Day: June 22, 2023

Is Education Failing?

For years now the retention skills of American children have been dropping and the latest stats look even more disturbing..

National test scores for 13-year-olds released Wednesday showed setbacks in mastering basic skills, providing evidence that schools and students have not overcome the lost learning caused by the pandemic. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which conducted the tests last fall, reported major drops of nine points in math scores and four points in reading from three years earlier, before the start of the pandemic, the Washington Post reports. The results sparked serious concern across the education field. “This is more than alarming,” said an educator who’s on the board that sets test policy, adding, “We really need to be concerned about what is happening here.”

The declines in what’s been called the nation’s report card put the average reading score back to where it was in 2004 and the average math score back to the 1990 level. In both subjects, scores dropped the most for students already at the bottom of the scale. Students of all races and ethnicities fell in math. But reading scores varied, with Black, multiracial, and white students posting declines while Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, and Alaska Native students pretty much held steady, per the Post. Scores fell 11 points for female students overall and 7 for male students, per CNN. Roughly 8,700 students in 460 schools took the test.

The drop in scores has been pronounced since the pandemic first disrupted schools, but student performance already was in decline, per the New York Times; the questions are designed to spot long-term trends. Action is needed, said a junior high school math teacher from Colorado and member of the governing board. Researchers and policy analysts should help identify the most effective methods for teachers and schools, said Mark Miller, who considers the situation urgent. “It’s like the alarm has gone off,” he said.

History and civics scores are at a record low.

Ignorant students make ignorant voters.

I blame local school boards….they spend more time worrying about bathrooms and what books are acceptable and less time on the quality of the student’s education.

I blame the voters for not caring about their children’s education enough to learn the issues other than some divisive crap.

School boards should not be a political position.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Titanic Tragedy Update

The search continues for the tourist sub diving ob the Titanic….as the story unfolds more and more information about this little sub has come out…..

A CBS Sunday Morning segment on OceanGate’s Titanic-touring submersible, originally aired in November, has now gone viral as it highlights the “MacGyvery jerry-rigged-ness” of the vanished vessel. Reporter David Pogue went inside the sub, where OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush—among five people now locked inside the missing capsule—showed him lighting purchased from Camping World and a modified gaming controller used to steer the vessel. “I couldn’t help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised,” Pogue commented. Rush countered that OceanGate worked with Boeing and NASA in creating the capsule itself.

Yet in a clip viewed 21.6 million times on Twitter in two days, Pogue reads from a waiver he was required to sign before going on a test dive, which describes the sub as an “experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death,” per Deadline. In 2018, dozens of industry leaders warned that OceanGate’s decision to forgo an inspection and certification could lead to “catastrophic” problems, the New York Times reports. OceanGate’s director of marine operations at the time claimed the company was “unwilling to pay” for such an assessment. It now charges up to $250,000 per ticket to the Titanic.

Pogue knew the risks. “I stayed up all night the night before my dive,” he tells CBS in a new interview. “I’ve never done anything that could kill me before and I was really, really scared.” He adds Rush assured him the vessel would maintain an oxygen supply and had seven different ways of reaching the surface. “So why haven’t they come to the surface?” Pogue asks. He says Rush told him he would be in real danger if the capsule sprung a leak or got snagged, but that that was very unlikely. However, author and reporter Dr. Michael Guillen recalled thinking he would die when a submersible he used to visit the Titanic in 2000 temporarily got stuck between the wreck’s stern and propellers, per Yahoo.

Would you go on an ‘adventure’ that required such a document be signed?   A “experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death”

There was so much that is being learned I ask why if these tourist were so smart why did they not do a little research….oh that’s right they have subordinates to do that for them….too bad they did not think to ask.

By the time I post this the operation will probably have gone from rescue mission to one of recovery.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”