Tag Archives: slovenian

There’s Something Wrong With the TIMSS Advanced Math Test

by cazaresibiuieftina Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Excellent news! The 2015 TIMSS test results are out. This is one of two international math tests for 4th and 8th graders (the other is PISA), and it provides us with yet another chance to bemoan the shoddy education of American students.

I’ll get to that later tonight. First, though, I want to point out an odd thing about the TIMSS test. This year, for only the second time, they decided to add a third “advanced” math test for high school seniors who were in advanced math courses. Eight countries participated, and the United States did pretty well. We lagged behind only Lebanon.

Lebanon? You bet: their average score was 532, a whopping 50 points ahead of the two second-place countries (Russia and the US). But then I noticed something: only 3.2 percent of Lebanese students were in advanced math courses compared to 34 percent of Slovenian students. It makes sense that if you compare the top 3.2 percent of one country to the top 34 percent of another, the former is going to do a lot better.

So are differences in these scores just due to differences in how selective different countries are in accepting students into advanced math courses? Here’s the scatterplot you’ve been waiting for:

Selectivity doesn’t account for everything, but it does have a significant impact. If you restrict your classes to only the very brightest students (like Lebanon, Russia, and the US), they’ll do well. If you open them up to more than a quarter of your students (like Italy, Portugal and Slovenia), the average kids will drag down the mean score. But which country is actually doing a better job of education? It’s hard to say.

Regardless, there’s always something to complain about. Here is Jeffrey Mervis in Science:

Students taking the most challenging math and science courses in their senior year were found to have performed progressively worse as they moved from elementary to middle to high school. The U.S. cohort, for example… deteriorated over time, from 29 and 9 points ahead of the midpoint in fourth and eighth grade, respectively, to 15 points below as seniors. Italy recorded the steepest drops, a startling 126 points below the midpoint in physics and 78 points in advanced math by the end of high school.

It’s not clear to me that the “midpoint” of the TIMSS test means anything at all. In the advanced math test, every single country except Lebanon scored below it. What kind of midpoint is that? A pretty arbitrary one, I’d guess.

See original article: 

There’s Something Wrong With the TIMSS Advanced Math Test

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, ONA, oven, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s Something Wrong With the TIMSS Advanced Math Test

Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job

by TracieG65h Posted on May 17, 2016

Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job

By on May 17, 2016Share

Last spring, a worker installing pipes in the roof of a Tesla Motors shop in Fremont, Calif., slipped and fell three stories onto a concrete floor. He broke both legs, and was concussed so badly that he drifted in and out of consciousness in a San Jose hospital for days.

In the hospital, the worker, Gregor Lesnik, asked for a lawyer. He was part of a crew of about 140 workers who had been brought over on a temporary B1 visa from Eastern Europe by a Slovenian construction company. According to Lesnik, he was paid less than $5 an hour — half the current California minimum wage, and a fraction of the going rate of $52 an hour for similar work in the area. The crew worked 10-hour shifts, six or seven days a week, with no overtime pay.

Lesnik’s accident was a reminder of a very old problem — just because a job is better for the environment, doesn’t make it better for the person who has it. Without strong labor standards, new green jobs can be just as dangerous and exploitative as the old ones they’re meant to replace. Treating workers poorly also risks the political goodwill that has brought the industry so many subsidies and tax breaks over the years.

Tesla told the San Jose Mercury News — which broke the story over the weekend — that Lesnik’s injuries and wages weren’t the company’s responsibility, because he wasn’t an employee. Tesla had hired a German company, Eisenmann, to build the new paint facility, and Eisenmann hired a Slovenian company, Vuzem, to provide the labor. “Mr. Lesnik was injured when he allegedly failed to wear the proper safety harness provided by his employer,” Tesla told the Mercury News. Other men on the Vuzem crew confirmed Lesnik’s story — long hours, working on weekends, no overtime pay — though they were more experienced, and made closer to $10 per hour.

This isn’t the first time Tesla’s use of contractors has caused controversy. Since the article was published, however, Tesla and its founder Elon Musk have promised to make things right.

“We are taking action to address this individual’s situation and to put in place additional oversight to ensure that our workplace rules are followed even by sub-subcontractors to prevent such a thing from happening again,” the company wrote on its blog. “Assuming the article is correct, we need to do right by Mr. Lesnik and his colleagues from Vuzem.”

Tesla’s blog post said representatives from the state’s occupational safety agency investigated the incident and cleared the company of any responsibility. “As far as the law goes, Tesla did everything correctly,” the company said. The sad thing is, they appear to be right.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Continued:

Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, oven, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tesla’s labor controversy shows that a green job isn’t always a good job