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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (3913)	10/29/2000 9:07:47 PM
From: Frank Griffin	Respond to of 10042

As I remember Bush didn't say he put through the patient's bill of rights. He just said that Texas had one. I am sure if he is President we will have things he didn't support but, once enacted, it belongs to all of us. On the spending, I heard what you heard, I later heard the media talk about it and they said it was sort of misleading but that he was truthful about it when referring to the funds in his campaign. The Republican party has more money. I believe that is right but I might have them backwards. I just saw a debate on the Jesse Jackson show. There was a representative from the GWB campaign and one from Gore. The fellow from GWB, Sandy something, refuted the report in question. He said that black 4th graders are # 1 in reading improvement, that black 8th graders are # 1 in math improvement, and another area is # 10 in improvement. That is a national and not a Texas test and the ratings are #1 in the nation, etc... He strongly refuted the report in question as being false, misleading and political.

To: epicure who wrote (3913)	10/29/2000 10:40:09 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10042

Geezus X.. I expected a little better from you, after all of you high-falutin' comments about "good reporting". That Rand report you are referring to is 14 pages long and peer reviewed by two individuals. And it CONTRADICTS an extensive 271 page long Now the AMUSING thing about this recent RAND report is that it was AUTHORED BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO PEER REVIEWED THE 271 PAGE GRISSMER STUDY and blessed its findings about NAEP test scores on a national level that suggested that Texas was doing rather better than other states: Here are the acknowlegements for the 271 page Grissmer report from July: rand.org And the authors of the 14 page report that came out last week: rand.org See what I mean? Why didn't they make the recommendations to Grissmer in the first place and question the TAAS results? What kind of peer review is that? And why only focus on Texas in this 14 page report if they are claiming to be non-partisan? This is such UTTER BS that is simply amazing that these people are purporting to be "non-politically motivate"... They reviewed the Grissmer study.. then the Bush campaign cites it as evidence of the success in Texas, and then the reviewers decide to cover up the inadequacies of their original reviewing process by creating this 14 page report on TAAS standards. And MORE APPALLING is that they felt the need to pump something out so rapidly, they only incorporated ONE STATEWIDE TEST as a sample for making their assessment: "In this issue paper, we examine score gains on one statewide test in an effort to assess the degree to which they provide valid information about student achievement in that state and about improvements in achievement over time. ("Background", 2nd paragraph) rand.org Furthermore, they seemingly criticize Texas over the divergences between TAAS and NAEP scores (NAEP being the testing system that the 271 page Grissmer report compared) So my point would be "who cares about the TAAS scores" since they are solely pertinent to Texas. Grissmer compared results using NEAP results nationwide and Texas DID perform better than most states. For them to bring up this "red herring" about TAAS scores is simply irrelevant to the purpose and protocols of the Grissmer test. So these people take a VERY SMALL test sample of TAAS exams and derive some kind of grand scheme that says Texas isn't doing as well as they Grissmer paper claimed. Personally, they should have just held off until after the election before presenting such a controversial paper reliant of such a small test sample. They claim that Texas didn't do as well on the NAEP tests when the "controlling factors" that Grissmer applied to his protocols are eliminated. Well dammit.., these people reviewed Grissmer's report. Grissmer assisted them with their 14 page report, and all of this looks rather incestuous and reeks of covering their collective academic @sses. I can only imagine someone threatened to withhold grant money and donations from Rand unless they came out and rescinded the findings of the original study...