in the country,” she bragged, “on improvement on SAT.”
That’s great. But when you’re ranked at the bottom, improvement doesn’t mean much, and South Carolina, even after its “No. 1 improvement” is still last among states. SATs don’t make for perfect comparisons because states have different participation rates, but South Carolina’s participation rate is about average, and yet its students perform well below the average.
That’s not good. Yet the superintendent said, “We are making tremendous progress in South Carolina, and we’re very proud.”
In government monopolies, that’s how bureaucrats think.
Is Our Children Learning? from John Stossel
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That’s what happens when people, be they politicians, bureacrats or whatever, play around with numbers. The SAT scores are played around with more than property mil rates.
Take Colorado. Worse state in the nation for SAT scores and they have the hated TABOR law. I bellieve it was Frank Lasee who pointed out that Colo. requires every student to take a SAT test. It doesn’t take drop-out long to figure out that the disinterested and poor students will pull the SAT scores down.
Anyone can make just about anything appear how they want. Let’s see. I could easily say for example:
Being this is the only comment by you up to theis point this evening this would be true statement. Your masked marvel post was prior to 6:00.
I could easily say:
and finially
If we can do that with language, imagine what we can do with numbers!
Good point Ziller!