John Warfield wrote of a Forbes Magazine article which stated in part
statistics that compared some aspects of education in 1914 with today's
conditions.
The Washington Post, on April 7th (I believe) had an article about the
same subject quoting some work done at Stamford. The major point of the
article was that such comparisons were not accurate, if for no other
reason than the population being compared is very different.
The argument, in part, was along the lines of the number of people taking
the SAT tests (or similar tests) in the 1950's was the top ten percent of
the classes. In the 1990s 40 percent of American graduating highschool
classes are taking these tests and one would expect the average grade
across the top 40% to be less than the top 10%.
I will try to get the article to obtain the rerference citations.
However, am on the road and it will take a week or two. You know,
consultants, techno nomads.
bhobler@cpcug.org ( William J. Hobler, Jr.) Bill
--"William J. Hobler, Jr." <bhobler@cpcug.org>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>