(06-14-2017, 11:41 AM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(06-14-2017, 10:17 AM)HURRICANE!!! Wrote: Personally, I think we probably failed at a much higher rate in the past but nobody really cared or put a number or rating on it.   The age of the internet has shed a lot of light on everything so now we've become a numbers society and the demands are very high.

Our education system has vastly improved over the past 50 years but we're a society focused on the bad.  I mean c'mon, back in the day if you got a 1,000 on your SAT you were considered relatively smart.  Today if you get a 1,000 your considered a dumb-[BLEEP].

The change in SAT scores is due to a change in the SAT, and has nothing to do with the quality of education. The SAT was dumbed down around 1990 and has recently been dumbed down (made easier) again.

Even Atlantic.com, a left wing magazine willing to gloss over any failure by socialist government, does not paint a pretty picture here.

Quote:The new SAT is different in many ways from the old model. To name just a few, the questions have four rather than five answer choices, there are fewer math concepts covered, and hard vocabulary is no longer directly tested. Comparing the two tests is like comparing apples to oranges. Instead, College Board has come up with calculations that allow colleges to compare scores on the new SAT to those on the old one. Its research has found, for instance, that a 730 on the new test’s math section is equivalent to a 700 on the old.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...at/482376/

Wow, this really annoys me "There are, however, likely valid reasons to explain why the percentiles have floated upward. Students are no longer penalized for picking a wrong answer, for example; they also have more time to answer each question on the test." This means that the new scores aren't equivelent at all. No penalty for wrong answers makes it way easier. I have always wondered how my much younger cousins (>10 years) and half brothers scored near mine but did so much worse in actual college. Now I know.

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(06-14-2017, 06:02 PM)FBT Wrote:

(06-14-2017, 09:37 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: So we send these kids to private school, and how long does it take for those teachers and administrators to give up on these kids?  

The problem of failure that stretches from one generation to the next and to the next has no simple solution, but at some point, it has to be driven home to the people who continuously fail that there are consequences for failure.  The opportunity is there if the motivation is there.   And failure to seize that opportunity must have consequences.

You missed my point completely.  The parents who honestly don't care aren't going to be pushing to take advantage of opportunities to improve the situation for their kids, so the odds of them sending their little angels to private schools is slim to none.  In many cases, unfortunately, these parents only see their children as a pay check and nothing more. 

I agree that there need to be consequences for failure, both for the people who continuously fail, AND the schools that do as well.  The only thing that's going to motivate a failing school effectively is competition.  For the kids, government indoctrination centers are not the hub for motivation.  That needs to start at home.  Unfortunately, our society today has been more fixated with trying to destroy the nuclear family than propping it up, and if you really want to fix what's wrong with education today, you have to start in the homes.  That's the only way you're going to break the cycle.

My wife has some interesting thoughts on homelife here in the US. She is from Korea and she believes things are quite a bit easier here and the money is spent wrong. For instance, in Korea they don't do major subsidized housing or food stamps. What they do tho is give universal healthcare and subsidize daycare. The money is sent towards totally different places. Its obvious that one system incentizes work while the other does not.

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