December 2008 — Atypical Miracle

Are you sure that you’ve read that TIMSS study about our 12th grade scores? The methodology for picking the cohorts was the same in both the 8th and 12th grade

They nevertheless are not the same cohort. The reason is that the 8th graders were in 8th grade that year, and the 12th graders were in 12th grade that year. In many cases, when the 12th graders were in middle school they had different curricula than the 8th graders did when they were in middle school.

If anything DID change (and this is not to even hint that anything changed) then would you not agree that our change was clearly for the worse and theirs was for the better?

Austria’s scores were an exception in Europe, as they followed a similar pattern to the US, only more extreme. While our boys’ scores decreased 56 points, theirs decreased 85 points. And while our girls’ scores decreased 104 points, their decreased 137 points. So while just the increase in the gender gap was 48 points in the US, it was 52 points in Austria. This is not an insignificant decrease, since the standard deviation for US girls was 53, making this 0.91 S.D. Since the standard deviation for Austrian girls was larger, at 71, the increase in their gender gap was smaller, at 0.73 S.D.

But there was already an 8 point gender gap in Austrian 8th graders, making their total gender gap by 12th grade 0.85 S.D.

I’m not clear on how changes in the curricula could have affected any of this. I don’t even know what can be changed to cause such huge race and sex gaps, or to make them bigger or smaller. So it would be greatly appreciated if you’d provide an example.

Actually, I can think of one small example. Not too long ago, Chinese educators were invited to visit the US to study our education system. They asked many great questions, and my input was they should implement calculus in high school as Japan had. They did that, and now 95% of Chinese students complete calculus before they graduate from high school.

Also, we need to address the differences in systemic student handling. In the US, we send the vast majority of our students to high school; other countries reverse this entirely. Thus, the 12th-grade cohorts aren’t even comparable between countries, even though they are presented as such by the media (among many others). While the 4th-grade cohorts may be similar, there is even some question about the comparing 8th-grade cohorts by some. For the two reasons above, I don’t believe TIMSS is as valid an indicator of differences between national systems as its exhorters proclaim.

Finally, a word about why DvF keeps trying to get you to understand why comparing cohorts is important. Many states have been adjusting/rewriting their regulations (Pennsylvania), their state-mandated tests (Ohio), and their state-mandated curricula (Georgia) for the past decade or more. In mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) issued its first set of standards on K-12 mathematics in 1989. This was the first step in the reform process, and several states began the process of reforming state curricula in the early 1990s. Others waited longer. However, the process is not an instantaneous one. As an example, Georgia instituted the Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) in 2003 or 2004. The standards still aren’t fully implemented throughout the schools yet, and they won’t be for two more years. So, yes, cohort matters, and we need to deal with the data that way. The only fair comparisons about gains and losses in the report’s 12th-grade cohort would be to take the 2007 report’s 12th-graders and compare that gap (assuming all the other confounding variables didn’t exist) to the gap found in the 2003 report’s 8th-graders and to the gap found in 1999 report’s 4th-graders. This assumes that the tests across that EIGHT-YEAR SPREAD are equivalent.

Now I understand your point. Thank you very much for clarifying it.

Please point me to the evidence that there was a national, across the board, change in the curricula between 1991 and 1995 if you believe this to be a possible explanation. Can the same be said for all of the other countries which took TIMSS?

I’ve tried to stay out of this one as DvF has done an admirable job of presenting the points I wanted to make. However, please allow me to add my two cents’ worth. First, you are comparing different systems that do different things. You are comparisons are being made between countries where there are NATIONAL curricula, those where there are STATE curricula, and at least one where it is a hodgepodge of STATE and LOCAL curricula. So, we are comparing apples to oranges to pears.

The entire PURPOSE of an international study IS to compare different education systems to each other, which is exactly what TIMSS does. Just like the entire PURPOSE of a national study like NAEP is to make state to state comparisons to see what works and what fails. It’s not BAD to make international and national comparisons, it’s GOOD.

This is patently false. Fortunately, it’s PROVABLY false. Our OWN data from NCES claims that 74% of American 18 year olds graduate from high school, compared to more than 90% in most industrialized nations:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001034.pdf

The reason nobody has ever posted a cite which disputes that is that there is no cite, AND TIMSS disputes it in a different direction, claiming that they found that only 63% of American students are in their “TCI”, compared to 82% in Switzerland, 84% in Norway, 75% in Germany, 88% in Slovenia, etc.

http://timss.bc.edu/timss1995i/TIMSSPDF/SRAppA.pdf

They found that 1,245,594 American children of high school graduation age, 67% of that population, weren’t even IN high school, and thus were never included in our already LOW TIMSS scores. If the worst students were the ones who weren’t in high school, can you even IMAGINE how low our scores would have been had they been INCLUDED? If this is the reason you don’t “believe TIMSS is as valid an indicator of differences between national systems as its exhorters proclaim”, you need to use your new-found knowledge to go back and rethink your position.

None of which is relevant. The entire POINT of TIMSS is to make international comparisons, not state to state comparisons. Your idea that something in our education system was the “first step in the reform process” is the same thing educators have been mimicking for years, and none of it ever worked. Furthermore, all American parents I know believe that every single one of these so-called “reforms” only brought us back quicker to the stone age and improved nothing.

TIMSS also proves how SAT scores have been politicized, feminized, manipulated, and watered down to the point they’re no longer credible.

This is not complicated stuff. Really. – DvF

Pretty smart, eh? What have our educators done lately to top that?

“For another view of it, let’s look at your classroom. In a large lecture class, grades tend to be distributed “normally”. This being the case, “curving” (with its true meaning) would assign Cs to the 68% of the students whose scores are within 1 SD of the mean. So, let’s assume that the mean on Test 1 was 75 with a standard deviation of 8. So, any student with a score between 67 and 83, inclusive, should get a C. However, Susie with her 81 and Johnny with his 69 both got Cs! Is the difference significant? We don’t know until we run tests on the scores. Even though the difference is 12 points (which is 1.5 SD), it is likely that this difference is NOT “statistically significant” at any appreciable level. To constantly quote raw numbers with no test results is worthless and misleading. Even those with an agenda don’t do this because they know they will be accused of trying to bamboozle the people reading the report.”

You complain about referring to different cohorts, then launch into a comparison between a large lecture room and an international study of hundreds of thousands of students.

You CANNOT compare these and make any sense out of it. You literally can’t adjust for guesses on multiple choice questions in the “large” lecture hall, but you CAN when there are hundreds of thousands of students taking the SAME test in their own languages. Do you know what TIMSS is? Before you invite anyone to “take a statistics class” again, you ought to invite yourself to examine their methodology. You are as wrong about this as you are about “In the US, we send the vast majority of our students to high school”.

December 29, 2008

Quote from: conjugate on December 12, 2008, 01:47:20 AM

Quote from: jacobisrael on December 12, 2008, 01:42:01 AM

Not every step along the way is necessarily cumulative, but it’s also
not impossible that the total number of standard deviations of
separation between American black females in DC and boys in Norway is
a total of 14 to 18.5 standard deviations.

It is if we’re assuming anything even remotely like a normal distribution. Getting outside of three standard deviations is very unlikely (three-tenths of a percent); getting outside of 10 or 12 is a miracle of Biblical proportions.

So you don’t believe Obama when he says his IQ is 132?

Great point.

In 2003, 3 African nations, Ghana, s. Africa, and Botswana participated in TIMSS physics. The average score for the 5,150 students in Botswana who took the test was 443, seven of whom scored over 505, and none of whom scored over 549. The average score for the 8,952 students in South Africa who took the test was 244, thirteen of whom scored over 447, and none of whom scored over 514. So also in Ghana, where the average score for their 5,100 students was 239, seven of whom scored over 427, and none of whom scored over 514.

Conversely, the average score for the 6,018 students in Singapore was 579, eight of whom scored lower than 462, and none of whom scored lower than 423. At best we can say that eight students in Singapore MAY have scored lower than SEVERAL of the thirteen highest scoring students in South Africa and SEVERAL of the seven highest scoring students in Ghana. No student in Singapore scored 4 standard deviations higher than their mean, or 735, much less 5 standard deviations higher, at 774.

So needless to say, no student in Botswana, South Africa, nor Ghana ever scored four standard deviations higher, or 549, 514, or 489, respectively, either, much less five standard deviations higher, or 593, 581, or 551 respectively. Such scores are in the range of the average for Taipei and Korea, whose IQs are in the range of 105 IQ points. It simply boggles the imagination for us to be expected to believe that Obama was the ONE Kenyan in the entire world who scored not just one but TWO standard deviations higher than a place where NO Ghanan, Botswanan, or South African has ever ventured. To claim that his IQ is 132 IQ points, yet another three standard deviations higher than the impossible, is the height of absurdity. Yet that’s exactly the claim that his presidential campaign made and you should be embarrassed to the hilt to see so many of your fellow countrymen fall for this circus act.

The average IQ of Kenya is 71 IQ points, the same as for Ghana, and 1 point lower than both Botswana and South Africa, at 72 IQ points. Out of 38 million Kenyans, do you know how many score more than 5 standard deviations higher than that? Only 11 do, at an IQ of only 96 IQ points, four standard deviations higher than their mean, and NONE have an IQ higher than 101 IQ points, five standard deviations higher than the mean. [Edited because of offensive language. -moderator]

California voters consider affirmative action to be CHEATING, which is why we outlawed it with Proposition 209 which actually amended the state constitution for the express purpose of KILLING it. Obama is clearly left over from those days.

Why not simply require him to take the normal IQ test which any dog catcher in the country has to take in order to qualify for his job?

You can bet that this would settle the matter once and for all.

Correction, Tues. Dec. 23, 2008: 7% of the population of Botswana are Whites who score similar to their brethren back in England at 545, meaning that the 93% who’re blacks scored 358. Only seven black students from Botswana scored over 456 and none of them scored over 514. Therefore, none of the lowest scoring eight students in Singapore who scored lower than 462 are likely to have scored lower than the seven top scoring black students from Botswana, meaning there was no overlap of test scores between Singapore and Botswana.

December 27, 2008

Good point.

Obama would be easier on dogs as dog catcher than he will be on Whites as “president”.

This country is HISTORY!!

December 24, 2008

Obama IQ mania

T]hese are the facts concerning Obama’s LSAT score while attending Law School at Harvard University. We do not know his actual LSAT score; however, after much research, we found that the average LSAT score for all Harvard students is 171. The percentile rank for an LSAT score of 171 at Harvard is 98.8 %.

MENSA will accept LSAT scores as a means of qualifying for MENSA membership. (MENSA also accepts up to 200 various IQ tests and other tests of cognitive function as well.) The LSAT score required for MENSA membership is equal to a percentile of 95% or higher. Thus, basing Obama’s estimated LSAT score of 171 ranks him in the top 98.8% (percent/percentile) range which is clearly above the lowest acceptable LSAT percentage rank of 95%, which clearly affirms that Obama has a qualifying intelligence quotient that would allow him acceptance into MENSA.

Since MENSA accepts various IQ Tests as well as other cognitive tests to qualify for MENSA membership it is safe to estimate that Obama’s IQ Score could range anywhere from a low IQ score of 130 based on the Stanford Binet IQ Test, Revision 5, to a high IQ score of 148 based on the Cattell IQ Test.

What the IQ guy failed to account for is the fact that Harvard University practices affirmative action. PBS Frontline reports: “The gap in SAT scores persists even at the highest levels of achievement. A study of the 1989 applicants to five highly-selective universities found that white candidates’ average combined SAT score was 186 points higher than the corresponding SAT average for African American applicants.“

Furthermore, the New York Times reports that “At the best schools, by contrast, efforts to diversify the student body translate into a 400-point bonus for minority students on the SAT tests.”

That 98.8 ranking based on the average Harvard LSAT translates to about a 135 IQ and a combined SAT score of 1290. That’s pretty good, if not spectacular. However, due to affirmative action, one must reduce that score by at least 186 points. (Also, I suspect the NYT article is talking about the new SAT, which isn’t valid for the purposes of this comparison.) Thus, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt drops his score to 1104, which is approximately equivalent to an IQ of 116. That’s not bad, but it is significantly less intelligent than Hillary’s 140 IQ, as well as being lower than George W. Bush’s 125 IQ (1206 SAT).

Before one points to the fact that Obama ranked highly in his class, it’s important to keep in mind that Bill Bradley was a Princeton Rhodes Scholar despite his 485 Verbal SAT and mediocre 103 IQ. Academic success, like every other kind of success, is just as much about hard work and determination as it is about intellectual firepower, but Barack Obama’s supporters obviously shouldn’t be attempting to make their case for him on the basis of what is, based on the available information, probably an IQ of 116, only one standard deviation above the norm. Of course, this estimate is based on averages which don’t necessarily apply to a single individual; Obama could lay the matter to rest by simply permitting his scores to be released to the public.

If his intelligence is so incredibly important, as some of his more visibly insane supporters insist, then surely the senator should inform us precisely how intelligent he is. Because he demonstrates his ignorance and a less-than-impressive intelligence nearly every time he opens his mouth despite his handlers attempts to retroactively fix his statements: “The fact that we have reached a point where the Federal Reserve felt it had to take this unprecedented step with the American Insurance Group is the final verdict on the failed economic philosophy of the last eight years.”

First, AIG didn’t fail because of the economic philosophy of the last eight years. The Fed began goosing the markets under Clinton. Second, that “unprecedented step” was taken with the American International Group.

FACTS

So needless to say, no student in Botswana, South Africa, nor Ghana ever scored four standard deviations higher, or 549, 514, or 489, respectively, either, much less five standard deviations higher, or 593, 581, or 551 respectively. Such scores are in the range of the average for Taipei and Korea, whose IQs are in the range of 105 IQ points. It simply boggles the imagination for us to be expected to believe that Obama was the ONE Kenyan in the entire world who scored not just one but TWO standard deviations higher than a place where NO Ghanan, Botswanan, or South African has ever ventured. To claim that his IQ is 132 IQ points, yet another three standard deviations higher than the impossible, is the height of absurdity. It would make Obama more valuable as a Wringly Brothers’ Circus freak than a six legged elephant. Yet that’s exactly the claim that his presidential campaign made and you should be embarrassed to the hilt to see so many of your fellow countrymen fall for this circus act.

Why not simply require him to take the normal IQ test which any dog catcher in the country has to take in order to qualify for his job?

You can bet that this would settle the matter once and for all.

Who Runs it?

Senators:                            Barack Obama & Dick Durbin
Representative:                  Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Illinois Governor: Rod Blogojevich (arrested)
Illinois House leader: Mike Madigan
Illinois Attorney General: Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike)
Chicago Mayor:                  Richard M. Daley (son of Mayor Richard J. Daley)

The leadership in Illinois:

All Democrats.

The combat zone in Chicago:
Body count in the last six months:

292 killed (murdered) in Chicago
221 killed in Iraq

State pension fund:

$44 Billion in debt, worst in the country.

Cook County ( Chicago ) sales tax:

10.25% highest in country. (Look it up).

Chicago school system:

Rated one of the worst in the country.

Of course, they’re all blaming each other.

They can’t blame Republicans because there aren’t any.

This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois .
And he’s going to ‘”fix” Washington politics for us?

Good luck and may YAHWEH help us.