Comments on: Now With More Molecules!

By: shpx.ohfu

shpx.ohfu — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:41:41 +0000

At least I get to whip this out again.

By: Where does your state rank? « A Man With A Ph.D.

Where does your state rank? « A Man With A Ph.D. — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:47:23 +0000

[...] does your state rank? September 18, 2009 — Richard Now With More Molecules!: [Via Balloon Juice] Q: Is our children [...]

By: Gravenstone

Gravenstone — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:29:24 +0000

@amorphous: I find it amusing how the claims 45% is the average, with 55% for educators, yet current average reported for Spetember is 74.5%. Although I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, given that about halfway through it veers widely from US history and government to WIngnutistan oriented "free market" drivel. Oh, and I got 33/33. *smirks*

By: Ecks

Ecks — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:36:15 +0000

Actually I’m surprised that none of them answered that the first president was Sam Bradford… if that had been a 2% answer I might have started believing them.

By: Tongue of Groucho Marx

Tongue of Groucho Marx — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:15:38 +0000

Oh, and according to the OCPA, 2% of the students really, truly think that Michael Jackson wrote the Declaration of the Independence.

Assuming that they really aren’t making shit up, all this really says is that there isn’t much variety in Oklahoma high school snark.

By: Tongue of Groucho Marx

Tongue of Groucho Marx — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:10:52 +0000

Actually, I think this survey is bullshit. First of all, from the article, it says that the survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs _ which, by the way, has 'school choice' as one of its primary policy goals. So, the survey is being commissioned by an explicitly partisan group. The Arizona study was also commissioned by the Goldwater Institute, which also doesn't exactly have non-partisan leanings. The test was also done over the phone. Any telephone interview where the subjects are contacted randomly will be done rather hastily, as the students aren't really given adequate time to think over some of the answers. If you honestly think that students are going to spend more than 10 seconds thinking about the answers over the phone when they could be doing something else... Finally, any survey that claims only 23% of high school students knew who the first president was is absurd. That no student out of 1000 could answer more than 7 questions should lead to some questioning of the surveyors. The really sad thing about this survey is that there are people who are trumpeting how their kindergartner already knows all 10 of the answers, while also failing to account that the survey was conducted really fucking badly.

By: slag

slag — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:57:41 +0000

I’m just glad that, according to #michellemalkinmath, Obama will be President for 846,379 years, so he’ll have just enough time to help us resolve our education problems.

By: Brian J

Brian J — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:55:14 +0000

P.S. That’s about the only thing I found amusing on Leno’s “Tonight Show.” I tuned in to his 10 p.m. show on Monday out of curiosity and came away unimpressed with its slapped-together quality. NBC lost its pride—and all of its good scripted dramas.

I’d say we give him a week or two before we judge his performance. He’s been off the air for three or four months, so he was bound to be a little rusty.

If nothing else, I hope he tries to make it something else than an earlier version of “The Tonight Show” when he was hosting it. Even if some bits fail, it’s worth it to try to break out a little.

By: mai naem

mai naem — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:14:00 +0000

Was this a multiple choice test? Maybe that explains the Monroe Doctrine answers and some of other stupid answers. Also too, anybody catch the anchor so “to be fair, the kids didn’t get to study unlike prospective citizens.” Hello, the kids looked like HS kids. They should have covered the vast majority of stuff in school already.

By: McGeorge Bundy

McGeorge Bundy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:39:39 +0000

This country is spiraling round and round the drain.

By: pattonbt

pattonbt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:06:30 +0000

Camacho / Palin 2016? Pure genius. More please.

By: dlw

dlw — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:33:35 +0000

I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt. Many kids that age see these kinds of tests as a joke and don’t have any reason to put down the right answer, even if they do know it.

By: Leelee for Obama

Leelee for Obama — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:24:01 +0000

@joes527: Thanks, that makes sense.

By: Little Macayla's Friend

Little Macayla's Friend — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:17:27 +0000

Also survey is also suspicious to me too:
http://sde.state.ok.us/Service.....LAug28.doc
Or html:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q.....8;ie=UTF-8
If Palin runs, I want a 2012 presidential debate where all the questions are taken from the citizenship test.

By: Caravelle

Caravelle — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:03:13 +0000

The conclusion here isn’t that the kids didn’t know the answers to the questions (although I’m sure a lot of them didn’t), but that a whole lot of them didn’t care about the test and hardly read the questions at all.
I’m sorry, there is no level of stupid that will have 5% of the children sincerely thinking that Obama was the first president of the United States. So either things are worse than you think because the students can’t even read, or the kids knew this test wouldn’t count for the finals (did it ?) so they answered more or less at random so they could leave/sleep for the rest of the test.