What are the moral standards of today?
For the most part, today's moral standards are defined by today's society and, as it changes, so does our perception of moral standards. Just think about things that were seen as unacceptable 30, 20, or just 10 years ago and are now considered to be perfectly acceptable according to today's society. Some for the better and some probably not. There are, however, some things as a society we should try to never change. For example, the golden rule and how we treat each other. Also, the basic moral concepts of honesty, fairness, and goodness do not necessarily have to change. I'm an optimist and I'll always try to look for the good in people. Yes, it can sometimes be hard to find, but most of the time, if you expect the best from people, they will at least try to find some of it within themselves. If we adults and parents lead by example, that is bound to have some affect on the people we come in contact with. Over time, I believe this can make a difference.
There has long been a debate about the relationship between constituency size and freedom in democracies. Is the government of a larger constituency more likely to be tyrannical than a small one? Or vice versa? There is a theory about this, which I believe was conceived by Anthony Downs - but I may be wrong about that. First of all, define tyranny as a single sub-group dominating the political process - essentially dictating outcomes. Then observe that as the constituency size increases, the number of different sub-groups of the constituency with common interests grows, as does the size of the most significant sub-groups. Interest groups compete with each other to influence politicians, so the more of them there are and the larger they are, the less likely it is that one interest group can dominate. Ergo, the larger the constituency size, the less tyranny, and therefore the more freedom.I believe this theory is correct. A small town government is easily dominated by a single interest group, e.g., the largest employer. A dominant sub-group can have a huge infliuence on a state - think of the LDS Church and Utah. And while we do love to complain about the influence of speical interests on the federal government, they still don't dominate in nearly the way they could over a state or local government.So no, I don't believe the federal government should be scaled back. As the unit of our government with the largest constituency size, I believe that whatever its flaws, in the long run it is our best hope for standing up for all of our freedom.
The standard state test help!?
no you will not be left back. the test is nothing. its just for the state to see how the school is doing. not based on you really. don't worry about it. it should not even affect your grades. talk to a teacher.
A state establishes “standards” which students must meet in order to graduate. The state is most likely focusi?
I'd say: a) transmitting society's knowledge and values. The purpose of education from society's point of view is to "train" individuals for the workforce and to be productive members of society. In my opinion, "transmitting knowledge" means knowing basic fundamental skills (like reading, math, science, history) and using them to better our society through a profession. "Values" refer to our commonly held beliefs about freedom, productivity, being a good citizen, etc.
Do you feel that school achievement test standards should be set by each individual state?
shoot, i missed an interesting one. i'm with midnight that there are serious problems with the whole standardized testing concept in general. i do realize we need ways to evaluate teachers' effectiveness, but i'm not convinced standardized testing, at least in its current form, is the right way. what i think we really need is higher teacher salaries to draw the most qualified people into our teaching force, higher teacher standards, and better teacher mentoring, and a better system in place to handle major disciplinary problems at troubled schools so that teachers can focus more on teaching and less on classroom management. but, going back to your actual question (!), i think there's some benefit to their being set by individual states. living in a state that has unusually high standards right now, i fear that if there were national standards they would fall to the least common denominator. perhaps that could be remedied by setting national minimum standards that a state is free to require its own schools to exceed. but the other benefit to allowing states to do things differently is that it sets up 50 laboratories so that people can watch and see what actually works. as long as people are paying attention and discard the losing ideas and adopt the winning ones, that would be a better system than arbitrarily choosing one set of standards and hoping it was a good choice.
tl;dr: NoUniversities do not use academic standards in the same way that K-12 schools do. K-12 schools are designed to instill a general knowledge base over a range of topics to prepare students for a variety of future possibilities. The emphasis of the Common Core State Standards has been on raising the bar sufficiently so that most students have the reading comprehension and basic math skills to be able to access university-level content without remediation.Each university in the U.S. (and each state, for HS, actually, it just so happens that most states are opting for a common set of standards, but that's another answer) sets its own general education and major degree requirements. Individual university courses are generally structured according to how the individual professor wants them to be structured. It is generally assumed that after X years of studying whatever subject matter, a college professor knows what needs to be covered in a given class about a given topic (This confidence is sometimes misplaced, as nearly any undergraduate can tell you). Universities covet academic freedom above almost anything else, and although university accreditation and other processes help to "standardize" university education somewhat, any attempt to instill a standards-based approach such as that adopted by K-12 education would almost certainly be met with fierce resistance.
Good question, because people are often confused by this.Properly speaking, the CCS are a set of specific guidelines about what students should know at each grade level in Math and English Language Arts/Literacy. You can find the complete list of Standards at Common Core State Standards Initiative. You can read how these Standards were developed at About the Standards.It is important to note that these Standards were developed by a consortium of state and private-sector interests. The federal government was not involved in the development process, but strongly endorsed them after publication.The most common sources of confusion about the CCS is what they are not.They are not a set of classroom practices, teaching methods, or curricula. There are no official CCS curricula. Various publishers claim that their products are "CCS-aligned", but it is difficult to evaluate these claims independently. Likewise, you might see rants about "crazy Common-Core questions" (especially math problems), but such claims are nonsense--again, CCS is not a list of problems, it is a set of outcomes that you can read as linked above.They are not a standardized testing regime. There are actually two major standardized tests supposedly based on CCS (SBAC and PARCC), and numerous smaller ones (especially state-level tests). Again, these are neither a part of CCS nor necessarily endorsed by them.Bottom line: As both a parent and as a mathematics educator, I think that CCS represent a good, if incremental, improvement over earlier (NCTM) Standards, and have been much more effective at generating visibility (though sometimes more negative than positive, unfortunately). I am not sure that we are anywhere near ready for standardized testing based on CCS, since implementation is new and inconsistently supported. Professional development for teachers lags significantly, as it usually does. It would probably take a full generation of students passing through CCS--i.e, a K-12 experience--before it is fair to begin assessment of implementation. Unfortunately, I doubt that we have the patience for that.
From the point-of-view of federal income taxes in the US, it depends… Here are some situations that would mean you must file and may have to pay taxes:If your income from self-employment, you must file and pay Social Security and Medicare taxesIf you had asset sales (e.g., stock sales), you may have to file to prove your actual capital gains, but you will not necessarily owe taxesIf you received a subsidy to offset health insurance costs through the Marketplace, you must file to reconcile the payments against your income - again you may not have any payment, just a filing requirementIf you had debt forgiven (student loan, credit card, home foreclosure, etc.), you may have “income” from a tax point-of-view without having any actual cash. This may mean you will owe taxes.If you received income in a way that incurs a tax penalty, such as taking funds out of an IRA before you were 59–1/2, you may owe early withdrawal penalty taxes. (There are also penalties for putting too much IN a tax-advantaged account in a year, including IRAs and HSAs.)If you had taxes withheld or are eligible for refundable tax credits, you may want to file to get your refund, but you are not required to do so.Remember, too, that the standard deduction only applies to Federal Income Taxes. You may still have an obligation to file income tax returns at the state or local level. Other taxes (e.g., property taxes) are outside the bounds of this question.
Mentally Retarded People and the Death Penalty?
I agree with you. in our society today, it seems that no one can gain closure unless someone takes the blame. it's almost part of the grieving process. even if an individual is mentally unable to differentiate right from wrong, a family, society even, will call for their blood regardless. now here is the other catch 22 that makes me a 50/50 supporter of the death penalty. if a prisoner (regardless of mental status) is sentenced to life in prison or even several life terms without the posibility of perole, it almost makes more sense for both the state and the prisoner, to just embrace the death penalty. the state and it's citizens and it's economy would save hundreds of thousands of dollars from what it would spend supporting the prisoner. the prisoner would benefit by not having to spend the rest of their life locked up like a caged animal. he would not have to fight to survive the various perils of prison life, the shankings, gangs, rapes, beatings, etc... i'm not saying that i support killing people and i don't think that people should be sent directly to "the chair". simply that maybe it should be a prisoner's choice. life sentence, or death sentence.
Increasingly, the United States is one society. Mass media, transportation and the movement of Americans bind the 50 states together and reduce regionalism. Many Americans move to different states and mix up the regional cultures. 200 years ago, things were very different, as each community or state was a separate country in essence, but gradually one culture was created. This is reflected in our national motto:E pluribus unum = out of many, one.