How about $600? One of the strange things that's come out of modern American government is massive private contracting of government services, resulting in a bizarre system of "capitalist communism". That is, the society uses a capitalist financial structure, but then the government uses forced taxation to hand monopolistic contracts to private corporations who perform public services (usually far more poorly than in an open market) — corporations who pay a lot of money to put those politicians in power. One example of this outsourcing and centralization is education. In Nevada, the state uses the same tests in most of their schools, and then sends them out to Harcourt Educational Measurement for grading. The teachers never actually personally review the tests, and simply administer them, teaching a corporate-dictated curriculum from corporate-supplied textbooks. As a result they are little more than prison guards, and are losing the opportunity to have a scholastic relationship with their pupils. Is it any wonder that education quality has consistently gone downhill, rather than improving as logic would suggest it should? A major additional problem is that the companies are sloppy (in order to maximize profits — after all, they are not there because they care about education, they are doing this to make money). For example, recently Harcourt was shown to have "accidentally" failed about 750 students. You know, to me, that seems like a pretty big deal — failing a student is an emotionally shattering thing, to say nothing of the damage done from failing a student that actually worked and got the grade. This is the sort of thing that screws someone up for life. Because of this, Harcourt had to pay a fine of about $600 per student — to the government, which then renewed the contract and paid them the money back! And if you think that's bad, in Virginia, where Harcourt holds similar contracts, they "accidentally" failed 5,625 students — a case which threatened both students' graduations, and in some cases could have resulted in the schools actually losing accreditation. The reason this problem happened is that the tests are not marked in the sense of right/wrong — the computer software analyzes all the tests, and then attempts to automatically determine the proper "pass/fail" gradepoint. In Georgia, Harcourt screwed up 340,000 students in a single test, with students either grading far too high or far too low. In another Nevada case, Harcourt simply lost all the results. Anyway, as a "thank you" screwup, Harcourt then went on to "accidentally" artificially inflate the grades at 220 schools, causing all of their students to rank higher than the rest of the state (and penalizing the other students in return). For this they were fined about $2000 per school. The punch line is that because it's cheaper for them to accept the fines than to do a good job, as a corporation they are legally required to continue providing poor service. And, because they're locked in with cushy government contracts across the country, the American people have to keep paying their own money to have their kids screwed over by the government. Let's clarify how this process works so there's no mistake: * The corporation pays a lot of money to a political party to put it in power. * Once elected the corporation is given enormous amounts of money by that government. It gets this money by taking it by force from citizens. * The corporation then cuts corners, provides horrible services, and is fined large amounts of money by the government. * The corporation pays a lot of money to a political party to put it in power... yes... It just loops and loops and loops. Because citizens don't actually put politicians in power, and all the money a citizen gives to the government is seized by force (it's not like taxes are optional or you can decide how they're spent), the government has little to no interest in doing what the people want — their sole responsibility is to the corporations that put them in power. Hence the wicked cycle above. The fact is that 98% (or whatever) of people are stupid which instantly invalidates democracy. When people are stupid, they can easily be controlled by propaganda — that is, they'll vote for whoever the TV tells them to vote for. Because both of the mainstream US political parties engage in the above, the system can not be broken — to break this system using the democratic process, you would need to convince at least 30% of the population to go out and vote for an untested party with a radically different ideological stance than America has held in their lifetime. And we know that's not going to happen. Oh, and if you want to really get pissed off, go do some searches for Harcourt failing kids in the news and you'll see that as far as 99.99% of the media is concerned this is a total non-issue. Wondering why? Could it be that they all have the same parent company? Welcome to the modern world.... ______ Essay by Shannon Larratt (© 1994-2004 BMEZINE.COM LLC., PsyberCity Inc., and/or Shannon Larratt) *n
The sad and scarry thing is that it's 100% true and "regular" people just don't know about it. There is a station that I receive on my satellite dish called Free Speech TV (look at my sig for link). The station is pretty much run by volunteers without corporate or government money to influence their reporting. One of the topics they convered once was the welfare system. Come to find out that the bulk of the federal welfare system is NOT run by the government, but is contracted to private corporations - namely the Lockheed Martin / Marietta corporation. Yes, the same corporation that builds defense systems for the US pretty much runs the welfare system. Scared yet? How about this... I can't remember the corporation involved (I want to say Lockheed again), but I'm going to tell the story anyway. Let's call the corp Widgets Inc... This is a TRUE story and can be related to Columbine... In a suburb out near Denver, Co (can't remember the town name - sorry), there was a sharp rise in the current generation's violence level. Well, no one could figure out why untill an independant contractor discovered an extremely high level of PCB's in the community's run-off water which subsequently ran into their drinking water and contaminated it. The community demanded research into the problem and the feds hired Widgets Inc to run the testing. They came up with nothing unusual, but while Widgets Inc was doing its testing, the community hired their own contractors to compare results. Come to find out that the independant contractor came up with a different conclusion. They deduced that there was in fact an extremely high level of PCB's within their drinking water and the PCB's were a direct result of Widget Inc's production of defense weapons. The government hired the same contractor that they buy weapons systems off of to do research on PCB's that they were responsable for. You scared now?
I knew you'd like it, Dad What are things like in your corner of the states? As bad as stated? Worse? Better? *n
The vast majority of the world sucks. Maybe not because individuals are bad, but because the company they work in or the government comes up with **** like this, systems that dont work as well as they should. Then the people who gain the most from it, pay people off to keep it under wraps so that they can keep doing what they were doing - i.e. providing bad service and getting away with it. In the end who suffers ? The people. But does anyone really care enough about it to do something ? No. People just keep going on doing the same things again and again as regularly as clockwork, helping to maintain or even worsen everything that is bad. For example, the NHS ... some of you might flame me for saying this, but I really believe that over 80% of the NHS system doesnt work. It was a system designed in the past for that time, and unless they make some drastic changes, it cannot keep up with the current times. In the NHS, people in critical condition and people with nothing more than a headache will get all the treatment they need. The majority of people with anything in between will be put on waiting lists and have to wait for ages before they can get treatment. For example, I had some wrist pain and needed to see a physiotherapist. If I had to go to a GP and then be referred through, then it would have taken more than 6-7 months for me to receive any treatment. Those 6-7 months could have been enough to ruin my wrist and finish my career once and for all before it even started. A lot of the systems have been similarly designed in the past, and were good at the time they were introduced .... To match up with the present, they need drastic changes.
Hahaha... Funny thing is that I'm a Conservative and am supposed to be pro-corporation / capitalist, but I have very Liberal ideas and thoughts. Just call me a freak of nature Things around here aren't like that. There are WAY too much community involvement where we take control of given situations. The 2 biggest things around here are: 1- There's a lake not too far from here in Syracuse (Oneida Lake) that had been seriously contaminated (by a now defunct corporation) to the point that it was extremely dangerous to eat any fish from there and there was no swimming allowed. About 20 years ago the community found out what was going on and launched an investigation to find out who was at fault and when they did find out, brought them to court and forced them to clean up their mess. Recently independant studies have shown that it is now safe to eat the fish in moderation and they are allowing boating again, no swimming yet, but they expect in 10 years, it will be okay. I'm not sure what was dumped in the lake, but there was 6" of sludge at the bottom that was choaking all life out of the lake and making it smell when you drove past it. Now it's real nice and the local governments and comminuty groups are developing the land around it by putting in a gravel running track / nature trail, 2 parks and stuff like that. 2- IBM out near Albany had been dumping stuff in the Mohawk river which lead to the Hudson and down to NYC. They had been doing that undetected for so long that the river became hazardous. If you ever hear any jokes about not swimming in the Hudson or East rivers while your in NYC, IBM is the direct cause of that. The communities and local/state governments sued IBM and they are cleaning up the rivers. The Hudson is nearly completely "healed" now and Albany (the state capital) is developing the river-front like we are around Ondeida Lake. The communities around here won't take anything from any corporation or gevernment and we do fight back. I'm not saying that others don't, but we are very pro-active and not reactive. I think that's one of the main reasons that I love living in this area so much...
Penski, you are my hero for that line. But in Texas we have the TAKS now, used to be the TAAS... this new test is... well... question one of the practice test for 11th grade is the definition of "fix" You don't have to KNOW anything beyond 6th grade for this test. The only way they get kids is by giving weird questions that may have another right answer if you sit back and think about it for more than 2 seconds or by miswording something. Then there's an essay... which has to be written in the format the state provides... we had a practice test last year, most of my friends wrote the state's way... I wrote a page and a half on why standardized tests are useless... most of them got a score of 2 out of 4, I got a 3. Think the reader/graders take much pride in their jobs? If someone told me my job was useless I sure as hell wouldn't pat them on the back. Anywho, off to school for me, so they can teach me how to take more standardized tests and NOT actually teach me anything like, oh, I don't know... english, math, economics... meh.
OMG, I am SO friggin tired of snow. We got ~21" since last Thursday and I'm starting to get concerned about the roof. I'm afraid that I'm going toi have to go up there and shovel the roof off to reduce the weight. Not as bad as Oswego though (about 20 mins north of me). They got a total of around 60" and at one point the snow was falling at 6" per hour! See what you started! You got me all agrivated...
It's been a few years since I graduated from high school (not THAT many!) but this is pretty much how my junior and senior years went. Basically, since I was deemed to have been someone who could score well on tests (one of the top 100 students in the county or something) I spent 1 hour each day of my junior year taking practice tests and trying to "learn" all of the little tricks that can get you better scores on the standardized tests such as the SAT, PSAT, whatever. They weren't teaching me better grammar or math. They were literally giving us questions that we wouldn't know the answer to, and then teaching us how to eliminate answers and guess better. How's that for knowledge? Let's teach the kids how to beat the system! Then my senior year I took all AP classes (that's advanced placement...earn college credit for high school courses) and at least one day a week we learned the same type of stuff. How to answer essay questions in such a way that you would get more credit. So....if I say the same answer as my friend, but I word mine just a little differently, I get more credit than her although mine is no more right or wrong. I feel like I got an education to be a better con man or something.
Interestingly enough, though middle school (like elementary) I was deemed to have an "abnormally high" IQ. I was put through a completely different course than anybody else. 99% of what I was doing was infact collage level stuff, and the rest was purely to help me pass the mandatory tests that we're shoved at me. But that’s another story upon itself, but anyway, while I was doing my thing I saw a few other people in the same "advanced" class (if you could call it that) that we're solely studying for the mandatory tests, not actually learning anything but that. One day I actually asked the principle about why they we're doing this, and her answer was just simply "because we want to be the best school we can, and by having a certain percentage of students do amazingly on the standardized tests, we increase our funding". Kind of shocked me to hear this, but after a lot more studying, I found out that all the local schools we're doing the same, kind of sickens me that schools have to stoop this low just to get better funding. And if you’re wondering, the school system is a joke around here; students who are mentally inept get higher scores on tests than normal students who are being taught properly. Class sizes of 40+ and teachers that are never there are not helping anything I'm sure.
Well my exams got graded by two different teachers. One was my own the other was from an other part of the country. If they differ on results a third teacher is called in to make the final judgement. Pretty Ok in my vision.
Anyone remember that simpsons episode with the corporate periodic table? Krabbaple: "What is the atomic mass of Bolonium?" Martin: "Is it D-eelicious?" Krabbaple: "I would also accept snack-tacular" Quality!
Penski, While not being Americans, Plink Floyd nailed it right on the head…Welcome to the Machine…and a well oiled one at that. Americas a capitalist state…it’s all about the money…and making sure it keeps moving. You’ll see all that you are talking about in the next few months. It’s an election year…and the “special interest” money is flowing big time…As for me I’m kind of glad that the gov is starting to contract things out…I think people that work for the gov get lulled into a state of apathy. They know that once they are in…they are in for life….unless they do something really stupid. Even then they usually don’t get fired. So…with that fact in the back of there mind, there is no need to perform at you’re best. So the work they do is usually slow & sloppy. Now you try that in the private sector…you’re not “in”…you’re out! So the quality of work tends to be better. Sure there are exceptions…there are always exceptions but over all and in the long it is better. Every time I here someone bashing the American system…all I have to do is point them to American immigration. If we are so terrible then why do people risk there lives every day to get in? As for toxic waste...I live in Jersey...nough said on that.
