New York Students Not Ready For College; Regents Are to Blame

• The questions are trick, the 1st is andragogy and not pedagogy and has more than one answer and the second is only 1/2 an answer.  DOE should be ashamed of themselves. 

• The English Regents used to be a 2-day exam with 4 essays.  As of Jan, 2011, it has been reduced to a 1 day test requiring one essays. So even though the passing score has been "raised" to 65, it is now a much, much easier exam.  In no way does excelling, let alone passing, that test indicate that a student is even remotely ready for college-level writing.

• "Well by the laws of probability, on the remaining 20 multiple choice questions since there are 4 choices, the student will stumble onto 5 correct answers." The math here is more complicated than you think it is. The actual probability of a student guessing 5 answers correctly out of 20 multiple choice questions (with four choices each) is actually 58.5%.

• At the commencement of the 09/10 educational year, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have been busy making untiring efforts for the development of strategies to maintain the competitive status of American higher education in the 21st century economic chaos.........

• But you missed the worst of it. 65 doesn't mean 65% anymore (once it did, although students had choices on most exams but they needed 65% of the credits on the questions they chose to answer). The state now used a scaled scoring system. What does that mean. After scoring and alloting the credits, a day later the school receives a sheet prepared by heaven only knows whom equating various scores with the final scdore. On the Elementary Algebra Regents exam given this past January, a score of 30 credits out of 84 was equated to 65! That means 35.7% of the possible credit is a passing grade. Let me explain how ludicrous this is for that particular exam. The exam starts off with 30 multiple choice questions worth 2 credits each. Let's say a student has mastered enough algebra to be able to answer 10 of these questions. Well by the laws of probability, on the remaining 20 multiple choice questions since there are 4 choices, the student will stumble onto 5 correct answers. That's 15 questions at 2 credits each. Guyess what. The student has passed. This is done on all Regents exams so the state can maintain the fiction that kids' graduation rates are going up. Emperor Michael I and the lawyer who formerly masqueraded as an educator for 8 years used these improved graduation rates to try to tell the world how wonderful their "reforms" were. Give us a break. But some day people will know the scandal of these equated scores to maintain artificially high graduation rates.

• Regents is not to blame,the entire New York public system is to blame! Teachers are BORN! Although one can learn to teach, but a innate teacher is a better teacher! The Education system in America is using an out dated curriculum. 19th and 20th century in the 21st century. Right now we are in throes of a technical revolution similar to the industrial revolution. The foolish question asked why are jobs being lost? Because they are out dated in a technical society! The world is no longer isolated. The computer has instantly open up the world. We are still using fossil fuel. Again similar to oil lamps being replaced with gas,then gas light being replaced with electricity! We have the technical skills to invent a fuel for travel and energy use period. The stale hard nosed lobbist for the petroleum industry. has us tied up in red(green money)tape! What is more important the people, or the money people spend? America's greatest resource is it's children. Why is it that our children are not interested in school? Because school is moving to slow where are their minds are moving at nano seconds, you feel me? When school catches up to our children and not the reverse, will our education system turn out a improved product!

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