It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
Since our current secretary of education can’t seem to understand the difference between proficiency
and growth, allow me to describe the difference and the terms.
Proficiency means an individual has a
minimum level of competence or understanding in a certain field. Growth means an increase in the chosen
measurement of understanding and competence in a certain field. This is akin to getting kids to be
able to tie their shoes. Proficiency means you have tied your shoes. Growth measures the increase
in the number of kids who have learned to tie their shoes.
After a certain point however, growth can only go so far, regardless of the overall proficiency. A
group of students can have 90% proficiency, and yet have oscillating, negligible, or even negative
growth, because the other 10% of the underlying population of students are affected by other factors
outside of the school system. Many of this subgroup move 2 or more times from age 8 to age 18.
Many of this subgroup go through the ordeal of parental separation and divorce, step-mothers and
step-fathers. Many of this subgroup have parents who are alcoholics. Many of this subgroup have
parents with low-income, disjunctive work history.
Both of the concepts — proficiency and growth — are beset by how they are measured.
Interpretation of data is always tied in to what the baseline is determined to be. Should this be
the same for all students and districts? How does one create a scale of measurable baselines? What
rubric should be used to measure the comprehension of the concepts? What specific language is chosen
to convey the
questions used to measure comprehension and understanding?
In these matters, proficiency measurement is completely dependent upon the measurements. Numbers
reflect a various quantity of different interpretations. Was the said student good at narrowing
down the 4 choices and guessing out of the remaining two possible answers? Was the said student
good at reverse
engineering, regardless of understanding? Is the student able to articulate or convey the
concepts, or merely just able to click correct answers on an app, or select the correct bubble on a
multiple
choice test.
Education consists of engagement and discussion. The socialization aspects of learning are as equally
as important as the learning or information itself. People can only understand information in the
context of their environment, and for humans this means their fellow human beings. Tying in the
individual understanding with the views of other people’s understanding is critical to the
attainment of proficiency because most people only effectively learn when they get reinforcement and
feedback from other human beings.
The measurement of growth is always going to be subject to too many biases to be reliable. Going
from 40 percent ignorance to 60% ignorance results in a 50% increase of growth. Going from 95% to
96% however, is barely a 1% increase of growth. And in a common American population that has a
churn of more than 10% (students who move in and out of various schools) the measurement of growth is
inherently affected by incoming and outgoing student populations.
Hence a school that had 95% profiency could actually experience a negative growth merely because of
the 10% churn.
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 4h 8m 19s
Highly Refined Pirates
Here's the 2002 album of Minus the Bear, "Highly Refined Pirates, 15 years ahead of their time :-)
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 3h 55m 1s
and another
One of their earlier songs.
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 3h 45m 34s
Oh yea
And this song too. Perfect illustration of the versatility of this band. Minus the Bear. 9 albums
and still going.
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 3h 39m 38s
Yet another song
This song is cool too. What can I say. Another in a long effort to get to 1,000 posts.
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 3h 35m 16s
Another Minus the Bear song
Probably a close second to my favorite Minus the Bear song.
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 3h 26m 32s
Minus the Bear
One of my favorite songs from this Seattle band.
Saturday, 11 February 2017 at 2h 59m 24s
Holy Shit
WE are being set up.
The travel ban and the current rewriting to be against "terrorists" speculation is really about
cover. I mean, our government officers and immigration officials and Homeland security personnel and
FBI and CIA aren't ALREADY FUCKING fighting potential terrorists ?? Come on Man. This ban is about
the politics of
fear, intimidation, and distraction.
The ongoing story about the Russian dossier and calling fake news to CNN is really about using
vindication when the proof turns out to be or — more likely — is made to appear false. Honestly, I
have not completely made up my mind about the veracity, because I don't trust the CIA and there have
been plenty of examples of false hysteria orchestrated by bad actors who use the back-lash against
the fake story as a weapon to achieve goals. Does anyone remember the Dan Rather
typewriter mess concerning typed documents from George Bush's commanding officer when he
purportedly served in Texas Air National Guard from 1972-1973 ? Exactly.
Regardless, this is what Sean Spicer says:
"It is about time that CNN focus upon the success that President Trump has had bringing back jobs,
protecting the nation, and strengthening the relationships with Japan and other nations. The
president won the election because of his vision and message from the nation."
Oh, do you mean that awkward handshake with Japanese prime minster Shinzo Abe? In the video,
Trump asks what the Japanese are saying, and Abe says "Please, look at Me" because Trump is looking
at the media with his media-face the whole time, holding Abe's hand like he was his submissive dance
partner.
AND all of those
news media camouflage events appearing to stop jobs from being outsourced ... the Indiana plant he
scoffed during the election, and who is still outsourcing more than 1,000 jobs to Mexico, ... and
OMG the Sprint jobs "save" that already occurred a month or two prior to the election, and had
nothing to do with the grand orchestrations of Herr Trump.
This is the meme they want to create, and right now they are just laying the trap. I think they are
staging an event. I suspect it will be akin to the burning down of the Reichstag because these people worship Nazis and crave
to implement a superior version. They use the same words.
Thursday, 9 February 2017 at 3h 22m 32s
The language mindset
Humans think and envision with images and vague notions that are internalized. Sometimes this
panoply of thought and ideas are connected to words and vocabulary, but in raw form, our instinctive
thought process or mindset is independent of words and vocabulary. Hence the language used to
convey or speak to oneself depends on the underlying language. The languages of the world are not
all inherently, constructively the same. Some are noun dependent. Some are Verb dependent. Some
have different constructs for transitive or passive voices. Some use Direct and indirect object
declarations very heavily, and others no so much. Some have the prepositions incorporated in the
verb. Some do not use plural forms of nouns.
An English speaker for instance, would say "I feel bad." Pronoun, present-tense-verb, adverb. A
French speaker however would say "Je me sens mal" or "I myself feel bad." Pronoun,
Direct-Object, present-tense-verb, adverb. In French the verb is more powerful. It needs a direct
object, because if you
say "Je sens mal" that means "I smell bad." Yikes. You don't wanna say that.
This is because in French/Latin the notion of "feel" or internal intuitive sense is connected to the
primal word for
"smell."
I use Word Reference frequently to look
up words in other languages online. Wordreference.com is a real good one. The examples are awesome, being aided by
native speakers from all over the world who supply the insight. Today, I am looking up the word for
"everywhere" in French because I could not remember it (it is "partout" ... "for/involving everything"
). I came across the following statement in French.
Un oubli important ? Signalez une erreur ou suggérez une amélioration.
Which means, "Is there something that was forgotten that is important? Tell us about the error or
suggest something more beneficial."
First of all, notice how much is conveyed in French in a few short words. Second of all, wow, like
English speakers would never say this. They would say
Did we forget something? Let us know about an error or suggest how we can do better?
Notice how noun/pronoun dependent English is. Starting a sentence
with a verb in French is common, but unlike English, it does not need any help from other language
devices. In English, the sentence has to involve more words than the verb in order to
be effective because verbs are weak -- "let us know about" (4 words) versus "Signalez" (1 word) , or
"did we forget"
(2 verbs) as against "Un oubli important" (no verbs). The literal translation of "Un oubli
important" is "A forgotten item important" which needs a verb in English.
The verbs in English come
before the direct object. You hear the action before the object because the verb cannot incorporate
the object in English like it does in French. Hence the 3 word verb phrase "suggérez une
amélioration " is translated into
"suggest how we can do better" in English because English needs both two other verbs (can do) and a
qualifier word "how" since the English verb cannot incorporate the object or implied idea on it's
own. The word "how" was necessary to convey the same information because the word "suggest" is
weaker in English than the French
Which means that the action is more important than the individual in the English language. In
English the person is subsidiary to the action. The verb is just a portal between noun/pronoun and
stuff. It has no inherent power except in a literary sense when creative English speakers use the
language to it's utmost potential.
Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 4h 49m 18s
Jean-Paul Marat redux
This is a quote I found on the 21st of August, way back in 2012.
“Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen
because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of
these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never
had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in
when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of
and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their
marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of
bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect
their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more
deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.”
— Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat was assassinated during the French revolution in July 1793. Click here for a decent biography.