In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
J. Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Francis Galton explained it in 1885. Possibly, the Mass. Dept. of
>Education missed it! Or, could it be that the same gang who brought
>us the exit poll data during the November election were helping them
>out? :-)
>I am wondering why they did not have a set of objective standards for
>ALL students to meet.
There are only two ways this can be done. One is by having
the standards so low as to be useless, and the other is by
not allowing the students who cannot do it to get to that
grade, regardless of age. The second is, at this time,
Politically Incorrect.
................
When a given school is already "good" it naturally can't
>"improve" more than schools on the bottom of the achievement ladder.
It can, by changing curriculum and speeding things up. This
is also not Politically Correct.
>It seems they really should have prepared a better public announcement
>of results. Rather than "knocking" the high achieving schools, they
>should praise them justifiably. Then, noting the improvement in the
>large urban schools would seem positive as well.
The biggest factor in the performance of schools is in the
native ability of students; but again it is Politically
Incorrect to even hint that this differs between schools.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
