So what brand do you buy that has such a good rating?

What's the accessibility problem with Python's whitespace? I don't code, but my screen reader reads space, tab, and newline to me just fine. I use VoiceOver.

I love how the mere suggestion that people take responsibility for their actions and the raising of their children provokes an insult as a response. When you don't have an argument, resort to insults, right? Besides, you should look up what those words mean before using them. I may indeed come on hard times but I have a seven layer deep contingency plan to try to avoid it. If all else fails, I grew up with very little, so I know how to live on very little. I choose to plan and focus on my children because I see bringing a child into the world in part as a serious responsibility. I'll still put the focus on my children if I do "fall down on my luck". But I believe you make your own luck.

More than 99.9% of those people were not forced to have children. Maybe they could have considered whether they had the ability to raise their children before having them. Yes that's making a value judgement about the value of spending quality time with children and the value of education, but the benefits of those are easy to support. And yes, there are other situations like divorce, but there are other options too, like considering before having children your ability to afford to raise them should a divorce occur, etc. I know it's crazy talk to hold people responsible for their own actions and raising their children.

You can call this thing whatever you want, but at 1.9kg (4lb) and a narrow angle cutting wedge, it's closer to an axe than a maul. A maul is heavier, often 8 to 16 lbs and has a much steeper sloped wedge to split with both kinetic energy and wedging action. An axe of course has a narrower sloped cutting edge to bite in more. This also has nothing to do with a froe which is use with a mallet and a lever action without kinetic energy to control a split. And you can definitely split wood with an axe. You just have to rotate the axe at the point of impact in a similar way to what this tool is supposedly designed to do automatically. The technique for splitting wood with an axe was probably the inspiration for this tool.

http://www.saylor.org/majors/m... Most complete college level open education resource I've seen. The math is pretty good, starts at algebra, and even has a bridge class "Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning" to help teach proofs and other necessary mathematical rigor to be able to tackle higher level math. You'll still need to do the work and focus on the concepts and make sure you understand, not just going for passing a test, but the fundamentals are there.

The Common Core standards in themselves are a vast improvement from the patchwork of state standards that ranged from bad to very bad. The Common Core standards do a decent job focusing the standards on fewer topics allowing for deeper more rigorous learning of the important topics and a focus on understanding, not just procedure. Previous standards tended to focus on facts, recall, and mindless procedural learning, rather than moving higher up the hierarchy of learning to where students can be creative and actually use what they learn. The quality of implementation of the Common Core standards will of course vary as they move into texts and standardized tests and are used by teachers.

Now to your specific example, that's a decent problem that requires thinking to solve. If Math MS and PhD's are having a hard time with it, then they are either so focused on their limited area that they can't do anything else or they are so used to being spoon fed procedural thinking by a professor that they don't know how to think for themselves. The problem you linked to was also cherry picked out without any context or explanation of the task that likely would have been in a good classroom. Without any context or explanation though, the task does require a higher level of thinking to parse what is being asked. Higher level cognitive demand is another way to say it.

The Common Core does not only call for open ended problems like that, and does also call for procedural fluency. Think drilling. The trick is in the balancing of procedure with problem solving abilities and stretching problem solving abilities requires giving tasks with higher level cognitive demand.

There's always going to be people like you that try to drag out the negative in any improvement effort without understanding the background behind it.

I'll have to go read the linked study to see what it's all about.

The time advisory is actually new since I last looked at the materials. Previously I mostly evaluated the quality of the materials and completeness. In general though actual time requirements to complete the work are going to vary quite a bit by the amount of prior preparation a student has. The time guidelines given for individual assignments I spot checked just now appear to be in the ball park. The overall totals are likely to be off more, though possibly a reasonable starting point.

Saylor has one of the most complete, free, college degree equivalents that I have seen. The best part is many degree programs have links to video lectures, full problem sets and exams.

http://www.saylor.org/majors/c...

Their math stuff is decent, and that's what I'm competent to evaluate, so based on that I'd think the compsci would be good too. Some degree areas are not complete yet, but compsci is.

Yes same in the districts near me. The "poor schools" get as much as 1.5 times as much funding as the "rich schools". Admittedly because of the poverty issues from the students they serve they do have higher costs. There are higher incidences of untreated ADHD, behavioral disorders, hungry kids, violence, etc. But that doesn't change the point that you're right, it's about the parents.

It's pretty independent of race. I see examples similar to what you point out from a variety of races. Poverty doesn't care about race.

Very carefully and with more understanding of the causes of racial tension than you have displayed. It's fairly clear you are from a privileged race and don't have much understanding of what it would be like to not be. A good book for starters is Lisa Delpit's "Other People's Children". It'll make you mad and she beats the point home, but eventually it will sink in and you'll get a glimpse of how different it is to be part of the dominant race vs not. It subtly affects a large number of seemingly small things that you don't need to notice when you're on the dominant side of it.

Well when the stakes are as high as they are you can't just take the first graders result. You have to do various types of validation. A certain amount of overlapping grading and statistical validation. The first x amount of a grader's results have to be verified and at least a certain percentage thereafter. The way AP tests work as I recall is two people grade each answer then any significant differences go to a more experienced grader. So it's definitely higher than $4 per short answer, but I'm not sure what the exact number would be. It starts to add up to big numbers when large numbers of students take the tests. I do know the free response questions were removed from my state's standardized tests because the couple questions they did have cost tens of millions (could have been a hundred) of dollars in additional costs to grade versus running the scantron sheet through. The AP tests do it for a fee of something like $80 so it's not impossible, in fact, I agree it would be worth doing. If money were the only object, it would probably be better to do statistical sampling of students with a better test than the current flawed tests for all students.

Two things, this type of proper adjustment to look at the actual effect teachers have isn't always done well, and your underlying assumption is that the standardized test accurately measures what a student knows. From assessment theory and observation it is known that a single standardized test in purely multiple choice format cannot accurately measure what a student knows.

Given that though, the tests could have some usefulness. There are two problems though. The unions don't want them used at all because they have this fantasy that all teachers are wonderful and should be treated the same. They don't want anything used that would move towards a pay for performance system as that would undermine their power and worldview. The other problem is that systems like you mention are typically implemented blindly because that's easier and then it doesn't take into account the problems inherent in multiple choice test taking and the failure to adjust for the factors you mentioned or other that weren't considered. When those problems are ignored you have distortions where good teachers are either driven out or forced to teach poorly in order to conform to poorly thought out system.

Yeah that's the whole debate about tracking. For a long time everything used to be tracked and the result was that lower and middle performing students got lower quality teachers and had lower expectations placed on them than they could handle and were given less rigorous work than they were capable of. The solution is for teachers to use methods to differentiate their instruction so that high performing students get what they need and low performing students do as well. It's actually possible and the result is everyone learns more. It's more fun and actually more intellectually challenging as a teacher to teach this way as well. The top 1% or so of students require particular attention that the average teacher is not equipped to give, but that's the case whether students are tracked or not. A relatively small number of US states have any requirements that the top certain percent of students get any special education services. Not sure how the rest of the world handles it. So is this ideal as I've presented it really happening? Probably not that much. Older teachers haven't been trained in it, the methods are mixed up with reform methods that get some push back, teacher certification programs are far lower quality than they should be, and new teacher training is sporadic and of spotty quality. In addition the No Child left behind Act primarily provides incentives for lower performing students so that's where the attention goes. With improved teacher training, both before certification and especially after, good results can be had. As it is, to do it well, a teacher basically has to take it on themselves to learn and improve. We can all take a guess as to how often that happens.

If any schools are discouraging parental participation that is wrong and should be stopped. Parent support and participation is probably more influential to a child's success than anything the most talented teacher can do. While the school should be encouraging and supporting it, if they are not, the parents should demand to be heard.

Data on head start shows that overall, it is slightly better than a wash, but quality head start programs show long lasting educational, life, and community benefits for example through reduced crime long after the head start program. So the question is how to get all of them to be high quality. The educational establishment is only just beginning to really use real data driven methods to ensure high quality effective methods are identified and employed. That's sad it had not been done more before, but it is being done more now. Well actually the real question is how to get more parental support and involvement so that the school isn't expected to raise kids entirely while at the same time improving the effectiveness of the schools. The worlds most effective schools won't get great results without parents supporting their kids (if you don't believe me spend some time in both an inner city and a suburban school, preferably with a good teacher in an urban school), but the worlds most supportive parents will result in more effective schools, partly by demanding and getting improved schools, but partly because it's the foundation for a child having success.