You can't tell anything from looking at "average salaries".

Post #38,484 by mmoffitt 5/13/02 2:54:52 PM Reply	You can't tell anything from looking at "average salaries". Those are inflated because of the graying of Murica's teachers. (A point I tried to make one post up, but I guess I didn't make it well enough). The "30K" average figure you cite, does that include McDonald's workers? Or the more fair assessment: only college graduates. Maybe you think with a Master's degree you shouldn't make more than 29K after three to five years, I differ. I don't have anything per se against mandatory testing. When I went through school, we were tested every year K-9. They were standardized objective tests. Back then, how you scored on those tests did a couple of things for you: 1. Determined if you went into the "Below Average", "Average", "Above Average" or "Gifted" classes (in grades K-6) 2. Generated an estimated IQ (the value of which you were told upon entering high school, and which was used by your "counselor" to determine if you needed an academic or vocational track in high school). The thing about these tests were that NO ONE in the school knew which day we were going to take them (or saw them before the day of testing). The school board notified the principal after school on the day before the tests were to be administered. We had no "preparation" for the test. We get to school and in the first class the teacher said, "Today is test day." I remember I used to love that because that meant we got out of working and took these easy tests (at least that's how I felt in grade school). This kind of test (where the teachers know neither the content, nor the timing of the test - these tests were as guarded year to year as any corporate trade secret) yields far more accurate assessment of student accomplishment than this idiotic trend towards modifying the curriculum to acheive some score on some test. I have 2 major problems with the current testing hysteria: 1. The curriculum should not be altered to accommodate some test: that weakens an already too weak (i.e. too p.c.) a curriculum. 2. Teachers more than students are being evaluated using standardized tests. (Aside: I know how the testing was done because my father taught in the same district I went to school in and he/I was very good friends with several principals at the time)
Post #38,500 by bepatient 5/13/02 4:37:13 PM Reply	You made that point.. ...and I made the counter...but in the end you're right...averages don't tell you anything. They're are richer districts and poorer, younger districts and older. And it looks like we would be able to spend alot of time essentially agreeing with each other....with minor differences on approach. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #38,505 by mmoffitt 5/13/02 5:32:25 PM Reply	GACK! We'd agree??? Somebody shoot me :-)
Post #38,525 by bepatient 5/13/02 8:57:15 PM Reply	Scary part... ...is, at least on this subject...it appears that we already do for the most part. I feel the earth shaking... ;-) You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #38,682 by Ashton 5/14/02 5:24:55 PM Reply	See BeeP? this is whatcha get by.. Obscuring from us readers the fact that yer a Radical Libertarian, fully armed at all times (but with a crossbow), think Ayn Rand was soft on individual responsibility ... and visit secret Vivisectionist cabals - but only at New Moon - while sacrificing non-virgins on a spread-sheet. (And yer Armani suit is a Korean knock-off, which fools most of the colleague folks who are mainly into er mining And Golf) Why I'll betcha even plays Golf... :-\ufffd who needs data when it's so much more fun to make up stuff?
Post #38,686 by bepatient 5/14/02 5:41:16 PM Reply	Got me there... ..I do, in fact, play golf. Don't get me started on Ayn. Her train of thought derailed long before the Rearden line was built. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #38,694 by Ashton 5/14/02 6:39:15 PM Reply	OK.. then I'll confess Adam Smith* was no fool (!) But sometime, we can have that little chat about Econ / academia and the kinda stooents what morph into bus-ad, after failing to grok Ohm's (and a lotta other) laws. Them as helped get us where we are today. (Bus-ad oughtta be served-up at a trade-school, Not anything ever called a University IMomniscientOpinion) * but.. he be daid and no successor in sight. Too bad Dan Bricklin (wasn't it?) seems an OK sorta guy -- but by giving away VisiCalc, watchin Lotus and the other packs of thieves walk away with his er evident inellekchal propitty: methinks he spawned the flood of droids whose illiteracy about humans was not remedied by the change in majors from ~learning to mere scheming: all of which led to the possibility of.. a Billy arising! And He did. Right on cue. But Golf ... see, I once caddied, at about 13 yo; &^#$*@ had about every cockamamie club known to boys -- and there were no carts. You can see how that would warp a young person's outlook ever after. Ashton
Post #38,719 by bepatient 5/14/02 9:45:49 PM Reply	Made me look it up... ...but [link\|http://www.bricklin.com/\| it was Bricklin] There's an interesting article there about why Visi wasn't patented. On golf...I caddied at 8...but I had a pull cart ;-) so I guess I got a better first impression. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #38,720 by bepatient 5/14/02 9:45:49 PM 5/14/02 9:46:29 PM Reply	weird i only clicked the button once...thats 2 times in one day..a double double..as it were. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient] Edited by bepatient May 14, 2002, 09:46:29 PM EDT Expand All History

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