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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (256359)	10/19/2005 10:42:28 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573383

I'm still interested to learn what is the difference between "teaching to the test" in 5th grade, and teaching basic math and arithmetic. I can answer that, since I have just sheparded my kids through Texas schools. Instead of teaching long division or factoring, for a few weeks the teachers teach how to read the test questions. For example they are taught to look first at the answer choices. If the answers have the same digits, but differ in power (for example the answers might be: a) 3.14 b) 314.0 c) 3.14e-3 d) 3 Then the student knows that the question depends only on the size of the numbers and that the calculations will only take wasted time. Another question might have answers of: a) 4872 b) 5764 c) 126 d) 88 The student taught to notice that the answers fall into two ranges. One range or the other will be correct depending on a division (if you get the right dividend and divisior you will get the right range). The actual value is decided by the order of a subtraction somewhere, but even if you screw up that you can change the problem into a 50-50 guess by getting the range right. The point is: you don't even have to know what the question is. This is interesting stuff, but it's not math. The list goes on and on for other subjects too. TP

To: Elroy who wrote (256359)	10/19/2005 10:45:57 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573383

>I barely know who Tom Delay is, and really could care less. Then you don't know very much about American politics today. -Z

To: Elroy who wrote (256359)	10/20/2005 12:21:24 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 1573383

You should care who DElay is. He's cost you plenty. He has been running congress like a mafia don and has been putting for sale signs on our public wealth to the highest corporate lobbyist bidder. He also always sides with polluters and gas-gougers. As cover, DElay tries to hide behind the Bible. He was one of the main jokers grandstanding at Terri Schiavo's deathbed, wanting the religious right freaks to attack and kill our judges, even conservative judges. DElay has also helped steal Texas from the voters there by re-districting twice in a row, which has never been done before. However, DElay was so arrogant he went way over the line and was careful. So now he's busted. However, he will fight tooth and nail to keep corrupting our congress. he is really an evil man. Perhaps the worst thing he's done is found a charity for needy kids, but using it as a lobbyist kickback and extortion ring and dirty tricks slush fund. There is evidence now to suggest he may have indirectly paid for the smear campaign against Kerry, which of course had very little to do with real veterans, except a few extremist rightwing ones.

To: Elroy who wrote (256359)	10/20/2005 12:53:16 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 1573383

Bush made his Texas teachers tech to the test, a specific list of questions and problems. So the extra time the teachers took focused on helping their students get good grades on this specific list of questions meant they had less time to devote to normal curriculae. It's basically cheating. It made Bush's Texas education system look a lot smarter than it really was. In actuality Texas ranks near the bottom nationally. Karl Rove probably thought of this trick in order to hoodwink voters in 2000. All the worst state education systems are the reddest of Republican states, Alabama and Mississippi being the worst. Texas not much better.