high school kids protest

[Autocratic]

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Let are kids walk.

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Lol in the Special Olympics Opening Ceremony maybe.

Love the top 10% rule in Texas. These retards would get admission at UT no questions asked while someone who worked their ass off, high test scores, but finished 11% in a top high school may not get in.

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Yea, it's a crime that Texas has such a progressive policy allowing rural and urban kids to actually compete with the pampered suburban brats who went to the best schools with the best teachers. What a shame that these spoiled and coddled whiners can't make the cut against their own classmates. Maybe the universities should just bar anyone from a poor family or area from attending. That'd fix 'um!

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It levels the playing field between the literate and illiterate. This has nothing to do with poor vs. rich. It has to do with punishing people who's parents put them in a demanding high school. If you went to a poor school and actually do the work, welcome in. They don't compete, they just destroy the university once they get in. The school has to either lower their standards for these nitwits or just fail them out.

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You've got to be kidding me, do you seriously believe this? The 10% rule compares how you do relative to those in the exact same situation as you. Someone in a poor area getting a 1050 on his SATs has considerably more potential than someone in a wealthy area with the same score.

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Not neccisarily. We aren't talking about SAT. We are talking about class rank. I'll take the 30th percentile at Austin - West Lake over the 10th percentile at Billy Bob County High School or Espanol High any time.

If you are top 10% in any public Texas School, you are automatically in! Even with a 400 SAT.

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But this standardizes GPA etc across different groups where the quality of education received varies greatly. The 10% rule is a little fragile in that other qualifications are ignored, but it allows a lot of kids with limited opportunities a chance to maximize their potential. Sure, two kids with equal class ranks at very different schools are not dead even, but you can't say that one is more deserving of a certain college education just because they were provided more mobility through their upbringing.

[mrkilla]

[David H]

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You guys are making it sound like each school hands out A's and B's on a consistent, universal scale. Sorry dudes, but 3.5 is not the same between schools.

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Your argument(a valedictorian with a 3.5 GPA is not pathetic) is weakened(if only slightly) by the fact that the valedictorian is not graduating.

[guids]

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Let are kids walk.

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Lol in the Special Olympics Opening Ceremony maybe.

Love the top 10% rule in Texas. These retards would get admission at UT no questions asked while someone who worked their ass off, high test scores, but finished 11% in a top high school may not get in.

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Yea, it's a crime that Texas has such a progressive policy allowing rural and urban kids to actually compete with the pampered suburban brats who went to the best schools with the best teachers. What a shame that these spoiled and coddled whiners can't make the cut against their own classmates. Maybe the universities should just bar anyone from a poor family or area from attending. That'd fix 'um!

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you are confusing the term "leveling the playing feild", with the term "dumbing down the standards so the stupid people dont feel so stupid." I can bet which set of high school you went to.

[TomCollins]

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But this standardizes GPA etc across different groups where the quality of education received varies greatly. The 10% rule is a little fragile in that other qualifications are ignored, but it allows a lot of kids with limited opportunities a chance to maximize their potential. Sure, two kids with equal class ranks at very different schools are not dead even, but you can't say that one is more deserving of a certain college education just because they were provided more mobility through their upbringing.

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In fact, its doing the opposite, its providing someone with more mobility for going to a WORSE school. How does it standardize GPAs at all? It does far from it. This school has a valedictorian with a 3.5 GPA that can't even pass a basic test. You go to some high achieving school where someone has a 4.2 and still isn't in the top 10% with a 1400 SAT score, and you are saying somehow these are standardized? Give me a break.

The top 10% rule is awful. Its purpose is somewhat understandable. However, the consequences of the current implementation is disaster. It handcuffs top schools like UT into accepting people who have no business there. If you are a top achiever at a crap school, there is a chance you have a lot of untapped potential. Make it a top 5% rule, or less, so that its impact on otherwise deserving candidates is minimized. Make it so that the top 10% have to still complete some other basic requirements to get entry to their top choice, or otherwise get delegated to another state school. It will prevent the best state schools from getting watered down and allow unprepared candidates to suceed more often at a lesser school that is more on par with their abilities. If you can't pass the TAKS test after 5 tries, you have no business at ANY top tier university.

[kevbo]

" Crystal Martinez complained that while she finished at the top of her class with a 3.5 grade point average, she is now blocked from graduation by failing the TAKS test."

Likely proves that her grades were not legitimate.

[TomCollins]

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" Crystal Martinez complained that while she finished at the top of her class with a 3.5 grade point average, she is now blocked from graduation by failing the TAKS test."

Likely proves that her grades were not legitimate.

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Look at this information about the test-
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Every portion of the exam, except for the written essay and free-response questions on the Reading, Writing and ELA tests, and the are in multiple choice format: a question followed by four multiple choices. The scale scores that students are required to meet in order to pass the test often necessitate the correct answering of about 50-60% of the questions.

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50-60% is passing on an already dumbed down test. These people shouldn't be banned from walking at graduation, they should be sterilized to prevent contamination with the rest of the population.

[lacticacid]

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I don't know about the TAKS, but on the Pennsylvania state assessments I took, I basically screwed around and put no effort into the exam and placed in the top 5% in the state in every category. Now maybe I'm better at that sort of thing than most kids, but no one I knew FAILED it. If it's at all similar in Texas, if someone is failing this kind of test and has a 3.5, then it's not that the test is bad, it's that they should not have a 3.5

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There is no incentive to do well on the PA tests. So many people do not take them seriously. I remember watching a kid fill out his in the pattern of a Christmas Tree and a house and then get up and leave. At our school they let you leave early when you finished that year. I believe they have since fixed that problem.

[Rhett]

My school had a walkout to protest the air quality. One of our local geniuses got on the news with a sign that said "Are school don't care".

[kevbo]

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50-60% is passing on an already dumbed down test. These people shouldn't be banned from walking at graduation, they should be sterilized to prevent contamination with the rest of the population.

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Agreed.