Our Skools Is Threw Thu Ruuf
SOUTH CAROLINA IS MAKING PROGRESS IN EDUCATION!
FITSNews – August 12, 2008 – God bless S.C. Education Superintendent Jim Rex, people. And God bless all those visionary legislators who decided we should blow an extra billion dollars on top of the billions we already blow each year to prop up the worst public school system in the history of the Western World.
How come? Well, according to the State Ministry of Failure and Non-Competition, South Carolina students are showing “improved performance on the ACT college entrance exam.” Wait, what?
Average ACT composite scores for South Carolina’s white students increased two-tenths of a point to 21.7 in the 2008 report; African-American students’ average scores went up one-tenth to 16.4.
Hold up … does that say “tenths of a point?” Are you kidding us? Our white students are “two-tenths” of a point smarter than they were last year, while our black students are “one-tenth” of a point smarter?
Of course, Rex (the PR genius) is touting these completely nonexistent gains like our kids just invented time travel or something, and (surprise, surprise) bringing it all back to the almighty dollar.
“Now that we’ve built up this momentum, it would be a shame to have it blunted by impending budget cuts,” Rex said today in a statement.
Sweet Jesus. Do these people ever stop with the bullshit? All we ask is that you keep in mind that Rex’s own Department considers any change of less than three-tenths of a point to be “statistically insignificant.”
Comments
By AdeT on August 12th, 2008 at 9:31 am
“Now that we’ve built up this momentum, it would be a shame to have it blunted by impending budget cuts,†Rex said today in a statement.
Budget cuts? What budget cuts? K-12 education was the only major statewide program that was NOT cut this year.
This is extraordinarily disappointing from Rex. If we wanted another politician to “play the game” from the left-wing text book — “if only we had….MORE MONEY….” — we could have elected, well, just about anybody in education in this state.
By baker on August 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I tend to agree with Will that minor improvement on the ACT isn’t a great measure of schools’ success. You don’t know which kids are taking the test, how that demographic is skewed, etc. Some high schools really seem to stress the SAT over the ACT or vice-versa. So, yeah, I think it’s a pretty sketchy measure of improvement.
Of course, if our state’s SAT scores went DOWN on tenth of a point or percentage or whatever, I reckon that Will and SCRG and all them would make huge headlines with it.
By fitsnews on August 12th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Baker-
We can’t speak for anyone else, but we have to make headlines over nonsense like this because the mainstream media (of which you used to be a member) is intent on perpetuating the more money myth.
Perhaps if you guys did your jobs, there’d be no need for us …
-FITSNews
By Bought and paid for by SCASA on August 12th, 2008 at 10:37 am
sic(k) willie and clones never learn. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Just that something prevents the learning process in their brains from working properly. Like voucher scam money.
Public Education is S.C. is making progress! It does have issues that need to be addressed so progress can continue and spread to all students in SC. Read that again. “ALL STUDENTS” Get it?
Your voucher scam will abandon those who need help the most.
We all know the challenges facing public education and our children include a variety of problems like poverty and latent racism (and Brazillions of related social issues that sic(k) willie ignores) as well as a funding system the punishes many rural kids.
The first thing S.C. needs to do is fix “minimally adequate.” What a terrible thing for S.C. Our education standard is “minimally adequate.” sic(k) one, where is your outrage?
BIN News – Flair and Balance!
By baker on August 12th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Will — I was primarily agreeing with you, dude…..that ACT/SAT ‘incremental’ improvement is a poor measure of progress.
In fact, as a reporter, I wrote pretty extensively about what to read into SAT and ACT scores….that it has to do with sample size and sample type (does a school encourage ALL its students to take the SAT, or just those likeliest to attend college, etc.?) and so on.
No, I didn’t write stories on whether some government office’s p.r. efforts — including the governor’s — were full of fluff, generally, as that’s more for the realm of editorial pages….opinion outlets, perhaps similar to this one. And, again, I’m agreeing with the thrust of your comment here — not all the “worst in the Western World,” “total waste” or whatever stuff, but your criticism of Jim Rex’s ACT commentary. I’m guessing your beef with my comment has to do with my supposing that the pro-school-choice crowd would make hay with any ‘incremental’ or ’statistically insignificant’ decrease in scores.
By Rob W. on August 12th, 2008 at 11:43 am
That’s about a 1% improvement in the ACT scores. That seems to be a decent improvement to me; if we compared this to the SAT, that would be something like a 10 point improvement in one year.
I haven’t been able to find the 2008 ACT averages anywhere, so I’d like to see where you got your quote/story, and also where you got the idea that 0.3 points isn’t significant. According to the 2007 scores, 0.3 points separates the 15th ranked state (Pennsylvania, 22.0) and the 25th ranked state (Delaware, 21.7), so it seems to make a big difference, particularly if you’re obsessed with ranking educational performance to make a point. The national average last year was 21.2, so we’re not that far off; I don’t know what you’re whining about.
2007 scores, if you care to see them: http://www.act.org/news/data/07/states.html
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