We now close our look at the 2012 education Olympiad and offer some concluding thoughts. Again, 2012 may be somewhat outdated, but it was a special year in history when essentially all the major international, national, and local standardized tests were administered at more or less the same time.  Those rare circumstances allowed for a…

Now for the final event of our worldwide education Olympiad, we have come to 8th grade science which shares some characteristics with the ski jump.  In this event, competitors upon skis descend a long ramp to pick up speed before then ascending a short ramp that abruptly ends, thereby sending the ski jumper through the…

The fifth event is 8th grade math, which is something like alpine skiing.  The assortment of skiing events includes bouncing through moguls, maneuvering around flags, flying off jumps, and rocketing very quickly down a mountain, all while maintaining balance.  In 8th grade, math students bounce through algebra and geometry, maneuver in statistics and probability, fly…

The fourth event of the 2012 worldwide education Olympiad has us shift our focus from 4th grade to 8th grade.  Let’s begin by looking at 8th grade reading.  If 4th grade reading was like skeleton, we’ll liken 8th grade reading to a similar event, the bobsled.  The Bobsled race is a team event and is…

To wrap up the events in 4th grade achievement, we turn our sights to science and figure skating.  No doubt, there is a lot of force and motion involved in figure skating, but with the competition having judges and controversial scores on occasion, it suggests there is high degree of subjectivity in the event as…

The second event of the 2012 worldwide education Olympiad is 4th grade math.  This is somewhat like speed skating.  Speed skaters cover a lot of ground very quickly across a slippery hard surface, often in a repetitive elliptical pattern of laps over short or long distances.  Our 4th graders cover also cover a lot of…

Our first event of this 2012 worldwide education Olympiad is 4th grade reading.  4th grade reading is somewhat like skeleton in the Winter Olympics.  How so?  In skeleton, individual athletes zoom down a track on a sled going head first, completely focused, with their faces just inches from the track.  Similarly perhaps, in 4th grade,…

Before we get to the first event of our education Olympic competition, some background information is necessary by way of research and sources.  We'll call it our opening ceremonies. For this competition, we are going to go back in time to 2012.  It is the heyday of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which has been…