the four companies that dominate the testing market -- three test publishers and one scoring firm.
Those four companies are Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson. According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.
Okeefenokee wrote: You can beat on teachers all you like
We would have been happier, frankly, if the school had flunked him out, rather than giving him a prize just for being 18. We begged them to give him the grades he earned, but they never did. Hard to blame a kid for accepting a prize. It also solidified the "everyone gets a trophy for existing," mindset. He's going to struggle with that for a few years. He's kinda butt hurt that we won't subsidize his life, but he chose to listen to the school instead of us. In his defense, school was telling him what he wanted to hear - you don't have to work hard to reach your goals.
Standards are meaningless if they are not enforced, got so sick of being passed just for showing up, that I dropped out of high school to find a standard to measure myself against, at the Royal Canadian Regiment Battleschool. I learned plenty of critical thinking from my parents, but never had to apply it under pressure, until I got to the School of Hard Knocks.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the most recent update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
apeman wrote:I couldn't be less concerned with which party passed which crappy bill, I am concerned with crappy bills.
+1. Have no idea how it's relevant to the discussion.
NCLB mandated the current, fuzzy 'everybody wins' approach to education. It's also the reason that we have glorious nationwide, continuous testing every week or so.
This is why I'm so confused about you guys jumping all over the DoE... We basically told schools that 'all kids must graduate', then told them 'make everybody equal'. The rational (economically-speaking) approach to this was to simply lower all standards to the lowest common denominator.
GrumpyCatFace wrote:
the four companies that dominate the testing market -- three test publishers and one scoring firm.
Those four companies are Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson. According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.
The only reason those companies exist is because of the DoE.
Last edited by Okeefenokee on Wed Dec 21, 2016 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
GrumpyCatFace wrote:Dumb slut partied too hard and woke up in a weird house. Ran out the door, weeping for her failed life choices, concerned townsfolk notes her appearance and alerted the fuzz.
Okeefenokee wrote: You can beat on teachers all you like
We would have been happier, frankly, if the school had flunked him out, rather than giving him a prize just for being 18. We begged them to give him the grades he earned, but they never did. Hard to blame a kid for accepting a prize. It also solidified the "everyone gets a trophy for existing," mindset. He's going to struggle with that for a few years. He's kinda butt hurt that we won't subsidize his life, but he chose to listen to the school instead of us. In his defense, school was telling him what he wanted to hear - you don't have to work hard to reach your goals.
One of my professors was telling me something similar about her kid. He was pretty upset when he didn't get to move back in, and instead gets to live in his car.
GrumpyCatFace wrote:Dumb slut partied too hard and woke up in a weird house. Ran out the door, weeping for her failed life choices, concerned townsfolk notes her appearance and alerted the fuzz.
