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"South Carolina's SAT Scores Still Suck"
http://www.thestate.com/local/story/916320.html
According to the latest reports, South Carolina's SAT scores still suck.
To be perfectly fair to the students of South Carolina, the comparison with other states is completely unfair. If we're going to make every student take the test in SC, we should apply it exclusively to the group that we spend most of our education dollars on: mid-level, non-teaching, breathing our air, bureaucratic no-loads! I'm not saying that would improve the scores that way. They'd probably still suck just like they suck up nearly all of our education dollars.
What we need to do is to cut the waste, make the test voluntary, and otherwise quit slitting our own throats in the world of spurious statistics and other silliness in the effort to compare our governmental body parts with those of other states.
(We should also offer the ACT as an alternative--I got to take either or both voluntarily when I was in Alabama's school system in High School. I opted for the ACT as a fairer assessment.)
Not saying it happens now but when taking the standardized tests during junior high and high school (done purely for assessment purposes) on more than one occasion, I purposely checked answers at random to get it out of the way.
That little bit of negligence on my part took one 98th percentile student down to around the 36th percentile. The way I looked at it, I worked hard enough as it was on real tests that actually affected my grades and wasn't going to strain my brain on yet more testing which was stressful enough.
I am not trying to justify my slight sabotage job as a minor when I state that we worry waaaaaay too much about chasing education dollars with such testing statistics, anyway. That's what a huge, bulging mid-level non-teaching educational bureaucracy reaps for us within the current fascist framework of our state and federal governments. These no-loads don't have enough to do LIKE ACTUALLY TEACHING! Instead, they always point at the poor scores and demand money.
If we were to actually improve by instituting a common sense, frugal, disciplined, and lean teaching establishment, the no-loads figure they wouldn't have any rationale at all for having a job, much less getting any additional money. After all, it's so undignified to BEG for anything when they can sabotage the statistics as well as the learning process and DEMAND that we help the children. They cry about the children all the way to the bank, I'm sure.
wtc
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