Musings
This is a list of places I have visited The quality of our nation's public school system, a topic of great national concern, will not improve unless the standards by which individuals obtain their teaching license are raised. Currently, in the state of Missouri,on the C-Base, one need only score at a level one standard deviation below the mean for each section in order to be certified to teach. This is absurd. In a standard bell curved scale, which is the scale the C-Base and most other standardized tests are based on, one standard deviation below the mean is not only significantly low, there are not many score possibilities below it. For example, on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) the mean score is 150 with a standard deviation of ten. Thus, a score one standard deviation below the mean would be 140, a score not likely to get you into any of the over 180 accredited law schools in the country. Put simply, one needs only to be below average to obtain a teaching license in the state of Missouri. Until this is changed, we cannot expect our public schools to produce a high quality student, on average. In defense of the schools, there is a teacher shortage, which makes raising the standards for teacher certification impossible. Nonetheless, our public schools are clearly facing a crisis that is reaching a panic level significantly above the reasonable person's "mean" panic level. The word "interesting" should be removed from our language due to its nearly perpetual misuse. True patriotism contains an element of devotion not accessible through your local Wal-Mart. Home