(After reading this article...homeschooling is sounding all the more appealing. What a huge failure for New Jersey. What a shame.)

Fourth Graders Flunk Writing Exam in Droves

TRENTON, N.J. (Reuters) - New Jersey's 100,000 fourth-graders do pretty well on multiple-choice tests in math and science, just don't expect them to be able to write home about it.

State education officials announced Tuesday that more than half of the fourth-graders in New Jersey, who are typically aged 10, failed the language arts section of a skills assessment test that required open-ended answers to questions on reading comprehension and writing.

Essay writing questions posed the main problem. Forty percent of the students got a zero grade on one essay question that asked them to craft a paragraph of disjointed information into a coherent story.

The exams, given last spring, were actually designed to assess the performance of individual school districts.

New Jersey Education Commissioner David Hespe called for a review of the grading procedures that a private North Carolina contractor used to evaluate test answers in the reading and writing section.

``We expect large numbers of students still to be below proficiency in writing,'' said Hespe, deflecting suggestions that the state government was hoping to lower the bar for passing grades. ``Writing will still be a very troublesome area.''

More than 80 percent of the state's fourth-graders passed the science and math sections, which required only multiple-choice answers.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), August 23, 2000

Answers

Kritter, homeschooling is wonderful! No one cares more about your daughter's education than YOU do! I homeschooled my daughter from 3rd grade through 12th. She's now in College (making A's!) :-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 23, 2000.

For years, homes- (not Johnny) chooling was the thang 2do for us wierdo ejukatered thinkin'-punks....nowsa lasa meesa wha'ssa ...

........ Well, turns out we was right....being told whatta do for 7 hours a day ISN'T the proper training for being a healthy happy brainy so&so. You all went to school right??? You all noticed it sucked dogs' balls???/?? Right???

School is there to teraIN YOU TO BE AN EMPLOYEEEE. hands up Aall the people who've happpily spent the best hours of their adult life shuffling papers or arranging widgets for the man????? (Don worry, ibin there 2.

None of you???) Oh Rodger me, i'm so freaking suprised......you tell me of the all the things you've seen this world has to offer, 9-to-5 ISN'T what it's all about?????? Honest?????

Oh dude, sar-karsm is hard 2do in ASCII, & text is hard enough, but i know thst you-wall know, ........ "the best things in life are free..." And by all means help people out with what you can do......but the employment market is this conflagration which chews US ALL UP, and ummmmm,

Maybe us "LAZY" fornicators have a clue??... maybe we know whose example to follow or not to follow,....or die not-trying!

I

I'm convinced $$$$ is not the proper way to arrange humans with each other. QED.

8========> ....+ 0 = ???

We live in the future, so whilst we're wearing our fancy 70's-style velueur jumpsuits and grooving in our anti-gravity Chrystlers, let's ALL just work out how the humans are MEANT to interrract with each other????

ANyone???

!

etc...

Teach yo kids PATTERN RECOGNITION FROM AN EARLY AGE!!!!!!

Honest....It's what it all comes down toooo, ....in this universe anyhow.

-- numbersix (Well_there's_a_lot_more_things_to_football@than_really_meets_the_eye...there_are_days_when_you_could_give_it_up,_days_when_you_could_cry_etc@hotmail.com), August 26, 2000.

How profound, Six! What's gotten into you??? :-)

Unfortunately, outside of owning your own business, everyone who works becomes someone's possession. I've tried to steer my kids towards finding a career path in somethign they enjoy and not worry about the money. There is much too much emphasis put on monetary gains these days, I agree...

You really do have to teach your children that they don't HAVE to make a lot of money to be successfull in life. A true success is a man who does something he likes and still gets by in everyday life.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), August 26, 2000.