Bill Bradley's SAT Score HAHAHA

I have always tested well and must add that the tests under discussion do not measure motivation and determination. I am not associated with any educational system in any way, but do test people for a living and make training, educational and job recommedations. Tests only measure a person's behavior/responses on a given day, so fatigue, illness, depression, worry and length of time since leaving school can and do interfere with using scores to make predictions. A good score may indicate the ability to perform a task, but a bad score may just be the result of using the wrong test. For example, essay vs. multiple choice, timed vs. untimed for a person with a coordination problem, small print instead of large for a person with a visual impairment, English for an English-as-a-second-language person, and the whole arena of problems that come with evaluating the performance of individuals with a specific learning disability(if you can get an accurate diagnosis and not just some slacker stating that the person has a "Learning Disability"(duh -which one? - math, word recognition, comprehension, spatial, etc.) This also applies to diagnoses of ADD and ADHD. A particular problem involves giving a math test with word problems to someone with poor English skills and then thinking they don't know much math. While preparing for a test by studying facts may or may not help much, studying the form of the test questions will likely help by improving the taker's comfort level and providing clues to approaching the usual types of questions encountered. Multiple choice questions often have one or two obviously incorrect answers, true-false questions often include the telltale words always or never, and arithmetic questions can be estimated to eliminate an answer or two or to check the final calculation. And finally, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior(homework completion,grades, attendance, work history, etc.) Putting my soapbox back in the closet for now. John
 
Everbodyn wants to explain why "somebody" scored low on some test then blame it on "who" the test was made realy made for. It's simple your parents teach you, their your first teachers. If your parents fail at that then you go on to do bad, unless YOU do something to change that. YOU CONTROL YOUR OWN MIND AND WHAT IT LEARNS. Neither of my parents went to college but they did their best to make me understand that learning was important and it worked. I know some people who both of their parents had degrees but didn't give a dam and they did bad. I've also seen just about every other combo with all different results. It is not race, color, height, weight, etc, etc... If peolple would stop thinking/blaming it and start to teach then the whole mess would go away. By the way if your wondering I scored 1040 on my SAT 560 V and 480 M, graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA and now in my third year of college I have a 3.0 GPA.
And it's not because of "what" I am but "who" I am. I make myself what I wish. not my background. And if some of this is incorrect then so what.

Cyric13
 
Guys, it's really bad, but that's only VERBAL. Now, granted, that's pretty sad, but the average verbal, as I recall, is only in the 400-500 range. He was a jock. Not everyone can, as I did, score in the mid-700's (okay, okay: 731...) verbal.

I think that we should all laud the Democrats for promoting a guy who can score an (approximately) average verbal score in this, The Age of the Common Man.

Recognize that the average combined math and verbal score usually hovers around 1000, and math scores are almost always higher than verbal.

[This message has been edited by Long Path (edited February 14, 2000).]
 
As a high school teacher (and therefore someone who comes in contact with SAT scores fairly frequently), I couldn't help but be amazed by all of the eye-poppingly impressive verbal scores being bandied about on this thread. So, I got out my trusty little ETS score manual and did a little research. Fact is, only 3% of test-takers score over 700 on the verbal portion of the SAT. That's *three* percent, folks. And look how many we have right here among us. If all of our reported scores are accurate, statistically, we're doing just swell!

Now, here's my question to all of you in the 700+ club: How come I don't see "English teacher" or any related occupations in your profiles? We really could have used you guys!

duck hunt
(English teacher -- 700V, 640M)

------------------
*quack*
 
Another note on B.B.
His wife's father was a Col. in the Air Force during WWII - Hitler's Air Force.

The local liberal newspaper left that out of a recent profile of all the canidates wifes that they did. Everyone elses fathers professions got mentioned.

I know you dont get to choose your parents but its hard not to pick up some of their values.
 
Duck,
I would LOVE to teach. The only problem is, here in PA, the profession doesn't pay very well. Plus, you have to relocate in most cases to land a job. Therefore, I decided to go to engineering school instead.
640V 680M
 
We must all commit to teach what we know and set examples of learned behavior to those in our immediate family first. That is the platform of intelligence beyond genetics in any species. We are human, not ants or bees or cattle. The foundations of our existence should not be based upon the collective "needs" of our farm mates (i.e. the state), but our individual potentials. Our educators should love us and many state teachers do. It is wrong to saddle strangers with our responsibility as parents or guardians. It is wrong for the state to get in the way and shut us down without an alternative. Sorry, just left a school board meeting. FREE kids first.
 
johnbt, you're spot-on concerning test-taking technique. I took the PSAT, SAT, and GRE exams just by showing up (I was actually on time for one of them!). when I took the GMAT, I ordered those prep books from ETS and did the practice tests for 2 hrs a night for the Monday thru Friday before the exam day. also learned about the multiple-choice bit (if you can eliminate two answers, guess; if not, don't answer). in percentile terms, practicing and using the multiple-choice trick put me way, way up on both math and verbal scores (and I wasn't exactly drooling on any of the previous exams).

duck hunt; I'll give you my reasons.
1- college was a financial burden on me and my antecedents and secondary education pays worse than just about any skilled blue-collar job (the local school district is fishing for new teachers at $27k/yr, in a district where most anglo teachers *will* be accused of racism at some point, which costs $5-10k in legal expenses)
2- I despise kids
3- even back when I finished my Bachelors, teachers couldn't use the teaching methods that worked, they had to use the dumbed-down textbooks and the "admin-approved curricula". I have better things to do than execute a flawed plan.
 
duck hunt: As a data point on pro-gun folks not being knuckle-draggers--and not a horn-blowing, since DILLIGAS? is built into me--I split the GRE, 720/720. Wuz told that's uncommon.

Uncommon is another word for "Odd", of course. :)

Art
 
I never took the SAT's or the ACT's , But as
a FAA licensed A&P mechanic plus my FCC
electronics license , Those test kick a lot of people's butt's .
Now I hear the FAA is going to lower the standard some what to get more people licensed , That's what we need more
licensed people with less knowledge , makes me feel safe at 35'000 feet.
 
And remember, the Educational Testing Service re-normed the SAT 5 or 10 years ago(I asked the guy in the next office at work - he can't remember either). The combined average score, as I remember it, had dropped from the originally set 1000 to around 900. So ETS declared it was going to be 1000 again. The point? If you took the SAT 10 or 20 years ago you need to add about 100 points to your total score before comparing it to current scores. Makes my 1967 scores of V-650 and M-735 look even better. Don't let your heads swell, new hats cost money. John
 
Our Glorious Leadership keeps telling us that the military of today and tomorrow doesn't really need all that many ground-pounders; it's all hi-tech.

And recruitment levels are way down, so they're lowering the standards. Wonder wat the average scores will be, in 2000 and 2001?

Who's gonna deal with all this hi-tech, if they can't read? Click the bad-guy icon, see him explode?

Grumpy Art
 
aw, come on now Art, 50 years from now we will all be One Big Global Village, we won't need a military anymore, just a secret police.

of course, that'll all change when the robots become self-aware... ;)

just think, the teenage morons of today will be the orthopaedic surgeons in 30 years, putting in your artificial hip. :( we have a whole generation of kids who not only have poor academic backgrounds, they don't have learning skills. this is already causing limitation of economic growth; its only going to get worse over the next 20 years. my employer is having such a hard time finding IT skills that it is now trying to cannibalize workers from engineering depts.
 
Oohhhh yeah, norming. What a pretty concept. I took the ACT the year they normed it again, and what it worked out to somehow was that I didn't score low enough for the norming to affect me but if I had lost a few points on the areas I didn't get perfects in, I would have gotten roughly the same scores I actually achieved. So basically, people who did NOT do as well as I, got the same scores as I did. Woohoo.

I don't know where you live, Svt, but around here 27k is pretty good for your first year. I'd jump on it if I could get it in this area, the norm here is more like 23-24k, with 15$ per year per student for classroom materials (my fiance is doing her student teaching this semester and they just finalized the classroom budgets.) The rest is out of your pocket. Buy one new set of novels per year and you've shot your budget!

Then again, maybe you live in California. I've heard you make ungodly money in L.A. and other lovely hellholes because they're so shorthanded, but there's no way they could muster enough people to push me into an LA classroom.

The problem with teaching is that it requires a dedicated professional, just like engineering (unless you don't care about results.) BUT what an engineer does puts money in his employer's bank account, which is theoretically then shared with him as a reward. What a teacher does, puts no money in his employer's bank account. So the employer may be happy with my work, but I have to recognize that there is no money to pay me the same salary as an engineer no matter how good I am. The area tax level decides my pay, and the area taxpayers are understandably reluctant to pay more (especially with the quality they're currently getting.)
So basically, I'm screwed as far as money goes, unless some private individual or company figures out a way to make teaching profitable without relying on tax handouts, in which case I'll be on the front doorstep in a heartbeat!
 
780 Verbal, and a pathetic 710 Math. And, ultimately, I flunked college, albiet in the final year of a dual degree, at a very tough engineering university. See, I never picked up any study skills, since all the classes even in my high school's college prep track were a cinch. (My biggest problem there was reconstructing the steps somebody else would have used to solve the math problems, which I had solved "by observation".)

BTW, the "tough" courses were the ones I aced, because they engaged me. My bane was this really stupid course in electrical instrumentation I somehow missed in my sophmore year, which was so imbicilic and pointless that I simply could NOT bring myself to knuckle down and do it. Two "F"s in a required course, and I was flunked automatically 10 credits shy of graduation. Think I was suffering from burnout?

While it's handy being a genius, there are very few things in life for which a very high IQ is actually obligatory, and being President isn't one of them. Determination and discipline, though? It takes an awful lot of IQ points to even begin to substitute for their lack. My problems with Bradley have more to do with ideology than capability... In fact, you might say that given his ideology, I'd prefer that he were incompetent!

------------------
Sic semper tyrannis!
 
Gwinnydapooh

I live in a suburban area of central Pennsylvania, Lancaster County. I am located an hour and a half from Philadelphia and three hours away from Pittsburgh. There are quite a few high-income townships scattered throughout Lancaster.

With one of the top teaching schools in the nation (Millersville Univ.) located within Lancaster County, there is an o ver abundance of teachers. The schools get the cream of the crop for subs then permanent positions.

27K is the average, but in my district, the teachers start at 32K+. The tax bracket is relatively high due to the upscale neighborhoods. Many of the teachers make well over 45-50K a year. It is no wonder that the teachers there stay well past 60.

I like my job. I love designing and implementing new technologies for my company. We put a ton of money back into the board of directors' pocket with all the technology patents. Yet, the enjoyment is not the same as seeing a persons eyes light up when they ascertain or comprehend something you taught.

I often contemplate leaving my current engineering job to teach. I love helping people that want to learn. If I could find a university teaching position, I would quit my job in a heartbeat. Physics or computer science would be the subjects.

Money is not everything to me. However, for me to support my outrageous firearms spending habit, I need a decent paying job. 27-35K would not cut it. I know, I know I am excessively frivolous with my toys.

God bless all the teachers out there. I admire the dedication and your passion for helping others.


[This message has been edited by Svt (edited February 16, 2000).]
 
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