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CAT Tracks for June 20, 2012
FIRST-EVER NAEP SCIENCE RESULTS |
As you will see below, this article from Education Week is "Premium Content"...available to subscribers only.
Speaking for me...
"Save your money!" (Folks, there is plenty of S & M material out there in the media alleyways and byways for free. There is no need to go soliciting and paying for it.)
Speaking for Education Reformers everywhere...
"The latest standardized testing reveals that science teachers suck too!"
CAT Tracks Editor's Note:
From my song for every occasion catalog...
Since I mentioned S & M in my intro, I thought I would stay with the "kinky" theme!
Actually, not in subject matter, but by artist.
The performer of my song choice of the day is the Kinks, their 1965 song "Who'll Be the Next in Line" (for heartache.)
Since I took the liberty of speaking for Education Reformers above, I'm going a step further and speaking up for unappreciated and much-maligned teachers by selecting a stanza from the aforementioned song as a response to they who would fill the classrooms with "temps" and relegate them to the roll of automatons:
Speaking for those who chose teaching as a life-long profession (not as a two-year pit stop on their way to their "day job"):
I was the best one you had,
I was the one who gave you love.
Not that Education Reformers will give a damn...
From Education Week...
NAEP Reveals Shallow Grasp of Science
By Nora Fleming
Elementary, middle, and high school students failed to demonstrate a deep understanding of science concepts when they performed activity-based science tasks and investigations, concludes a study released today from the first national assessment of both hands-on and interactive computer-based science activities.
The hands-on tasks, which required students to use materials and laboratory equipment to perform science experiments, and the new, interactive computer tasks, which simulated an environmental or laboratory setting and asked students to solve scientific problems, were administered as part of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress in science for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders. The report follows on the heels of the 2011 traditional pencil-and-paper science NAEP results released last month.
Both the hands-on and computer tests asked students to predict what might happen in a particular scientific scenario, make observations about what occurred in the scenarios, and explain the findings of the experiments or investigations they launched. These questions examined how well students could conduct and reason through “real life” science situations and grasp the scientific concepts of what occurred in their investigations, according to the report from the National Center on Education Statistics , the U.S. Department of Education...
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