Education

See the graph below created by Cabinet Magazine, which shows how extensions of copyright law have kept works out of the public domain. The page also has a printable version of the graph that you can send to your local Congressional representatives.

After looking at that graph, please sign the Reclaim the Public Domain Petition, which is being put forth by Lawrence Lessig and the folks over at Eldred.cc. It now has over 12,000 signatures! I’ve signed it, you should too.

To: Members of the United States Congress

It seems that Florida has joined the bandwagon. Florida is considering lowering the required test scores on the FCAT needed to graduate. Florida’s solution is three tiered. The first tier would allow students to enter community college as long as they have a 2.0 GPA and have completed all of the required courses, even though they did not pass the FCAT. The students would then be required to take remedial classes before they take college level classes. Assuming they complete the requirements for an Associates Degree, they will be allowed to go on to a 4 year university and earn a Bachelors Degree, even though they never earned a High School diploma. The second tier would allow students who have moved to the state from another state or country to graduate provided that they have a 2.0 GPA and have completed all of the required couses, as long as they meet the graduation standards of the location where they previously lived. The third tier, which was originally designed for speakers of other languages, but is now available to any student will give a High School diploma to any student that scores above a minimum score on the ACT or SAT, even though state education administrators state that there is no relationship between the scores on the FCAT and the ACT/SAT. The minimum score for the SAT would be 370 verbal and 350 math.

The New York Times has an article about President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law passed in 2002. The law requires states to administer standardized tests to the states’ public school students to measure a student’s proficiency in various academic areas. If schools do not meet passing standards Federal money can be withheld from the states and local school systems.

Many states, including Texas, are realizing that they will not be able to meet their own standards and are now lowering the passing standards to insure that they meet the law’s requirements. The “No Child Left Behind” law allows states to set their own passing standards, which completely destroys the credibility of the program. Any state can change the passing standard at their will, which will essentially allow states to gerrymander the test scores as evidenced by the following quotes.

The New York Times has an article called Nu Shortcuts in School R 2 Much 4 Teachers. The article details how instant messaging programs have not only become pervasive in our daily lives in the internet age, but are entering the lexicon of high school student’s term papers.

For instance:

Deborah Bova, who teaches eighth-grade English at Raymond Park Middle School in Indianapolis, thought her eyesight was failing several years ago when she saw the sentence “B4 we perform, ppl have 2 practice” on a student assignment.

“I thought, `My God, what is this?’ ” Ms. Bova said. “Have they lost their minds?”

The BBC has an article about the South African version of Sesame Street has recently introduced an HIV positive puppet. South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world. According to the article, either 1 in 9 or 1 in 5 South Africans has HIV (the author used both statistics, so I’m not sure which is correct) and there is a great need to introduce tolerance within society. From the article: “The idea is to teach children that people can live normal lives with HIV.”

Space.com has an article about a piece of space just that is expected to hit the moon next year. The space just is believed to be a “Saturn IVB upper stage from the Apollo 12 mission that flew in November 1969.” Scientists want to use seismometers that were placed on the moon during the Apollo mission to conduct experiments on the Moon’s makeup. The only problem is that the seismometers were turned off in 1977, so they need to figure out if it is even possible to turn them back on after 25 years.