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Comments
I think the time spent with your kids is huge. I was the only child of a single parent who worked a lot of overtime. I excelled initially at school because I could read at age 4 and solve puzzles. But no one spent much time with me on homework; sometimes I flew through it, sometimes it was harder, and sometimes I didn't do it at all-- even though I probably could have, with ease. I get the feeling both my parents were completely self-made; their parents didn't help with homework at all, either.
I didn't reach my potential. I won't make that mistake with my son! I won't be a "Chinese Mother" or anything, but spending 30-60 minutes a night makes a big difference. The main thing I failed to learn at a young age was discipline and how to work hard.
OTOH, they have to see how the kids are doing in relationship to where they should be. Luckily both of my kids do well on the test - one because he's a natural student, the other because she is blessed with test memory and is able to write well. She can't spell worth a dang outside of tests!!
Further bit of luck - we live in one of the higher tech towns along Rt 128 and have a top 20 school system. Our town is ahead of the curve on understanding that school systems directly affect property values and that teaching kids how to use technology in school and their lives is key. My son will be part of a the freshman class at the highschool this fall and all students will be issued an iPads as a text book replacement and overall teaching tool. Our superindendant, administrators and many teachers blog regularly in an effort to interact with their students in a way to keep them engaged. Some folks disagree with this plan but I for one am glad that the system is moving into the present.
Bought it from Amazon already, and 2 days later they had a $10 gift card, but my wife called and they applied it.
So the net cost was $200, plus free shipping, no sales tax. We're both happy.
With high unemployment, ever rising taxes, rising food & energy costs, declining enrollment, and general lack of raises in the private sector, everyone is feeling the squeeze. School budgets that passed without a blink in the past are now falling at an alarming rate. Last year I fought constantly with several of my co-workers who said that the yearly increases of $300-400 (school rate alone, with town/county/state on top of that) was simply too much. We closed a school last year, and music/sports is on the block for the upcoming vote. 98% of the programs are state mandates. Total savings when the budget fails are tiny.
In principle I agree - we do have issues to tackle. But education has to be a priority. If nothing else, our property values depend on it! Mercenary, yes, but residents need to grasp that they are making an investment in themselves as well as our children.
My father's mother was a teacher. His father was a teacher/school administrator who finished his career as a school superintendent. My mother's brother and his wife were also teachers. In spite of being a young parent (18), my mother spent a lot of time with me encouraging learning. I could read by the age of 3. In Kindergarten I was in trouble one day for getting one of the teacher's professional texts off her desk. I told her I was reading it, and she didn't believe me until I read it aloud for her. My father finished high school at age 17 (having skipped a grade somewhere in one of his family's many moves), and finished a college degree (while married and a young father) in 3 years while working to support us. As I think I've posted here before, he worked in the aerospace industry - finishing up with 25 years at NASA. It was expected that we would work hard and do well in school.
During that time, I know that some schools were better than others, and some teachers were better than others in each school. I had a couple who stood out because they challenged me even if it meant finding "extra" things for me to do when I finished my work.
While there are a lot of other later comments about parenting, and I do believe it is important, I also think that most parents do the best they can with the resources they have at the current moment. Current resources may include their own knowledge and skills, their monetary resources, their time resources, emotional resources, etc. Most of us here have "free" time outside of providing the basics for our families. There are many families in this country that are not so fortunate. One of the dilemmas is how to get families and assistance programs paired in order to help the children. Even if they should be hooked up to the assistance, many of these families are also "transient" moving often - whether it be from family member to family member, or from one rented residence to another. The current economic situation in this country impacted this group much more quickly and to a higher degree than most others.
(Puts away the social soapbox and moves on since I've really strayed from what I started with in this post.)
Thanks for listening ...
Love it when he tosses the ticket back at the meter maid...
Beyond the actual scoring issues, there is another difficulty with test scores as they are used by many states. There are 2 basic types of standardized assessments. One is a norm-referenced test. These are tests like ability (what we used to call IQ) tests where a large group of people are given the assessment and then the statistical analysis generates tables of scores based on ages of the people taking the tests. These tests provide a fairly broad range of material to be assessed and are used for a wide range of ages. The scores often are reported as a standard score with the average score at 100 and standard deviations of approximately 15 points. However, there are other scales that are used to score with a number assigned to each "standard deviation" point. Some examples are z-scores and t-scores.
The other type is a criterion-referenced test. An example of this might be as simple as a spelling test - where the students knew what would be tested. They have the opportunity to learn the subject matter and know what they will be tested over. Everyone tested could (theoretically) master the entire test. The problem is that some (many?) state tests purport to be a criterion-referenced test, but then apply the statistical analysis of norm-referenced testing to the scoring of the tests. This means that it is possible for every single student to "improve" individual raw scores and still not show improvement in the overall state picture.
Often grade 3 from one year is compared to grade 3 of the previous year without ever considering that 2 completely different groups of students are being compared. It makes more sense to compare scores for grade 3 of 2009-10 to the scores of grade 4 of 2010-11 - but then we are back to what the test scores really mean anyway ..... and you want to tie my compensation and ability to retain my position to these once per year test scores?
Each February we are asked to write up a set of 'business commitments' for that year, and our accomplishments against those commitments are then judged the following January. Want to talk about subjective? Being a competitive market driven high technology company, our tactical and strategic direction is in constant flux. During any given year, items that seemed important in March may be complete non-issues by November, replaced by a whole new set of tasks. You might change roles, your team might change, your manager (that's doing the judging) might move on. Whole departments disappear or are created as a result of reorganizations. A task might get 70% completed and that is more than adequate, some tasks 95% complete and that just isn't nearly enough because the target changed!
It's interesting that Watson actually thinks but of course it's all based on programming. But still: Toronto??
What did you mean by that???
IBM engineers explained that Watson was trained to not 100% accept the category names because they can be misleading.
FTR, I think this must be some sort of advertising idea for IBM. Not unlike the show called "Undercover Boss". These are ploys to boost the companies exposure in the market place and confidence by the consumer.
Just because they (IBM) can, doesn't mean they should have in the case of Watson and Jeopardy. I felt badly for the other real guys...that would be the ones affected by the lights, the studio nerves, the blood fed memory that might have had a bad plane flight or poor nights rest, or nagging headache, etc etc.
This article from IBM details it:
http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/icons/watson/
Another article I read noted that Watson could be scaled down and could be able to handle things like booking reservations where it has to decide if the answer has a high probability of being correct. If it can't then it can ask questions.
But if you looked carefully at some of the answers Watson came up with on the questions it didn't try to answer (low confidence), some of the possible responses were quite weird and off base. In a real use situation, it is here that the tool would simply ask for more input.
As for the confidence level, Watson was trained not to answer if the probablity was too low but in Final Jeopardy, it had to say something. It was cool how Watson had to press a buzzer as well and waited for Alex to call on him (it??) to give the answer.
- if you make a DVD recording with a DVD-RW dvd in a VR mode (as opposed to a V mode)
[VR has chase play ability. V= video, can't chase-play]
- Can you finalize that DVD with just any brand DVD recorder?
- Can I even use my computer to finalize a DVD and if so, will it play only in other computer DVD drives, or will it play with any DVD player?
I have a number of unfinalized DVD's and now that one machine is down, I am concerned that if it goes down and I am unsuccessful in fixing my first one, that I'll be out of luck in being able to play these unfinalized DVD's on another brand. Some brands will play an unfinalized, and some won't. I have checked this already. It is really just luck of draw. All units should play all finalized DVD's but something I have never known is if any old recorder can finalize any other recorder's DVD?
I'm not familiar with VR mode vs V mode.
The two modes has to do with whether you want to be a able to do a chase-play. (start watching a recording in PLAY that has already started). It allows you to watch it from the beginning without waiting for record to finish. I use it all the time, great time saver...highly recommended.
Someone posted that "good public schools help guarantee high property values". While I agree with that, there is also a lot of the "chicken vs the egg" argument. If you look at high performing schools, the vast majority are in areas of higher income and more desirable properties (with concurrent higher prices). That invites a different demographic than where there are less desirable - and cheaper - properties. So which comes first? The students from the demographic or the performance of the school?
I have also found in interesting here in Indiana over the last 11 years. There were 5 high schools in town when I moved here and now there are 4. Even if they were closing the high school with the lowest "performance" scores (and I don't really remember how they decided which one to close), the hue and cry from the parents of those students at that school was, "Don't close OUR school!" Since then there have been other elementary schools that have been "targeted" as a possible closure, with the resultant outcry from the "clients" of that particular public school. Never think that it is strictly a business decision to close or combine schools. Often when a school is "repurposed", it resets the state testing clock on that building. For instance, if the school has had 3 years in "warning" for its performance on state testing, and the clientele of the building changes in some way, then the "warning" clock starts over at zero.
Someone also posted about "magnet" schools for high ability students. While there are highly specialized programs that can happen in this type of setting, there is a part of me that is completely opposed to them. Ironically, these are the types of schools that my 2 grandsons (who live in my house) attend right now. It is the ONLY type of high ability classes available to them in their schools. There are a couple of issues I have with this.
First of all, they spend the large majority of their day only with other students who have been identified as "high ability". I firmly believe that students are best served by interacting with all types of people so they have a broader base from which to be successful in the larger society.
I also have a problem when these schools are allowed to "boast" about their performance on state testing. When you control "raw material", you can make a superior "product".
We also saw a sad consequence of this system, last spring (and continuing into this school year). One of the neighbor's children was in the "high ability" program at the 1-4 campus. Once a student gains admittance in 1st grade, they remain in the program without needing to be retested each year. There are very few openings each year, and the competition for the spots is pretty fierce. My grandson moved here in 2nd grade, and in the spring of that year was nominated for the program. He was tested - along with 60 other students who applied for 3 spots. Initially he was not accepted, but over the summer received news that he was invited to attend. (I assume someone moved or declined a spot.) He and the neighbor's child attended school together in 3rd and 4th grades. About halfway through 4th grade, the students were tested again, and the grandson continued in the program, but the neighbor's child did not. They received this news in early March. This child (and others, too, I assume) had the remainder of the school year to finish with their classmates - knowing they would have to be in a different school with an unknown peer group the following year.
Someone posted about the book "Outliers". While I have not yet read it, I have heard of it. Interestingly enough, when I was in charge of identifying young students (K-2) for high ability programs, I began to realize that most of our students had birthdays in the 1st 6 months of the school year. Our cutoff for Kindergarten was Sept 1st. Approximately 3/4 of the students we were identifying had birthdays ranging from Sept. through January. It was difficult for us to get teachers to look past what they saw as "immaturity" to the student's abilities. There is a great deal of difference in Kindergarten (and early elementary and probably later ages) depending largely on the birthdays. Think of the differences between a newborn and a 6 month old baby. Or think of a 6 month old and compare to the abilities of a year old toddler.
Someone else posted about Massachusetts schools. I did some research last summer on NAEP scores and took a look at them nationwide for reading. Massachusetts scores are high for reading no matter the age or demographic groups. The subgroups may not perform as high as the total, but the subgroups outscore other states' subgroups. When I made a presentation to our superintendent, I even said that if I were in charge of the reading curriculum, I'd be looking to see what Massachusetts is doing that the rest of us are not!
Asperger's ... several have mentioned having children with high-functioning autism. While I will definitely agree that this can be tricky to help classroom teachers understand, I also know that these kids have so many talents and skills that we desperately need to nurture. We CAN teach social skills - at least enough to interact and share the talents! Someone made the comment about teachers having difficulty with "normal" kid behaviors from these students identified with Asperger's. Part of the problem is that the intellect doesn't match the social skills. We see this all the time with "high ability" students, too. The teacher may not nominate a child with behavior issues although they realize the student's intellectual abilities. The behaviors may be a manifestation of the child's BOREDOM! Or ... maybe they just lag behind with the social/maturity issues. We all have some measure of "dysynchrony" in our development. (My abilities with words far outstrips my social popularity skills!
An anecdote about a student I worked with on the autism scale. Parents and grandparents are very well-educated with either masters or doctoral degrees. The child was identified as being on the autism spectrum when he was about 4. Mom went into high gear with occupational therapists and others in order to do what was "best" for him. She spent time each week with the therapists and then spent hours each day working with him (6-8 hours a day and more). When he entered Kindergarten, he had a full-time para with him for the 1/2 day class. He also qualified for the extra 1/2 day program offered to those K students who needed "more", but no para. Mom would spend the afternoon with him to keep him on target. He continued through 1-3 grades with a full-time para. During this time, the parents asked for all the worksheets, daily assignments, etc so they could continue working with him in the evening. They did this for hours every night. By 4th grade, we asked to cut back the time with the para to see how independent he could be so that we could better plan by the time he went to middle school (6th grade). Parents were tearful and scared, but we promised we'd keep an eye on things and up the time if it were necessary. We had a few minor behavior issues, but I kept reminding teachers and parents that he had not needed to make these choices in the past, because the para basically did it for him. By the time he went to 5th grade, we cut back more time with the para, and he went to 6th grade with no para in all general education classes. He is now in high school and continues to be successful.
This mom went to work for us as a para when the student went to middle school. When he was 13, she came in one day just raving mad about him being "caught in a lie". This was a child who had always told the truth even if he would be in trouble. I started laughing which really made her madder, I'm sure. As I was able, I apologized and said, "We've tried all this time to get him to behavior like his peers, and NOW HE IS! This is SO normal for a 13 year old!" As a parent, I sympathized with her, and told her I'd have punished my own children and I understood, but for her to PLEASE celebrate how normal this behavior was!
A side note - there is a child on the TV series "Parenthood" who has been identified as being on the autism spectrum. Do any of you watch this? I'd be interested in your perceptions of the portrayal.
Last point ... I promise. The governor of Indiana is Mitch Daniel. If you have not yet heard of him, I suspect you will. He seems to be gearing up to make a run for President of the US. He brags about our budget being in the black (and it's an important point, I agree). Education took a big cut in the last couple of years, and is taking more now. A couple of years ago, a new state superintendent of education was elected who was the "governor's candidate", so there has been groundwork laid using that office for what is taking place now in the legislature. The mid-term elections gave the Republican governor and Republican-dominated house and he is using it to push through legislation to take out union participation.
If you've read to here, I applaud your perseverance and you get an "A+" in "teacher's pet skills" ... lol .. I'll try to limit the discussion about this from this point. If you want more info on what is going on with Indiana Education, check out the following Facebook pages:
Support Indiana Teachers
Parents & Educators against the Daniels & Bennett Educational Reform
The discussion has been interesting and I've enjoyed reading your posts ...
THANKS!
But to your point about age and development- her school has broken "kindergarten" down into 4 sub divisions. Pre-k, k, k-pre-1st, and pre-1st. It isn't unusual for me to encounter a degree of eye rolling from people when they ask me what grade she's in and I describe those tiers. They have less to do with academic capability than they do with social and cognitive development. So Elie, being a late sept birthday, entered k last year, and moved to pre-1st this year, and will go to 1st next year. There is a range of ages (in terms of months apart) in the group moving with her, but it isn't nearly as big a gap as when I was a kid
Perhaps that's true, in a perfectly dysfunctional world, but my family opted for a one-parent income in order to avoid the necessity of "day care," which all but precludes the financial ability to pay $500-1000 a month for a preschool. Were that not an obstacle, I still do not think I would opt for 2-3 years of preschool rather than giving them the chance to just be children for a while before beginning that slow march toward societal assimilation.
Moving back toward the point, which is age differentials during the early grades, my brother and I represented, perhaps, the most extreme example of this. We are 362 days apart - he 8/12/76 and I 8/9/77 - and we went through school as classmates. He went through K a year prior to me, at the age of five, but then went through a year of "junior primary," which sounds somewhat similar to the pre-1st structuring at Elie's school, while I was attending K. The following year, we both entered first grade.
While our grades were often similar, socially he was on a completely different spectrum from me. Granted, I imagine I would have been diagnosed as autism-spectrum like my son were such a diagnosis ever performed, I always felt socially awkward while he took to it like a fly on feces. Until late in high school, he was bigger, faster, stronger - and all mostly due to his age. Really, the only thing age-independent was intellect.
And even after all of that, we are constantly pushing for more achievement at younger ages when really we should be pushing for more nuturing, and not just at younger ages, but throughout childhood. With nurturing, achievement comes naturally at any age.
Your kids will be going the online "High School of Phoenix" before you know it.
Idaho Statesman
link title
My brother was hit and his Legacy was totalled, now he may be buying another Subie. Details in the Cafe soon.
Link to our Wild Ride:
http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.ef0a957/16051#MSG16051
Then this morning.. 19 degrees and wind chill of 10 when I came to work. :sick:
I have no idea what MA does special for reading. I do know that my kids were doing book reports as early as 2nd grade and that they were encouraged to read what excited them. I remember my son doing a non-fiction report back in 3rd grade. He asked his teacher to do it on a book on D-Day - she reviewed the book and felt it to be a bit of a stretch but said go ahead.
My kids are voracious readers and ask to get more books.
Not only are there book reports, projects, etc, throughout the year ... there is a "summer reading list" and the kids are expected to read at least one book over the summer and hand in a book report the first week of school!
Everything you listed is what my kids do. I guess I expected that to be the norm around the country so I didn't consider it anything special.
lol
And of course if I take a few days away from work, the assignments pile up requiring extra long days when I return!
I loved the story of the child with a diagnosis of Asperger's being caught in a lie, and what it really meant. One of our boys did flirt with the "A"/PDD diagnosis for a couple of years during his workup (It really did take that long) but we had never thought he made the criteria for the diagnosis. Still, we do know that regardless of labels (and he does have a few - ADD,DCD,Processing disorder) he had signifcant obstacles to normal learning and development. At the parental level, though, whenever there is a blow up amongst our boys, we always ask him what happened, because he never lies; it is simply not in his nature. Our other sons may challenge his recollection or perception of events, but never accuse him of lying. The other two accuse each other on an almost daily basis.
Honda, Subaru remain top automakers in Consumer Reports ranking
WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) -- Honda and Subaru topped Consumer Reports' annual rankings of automakers for 2011
I was in the company of adults all day long! We did have a good visit and a great time.
Oh yeah, and my Subaru performed just great on the trip in and out and all around Chicago ... lol
All day long?! Shoot; a person could get spoiled by something like that.... :shades:
I'm glad you had such a great time, Brenda!
But here's the funny part. I spend my days in a lab and office environment surrounded by adults with an 'agenda'. At the end of the day I crave silence and solitude!
I do know that I would miss it pretty quickly, though, if too many days went by if I didn't hear a child eagerly saying, "GUEFFWHAT!"
Wake up early this morning to inspect all work, only to find that most of what's completed is spotty, and much of their work done on school computers cannot be opened by our version of Office. I called a couple of other parents who reported similar, "Cannot open file - format not recognized" or "a portion of the file is missing" issues. Those error messages for work files had been the reason I updated Office XP to the newer version in the first place. Turns out that the school district is still using old versions of Office. All my usual fixes to the problem fell flat, so the entire day was spent rebuilding and editing older versions of their projects with much more to come tomorrow. If I ever meet Bill Gates in a dark alley......
What had looked like a fun weekend of bonding with my maturing boys collapsed. I am having a difficult time balancing the issues of helping them and still keeping the projects their own. Meanwhile 1.5 of them have spent the day horizontal due to being really ill. When adolescent boys don't eat, you know they aren't well. I don't want them to be stenographers of my ideas, but at the same time want to help them work through everything. I know that many other parents are heavily involved; I just don't have a good feel of when I am directing rather than supporting.