That's great in theory, but examples to the contrary are unfortunately rife throughout the industry, even amongst otherwise reputable insurance companies.

I disagree almost completely about the usefulness of standardized testing as a means to assess the efficacy of what has always been smoke & mirrored previously.

1) Here's what we expect students to know
2) Can they prove they know it?

This isn't exactly brain surgery.

One of the biggest failures of NCLBA was not providing stricter guidelines for point one & instead leaving too much of that in the hands of the very people desperate to save jobs they often don't deserve.

It's other big failure was trying to make the politically correct assumption that the expectations in part 1 up there could be universal instead of being tiered to some extent. But God help us, I can only imagine the keening that would have gone on when that was even suggested.

And so part of my argument is that we'll need to change our expectations (while continuing to allow private health insurance for those who want to pay for gold-plated care) otherwise we (the average American) won't have anything in a decade or two.

And if that happens, just watch our productivity and GDP go into the toilet.

Well sure, if you're going to compare it to what was done before (which ranged from nothing to willful obfuscation) then of course standardized testing is better.

That still doesn't mean it's good, helpful or relevant.

Look, we now live in a world where organizations from non-profits to corporations use an ever-increasing array of sophisticated data analysis tools and approaches to turn what were previously subjective assessments into objective ones. Look, for instance, at the kind of analysis the Gates Foundation requires to determine if their money is making the impact they want in their various programs.

There's certainly still a place for determining if students are learning the black-and-white aspects of their curriculum. Can they name the 50 states? Can they spot spelling errors? Can they add/divide/multiply? Etc....

But that's the easy & lazy part of the analysis. We need better measures and better models that can be appropriately localized. And these go far beyond just standardized testing.

An individual teacher is responsible for 1 year of instruction (at elementary levels). They have no control over the yahoo who taught these kids the year before, and often get kids who are VERY behind the others -- there's just no way in hell these kids can get up to the level they should be at during a single school term. These are kids who SHOULD have been held back at some point. But people who are trying to tie pay and jobs to test results do not understand that a good teacher can get royally screwed if they suffer the misfortune of inheriting a bunch of kids who are well below where they should be.

Trying to actually teach a kid to learn and improve is a helluva lot different than just trying to coach 'em through a standardized test.

Don't get me wrong. I want accountability in teachers & administrators. I personally think tenure in the education profession is asinine. I also think that this whole 'pass everybody' mindset is equally asinine. But standardized testing ain't a good way to do it, as these kids ain't anything near standard.

But the problem is that's not the point we're arguing. Yeah, private vs public is night and day. Why? Because they pay a lot more per student and have better students. So, yeah, the private school is going to be better. That doesn't mean we scrap the public schools.

And it sure as hell doesn't mean that with the same kids/parents the private schools would do better than the public school as you implied earlier (below)


SI

And the doctor is saying that full replacement would be staying in the hospital another day. A better example would be burning down your home, having the fire chief say it has been destroyed by fire and must torn down. Then having the insurance company come out without looking at the home and saying "well we don't agree with the expert on fire so we aren't paying for it".

You don't have an agreement that says "we don't allow you to stay in the hospital 4 days when you have knee surgery". They are using their judgement and since most people don't have the financial ability to contest or pay for it on their own, they are making the medical decisions for you.

The other issue is that you can't always get additional treatment. Even if you're a millionaire, you are treated differently if you don't have insurance.

A better analogy would be the insurance company saying "Well, you don't really need that garage you had before so we're only going to give you $150K for the house instead of the $200K we appraised it at"

SI

I went to a private elementary school and they did NOT get as much funding per student as the public school did.

I went to a pretty mediocre private grade school, too. And, yeah, they cost about the same as a public school, too. But it's a bit different story when you're talking about private schools that cost more than public universities.

SI

My response was directed at this question:


And I think it's pretty clear that most private schools do a much better job educating kids than public schools.


It costs about half (3-4K) for a private school to educate a child than it does for a public school (8-9K). The difference is that private schools currently lack the capacity to handle all the kids in the public school. If that could be solved, the cost and quality of education would be much higher.

If private capacity could meet the public school demand, I would have no problem scrapping public schools.

One view of Bayh's decision to retire:

(the below are excerpts only, the full opinion piece is at the link above)


It's a common enough thing to decry the bitter partisanship of politics and claim that this is as bad as it's ever been, when in truth there are plenty of examples of serious dischord at the national political level in the past.

However, it's pretty bad right now. Congress is almost completely disfunctional at this point, and anything they do manage to pass is often just terrible.

This goes back to what I've said for a number of years now though: that politics is simply a reflection of the larger society, not the cause of any of it.

That's what the VF writer fails to recognize (although not as badly as what I usually read). The constituents are the ones who put the relatively hard to get along with folks in office. I wouldn't want anything less than the guy I've got (Broun-R) and Lord knows he's not known for compromise. And there are those equally adamant on the opposite end of the socio-political spectrum.

We aren't divided by politics, our beliefs/view/worldview/etc divide us and the politics just have to come along for the ride since we're given the opportunity to choose our representatives.

I'm fine with Bayh choosing not to deal with that reality any more, I'll readily acknowledge how difficult the stress of the position would be regardless of party affiliation. I'll even tentatively wish him a fare-thee-well (at least until he gets his hands on something & starts to screw it up). But if he were trying to give away the farm from my side of the aisle, I'd also be glad to have helped him pack his bags.

Then you'll prefer this take:


:D

It definitely seems more in touch with reality than the first one, that's for sure.

The whole "we hate the partisanship" hue & cry reminds me a lot of the old joke about surveys that showed how everyone loved PBS ... and the reality that outside of Sesame Street & Masterpiece Theater no one knew anyone who actually watched it.

Speaking broadly, people hate Congress but love what their Rep & Senators do for them without realizing that, writ large, what their Rep & Senators do for them generally contributes to what they hate about Congress.

But that's old news at this point for most of us here.

Saxby Chambliss keeps getting re-elected without doing a single thing. It must be an awesome job!

Sad, but true.

There really needs to be a term or age limit for some of these guys. Prime example right now is Sen. Byrd. I know that there were complaints about Republicans forcing some votes that caused him to have to be up past his bedtime or for long hours. While I certainly sympathize with the plight of being 90+ years old, that's part of the job. If you're not able to perform it, move on. Strom was another fine example. They need to say no more re-elections after 80 years old or something. This is just getting out of hand.

Yes, this congress is exactly who I want to try and fix a major issue like Health care. What could go wrong?

But the counter to that is if WV voters want him as their representative why shouldn't they be allowed that?

I'd like to see more turnover and more primaries for the legislative branch, but I'm skeptical that term limits will make things better.

Why are the conservative sites pretending like this CNN poll is such a shocker? CNN poll says that majority of responders say that Obama doesn't deserve a second term. Given how poorly his first year has gone, this should surprise no one.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/im...2/16/rel4a.pdf

I'm curious: what did you expect? Two wars, a hostile and obstructionist opposition in Congress, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a considerable number of legal problems left over from the Bush Administration, etc....

Don't tell me you were one of those people who expected he'd wave his magic wand and give everyone fairies and unicorns, were you?

Absolutely not. I thought it would go just about how it went. A whole lot of blame on the previous administration and the minority in Congress along with very little of Obama's policies actually coming to fruition despite a large party majority in both houses. I'm happy with the change in stem cell policy, but very little else.

Poll results for the congress shows an increase in those that would vote for a democrat m/m. a decrease for Gop m/m.

an increase in re-electing those in congress which would mean another Democratically held congress.

NOw here is my point:

I dont care really and think its a bunch of bunk BUT MBBF, after months of saying how the Dems are retiring and washing out for fear of not being re-elected (remember when he called congresspeople 'scared' for cancelling Town halls for fear of being attacked after receiving threats....and then people started showing up with guns) fails to point out shit like that while pointing out the one thing that fits his narrative. Instead of his own faux-shock I love how he now points fingers LOL. The new MMBF = embracing his willingness to make fun of others misfortune or handicap AND a willingness to tout hypocrisy for the sake of the narrative. Love the new MBBF....remember when he predicted McCain to win, only to backpedal and say he didnt insinuate that, leaving him to be 'right' no matter who won. Love the new MBBF, at least we dont have to worry about his faux shock should one choose to use the word 'X'.

To be fair, though, if you weight the election results properly McCain did win.

Maybe I'm just having a blonde moment but ... what is "m/m"?

Here's a nice column on the effectiveness of the stimulus, but as Leonhardt says, it's hard to sell, "things could have been much worse".

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/bu...rssnyt&emc=rss

Yeah, I don't think it's that surprising that the GOP had a decrease in support of man for man.

The only people that expected that were the ones who took that ridiculous campaign seriously. (Of course now, nobody admits to being a part of that group).

The only ones that put it in those terms (rainbows, unicorns, etc.) were the derisive right wings sites, once Obama's campaign started gaining serious traction.

To be fair, there are some that admit to it, but they're the same people who are having buyer's remorse at this point.

Well, you can replace the words "rainbows" and "unicorns" with things like "close GITMO" and the point is the same.

Edit: GITMO was one of the hottest political issue here for a while, everyone trashed Bush and couldn't understand why these people couldn't just be transfered to supermax. Then Obama comes out and whines about it being harder than people realized, and that's just accepted.

And to me, the "change" nonsense was a rainbow/unicorn promise.

Are you serious?

If you can't see a difference between the way Obama supporters were stereotyped (including by people on this board) as naive hippies who expected Obama's inauguration to be immediately followed by a new American Golden Age and supporters who hoped he'd be able to address a laundry list of grievances they had against the Bush Administration, then you really need your cognitive abilities examined.

It was more than "naive hippies" that expected a golden age - maybe not immediately after Obama's inauguration, but certainly by now, and absolutely during his presidency.

His campaign was nauseating, and it promised a golden age. He's just an ordinary hack politican, as it turns out, and now his followers are yelling, "what did you expect!" Well, actually, the more dopey followers (the ones who got him elected) have gone back to ignoring politics for the most part, I think. I do think that there's plenty of regular people that didn't expect a golden age, but certainly expected foreign policy differences from Bush.

I mean seriously - does anyone eles remember this campaign? Hillary Clinton ripped it in the primaries for being ridiculous and idealistic.

We've gone from an Administration that 100% opposed any movement on GITMO and used every legal obfuscation in the book in this cause to an Administration that is making progress on the issue whilst also trying to unravel all of those legal obstacles.

You would have us believe that Obama supporters are taking exactly the same message from Obama that they got from Bush and accepting it wholesale just because it came from our messiah.

Do you even think before you post this shit?


What percentage, do you really think, of the people who voted for Obama really figured he was the messiah who would bring about a new way of doing business in Washington?

But please, go on spinning and stereotyping.

If you can't see why we'd accept "I want to close it, but it will take some time" vs. "I don't want to change it. It's fine." then I'm not sure what I can say. I guess it's easier for you to imply that we're a bunch of hypocrites than look at the logic of the situation.

Really? The whatever-percentage of independents and moderate Democrats that voted for Obama (surely a considerably larger group than the "naive hippies") expected a "golden age" after he'd been in office for a year? In the context of an environment that included two wars and the worst economic downturn in two generations?

Really? This is your argument?

Get some perspective, man. Did Democrats kill your dog at one point or something?

"messiah" throws things off a little bit, but I'd estimate the % of people who figured Obama would "bring about a new way of doing business in Washington" at at least 80%. He actually used that very phrase repeatedly in his campaign speeches.

I can see accepting "I want to close it, but it will take some time", but that's definitely not what was promised during the campaign. Nor was "health care reform once we can get Republicans on board with the plan"

Yet "rainbows and unicorns" doesn't. Gotcha.

Obama and HRC had very close policy positions. If Obama's policies were ridiculous and idealistic her's were too. Obama won the primaries because of charisma and tactics, not a wildly more progressive policy than HRC.

And here are my "rainbow/unicorn" expectations from the first page of the thread:


He's either accomplished or going in the right direction on most of these.

From Politifact:

I'll agree with this if you're implying this wasn't the main motivation to vote for him. I'd argue the majority of Obama voters were just voting against Bush (despite the fact that he wasn't even running for President). That's an even worse reason to vote for a guy than the rainbow/unicorn option IMO. Now only a year later, I see a similar situation setting up where the 2010 and 2012 elections will be about voting against Obama rather than voting based on what's best for the nation. I'm not sure that's any better than the real reason Obama became president in the first place.

Of course you did, because as we all know, your powers of prediction are without peer.

I see that website only recognizes a mere 15 broken promises, and 84 "stalled". Let's see how many of the 273 "in the works" ever happen.

I don't believe any Obama supporter that claims that they didn't believe GITMO would be closed by now.

And back to health care - when the "public option" went away there was a very brief backlash here, and someone here said they wouldn't vote for Obama in the primaries if that was the case. (I'll try to find who that was).

And there were repeated discussions here where everyone insisted that there was ZERO reason for GITMO to exist, and ZERO reason not to have civilian criminal trials for all terrorists. I think, though I'm not sure, that the implication was that Dick Cheney just got off torturing people and that was the driving force behind Bush's foreign policy. But Obama faced the realities of national security and started saying the same things that I and many others were saying back then (both about GITMO, and about civilian trials), and now suddenly nobody cares anymore.

I was hoping for Obama to govern pragmatically while aspiring to certain goals I personally had (gay rights, GITMO/torture, stem cell research). He's made decent movement on those issues, succeeded with a pragmatic foreign policy, and blundered a pragmatic domestic policy. So far he's got an INC from me.

:lol:


Oh please. McCain, in both word & action, offered little to indicate he'd do much else besides continue Bush's policies. If you think the current president is going in the wrong direction (and a majority of Americans did) and you're offered the choice between someone who will continue on the same path as the current president, and someone who says he'll go in a different direction, it certainly makes sense to vote for the second guy.

(Yes, yes panerd & Bucc, maybe it makes more sense to vote for another guy altogether.)

For the converse, see 1988.

Honestly, I think you could have ended the sentence right there and saved us a lot of time.