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-------------------- 2510 - EDUCATION - improving the system?
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- Does the U.S. need improvements in our Education System? 15th out of 45 is 67%, isn’t that considered a failing grade?
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- What is the reason for our poor showing? I think the cause belongs to academia as the ones you are under-achieving. If I look at the school system the same as if it were an industry, then the students are our customers. The teachers and administrators are the manufacturers, marketers, and suppliers of learning, their product.
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- Too often I see examples of academia being the same as poor businesses who go out of business because they have lost touch with serving their customers. They become successful at serving themselves.
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- The difference for the schools is that they have tenure and a monopoly without much competition. To counter this trend there needs to be a renewed emphasis in the schools in serving the customer. Judging from today’s scores we are not serving them very well. The problems I observe are systemic, so the whole system has to change.
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- The grading system and testing system are designed to serve the teachers and administrators more than the students. When the superintendent says 85% of his students scored greater than 75% on the SAP test, and that is up 10% over a year ago, he is grading himself more than helping the students.
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- Were these even the same students? Or, did he expel a dozen students and three families move into the district from out of state? If the superintendent was really measuring the students progress he would say: “ we started out the year with 30% in 4th grade level, 40% in 5th grade level and 30% in sixth grade level. By the end of the year our team of teachers had these same students: 2% at 4th, 18% at 5th, 38% at 6th, 37% at 7th and 5% at 8th. Many students have advanced more than one grade level in some of their subjects.”
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- To do this you can not treat all customers the same. Testing should be geared to the process of continuous improvement. If a group of students continuously score over 90% on the math tests, then they should be at another table and given harder, more challenging tests.
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- Administrators want to test to a standard, which is “a stake in the ground“. Students become tied to this stake. Teachers dumbing down to teach to the average. If an authoritative person told the class that he measured the temperature in Santa Rosa at this time last year and it was 41 degrees. A year later at the same time it was 76 degrees.
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- It is 35 degrees hotter this year due to global warming. 90% of the class would go home and tell their parents we have a problem with global warming. The idea here is that it is more important to teach students to think for themselves. They need to question the answers, not just answer the questions.
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- Part of the problem is that some teachers do not have the humility to become good at customer service. Many feel that their education has given them the right answers and their mission is to impart these to the students.
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- This often does not stop with curriculum but pushes over to diet, morals, virtues, politics, religion wherever they see conflict with the right answers. Some teachers go 30 years doing the exact same thing ever year to a different bunch of students. That is not customer service.
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- If several kids are reading at the 6th grade level and most of the class is at the 4th grad level they should be at a separate table and given 6th and 7th grade level books. The goal needs to be one of continuous improvement to the stretch of each students abilities.
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- In business if all customers are treated exactly the same for an extended period of time the competition would take them away. Businesses must continually change and adjust to differing customer needs.
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- In this global economy we live in, students enter a world of real world competition. Schools need to view themselves as competing with other schools, schools in other states, and schools in other nations.
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- They should always be comparing themselves with the market leaders (The best in class). If we are ranked 15 out of 45 in 8th grade math there is plenty of room for improvement. These students will enter the real world as citizens, voters, fathers, scientists, etc. competing with the rest of the world, handicapped in math literacy.
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- 2500 years ago the Greeks saw education as a means of understanding realty and the real world. Pythagoras in 600 B.C. discovered that the angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees. He found the sum of the squares of the two sides of a right triangle total to the square of the hypotenuse. He did not do this for the sake of math. He was trying to understand harmony in the vibrating strings of a musical instrument.
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- Euclid was another Greek mathematician in 300 B.C. working out of the library of Alexandria who wrote a textbook on plane and solid geometry. It was so popular with its students that to this day 3D geometry is called Euclidean Geometry.
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- Eratosthenes figured out how to measure the circumference of the Earth using a 10 foot stick. Archimedes measured the height of a pyramid by using his own shadow on the sand. These teachers were great thinkers.
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- Archimedes is ranked with Isaac Newton and Carl Gauss as the world’s greatest mathematicians. But, Archimedes was not studying to be a mathematician. He was using math to understand the real world. He invented the first calculus.
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- He invented marvelous machines, pulleys and levers, the water pump using a giant screw that is used unchanged to this day in that part of the world. He was killed at age 78 by a Roman soldier who saw him as a treat in inventing powerful war machines. The Greeks new then that math was the path to understanding the real world. Today’s students need to be equipped in math literacy to understand and compete in their real world.
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- When John Kerry tells the citizen voters that unemployment is rising and George Bush says the unemployment rates are falling, the economy is improving. Kerry is measuring from a high point in the past and Bush is measuring from a low point in the past, both are telling the “truth” and effectively misleading the citizen voters. No reporter, no newspaper column, no one asked to see the data. No one tried to analyze the bigger picture. People only looked at the picture they wanted to see. Your students should graduate with the adeptness to question the answers.
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- Students who do not question the answers will follow an Astrological forecast because it came true, while ignoring the fact that over the past three weeks each forecast failed.
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- Teachers who are math and logic literacy challenged have been shown that students with good self-esteem get better grades than students with poor self-esteem. Therefore the teachers boost self-esteem in their students thinking the grades will improve. They are mixing up cause and effect. Self-esteem may be the result of good grades, not the cause. A good family environment at home may well be the better cause for both.
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- Which credit card will your student select? The one that charges 16% interest or the one that has a 3% surcharge then only 10% interest after that. Most will say 3% plus 10% is only 13% I’ll go with that one. Do the math, the 16% interest is the cheaper card.
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- Will your student read a profit report and know enough to ask, is that net profit or gross profit? It would be nice to know before comparing other business before making as investment. If the report gives an average will the student know that there are three different kinds of averages. Average 2-2-2-3-5-6-8. The mode average is 2, the median average is 3, the mean average is 4. Which average are you talking about?
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- Will your student know the difference between odds and probabilities before entering the casino? Odds are bad outcomes / good outcomes. Probabilities are good outcomes / all outcomes.
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- Everyone remembers 98.6 F degrees as the normal body temperature. The number has too many significant digits. The number actually came from a German study which concluded that a normal body temperature is 37 C degrees plus or minus one degree. The 37 C got converted to 98.6 F and we have been taught that ever since. In truth a perfectly normal body temperature is in the range 97.6 to 98.8 degrees.
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- Students see the magazine cover that claims the “Titanic” was the top grossing movie of all time. The average ticket cost $7.50. In truth, if you account for inflation “ Gone with the Wind” out grossed the “Titanic” by $300,000,000 and the average ticket price in 1939 was 10 cents. The “Titanic” falls to number five when you adjust for inflation.
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- The paper says global warming will increase the average temperatures up to 8 F degrees by 2040. However, the calculations were challenged when the model failed to predict temperatures in past records. The model did not account for the effect of sulfur as an air pollutant. When that was added to the model the prediction became up to 1 F degree by 2040.
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- The paper also said that over 1 million Americans have HIV. The only way you can get to that number is to include all the ones who have died of HIV since 1980. Actually current estimates are 740,000 including approximating for those never tested that are HIV positive and don’t know it. The ratio for only live Americans is 0.29% have HIV, that is one in ever 340 Americans.
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- School expenditures have tripled since 1960. Account for inflation and putting the numbers on a per student basis spending has actually gone down, not up.
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- A chart put out by the U.S. Department of Education shows SAT scores falling while expenditures on education have tripled.( $75B to $225B) while SAT scores have gone down 975 to 900 average. The graph is totally misleading and just a trick using different scales for each plot.
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- If you redo the plot using the range 400 to 1600 which is the range of the SAT scores and putting the expenditures on a per student basis, now expenditures increase from $2000 to $5200 per student while the scores have remained relatively flat.
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- There are common mistakes made on how we ask the questions:
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- Asking questions in such a way as to make the student feel foolish if the do not answer the way the teacher wants.
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- Attacking the messenger such as the juror who decided the man is innocent, the cop who arrested him is a racist and therefore he must have planted the glove.
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- Using the fallacy of composition, This is a good class, therefore, each is a good student.
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- Using the fallacy of emotion, you would look so sexy in those $150 designer jeans.
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- Using the fallacy of experts, advertisers with celebrities sell more product than advertisers with expert endorsements. And, then there are celebrities that think they are politicians.
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- Using the fallacy of popularity, The majority of Americans believe in UFOs. Just because something is popular, does not mean it is correct.
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- The Polls have a plus or minus 5% confidence factor on 1000 people surveyed. A pre-election poll shows Bush ahead of Kerry by 8%. The democrats take 20 more polls of 50 people each. Mere statistics would show the at least one of those polls would show Kerry leading Bush.
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- Advocates groups continually report statistics to make their case:
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------------------------------------ Reported: --------- Actual:
- AIDS (1990) 1,000,000 200,000
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- Homeless(1990) 3,000,000 600,000
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- Right to life March 100,000 20,000
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- Spousal abuse 6,000,000 1,200,000
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- Homosexuals 10% 2%
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- Will your students spend $1.00 worth of gas to save 50 cents on soap.
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- Will they react to the statistics that give the cancer risk from eating apples and realize that the risk is higher that you will be in a car wreck on your way to school.
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- In Indonesia they eliminated pesticides due to their cancer risk and thousands more people died due to malaria carrying mosquitoes.
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- Macy’s is offering a sale everything 30% off. The dress has a tag offering another 20% off. Does that mean a 50% discount? No.
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- Biologists report 10,000 species go extinct every year. Actual statistics say that one species a year goes extinct, including insects. The biologists are including the undiscovered species that go extinct. A number that is impossible to calculate since they are undiscovered.
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- If your student reads this in the paper about the speed of cars involved in a wreck will he or she conclude that it is safer to drive fast?
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- 20mph or less 2%
- 20 to 30mph 29.7%
- 30 to 40mph 30.4%
- 40 to 50mph 16.5%
- 50 to 60mph 19.2%
- over 60mph 2.2%
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- Will your students enter the real world driving at the right speed? Will they have the math literacy and the ability to question the answers?
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- Socrates was the most famous of the Greek teachers and he had a method of teaching that never made a statement. He only asked questions until the student for himself discovered the answer.
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- The ability to think for themselves is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give a student.
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- November 30, 2019 2510 526
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--------------------- Saturday, November 30, 2019 --------------------
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