No child left behind: THE TEST (USA)

Ok I am stunned into knumbness by this! Its OUTRAGOUS! I mean seriously this is showing that this TEST is a test of ecconomic class, and NOT education..................stock up more stupid points for Mr. Bush on this one......

See the article below:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST
By Greg Palast

New York -- Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New York
will take a test. It's part of George Bush's No Child Left Behind program.
The losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade.

Try it yourself. This is from the state's actual practice test. Ready,
class?

"The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena
won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the
first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the
Williams girls could not seem to lose that year."

And here's one of the four questions:

"The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at doubles
tennis. This probably means when they played

"A two matches in one day
"B against each other
"C with two balls at once
"D as partners"

OK, class, do you know the answer? (By the way, I didn't cheat: there's
nothing else about "doubles" in the text.)


My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the students
live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court.

There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East
Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In Forest
Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools have nearly as
many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids.

Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the question
about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've never played a set
of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours every Wednesday
with Enrique the tennis pro?

Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of wealth
accumulation?

If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next
question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not
make this up):

"Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In
this sentence, a club is probably a

"F baseball bat
"G tennis racquet
"H tennis court
"J country club"

Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country club" is
a, "place where people meet." Yes, but WHICH people?

President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are
regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when
schools are not performing."

But there are no "better options." In the delicious double-speak of class
war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No
Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to
repeat the failure another year.

I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids
stamped failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests,
their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the
law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can't
provide more opportunity than that. But they don't provide it, the law
promises it, without a single penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004,
a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools
-- in which there were only 8,000 places open.

New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students
eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there's always the Army.
(That option did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision
requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.)

Hint: When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real agenda, don't
read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President
couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender
provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and
secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation's income
-- just one-half of one-percent of America's twelve trillion dollar GDP --
for primary and secondary education.

President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying
out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn't mean the extra
cash actually gets to the students. Fifteen states have sued the federal
government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools,
$3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left.

There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are better
uses for them. The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down,
identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden,
to educate.

No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score mark of Cain
-- no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new
social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class
early on. Trap them then train them cheap.

Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without
lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind -- to produce
the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club,
punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the
winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic order.

Class war dismissed.


**********
See a clip of the actual practice test at www.GregPalast.com
**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy. Read his investigative reports at
www.GregPalast.com
============================================


[edit on 13-1-2006 by theRiverGoddess]

Right on.....In my opinion, Bush s#@ks. But, that is pure opinion....

I think this TEST also prooves NWO type connections...division by class ect.

education truly sucks.

how can it be one of the 'platforms' of this country's politics yet they don't dare remove some oreo cookies from the military budget pile and put 1 or 2 on top of the education's half a cookie's pile to create a SIGNIFICANT improvement towards education.

it's all smoke and mirrors. this just proves it.

Right... All this show's is how poor american education is. Reading comprehension despite whichever sentence's are used doesn't equal NWO agenda's. Sure, they used tennis, but the core of it is still the ability to comprehend it. While I know nothing about tennis I'm pretty confident the answer was D, as partner's.

For those who don't understand what comprehension mean's, here's the defenition.

dictionary.reference.com...

com·pre·hen·sion (kmpr-hnshn)
n.

1.
1. The act or fact of grasping the meaning, nature, or importance of; understanding.
2. The knowledge that is acquired in this way.
2. Capacity to include.
3. Logic. The sum of meanings and corresponding implications inherent in a term.

[EDIT] In other words, the purpose of reading comprehension test's are to determine if your intelligent enough to comprehend and understand the paragraph and correctly deduce the answer. It DOES NOT mean "do you know anything about tennis". Can you figure out what double's tennis mean's in that content? If not. Then you haven't learned much in school and either need to go back or PAY ATTENTION.

[edit on 13-1-2006 by Produkt]

Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of wealth
accumulation?

If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next
question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not
make this up):

"Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In
this sentence, a club is probably a

"F baseball bat
"G tennis racquet
"H tennis court
"J country club"

Yes, because it's entirely impossible for a kid who's graspped simple concept's to understand that a club isn't a baseball bat, nor a tennis racquet, nor a tennis court. What's left? Gee, if done by simple guess work alone one would conclude country club!

I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids stamped failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can't provide more opportunity than that. But they don't provide it, the law promises it, without a single penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools -- in which there were only 8,000 places open.

This doesn't show lack of option's, but instead lack of children learning how to comprehend what it is they are learning. If there's only 8,000 place's open explain how a third of a million kids who failed a test are going to fill only 8,000 openings?

This is either anti-bush propaganda or the author of the article had trouble passing the reading comprehension test himself so felt the need to attack it and not the real problem.

In one way I can understand why no child left behind makes sense but it also shows me that Bush and his band of cronies are trying to force feed our children this stuff they call [Education ] No wonder we see such large numbers of children from all ethinic backgrounds especially those from the Aisian countries because they are hungry an education. Untill we get our kids heads out of the X-Box we are going to fall behind and remain there untill the parents get their kids butts up and going.

I got yelled at when I brought home a (B) from school.

So which are you blaming? Bush or the parent's? Have you ot anyone else bothered to take into consideration that the american school system has been in place well before Bush was even born? From the sound of it... No. This is anti-Bush propaganda, and I don't even like Bush myself!

Here's the chinese school system since you brought it up.

www.index-china.com...

www.csmonitor.com...

Like all schools in China, School No. 9, located in the city of Suzhou in the Jiangsu Province, revolves around a competitive system of standardized tests and exams. This process culminates with three "black days" in July: a comprehensive national college entrance examination for high school graduates that determines placement in the nation's university system.

Would you look at that! They do standardized tests! American school's are trying to do the same thing and all we're getting is people complaining about it left and right AND people who want to cite china as an example and or excuse! Don't complain about the tests then try using china as your excuse when china has already been doing the same thing. Make's you look uneducated.

The education system in china is a hell of alot better, they start sending kid between the ages of 3-6 to school. You HAVE to stay in school for atleast 9 year's, completing junior high school, you can either furthur your education or not.

And this article here show's how "hungry" these student's are.

www.corpun.com...

Note: The school system's are a hell of alot different then american school system's. In some cases better, in other cases STILL better. Children are children no matter what ethnicity or nationality. To kid yourself of otherwise would make you a fool.

Untill the parent's start caring at home, the kids won't care at school. For example, my 4 year old is going to be doing great when he get's into school because he's already picking up on what we teach our 7 year old. We help her out right as soon as she get's home. We read to the both of them, have her read to us and sometime's help our son try and read. He's already picking up on math, I'm always explaining astronomy to them. We go online and show them thing's everyday. Both my kids are able to use a computer unsupervised, whereas my daughter reported back to me that alot of the kids in her class couldn't.

It start's at home people, not at the whitehouse, but the school's do need a major rework in order to teach children more efficiently. That doesn't mean WE can't help teach our kids! Meaning, if your child is doing poorly in school, STEP IN and HELP rather then complaining about a damn readin comprehension test. These test's are put into place to find out who's LEARNING and who's NOT. Just like china and nearly every other school that happens to be BETTER then american schools.

[edit on 14-1-2006 by Produkt]

This test obviously is a seive designed to identify class - and weed out the poor as "unfit" for higher education.

One of the many of this administration's new eugenics policies.

Really... My family is as poor as they come and I figured out the answer! My daughter does better in school then most of her class. My four year old is doing addition, subtraction, starting to read and write.

here's a reading comprehension test. Says it's supposed to be advanced reading comprehension, but I managed to get every answer right.

www.englishlearner.com...

Soficrow,

These test's aren't made to sort out different income bracket's. These test's are to determine if your learning in school. One of the best way's you can help your kid's is to help them out home. Already my four year old is going to have a huge advantage over some kids in school. My parent's never helped me when I was a kid, I didn't do so good, especially in math. But, I did teach myself, always had my nose in a book, mostly science book's. Math is my weakest subject, which me and my wife are going to be working on again soon.

Unless you guy's can show how this tie's into the "nwo" or eugenics plot's, then please stop posting ridiculous assumption's about it. It's a damn test to figure out who's LEARNING.

I'll say it once more in hope's that this sinks in.

It's a damn test to figure out who's LEARNING.

Originally posted by Produkt
Soficrow,

These test's aren't made to sort out different income bracket's.

Puh-leeze.

These test's are to determine if your learning in school.

Name a ghetto school with doubles tennis on the curriculum.

Unless you guy's can show how this tie's into the "nwo" or eugenics plot's, then please stop posting ridiculous assumption's about it.

Your defense of eugenics and the status quo is persistent. But your assumptions and dogma are more than ridiculous. Please stop spouting such patently insubstantial and transparent defenses.

I'll say it once more in hope's that this sinks in.

It's a damn test to figure out who's LEARNING.

Right. Get real.

The kids who play doubles tennis have learned they're privileged. And the ghetto kids know dickall about tennis OR country clubs - so they have learned they're out of the loop. And the mainstream economy. Wotta surprise. Now it's official.

I'm guessing you don't understand what reading comprehension is. It has nothing to do with what double's tennis is or how it's played. I don't know jack abot tennis, but I got the answer right because I could COMPREHEND the text.

What are they supposed to do? Sally got her welfare checks... Little Johnny sold 3 time's more crack then...

Your telling me to get real? How about you learn what reading comprehension is and stop stereotyping. THEN come back here and post an educated reply to the topic.

Again, it's ridiculous to assert that this is an nwo/eugenics plot when your sole proof of such is READING COMPREHENSION.

I also took the liberty to provide the definition of reading comprehension a few post's back if your still at a loss of what it means. Should take a look!

I can tell you the most simple way to spell the "No Child Left Behind" thing, and that is a big C-R-A-P. This program was more than likely designed to in a way turn the tables on a few opinions and open up bright doors for ADULTS. It doesnt matter if a kid is in school or not. If the kid is making bad grades, then they are making bad grades. Boy, they sure arent being left behind are they?

So say the kid making the bad BOOK grades is actually smarter than the kid making the GOOD book grades. Not in the sense of book smart, but logic smart. To me, Bush thinks he's got it figured out. Its a put on to the parents. Basically here is what it is, except put into a smaller version.

Bush: "Well, I havent been running the country good enough for the past I dont know how many years, and people are starting to see this. I wonder what will open up the doors for Americans to make them think I am being a good president. I know!, ill launch a "No Child Left Behind Campaign". That way, the American people will say, "Wow, GWB is really doing something good, my hats off to George". This should work, in fact, I know it will. Sorry so short, bout to pack my bags for another vacation."

Thats pretty much my summary for that note. Just IMO, its all a big scam and a big lie. I am still in school, and I learn about this stuff everyday in American History. Its actually pretty interesting too. The system wasnt corrupt like it is today. But it wasnt as stable either. It was better, the world was better. Except for the natually smart kids in school, my opinion is that every child is being left behind. They screwed it up by launching the initiative in the first place.

Standardized tests is what is screwing all of the kids over. Im having to take mine for the 3RD time coming up. I feel left behind. Some people are good test takers, and some are not. And the ones who are not are basically the "backwash" people. They are really the ones who government could not care as much for than the smarter people. I have a friend that is probably going to make valedictoian, and she cant wire up a cable system like I could. But yet, I cant make the good grades that she can either.

I just dont see why its all in what the papers say.

brodband edit: brodband is NOT being Anti-Bush.

[edit on 1/14/0606 by brodband]

just happened to watch 20/20 last night....stupid in america ...video on thier front page... very interesting...
it seems that those in the education field see the demise of american schools but those in the administration think that american children are the smaaaaaartest in the world....only because they are being indoctrinated properly and covertly ...just my opinion..

once again the administration says 'things are great' everybody else say 'no they're not'..the admin response..'yes they are, and by not agreeing with us, you are unpatriotic and possibly a terrorist sympathizer and per directives included in the patriot act, you will be treated as such'

Brodband,

If the kid is making BAD grade's then they either aren't applying themselve's as much as they should or aren't learning. In either case if they fail the test, they need to stay back untill the figure out that they have to APPLY what they are learning. All your post showed was how anti-Bush you were. Logic smart mean's jack if you can't comprehend a given text to figure out the answer to something you don't know.

Jan. 13, 2006 — "Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.

Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."

Yeah right, students are NEVER just walking around smoking weed. Now THAT kind of stuff is what makes me mad. Im in 11th grade, about to be in 12th, and that probably has to be one of the biggest loads of propagandaized crap ive ever read.

About the whole falling asleep in class thing, that is 100% true. We've all done it.

Unless you goto that school, don't dismiss it off as propaganda. While the kids at my highschool didn't walk around the halls, they did do it in the bathroom's and on school ground's. They brought weapon's into school, and toward's my last year it got so bad we had to get security officer's in the building.

Propaganda my ass. Learn about other situation's before you assume something.

Originally posted by Produkt
It's a damn test to figure out who's LEARNING.

Exactly!

Name a ghetto school with doubles tennis on the curriculum.

I'd rather not name any of the schools I went to, but let me assure you that most of my high school years were spent at a school in the "ghetto" where we did have a tennis team (who happened to get caught in the middle of a drive by one year), and students did play tennis as part of "normal" physical education as well. On a side note, this highschool was also one of the last public schools in california to offer Latin, and once again it was in the ghetto.

I don't understand the point of this thread, or the questions used as examples. Doubles are doubles no matter where you are at--In canasta I play doubles with my Grandmother, In skateboarding you can do double lines with a friend, at In-N-Out you can buy a double double, etc, etc.

How should the test read for people in the "ghetto" ? Should the questions deal with 40's, bullets, and pieces of dub rock?

Sad thing is, the writers of the test probably thought they were being as inclusive as can be by using the Williams sisters as an example.

I went to New York City public schools for nearly my entire life, that test doesn't sound any different than the ones we used to take. One test had a reading about the habits of the common Shrew followed by questions on it. It never stated what a shrew was, I only knew the answer because i had seen a movie enittled "Attack of the Killer Shrews" lol

I think the author is neglecting to point out how many wealthy schools there are here in the city. I'd wager a good half of the kids in the city go to a private, charter, specialized, or in other ways not normal school.

Many of the children that "Live below the poverty line" (a group I might add includes white people) are still able to attend such schools. I think this test is just another standardized test that proves nothing at all but a student's ability to take a test.

Wow. In my opinion it is people like the writer of this article that is the problem with America. I have never played tennis in my life, do not live the high life, and yet those were the easiest problems to COMPREHEND. Its people like the creator of this article that cause the dumbing down of America. "Oh, they aren’t wealthy; we need to make the test different for them." It’s a simple reading comprehension, which is one of the most critical aspects of knowledge one needs to grasp. But i guess we could just keep dumbing down test, and dumbing them down and dumbing them down more.....then where will we be? This is nothing but propaganda against Bush, written by somebody trying to seek the weak minds that would believe this ridiculous propaganda. Ridiculous article, ridiculous argument, ridiculous attempt to bash Bush on no grounds. I mean dagum, there is plenty of justified reasons to bash him, and that’s coming from a Bush supporter.