God Help our Kids ....... and Us ........ and the Future

It would be laughable if it wasnt so sad and scary. here are actual guidelines for scoring on nys math tests.  and dont get all cocky, your state is no better and possibly worse: and home schooling?  well thats a tragedy all in itself.   Its like releasing someone into the REAL world after 12 years in a closet.  
Anyway here's  some details

scoring guides  reveal that kids get half-credit or more for showing fragments of work related to the problem -- even if they screw up the calculations or leave the answer blank.

Examples in the fourth-grade scoring guide include:

* A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12.

* A miscalculation that 28 divided by 14 equals 4 instead of 2 is "partially correct" if the student uses the right method to verify the wrong answer.

* Setting up a division problem to find one-fifth of $400, but not solving the problem -- and leaving the answer blank -- gets half-credit.

* A kid who subtracts 57 cents from three quarters for the right change and comes up with 15 cents instead of 18 cents still gets half-credit.

* A student who figures the numbers of books in 35 boxes of 10 gets half-credit despite messed-up multiplication that yields the wrong answer, 150 instead of 350.

These questions ask students to show their work. The scoring guidelines, called "holistic rubrics," require that points be given if a kid's attempt at an answer reflects a "partial understanding" of the math concept, "addresses some element of the task correctly," or uses the "appropriate process" to arrive at a wrong solution. Despite flubbing the answer, students can get 1 point on a 2-point problem and 1 or 2 points on a 3-pointer. 

Full story here

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Future presidents may actually make Bush appear to have been intelligent. Heck, the way Palin is going , SHE is making Bush look intelligent. And yes Obama is doing almost everything wrong too, but make no mistake,  he iS intelligent.  His problem is he is an ideologue who if SO focused on HIS view of how the world should be, and to hell with EVERYONE else. But remember IF bush wasnt SO BAD, obama never would have gotten in.  It was simply a classic example of the worst overcorrection in my lifetime.