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["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: clanSkeen <sgian AT planetc.com>
>
> ALL?  Do you want to engage in such absolutism?  Any time you make an
> observation,  are we free to put the quantifier "All" with it and say it
> represents your views?
>
***Ah, but James, you DO trot out the fat rant about absolutely everything
that has anything however slight to do with health.

> Of the direct behaviors that cause a person's death, cigarette smoking is
> still number one but only by a  very slim margin.  The thing is that it
> generally need not be mentioned because now of days everyone recognizes
that
> it compromises one's health and they also recognize that it is a choice.
> The direct behavior that is second leading cause of death is obesity due
to
> overeating and under-exercising.  The difference between that and smoking
is
> that the recent epidemic of obesity is dismissed.   When was the last time
> you heard an obese person say frankly that their physical condition was
due
> to their choices?  It's always genetics, rare disease, the drugs they are
> on, etc. etc.    Let me remind you of my first observation in this  post,
> when I was a child, obesity was quite rare.  Our human genes have changed
> that much in 50 years?
>
***And that has what to do with INFANT mortality?  What, you have a crystal
ball and somehow you have predetermined that these dead INFANTS would die in
the future due to being fat so they died now instead?  Or are you somehow
saying that URIs and murder are somehow caused by their parents being fat?
Just exactly what does fat have to do with infant mortality rates?  Or is it
the Pavlov syndrome and someone mentions health care and you have a canned
rant about fat that you automatically send out?
>
> They absolutely are not.  There are no test scores for reading and math
that
> can be compared because all states do not administer the same tests.  Not
> many years ago there was a list of official statements from state
> departments of education in which every one of the 50 states said that
> standardized tests showed their children above the national average in
> reading and math ...... of course this is a mathematical impossibility.
The
> phenomenon occurs because states have no motivation to purchase expensive
> tests that are going to show their students are below average.  So test
> publishers sell a specific version of their test to each state normed in
> such a way to ensure that the students in that particular states score
above
> average by those norms.   This state (Tennessee) is ranked as 46th in
> education and yet the recently published standardized tests results showed
> the state as a whole almost exactly at the 50th percentile (ranging from
> 47th to 53rd from system to system).  This would mean that there are only
4
> states that could possibly be below the 50th percentile if the 46th mean
> anything ..... which is doesn't.  It is only the per capita spending that
is
> 46th.
>
>***ON ONE RANKING.  Let's see, the Princeton Review isn't done on spending
http://www.princetonreview.com/footer/testingTesters.asp  Morgan Quintno's
uses 21 factors including, what, can't be, test scores
http://www.morganquitno.com/edfact04.htm and, of course, there is the biggie
which is all about reading, math, science, etc. the DOE's NAEP from the NCES
or as it is otherwise known, The Nation's Report Card
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/

And, actually, the numbers you refer to are usually NEA numbers and they are
all about $$.  However, per capita is only part of their formula.

Lynda