As pointed out by campbench, the tale of the graphing calculator’s consistent price is not an unnoticed one. (via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal; go visit them to read the full comic!)
It’s easily conceivable that TI-84 and iPod Touch prices could meet at $150 in the near future, and there’s no defensible excuse for that. One machine is thousands of times more capable than the other.BuzzFeed’s John Herrman • Noting how graphing calculator makers, despite a low amount of innovation in them within the past decade, have managed to artificially keep prices absurdly high, largely due to standardization forced by the College Board, which does not allow calculators with QWERTY keyboards, stylus inputs or connections to cell phones. But let’s face it, Herrman insists — it’s a strategy that can’t last. All that we know was that, way back in 1998, our TI-82 was the first portable device we ever jailbroke.
» Were the parents involved in this? According to a state senator, the amounts of money being talked about in the test-taking scandal (which involved students taking the test in place of other students) were just too much for the kids involved to raise on their own. “There are parents that are complicit in this. They are involved,” claimed State Sen. Ken Lavalle. “You can’t tell me that students are walking around with $3,500, or $2,500, or $1,200. That’s a lot of money, and that means the parents were involved.” The case involves a number of different high schools in the same region; some of the districts have emphasized that the students alone are to blame for their actions.
At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta Public Schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
This appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, unearthed across the country. The allegations point an ongoing problem for US education, which has developed an ever-increasing dependence on standardized tests.
Keep an eye on this. This is really big news.
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