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31 August, 2011

Use of police prosecution in US schools draw scrutiny

In a small courtroom north of Houston, a fourth-grader walked up to the bench with his mother. Too short to see the judge, he stood on a stool. He was dressed in a polo shirt and dark slacks on a sweltering summer morning.

“Guilty," the boy’s mother heard him say. He had been part of a scuffle on a school bus.

In another generation, he might have received only a scolding from the principal or a period of detention. But get-tough policies in US schools in the past two decades have brought many students into contact with police and courts - part of a trend that some specialists call the criminalization of student discipline.

Now, such practices are under scrutiny nationally. Federal officials want to limit punishments that push students from the classroom to courtroom, and a growing number of state and local leaders are raising similar concerns.

In Texas, the specter of harsh discipline has been especially clear. Here, police issue tickets: Class C misdemeanor citations for offensive language, class disruption, schoolyard fights. Thousands of students land in court, with fines of up to $500. Students with outstanding tickets may be arrested after age 17.

Texas also stands out for opening up millions of student records to a landmark study of discipline, released in July. The study shows that 6 in 10 students were suspended or expelled at least once from seventh grade on. After their first suspension, they were nearly three times as likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system the next year as students with no such disciplinary referrals.

Citing the Texas research, federal officials announced last month an initiative to break what many call the “school-to-prison pipeline." Suspensions, expulsions, and arrests are used too often to enforce school order, officials said.

“That is something that clearly has to stop," US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in Washington alongside Education Secretary Arne Duncan. This month, Duncan recounted that in his old job as Chicago schools chief, he was stunned to learn that so many arrests occurred in schools. The first response to student misbehavior, he said, “can’t be to pick up the phone and call 911."

The federal focus comes amid other change. In Colorado, a legislative task force is examining discipline practices, including law enforcement referrals and school ticketing. Los Angeles, police recently agreed to cut back on ticketing tardy students en route to school.

Connecticut officials have begun screening cases after students wound up in court on violations such as having soda, running in the hall, and dressing improperly.

SOURCE



AZ: A strange way to teach English

State education officials will no longer force schools to retrain or reassign English-immersion teachers because they speak with an accent. In an agreement with two federal agencies, the Arizona Department of Education will stop trying to single out teachers who they believe do not have a good command of the English language - a practice that resulted in complaints the state was illegally discriminating against teachers because they are Hispanic or are not native-English speakers.

But Andrew LeFevre, spokesman for the state agency, said that does not mean schools are free to hire whomever they want. Instead, LeFevre said, the settlement with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education simply takes the state education agency out of the mix. LeFevre said it will now be up to local school districts to certify their instructors for these classes are, in fact, fluent.

State School Superintendent John Huppenthal agreed to the settlement even though, LeFevre said, Huppenthal doesn't believe anything done was improper. Nor does state Attorney General Tom Horne, who was state schools chief when the investigation began more than a year ago.

The problem, according to the federal attorneys, is that evaluations of teachers were often "subjective." For example, the federal agencies said, state officials noted one teacher pronounced "the" as "da." Different teachers pronounced "another" as "anudder" and "lives here" came out as "leeves here."

Based on that, schools were required to create plans to correct the problems. Otherwise qualified teachers were removed from classes. The federal attorneys said the state policy forced schools to take action even where school officials did not have concerns about the teachers' English fluency.

LeFevre said that federal law still requires teachers be fluent - it just removes the state from having to make the determination.
Ignacio Ruiz, director of language acquisition for Tucson Unified School District, said his schools have not had any problems with the state, but he applauded the change.

Ruiz said the district recognizes the importance of teachers using proper grammar and that students understand what is being taught. But he said having an accent does not impair learning.

"There are many teachers with accents in many classrooms across the state," Ruiz said. "I know from my personal experience as a principal that students can do well in that setting."

SOURCE



British pupils return to tough subjects

The number of children studying tough subjects at school is to double following a Government crackdown on “soft” GCSEs, The Daily Telegraph has learned. Just days before the new academic year, it emerged that pupils are flocking back to traditional academic disciplines that are seen as vital to the workplace and further study.

Research shows that almost 50 per cent of children starting GCSEs for the first time this autumn will take separate courses in maths, English, the sciences, a foreign language and either history or geography. This compares with less than a quarter of pupils who took GCSE exams last summer.

The rise move follows the introduction of the controversial English Baccalaureate – a new school leaving certificate that rewards pupils who achieve good grades in five traditional subject areas.

It represents the first evidence that the reforms are having a major effect on the subjects studied by children in the last two years of secondary education. This follows repeated claims by the Coalition that education standards were “dumbed down” under Labour.

In the last 13 years, growing numbers of pupils have ditched tough subjects in favour of less rigorous alternatives such as media studies, photography and dance to boost school league table rankings.

It has had a significant effect on the study of key disciplines at college and university and led to a critical shortage of graduates with skills in science, technology, engineering, maths and foreign languages, which are seen as vital to the economy.

But research commissioned by the Department for Education suggests that changes made by the Government are having a dramatic effect on schools in England.

The study – based on a survey of almost 700 state secondary schools – shows rises in the number of pupils preparing to take a combination of GCSEs that leads to the so-called “EBacc”. Some 47 per cent of teenagers entering Year 10 this term – the traditional start of GCSEs – will study EBacc subjects, it was revealed. These pupils are expected to sit exams in 2013. It represents a dramatic rise compared with the 22 per of pupils who took exams in these subjects in 2010 – the last available data.

The number of pupils choosing to study languages is set to rise by more than a fifth compared with 2010, while entries for history and geography are up by at least a quarter this year.

The proportion of pupils opting to take all three sciences – biology, chemistry and physics – will almost double, according to the study by the National Centre for Social Research.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said: “Subjects such as physics, chemistry, history, geography, French and German give students the opportunity to succeed in every field. “The numbers studying a proper range of rigorous subjects has been in decline. Now, thanks to our English Bacc, that has changed.

“More young people are now following the courses which the best colleges and top employers value.”

The Coalition announced that the EBacc would be introduced in late 2010. To achieve it, pupils must gain C grades in maths, English, at least two sciences, a foreign language and one humanities subject – either history or geography. The new measure will be added to school league tables.

According to the National Centre for Social Research study, 52 per cent of schools surveyed said the EBacc had an effect on the type of subjects offered in the curriculum, while almost nine-in-10 said they provided information to pupils and parents about the EBacc.

But the reform has been strongly criticised by teaching unions and Labour, who claim it represents an elitist view of education and punishes children who want to pursue more practical courses.

It is also claimed it will narrow the curriculum and led to huge drops in those taking subjects such as music, art and religious studies, which are not featured in the EBacc.

But a Coalition source said: “Labour and union leaders live in a fantasy world where media studies is valued as much as further maths.

“Between them, over a decade they pushed millions of children into courses that held them back. By bringing honesty to the league tables we are already seeing a return to the subjects that universities and employers value most and this will strengthen education and our economy.”

SOURCE



30 August, 2011

Government schools as an engine of conformity

Green and Leftist notions are openly preached and normative there and questioning is frowned upon. And the heights of culture are now barely mentioned. Over 50 years ago in a small Australian country grade-school, I learnt about Homer and read the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron. Does that happen in any American grade-school today?

Shantanu Sinha contends that “America must break the machine of industrial-era education.” Reiterating what has become a truism, that “public education in America is failing,” Sinha notes the inflexible framework of government schools, “treating students like cogs in a factory.”

The specific complaints outlined by Sinha are hardly to be disputed, and they seldom are. Still, America’s schools remain unresponsive and ailing in the face of the widespread understanding that the problem lies at the very foundation of our system. The problem is not teachers themselves, but the cage they and the education system generally are trapped within.

That cage is forged and locked by the state, designed to promote obedience, and repellent to anything like real education. If students are victims of the rigor mortis that the state has set into American education, then so too are the teachers.

For the state, the family and community, as other, competing sources of values and worldviews, are necessarily dangerous, challenging its role as the ultimate authority on ethical questions central to human life. The family unit further rivals state power in its natural function as an unforced and unplanned safety net, one that inevitably engenders independence from the state-corporate economy and institutions.

In the United States, the Progressive Era’s new notion of citizenship, which underpinned the establishment of (for example) the modern government school system, was quite overtly aimed at undermining the family. Immigrant traditions, particularly as embodied in Catholic schools, were regarded as a threat to the civic culture of the desired homogeneous America, at the center of which would be the total state.

The goal of ensuring schooling for the poor or those incapable of paying was never at the forefront of the movement for state-owned and -operated schools. Instead it was a xenophobic animus against the customs of working-class newcomers and a desire to aggrandize the federal government that motivated the “public school” phenomenon.

We shouldn’t shrink at the specter invoked by the ruling class, that, in the absence of government schools, the needy would go without education, unable to afford tuition. This is, of course, a claim only true in an economic environment like the one we drudge under today, in which the overall cost of living is ratcheted up by an oligopoly market — and in which contemporary “private schools” are made artificially expensive.

Today, the vast majority of Americans are burdened under the strain of taxes and rents to rich elites that are created by barriers to entry and the systematic destruction of self-sufficiency. Absent these government-constructed hurdles to mutually beneficial exchange and cooperation, the necessity of the state in providing education evaporates.

Unless we believe that the state has a magical ability to create valuable resources from nothing — and it seems many do — we shouldn’t give credence to the myth that only coercion is capable of providing education for everyone. True free markets made up of everything from charity, to trade, to complex systems of mutual aid are quite equipped, if allowed, to furnish education — the kind society is asking for rather than the kind foisted on America’s children today.

SOURCE



Without history, we have only ignorance

The failure of British schools to teach history has helped create a wider crisis of identity

History is the most inescapable of subjects: we inherit it, we make it, and we are fated to become part of it. In our education system, however, its study is increasingly neglected: indeed, in a large number of British schools, the end of history is already a reality.

Last year, a total of 159 secondary schools did not put a single pupil forward for history GCSE. In state comprehensives, the number of pupils taking the subject has fallen to 29.9 per cent; in private schools, it has dipped to 47.7 per cent. The only sector where numbers are rising is state grammars, where it is taken by 54.8 per cent.

What the statistics suggest is that the least well-off pupils are also fated to be the most ignorant both of their personal cultural history, and that of the country in which they live. This is, in part, because history is perceived as a “hard” subject. Eager to shine in the league tables, schools with an academically problematic intake shepherd pupils towards “softer” subjects, in which higher marks can more easily be guaranteed. I cannot think of a more depressing illustration of the gulf between “performance” and education.

The pitiful irony is that it is children from poorer, and often more dysfunctional backgrounds that have the greatest need – and thirst – for history. For history, whether of family or nation, is the story of identity, the construction of which is the most primitive, deep-seated urge there is. If you cannot articulate where you came from or what you believe in, and are given few intellectual or emotional tools with which to do so, you are fated to become the most unstable, combustible human material of all.

For an example, one need only look to the recent riots, and that memorable moment in Hackney when a furious 45-year-old grandmother and jazz singer, Pauline Pearce, confronted young rioters against a background of blazing cars. “Get real, black people,” she admonished them, “We’re not all gathering together and fighting for a cause, we’re running down Foot Locker and stealing shoes.”

The difference between Miss Pearce and the rioters – beyond their immediate activities – was that she had a strong conception of history from which she drew evident pride. She spoke of “black people” fighting for a “cause”, words undoubtedly informed by her consciousness of the US civil rights movement and the teachings of Martin Luther King.

In her eyes, the rioters were not simply demeaning themselves as individuals, but shaming a political history that demanded greater dignity. The frenzied youths around her, in contrast, were purely creatures of the moment, and the moment demanded that they seize a pair of looted trainers.

That scene points to a bigger argument: in poorer black communities in both the US and Britain, the hope-filled language of civil rights, rooted in communal experience and holding out the promise of a better future, has too often been displaced in popular culture by the glorification of gangs, drugs, sex and easy money, with little philosophy beyond the buzz of the now. The destructive results of this abandonment of history apply equally to the white working class.

What surprised me, when I became a parent for the first time, is the open craving of small children for family stories. They frequently revisit them, asking for repetitions and expansions, gathering the information in a way that suggests it is almost as necessary to their growth as food.

Now imagine that your own history is something from which you can derive only pain: a story of neglect from the adults around you, of violence, crime or addiction. How then do you describe or construct your identity? For those who are given a strong understanding of national, local, or political history, it can – if taught with imagination – provide an alternative blueprint not only for behaviour, but also pride.

We cannot elude history, but we ignore it at our peril. Cicero argued that “to remain ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child”. If history in schools seems impenetrable, it’s because we’re not teaching it properly – but let’s not deny its lessons to those who need them most.

SOURCE



Call for charter schools in Australia

The Australian Federal government gives large subsidies to private schools so private schooling is made more affordable that way. But charters would up the ante for sink schools

A NSW Liberal MP has contradicted government policy by calling for the creation of fully publicly funded independent "charter" schools in NSW.

Matt Kean, the Member for Hornsby, said some "radical options" needed to be considered in the federal government's review of schools funding.

A Sydney businessman, David Gonski, who is heading the review, will release tomorrow the findings of four research studies his committee has commissioned.

Mr Kean said NSW should follow the lead of the new Coalition government in Western Australia which oversees more than 100 independent public schools.

He told NSW Parliament that as a Liberal, he did not believe "the radical reforms we need in our education system can come from a centralised system run out of Sydney or Canberra". "Personally, I would like to see a debate about charter schools occur in NSW," he said.

"Charter schools are state-funded community schools, accessible to all for no additional compulsory contribution and run by local boards, while meeting minimum standards set down by the state. In other words, while the state continues the funding, the governance and running of the school remains in community hands."

Mr Kean's proposal echoes that of the chief executive officer of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, who has also called on the NSW government and the Gonski inquiry to consider adopting the charter school model. The Herald understands the model is being considered by the federal review.

Mr Kean said the school principal and not the Department of Education should choose new teachers to avoid "arbitrary quotas or requirements set by head office".

The Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, ruled out the proposal yesterday, saying the state government "is not going down the route of charter schools".

A newly released NSW Department of Education paper called "Raising achievement for all: complex challenges", refers to a Stanford University study of 2403 charter schools which found 37 per cent performed significantly worse than public schools in improving maths performance. It also found 46 per cent of charter schools performed no better or worse than public schools.

Christian Schools Australia and the Anglican School Corporation are lobbying for a fairer share of funding for their schools which receive relatively less funding than many similar Catholic schools.

Catholic schools have asked the Gonski inquiry to increase recurrent funding to help them close the gap between the average income level of Catholic schools and government schools "to ensure Catholic schools remain affordable and accessible to families in all regions and all socio-economic circumstances".

SOURCE



29 August, 2011

NJ: Princeton bars freshmen from Greek system

The idea that you can stop students from getting drunk is a laugh. And most universities encourage student clubs of various sorts -- as long as they are not Christian, of course. Universities always have been and always will be an important social experience

Princeton University president Shirley Tilghman is banning freshmen from joining fraternities and sororities as of the 2012-2013 year, after an internal report said the groups encourage exclusivity and alcohol abuse.

Members of sororities and fraternities will also be forbidden from any form of “rush,’’ or recruitment, of freshman students, the Princeton, N.J.-based school said in a statement on its website. Upperclassmen won’t be stopped from joining the groups, said Cass Cliatt, a university spokeswoman.

While about 15 percent of Princeton undergraduates participate in sororities and fraternities, the organizations are not recognized by the university, do not have residential houses, and have been prohibited during much of the school’s history.

The report on campus social life produced last year by a 13-member panel of students, faculty, and staff said that the groups lead students to narrow, rather than expand, their set of friendships.

But Jake Nebel, a Princeton junior who is master of the school’s Alpha Epsilon Pi chapter, argued that fraternities and sororities, often called Greek societies because they are named for Greek letters, do not limit students’ contact with others, and in fact help them expand their relationships.

“Developing close friendships is both difficult and important during freshman year, and Greek societies serve that purpose for the large number of students who are interested in them,’’ he said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Supporters of the societies suggested a compromise that would allow freshmen to join the groups in their second semester of school, Nebel said.

SOURCE



Next lot of British High School exam results will 'mark end of Labour Party's grade inflation'

GCSE results out today will signal the end to decades of relentless ‘grade inflation’ as rigour is returned to the education system, experts believe. Teenagers receiving their results will pass close to a quarter of their exams at grades A or A* – three times the number of those receiving As two decades ago – before the A* was introduced.

But although the grades will be the best in the exam’s history, they will show only a minor improvement compared with previous years. And assessment experts believe pass rates and rates of top grades will eventually plateau in 2012 before falling in 2013.

The ‘significant slowdown’ – after 23 years of rampant increases – marks the end of Labour’s ‘we shall all have prizes’ culture, and has been attributed to measures designed to end the dumbing-down of exams.

In the past year, the culture of endless re-sits has been axed, easy-to-plagiarise course work slashed and exam boards made to penalise pupils for poor spelling and grammar. Under Labour, pupils could score an A* in

More pupils this year have sat tougher subjects following the Coalition’s attempt to remove a ‘perverse incentive’ for schools to teach pupils soft, easy-to-pass subjects.

Previously, a BTEC in ICT was considered equivalent to four GCSEs for the purpose of league table performance. The end of grade inflation at GCSE mirrors the halt in A-level inflation seen last week. Although overall A-level pass rates improved very slightly, the proportion of top grades awarded stagnated.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said the results herald the end of ‘grade inflation’. He added: ‘A chief factor could be the attitudes of examiners who saw it as their duty, under Labour, to help the Government achieve its targets by awarding top grades to more teens. But now the Coalition is in power the focus has shifted from targets to rigour.

‘The Government has also introduced measures to make exams more tough, such as ending the culture of re-sits.’

Some 750,000 teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are receiving GCSE grades today. Overall almost 70 per cent will have an A* to C, 23 per cent an A* or A, and close to 8 per cent an A*.

The results will also show the gender gap is closing, largely due to the scrapping of course work. Girls tend to work ‘harder and more consistently’ than boys, Prof Smithers said, and therefore score higher in course work, now replaced by ongoing assessment by teachers.

For years Labour had been accused of dumbing-down GCSEs. When the A* was first awarded in 1994, just 2.9 per cent of pupils achieved it compared with 8 per cent now. In 1994, 12.9 per cent scored an A or A*, compared with 23 per cent now.

General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers Russell Hobby, said: ‘Grade inflation was a symptom of extremely high stakes. Everyone has been involved in gaming the system, from politicians to exam boards, to teachers to pupils. But when this is done a lot is sacrificed.’

A Government source said: ‘We’re restoring rigour to GCSEs by getting rid of modules and reintroducing marks for spelling and grammar that Labour disgracefully removed.’

SOURCE



First-Grader Faces In-School Suspension for Growing Hair Long to Donate to Cancer Victims

I suspect this kid is being used by an attention-seeking mother. Dress codes are helpful to discipline

A 6-year-old boy was placed into in-school suspension during his first week of elementary school in San Antonio, Texas, for violating the school dress code, Kens5.com reports.

The school claims the boy's long hair and diamond earring do not meet school requirements. According to the district's parent-student handbook, boys cannot wear earrings and hair must be kept neat, clean and well-groomed.

The boy's mother, Kandi Shand, says Gareth was growing his hair out so he could donate it to Locks of Love, a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to cancer victims. "He'll be sitting in the principal's office every day," Shand told Kens5.

Gareth's earring is a small diamond, which he has worn for five years with no problems. The family recently moved from South Carolina to Texas.

Gareth says his classmates tease him about his earring. "I like diamonds," he told Kens5. Shand vows to fight the Blanco Independent School District to allow her son to wear his diamond earring, Kens5.com reports.

SOURCE



28 August, 2011

Why intrinsic motivation works

Amusing to see a libertarian group below arguing for what has long been a Leftist ideal of education -- "non-directive" education. They specifically compare their ideas to those of the radical "Summerhill" school of A.S. Neill. If you want to spend money sending your kid to a school that has a two-thirds dropout rate from their final High School exams, that's fine, I guess.

What the authors below seem not to have loaded is that "non-directive" ideas are now very influential in mainstream schools. In British education they seem to be dominant. The result of course is to turn out kids who know little and have little self-discipline -- Kids who are very poorly prepared for the world of work -- the British disaster, in short. In Britain it is only the graduates from Britain's many very traditional "independent" schools who keep the country running.

In my own days teaching High School, I taught at both a traditional private (Catholic) school and a "progressive" ("non-directive") school so I know the difference well. In the traditional school ALL the kids did well in their final examinations, some exceptionally so. And the school had quite a working class catchment area.

In the "progressive" school the parents were generally wealthy. About half the kids studied nothing, learnt nothing and failed their final High School exams -- thus leaving school with no qualifications -- which well mirrored what they had learnt.

The other half however did quite well because they came from homes where educational achievement was expected. In other words the parents had to provide the motivation that the school did not.

In summary: For a certain bourgeois minority, "progressive" education can work. For mass education it is a disaster. The article below talks theory. I'm talking results -- JR

Intrinsic motivation is the desire to engage in an activity for its own sake. More particularly, this desire comes from inside an individual. Because it adheres to intrinsic motivation as the basis for developing a healthy learning experience, the Summum Bonum Learning Center avoids using punishments, payments, grades, and rewards – all of which are examples of extrinsic motivation and control. The use of extrinsic motivation can be traced to B.F. Skinner’s theory of behaviorism (although behaviorists prefer rewards to punishments). Behaviorism posits that everything an individual does (act, thought, and feeling) is a form of behavior. Consequently, it denies the existence of psychological constructs such as the self, mind, or will. Furthermore, the theory of behaviorism posits that human behavior can be shaped and controlled (or “conditioned”) by the application of external reinforcements that induce a person to respond in specific ways. Educational theories based on behaviorism rely on extrinsic motivators to shape a child’s learning experience and psychological development.

Regardless of the status of psychological constructs such as the mind or self, SBLC rejects rewards and punishments as the basis for shaping a child’s learning experience. Extensive research, compiled by Alfie Kohn in his book Punished by Rewards, shows that extrinsic motivators such as rewards and punishments are ineffective. They appear to “work” for simple, quantifiable tasks, but their impact diminishes with time. Just as important, they are ineffective for tasks involving quality, creativity, risk taking, and long-term commitment. In addition, they tend to shift a child’s reasons for doing things from the task itself to an emphasis on getting the reward. Because they are a rather crude attempt to control a child, they fail to address why children learn. At the same time, they actually de-value learning because they are viewed as bribes to engage in something disagreeable. In the eyes of perceptive children, they are seen as phony ploys, and that perception fosters a feeling of being controlled, which is linked to long-term aggression and resentment.

Extrinsic motivators also have disturbing ethical implications that compromise learning and long-term development – implications that voluntaryists instinctively understand. In a sense, extrinsic motivators reduce human beings to passive machines – things to be switched on and off, slowed down, and speeded up at the whim of some controller. Not surprising, these extrinsic motivators raise the status of the reward-giver above the recipient, creating a controller-controlled relationship – the source of status-based relationships and their widespread acceptance as “normal.” Furthermore, by shifting the attention of the learner from the task to obtaining a reward, they reduce the learner’s level of personal engagement in a task, causing learners to make only the minimum effort needed to obtain the reward. Not surprisingly, they discourage students, instill a fear of failure, create anxiety; and suppress the spirit of cooperation by pitting learners against each other. Is it any wonder that public schools and many private schools are such abysmal failures?

In contrast, intrinsic motivation and the practice of motivational interviewing accustom children to thinking about themselves and their goals without being forced into any mold by a politician or curriculum developer. Intrinsic motivation and motivational interviewing also bring learners into the learning process by offering choices and enabling them to enlarge the scope of their choices. They also support a habit of providing detailed feedback to students and parents while identifying why children learn. With these practices in place, children experience learning as a process of discovery, making mistakes, and accepting challenges – the opposite of “playing it safe” to obtain a good grade or some other reward. A school based on intrinsic motivation engages children in the problem-solving process through both choice of content and collaboration. The children learn to value explanations as a means of understanding, not simply reciting information because they were told to do so.

Just as important, by making use of nonviolent communication (taught by Marshall Rosenberg), the Summum Bonum Learning Center fosters the development of empathy by providing an environment where it is demonstrated by adults and is acted out by children with each other on a regular basis. Most obviously, this will take place as children tutor one another. With no grading curve to shame or uplift the students based on their performance, they will no longer be pitted against each other. Instead, they will be able and willing to help one another to learn. At its heart, this type of environment values the perspective of the learner. Further, both the Summerhill and Sudbury alumni have already demonstrated their resultant emotional well being – evidenced by changes in the behavior of even “disturbed” students as they slowly adjusted to the new, healthier environment of these schools. Moreover, both of these schools demonstrated the “fitness for study” of their graduates; they were usually accepted at the universities of their first choice when they chose to attend these institutions.

One of the most significant effects of the Summum Bonum Learning Center will be played out within the families of the learners. The family is the first social “association” with which a child comes into contact. Furthermore, during the first four years of life, 90% of the brain and its functions are formed (www.acestudy.org). Consequently, since parents are deeply involved in the training for both nonviolent communication and intrinsic motivation at SBLC, the Summum Bonum Learning Center will be helping to reform relationships within the family itself. This will promote healthier interpersonal relationships in the process – the kind that are antithetical to the state. By reforming the two most influential associations in a child’s life (the family and school), SBLC is striking the root in a profound way.

SOURCE



The higher education bubble in Britain

Rachel’s post yesterday got me thinking about university education. Like many, I’m coming to think of it as being the next big bubble. Money is being ploughed into it higher education, and for many – probably most – people, it’s just not worth it. We’ve become afflicted by acute credentialism: to be taken seriously in many professions, you need a couple of letters after your name.

What’s wrong with this? Well, for a start, it makes it harder to break into new jobs. Credentialism raises barriers to entry, and protects certain professions from competition. (Incidentally, occupational licensure – which I consider to be one of the great evils of our time – is worse.) Moreover, it increases the penalties for making bad decisions. Did you spend your teenage years getting drunk and skipping class? Well, sorry, you’ve ruined your life because you can’t get the degree from that Russell Group university that you needed so you could do the job you wanted to do. And God help you if you chose art history instead of accounting on your UCAS form.

Worst of all, credentialism forces people in education to conform so that they get the grades they need. School and university are the two places in people’s lives where freethinking and contrarianism can thrive; where being brilliantly wrong is better than being boringly correct. When your on-paper performance matters so much to your future job prospects, this becomes more difficult. As a result, university becomes more like a training course and less like the thoughtful, argument-filled Academy that it should be.

In a speech at Oxford Brookes University last June, David Willetts said that more than 50% of degree courses were "license to practice" courses. In fact, the true figure is likely to be a lot higher. By now, almost all university courses are credentialist training courses, even humanities and social sciences, because having letters after your name is now so important to finding a decent job.

How did we get here? Mostly, I blame government. Long ago, it was decided that education was the key to social mobility. Targets were set to get people into university, irrespective of their ability. That someone thought it a good idea to get 50% of school-leavers into university says it all – university was just an extension of mass schooling, and shunting as many people through it as possible was the key to making people smarter.

Where a bachelor’s degree once set people apart from the crowd, now it’s a master’s degree. Some day, I’m sure a PhD will be the minimum. Standards have fallen and costs have risen as the bubble grows. Once, everybody wanted to own expensive tulips. Today, people are putting their money into letters after their name. Bubbles are pointless, madness of crowds hysteria driven by easy money, and we're seeing one in education.

People use qualifications to signal their intelligence. It’s hard to show an employer that you’re smart, and a degree is like a good reference letter vouching for you to an employer. But forcing more and more people into university education has devalued that reference. Like trees competing for sunlight growing taller and taller, the credentials have become loftier and loftier to achieve the same ends. The bubble is growing. Someday, it will have to burst.

SOURCE



Time to stop increasing U.S. education spending?

Even The New York Times is now questioning the massive spending increases on education that have occurred over the last generation in a discussion entitled “Spending Too Much Time and Money on Education?”:

Americans are spending more and more on education, but the resulting credentials — a high-school diploma and college degrees — seem to be losing value in the labor market.

Americans who go to college are triply hurt by this. First, as taxpayers: state and federal education budgets have ballooned since the 1950s. Second, as consumers: the average college student spends $17,000 a year on school, and those with loans graduate more than $23,000 in debt. And third, as a worker: in 1970, an applicant with a college degree was among an elite 11 percent, but now almost 3 in 10 adults have a degree.

Given that a high school diploma, a bachelor’s degree and even graduate school are no longer a ticket to middle-class life, and all these years of education delay the start of a career, does our society devote too much time and money to education?

In the discussion, PayPal co-founder and technology investor Peter Thiel notes that “College Doesn’t Create Success,” noting that college graduates make more money than non-college graduates partly because people who are more creative by nature are “more likely to complete college” than less creative people, even if going to college doesn’t make them any more creative or teach them much of value. The fact that many successful people happened to go to college doesn’t mean that college made them successful, anymore than the fact that “Brooklynites who work in Manhattan” make more money than “Brooklynites who work in Brooklyn” proves “that crossing the Brooklyn Bridge makes people more productive.”

Education expert Richard Vedder sums up education’s decline over the last generation as “Spending Triples; Results Slide.” As he notes,

Spending on K-12 schools, adjusting for inflation and enrollment growth, has roughly tripled over the last 50 years, yet there is little solid evidence that today’s students are better prepared for work and citizenship than their grandparents were — and even some evidence that they are less so.

The university situation is similar, with two-fifths of those entering college failing to graduate within six years, the average college enrollee spending less than 30 hours a week on academics, and a major recent study by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa showing that there is little advancement of critical thinking or writing skills while in school. Moreover, college costs are soaring, and almost certainly the education system is becoming less efficient, at a time when labor productivity is rising elsewhere.

The icing on the cake is the total disconnect between student job expectations, college curricula, and the realities of today’s labor market. More college grads are taking low-skilled jobs previously occupied by those with high school diplomas — more than 80,000 bartenders, for example, have at least a bachelor’s degree. If students are successful in graduating (a big “if”), they often are saddled with debt and only able to get a relatively low-paying job.

As students learn less and less, nowhere is the problem greater than in America’s education schools, which people are required to attend if they wish to become teachers. Students in education schools have some of the lowest test scores of any major, and lower high-school grades. But education schools are so easy for students to pass that, as Professor KC Johnson notes,

the average grade in Education classes far exceeds the average in virtually any other major, to such an extent that “Education departments award exceptionally favorable grades to virtually all their students in all their classes.” The University of Missouri provided the most embarrassing results; at the state university’s flagship campus, one of every five Education classes ended with each student receiving an A. The logical inference of such figures . . . is that Education professors have failed to perform the gate-keeping role of ensuring that badly under-qualified students aren’t simply passed along so they can then become public school teachers. . . they reflect the leveling approach that is at the heart of contemporary schools of Education. Competition is bad; cooperation is good. Individual achievement must be discouraged; collegial collaboration is the ideal. “High-stakes” tests and exams requiring critical thinking have less relevance than group work or classroom chats. Such an environment all but ensures that professors will not attempt, much less succeed, in distinguishing much between students’ abilities.

Many education schools are ideologically oppressive places that seem designed to inculcate left-wing ideology rather than produce effective teachers. K-12 education is better in Japan because teachers there learn through apprenticeships and on-the-job training, rather than taking useless classes filled with psychobabble at education school, as George Leef points out in “Nurturing the Dumbest Generation.” “In Japan, there are no education schools at all. Those who wish to become teachers first earn degrees in some academic discipline and some of them are then accepted as apprentices who learn teaching by assisting veterans in the classroom.”

Increasing education spending has often benefited bureaucrats rather than teachers. There are now more college administrators than faculty at California State University. The University of California, which claims to have cut administrative spending “to the bone,” is creating new positions for liberal bureaucrats even as it raises student tuition to record levels:

The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.

Other colleges raised spending on administrators as much as 600 percent in recent years.

States spend hundreds of millions of dollars operating colleges that are worthless diploma mills, yet manage to graduate almost no one — like Chicago State, “which has just a 12.8 percent six-year graduation rate.” People endure useless college courses to get paper credentials, but they get their actual education through internships and work.

College tuition is often a rip-off, since most people who went to college because of rising college-attendance rates in recent years wound up in unskilled jobs (including 5,057 janitors who have Ph.Ds or other advanced degrees), and tuition is skyrocketing faster than housing costs did during the real estate bubble, resulting in a 511 percent increase in student-loan debt. (100 colleges charge at least $50,000 a year, compared to five in 2008-09. Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation, while Obama seeks to double it. Spending has exploded at the K-12 level: per-pupil spending in the U.S. is among the highest in the world.”

SOURCE



27 August, 2011

I spent three years at Cambridge eating walnut cake, but don't let anyone tell you a degree is a waste of time

Tom Utley tells a jolly story below in his usual way but he is notably vague about the way in which university "enriched" his life. He makes it clear that it was not his studies. I suppose I must sound a dreadful swot but for me it was precisely the subjects I studied that I found enriching, with philosophy and economics being most so. I was quite active in student life but the only "extra-curricular" activity of which I have fond memories was my time in an army unit attached to the university. But many men have fond memories of their time in the army

Like so many other history graduates, I’ve found that one of the most useful phrases in the English language is: ‘Sorry, mate, not my period.’

I’ve used it countless times over the years when my sons have asked for help with their homework on the Tudors, or when arguments in the pub have turned to why exactly it was that a nation as apparently civilised as Germany turned so enthusiastically to Nazism in the Thirties. ‘You’re a historian, Tom. Tell us how it could have happened.’ ‘Sorry, mate, not my period.’

The truth (and whisper it quietly) is that I’ve long forgotten almost all the history I was taught during my three idyllic, and heavily subsidised, years at Cambridge in the early Seventies.

Indeed, I can only just recall what my period was — and I’m certainly not going to reveal it here and risk being grilled on it by my boys.

So just how much value is a university degree, in a subject as easily forgotten and with such few obvious practical applications as history?

Over the past fortnight, the question has been weighing heavily on the minds of tens of thousands of teenagers, including my youngest son (of whom more later), as their A-level results have come in and the scramble for the last remaining university places continues.

This year, the dilemma — degree or not degree? — has been thrown into sharper focus than ever by the prospect of tuition fees almost trebling to £9,000 a year from 2012.

For those who fail to find places this autumn, this will mean the truly agonising decision of whether to try again next year, when the price of a three-year course at most universities will rocket from £10,125 to £27,000, while a four-year course will cost a whopping £22,500 more at £36,000.

Rubbing the shine off a degree still further, the Office for National Statistics reports this week that one in five graduates actually earns less than the average of those who went straight into work from school with as little as a single A-level. And that figure takes no account of the many graduates who are currently unemployed or who have never worked.

Seen from another angle, of course, the ONS findings mean that four out of five graduates earn at least as much as less qualified school-leavers, while most earn considerably more.

But, at the same time, the figures do show that for a significant minority the Government’s oft-repeated claim that a degree is worth an extra £100,000 across a working life is pretty meaningless.

I think of my own eldest son, three years after he graduated from Edinburgh with a more-than-respectable 2:1 in Spanish, still working every hour God sends behind a bar in West London for little more than the minimum wage.

Or son number two, the idealist of the family, working for a charity in one of the most run-down parts of the Capital, teaching English to immigrants. If he spent three years studying for his 2:1 in English at Newcastle with a view to getting rich, he’s going a funny way about it.

But then I don’t suppose that when they made the decision to go to university, either of them gave a passing thought to the likely effect of a degree on their future earnings.

Quite right, too. For although a lucrative job may be an attractive by-product of a degree (in most cases), it isn’t really the point, is it?

Certainly, the financial value of a degree played no part at all in my calculations when I accepted Cambridge’s offer in 1972. I went partly because I was strongly attracted by the idea of postponing real life for three years — four, including my gap year — but, mostly, because I was lucky enough to have been to a school where it was simply assumed that everyone would go on to university.

Of course, the decision was very much more straightforward then than it is now, since the State was kind enough to pay my full tuition fees, together with a generous allowance for my food, drink and accommodation.

Indeed, unbelievable as it will sound to my sons’ generation, I graduated after three years with my bank account a few pounds in credit. But if you ask me now what was the point of the taxpayers’ largesse, or what they received in return for it, I’d be very hard pushed to tell you.

If I’d studied engineering, medicine or microbiology, I could probably make a convincing case that the investment was worthwhile, and that my studies had added to the gross domestic product or the general health of the nation. But history?

As I may have confessed before, a typical day for me at Cambridge would begin at about 3pm, long after the morning’s lectures were over, when I would crawl out of bed and make my way to Fitzbillies cake shop, opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum.

There, I would buy a large chocolate and walnut cake and take it back to my college, where I’d eat the whole thing. This would set me up for a stroll across the Cam to the history library, where I’d pretend to read for a while until opening time at the Eagle.

Then began hours of conviviality, which would generally end at three or four in the morning, after a Chinese takeaway, with a bottle of port in somebody else’s rooms.

Only once every seven days, on the eve of my supervision, would I have to break this shameful routine with a frantic all-night session, desperately bluffing my way through the weekly essay that was all that was required of me to keep my place.

True, throughout my working life I’ve paid many times more in tax than I received from the State during those three years.

But while it never did my job-hunting any harm to put MA (Hons) Cantab on my CV, I would be very hard pushed to claim that anything I learned at Cambridge added value to my future work.

Indeed, I’ve long been one of those irritating people — mostly graduates, I notice, since those without degrees tend to attach much greater value to them — who believe that too many young people go to universities these days, while for many of them it’s a waste of time and money.

With that thought in mind, I steeled myself for the worst last week, preparing comforting words for my youngest if he failed to get his grades. It wasn’t the end of the world, I was going to tell him. University really wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be — and it was certainly not a guaranteed passport to wealth. Just look at his two older brothers.

And yet, reader, he passed! And as soon as he broke the news that he’d achieved the grades he needed to get into Sheffield to read Spanish — and, yes, history — my heart fair burst with pride and happiness.

Suddenly, the joy of my three years at university flooded back to me. I realised that in countless intangible ways, those seemingly wasted years were the most hugely enriching time of my life — and that everything I’d been planning to tell the boy was rubbish.

To those who see a degree course as a path to making money, I would still advise caution — especially after the fees go up next year. And anyone considering some of the vaguer-sounding courses on offer, such as community development or social welfare, might do well to check the drop-out rates before starting to run up those massive loans.

But even if you forget the lot, you just can’t put a price on three or four years at a proper university, studying a proper subject such as history. And don’t believe any world-weary old fool who tells you otherwise.

SOURCE



Google chief says UK obsessed with 'luvvy' school subjects and calls for 'Victorian' return of science

The boss of Google last night criticised the British education system for its obsession with ‘luvvy’ subjects at the expense of science and engineering.

Dr Eric Schmidt called for a return to a ‘Victorian’ approach of bringing ‘art and science back together’ so that the UK can compete globally.

The internet giant’s executive chairman said there was a lack of students taking science and engineering in Britain and that something must be done to ‘reignite’ children’s passion for the subjects.

Giving the annual MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, he warned that the UK risks falling behind in the digital age unless it makes drastic changes.

The American tycoon said Britain was in danger of losing ground to other countries, despite being the birthplace of the TV and the computer.

‘Over the past century the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths,’ he said. ‘There’s been a drift to the humanities – engineering and science aren’t championed. ‘Even worse, both sides seem to denigrate the other – to use what I’m told is the local vernacular, you’re either a “luvvy” or a “boffin”. ‘To change that you need to start with education. We need to reignite children’s passion for science, engineering and maths.’

Dr Schmidt, who is worth more than £4billion, said: ‘I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even taught as standard in UK schools. First: you need to bring art and science back together. Think back to the glory days of the Victorian era. It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges.’

In his lecture he praised British television as a success story but warned that ‘everything’ could still go wrong. ‘If I may be so impolite your track record isn’t great,’ he said. ‘The UK is home of so many media-related inventions.

‘You invented photography. You invented TV. You invented computers in both concept and practice. ‘It’s not widely known, but the world’s first office computer was built in 1951 by Lyon’s chain of tea shops. Yet today, none of the world’s leading exponents in these fields are from the UK.’

He said British businesses needed support to become world leaders, otherwise the UK would be the place ‘where inventions are born – but not bred for long-term success’.

Dr Schmidt, 56, who studied electrical engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey, joined Google in 2001 and was chief executive of the company until earlier this year. He is the first non-broadcaster to give the landmark lecture which is dedicated to the memory of actor and producer James MacTaggart.

In the past it has been delivered by some of the biggest names in broadcasting including Jeremy Paxman, Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch.

Dr Schmidt also confirmed plans to launch Google TV in the UK. British TV executives fear the arrival of Google TV, which allows viewers to get internet content on their TV screens, could hit their advertising revenue.

In his speech, Dr Schmidt apologised for not appreciating ‘other’s discomfort’ at the ‘disruption’ caused by Google’s position.

SOURCE



Georgia Professors Offer Courses to Illegal Immigrants

Leftists putting their money where their mouth is for once. The "American civilization" course they intend to teach should be a lulu: A festival of hate, no doubt

As college students return to campus in Georgia, a new state policy has closed the doors of the five most competitive state schools to illegal immigrants, but a group of professors has found a way to offer those students a taste of what they’ve been denied.

The five University of Georgia professors have started a program they’re calling Freedom University. They‘re offering to teach a rigorous seminar course once a week meant to mirror courses taught at the most competitive schools and aimed at students who have graduated from high school but can’t go to one of those top schools because of the new policy.

“This is not a substitute for letting these students into UGA, Georgia State or the other schools,” said Pam Voekel, a history professor at UGA and one of the program’s initiators. “It is designed for people who, right now, don’t have another option.”

The policy, adopted last fall by the university system’s Board of Regents, bars any state college or university that has rejected academically qualified applicants in the previous two years from admitting illegal immigrants. That includes five Georgia colleges and universities: the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Medical College of Georgia and Georgia College & State University. Illegal immigrants may still be admitted to any other state college or university, provided that they pay out-of-state tuition.

The new rule came in response to public concerns that Georgia state colleges and universities were being overrun by illegal immigrants, that taxpayers were subsidizing their education and legal residents were being displaced. A study conducted by the university system‘s Board of Regents last year found that less than 1 percent of the state’s public college students were illegal immigrants, and that students who pay out-of-state tuition more than pay for their education.

“What we’re hoping is that people in decision-making positions will reconsider the policy,” said Reinaldo Roman, another of the organizing professors. “It goes counter to our aims. We have invested enormous resources in these young people. It makes sense to give them a chance at an education.”

For now the course will simply serve to expose the students to a college environment and challenge them intellectually. It will not likely count for credit should the students be accepted at another school, but the professors said they’re seeking accreditation so credits would be transferable at some point in the future.

The five founding professors all work for UGA, but they stress that the program has no connection to the institution. UGA referred a request for comment to the Board of Regents. Regents spokesman John Millsaps said faculty members are generally free to do whatever they want with their free time as long as it doesn’t interfere with their responsibilities as employees of the university system. But he said he didn’t know about enough about the program to comment on this specific case.

Once the professors hatched their plan – which was suggested by an illegal immigrant community member who works with a lot of illegal immigrant teens – they reached out to professors at prestigious schools nationwide to sit on a national board of advisers. One of them is Pulitzer Prize winning author and MIT professor Junot Diaz, who calls policies barring illegal immigrants from state schools cruel and divisive. He said he’s ready to help Freedom University succeed.

“Whatever they ask of me. I’ll do everything and anything I can,” he wrote in an email. “This clearly is going to be a long fight.”
With professors donating their time and a local Latino community outreach center offering a space for free, the program has few costs. They’ve started an Amazon.com wish list asking people to donate textbooks for students and gas cards for volunteers who will drive students to and from class.

Dressed in a black fleece jacket and tan cargo shorts and carrying a black backpack during a protest rally Tuesday at UGA against the policy, 25-year-old Karl Kings looked like he could be headed to class. However, Kings says he’s an illegal immigrant who was brought to the U.S. when he was a year old from a country in Asia that he declined to identify. “Pretty much, I would be a Georgia boy except I wasn’t born here,” he said. “I grew up here my whole life.”

After graduating from high school in suburban Atlanta in 2004, he dreamed of going to college but couldn’t afford to pay out-of-state tuition. He’s gotten by doing odd jobs, but has had to turn down some more stable or challenging job offers because they required proof of eligibility to work in the U.S. He was filling out an application for Freedom University at the end of the rally this week.

The program is currently taking applications, with the first class, American Civilization I, set to start Sept. 8. The five professors will rotate teaching the seminar course on their own time at an off-campus location. All qualified applicants will likely be accepted unless there are so many applications that space constraints force them to limit admissions, said Lorgia Garcia Pena, another of the founding professors.

SOURCE



26 August, 2011

David Starkey's views on race disgrace the academic world, say historians

Notably, they don't say WHERE he is wrong. They just object to generalizations. But rejecting all generalizations is philosophically incoherent. It would make all discourse impossible

David Starkey has brought his profession into disrepute by voicing theories about race "that would disgrace a first-year undergraduate", according to leading academics.

More than 100 historians have signed an open letter expressing their dismay at Starkey's controversial comments on the riots during an appearance on the BBC's Newsnight programme.

They asked the BBC to stop referring to Starkey as a "historian" on anything but his specialist subject, the Tudors, claiming that he is "ill-fitted" to hold forth on other topics.

Signatories to the letter include academics from Cambridge and the London School of Economics, institutions at which Starkey once taught.

Starkey's Newsnight appearance caused outrage earlier this month when he was asked about the cause of the riots and replied: "What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs... have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion."

In a letter to the Times Higher Education magazine, the collective of 102 academics said: "His crass generalisations about black culture and white culture as oppositional, monolithic entities demonstrate a failure to grasp the subtleties of race and class that would disgrace a first-year history undergraduate.

"In fact, it appears to us that the BBC was more interested in employing him for his on-screen persona and tendency to make comments that viewers find offensive than for his skills as a historian.

"In addition to noting that a historian should argue from evidence rather than assumption, we are also disappointed by Starkey's lack of professionalism on Newsnight.

"Instead of thoughtfully responding to criticism, he simply shouted it down; instead of debating his fellow panellists from a position of knowledge, he belittled and derided them. On Newsnight, as on other appearances for the BBC, Starkey displayed some of the worst practices of an academic, practices that most of us have been working hard to change."

The letter asked why the BBC had invited Starkey to discuss the riots when his academic research and published works have nothing to do with the subject.

"In our opinion, it was a singularly poor choice," they said, adding that "the poverty of his reductionist argument... reflected his lack of understanding of the history of ordinary life in modern Britain. It was evidentially insupportable and factually wrong.

"The problem lies in the BBC's representation of Starkey's views as those of a 'historian', which implies that they have some basis in research and evidence: but as even the most basic grasp of cultural history would show, Starkey's views as presented on Newsnight have no basis in either."

Among the signatories are Paul Gilroy, professor of social theory at the London School of Economics; Steven Fielding, professor of political history of at the University of Nottingham; Richard Grayson, professor of 20th century history at Goldsmith's, University of London; and Tim Whitmarsh, professor of ancient literatures at the University of Oxford.

SOURCE



Bloomberg lays off lots of teachers from "no compromise" union

Looks like they goofed. A lesson for others?

Nearly 780 employees of the New York City Education Department will lose their jobs by October, in the largest layoff at a single agency since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002.

The layoffs are a direct consequence of budget cuts to schools, which have occurred in each of the last four years, forcing principals to make tough decisions about what and whom to do without. Most of the burden will be shouldered by one labor union, District Council 37, which represents 95 percent of the workers who will be let go.

School aides were saved from layoffs last year by federal money, but 438 — about 5 percent of their ranks — will now lose their jobs. Some 82 parent coordinators, about 6 percent of the total, will also lose their jobs, essentially severing the main link between parents and administrators at dozens of schools.

The budget cuts have also cost 2,186 teachers their full-time, fixed assignments at city schools. Teachers were spared from layoffs, however, because of an agreement brokered in June between the Bloomberg administration and their union, which offered small concessions in exchange for job security for its 200,000 members, including 75,000 teachers.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Marc La Vorgna, placed the blame for the layoffs squarely on District Council 37 and the other six unions whose members will also be let go. “The unions involved would not agree to any real savings that could have saved these jobs,” he said in a statement.

Lillian Roberts, executive director of District Council 37, countered with a statement in a tone decidedly different from the aggressive stance she adopted during budget negotiations. At that time, she accused the mayor of proposing layoffs even though the city had money to avoid them, a claim his aides repeatedly denied.

On Tuesday, Ms. Roberts focused instead on highlighting the “important role” of the workers designated for layoffs, and asked whether the personnel cuts would disproportionately affect schools “in high-needs areas that are already in a bare-bones situation.”

SOURCE



Shocker! Teacher takes pictures of girls on the school playground!

And that's pornography??

A former Maine middle school teacher is no longer facing child pornography charges. But prosecutors say that if they receive more evidence they could still present the case against 55-year-old Christopher Brown of Monmouth to a grand jury.

Brown appeared Tuesday in Kennebec County Superior Court. After the judge determined no complaint had been filed she vacated his bail and Brown left the court.

District Attorney Evert Fowle says the lack of a complaint Tuesday has no bearing on whether charges will be filed in the future.

But Brown's attorney, Michael Whipple, told the Kennebec Journal it reflects his position that there was no criminal conduct.

Brown was arrested in June after a school official reported students found photos on a classroom computer of girls on the school playground.

SOURCE



25 August, 2011

Build New, Don’t Reform Old

When I wrote my two part critique of the Gates Foundation strategy, one of our frequent comment-writers, GGW, asked: “What would you do if asked by Gates how to better donate his (and Warren Buffett’s) billions?”

Here is a brief answer to that question: Philanthropists with billions of dollars to devote to education reform should build new institutions and stop trying to fix old ones.

In general, existing institutions don’t want to be fixed. There are reasons why current public schools operate as they do and the people who benefit from that will resist any effort to change it. Those who benefit from status quo arrangements also tend to be better positioned than reformers to repel attempts by outsiders to make significant changes. The history of education reform is littered with failed efforts by philanthropists.

Instead, private donors have had much better success addressing problems by building new institutions. And competition from newly built institutions can have a greater positive impact on existing institutions than trying to reform them directly.

Let’s consider one of the greatest accomplishments in American education philanthropy. In the late 19th century, America’s leading universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) were badly in need of reform. They were still operated primarily as religious seminaries and not as modern, scientific institutions. Rather than trying to reform them directly, major philanthropists built new universities modeled after German scientific institutions. John D. Rockefeller and Marshall Field helped found the University of Chicago. Leland Stanford built Stanford University. A group of private donors built Johns Hopkins. Cornelius Vanderbilt founded Vanderbilt. All of these universities imitated German universities with their emphasis on the scientific method and research and were enormously successful at it. Eventually Harvard, Yale, and Princeton recognized the competitive threat from these German-modeled upstarts and made their own transition from a seminary-focus to a scientific focus.

The reform of the U.S. higher education system did not come from a government mandate or “incentives.” It did not happen by philanthropists giving money directly to the leading universities of the time to convince them to change their ways. It happened by philanthropists building new institutions to compete with the old ones.

The same could be done for K-12 education. Matt Ladner has written a series of posts on “The Way of the Future.” He, along with Terry Moe, Clay Christensen, Paul Peterson, and others, envision large numbers of hybrid virtual schools offering higher quality customized education at dramatically lower costs. Students would attend school buildings, but the bulk of their instruction would be delivered by interactive software. The school would need significantly fewer staff, who would concentrate mostly on assisting students with the technology and managing behavior.

Obviously, this kind of school would not be good for everybody. But it could appeal to large numbers of students and be offered at such a low cost that it could be affordable even to low-income families without needing public subsidy or adoption by the public school system.

Gates or someone else with billions to devote to education could build a national chain of these virtual hybrid schools to compete with existing public and private schools. It’s true that Gates is already investing in the development and refinement of the virtual hybrid school model, but a complete commitment to building new rather than reforming old would give him the potential to do what Rockefeller, Stanford, and others did to higher education. Virtual hybrid schools could be the disruptive technology, as Christensen calls it, to produce real reform in education.

Another benefit of the “building new” strategy for philanthropists is that it avoids the Emperor’s New Clothes problem, where philanthropists are encouraged to pursue flawed strategies to reform existing institutions because everyone is afraid to criticize the wealthy donor from whose largess they benefit. With the “build new” strategy there is ultimately a market test of the wisdom of the strategy. If the new institutions are not better, people won’t choose them. If the University of Chicago had been a flawed model, it wouldn’t have attracted enrollment and would have failed to apply competitive pressure to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Similarly, if the virtual hybrid school is a bad model, then it won’t attract students and compete with existing public and private schools.

Edison Schools is an example of a “build new” strategy that failed the market test. They failed to develop technologies or other efficiencies to bring down the costs of operating private schools. And their revised strategy of operating public schools under contract with public school districts was flawed by an underestimation of the political resistance they would face and their inability to control costs or quality within the public system.

But we also have successful examples of the “build new” strategy adopted by philanthropists. In addition to the string of scientific universities built in the latter half of the 19th century, we also have the example of Andrew Carnegie and public libraries. Carnegie helped promote literacy and cultural knowledge by supporting the construction of hundreds of new libraries around the country. He didn’t try to reform existing book-sellers, he just built new. Another example (outside of education) can be seen in John D. Rockefeller’s role in the development of a national park system. Rockefeller privately acquired large chunks of what are now the Acadia, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone national parks. Rockefeller didn’t try to reform the operations of the existing Interior Department. Instead, he effectively privately built nature reserves and then donated them to the U.S. to become national parks.

Of course, this “build new” strategy has limited potential for smaller-scale philanthropy. But for the very wealthy, like Gates, the path to making a significant and lasting difference is to build new rather than reform old. The lasting benefits of what Rockefeller did in higher education and national parks and Carnegie did with libraries are still noticeable today. If Gates and others with billions to devote to education continue to focus on reforming the old rather than building new, I fear their efforts will soon be forgotten after the Emperor’s New Clothes adulation fades when they stop having large sums to give.

SOURCE



So, is it worth getting a degree? One in five British graduates is earning less than a school leaver

One in five graduates earns less than a person who left school with as little as one A-level. The official figures raise doubts that thousands of students have wasted their time with ‘useless’ degrees.

On average, the Office for National Statistics says that a person with a degree or higher academic qualification, such as a PhD, earns £16.10 an hour. By comparison, a person who got at least one A level, or an equivalent qualification, typically earns £10 an hour. But 20 per cent of graduates earn less than £10 an hour, the amount they would have earned without a degree.

The figure could be even worse in reality because the ONS did not include graduates who are unemployed or who have never worked.

The study also said the proportion of graduates doing low-skilled, badly-paid work has quadrupled to 2.3 per cent since 1993. Many of these end up doing jobs which require little or no training such as hotel porter, postman, cleaner or catering assistant.

Business groups have repeatedly warned that employers are turning their backs on graduates. A recent report from the British Chambers of Commerce said too many graduates have ‘fairly useless degrees in non-serious subjects’.

Phil McCabe from the Forum of Private Business said: ‘The value of a degree is dwindling.’

Tanya de Grunwald, founder of Graduate Fog.co.uk, a website for job-seeking graduates, said many are devastated by the salaries they are offered. She said: ‘Finally, the figures from the ONS back up what our graduates have been saying – that they are just not getting the quality of job that they thought their degree would lead to.

‘One politics and economics graduate told me a massive career low was when he got a day’s trial at a pound shop – and did not get the job. ‘People say that a graduate typically earns £26,000, but this doesn’t reflect the reality. Many of them are just scraping the barrel.’

One anonymous contributor to a student website wrote: ‘If I could have my time back, I wouldn’t have gone to university. ‘I graduated last year and work in a friend’s café for £6 an hour.’

A separate report, published yesterday, asked more than 4,000 people whether they would recommend a young person to go to university. Just 29 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 said they would ‘actively encourage’ it, according to the poll commissioned by the Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning.

A spokesman for the Department for Business insisted that university is not an expensive waste of time for many people. She said: ‘Our studies show that graduates earn, on average, around £100,000 more across their working lives, as well as having other benefits such as greater rates of employment and improved health status.’

SOURCE



History ditched by 70% of British pupils as 159 schools fail to enter single student

History is disappearing from state schools, with just 30 per cent of pupils taking it at GCSE. Alarming figures reveal 159 state schools have ditched the subject and did not enter a single student for GCSE history last year. State schools taught the subject to just 30 per cent of their pupils, compared with 48 per cent – almost half – of private pupils.

History experts blamed the demise on schools dissuading pupils from taking the ‘hard’ subject in a drive to improve league table results.

Paula Kitching, of the Historical Association, said: ‘This is a great concern. Young people will know little of the country or society they live in. Schools want good, fast results and don’t want to challenge pupils.’ She added that pupils typically get around 45 minutes of history a week before the age of 14, leaving them ‘unprepared and uninspired’ to do the subject at GCSE.

The 30 per cent figure fell from 36 per cent in 1997. In 1997, 169,298 pupils were entered for GCSE history, compared with 155,982 last year.

There is also great disparity between parts of England. In deprived Knowsley, near Liverpool, just 16.8 per cent of pupils were entered for history, compared with 45.4 per cent in Richmond upon Thames.

Historian Chris Skidmore MP, who obtained the figures under a parliamentary question, said: ‘We need a concerted drive to get history back into schools.’

The Coalition has pledged to encourage more schools to teach history by including the subject in its performance measure the EBacc – English, maths, two sciences a modern language and geography or history.

SOURCE



24 August, 2011

10 Red Bull Facts Every College Student Should Know

Red Bull is a staple on college campuses. When you’re running short on time, but still have lots of work to complete, chances are, you’re going to supercharge your energy with coffee or an energy drink like Red Bull. But although this drink is approved for sale in the US, the long term effects of its use are not known. Even short term effects are not fully understood, but just one can has the potential to alter your health, albeit temporarily.

There are plenty of rumors and accusations swirling around against Red Bull — even those so extreme they claim the active ingredient in Red Bull is a Vietnam-era Department of Defense chemical. Of course, not everything is true, but much of Red Bull’s bad rap does stem from actual events, research, and even deaths. Read on to find out 10 things you should know before you pick up your next can of Red Bull.

Red Bull may have triggered a fatal heart condition

After drinking four cans of Red Bull and various other caffeinated drinks, 21-year-old student Chloe Leach fell to the floor in a nightclub and died at the scene. She died of a rare heart condition, which may have been triggered by the excessive amount of caffeine she consumed. She had no illegal drugs in her system, and according to her mom, was typically careful in her caffeine consumption, only drinking Red Bull occasionally. This rare case is not likely to happen to most college students, but it does serve as a cautionary tale not to drink an excessive amount of energy drinks. It was unknown at the time of her death that a large amount of caffeine could trigger her heart condition.

Red Bull Cola once contained cocaine

In April and June 2009, batches of Red Bull Cola were found to contain cocaine, sparking bans from Taiwan and most states in Germany. However, this scary fact is made less scary when you note that it was between 0.1-0.3 micrograms per litre. Even with a low tolerance per can, a person would have to consume 2 million cans at once before becoming seriously ill from cocaine in the drink. Red Bull uses the extract of coca leaves for flavoring, but insists that they’re only used after removing the cocaine alkaloid, which, according to Bolivian coca growers, is completely unnecessary for safety. Some may recall that Coca-Cola’s original formula included coca leaves.

Red Bull contains lots of sodium

Most people realize that Red Bull has lots of harmful sugars. But sodium may not be as obvious, and although there’s a sugar-free Red Bull option, there’s not yet one with a low sodium option. In one small can, Red Bull packs 9% of your sodium for the day. Have more than one, and you’re nearing 20%. Although sodium is good for those working out, students downing Red Bulls to power through late nights probably aren’t sweating enough to need sodium replacement from a drink. The CDC reports that 90% of the people in the US get too much sodium, raising our risk of high blood pressure, and in turn, our risk for heart disease, stroke, and kidney problems.

Mixing Red Bull with alcohol can be dangerous and deadly

Red Bull cocktails can lead to impulsive, risky behavior, according to a study at Northern Kentucky University. Those who mix alcohol and Red Bull may feel more awake and alert, not really aware of their level of intoxication. You may drink more than you normally would, and make poor decisions as a result. A pre-mixed alcoholic energy drink, Four Loko, was banned after several hospitalizations and even college student deaths of those who drank the concoction to become "wide awake drunk."

Red Bull raises your risk for heart attack and stroke

After drinking just one can of Red Bull, your risk for heart attack or stroke rises, even in young people. An Australian study found that Red Bull makes blood "sticky," with abnormal blood systems similar to patients with cardiovascular disease. Researchers caution against drinking Red Bull for those that may be suffering from stress or high blood pressure. Researcher Scott Willoughby recommends, "if you have any predisposition to cardiovascular disease, I’d think twice about drinking it."

Red Bull has been linked to kidney failure

In Sweden, Red Bull was investigated in the deaths of three young people believed to have consumed the drink. Two of them used Red Bull as a mixer, which is commonly believed to be dangerous, but one of them drank several Red Bulls after a hard workout and died of kidney failure. This prompted officials in Greece to recommend that the drink not be consumed after strenuous exercise, and France, Denmark, and Norway only allow Red Bull to be sold in pharmacies. Although there is no conclusive evidence, scientists do have their suspicions that Red Bull in large amounts can harm your kidneys, and clearly, officials have acted to reduce the risk if it is in fact true.

Red Bull can slow water absorption

Although Red Bull "vitalizes body and mind," it’s not good for exercise, and can keep you from absorbing water due to high levels of caffeine and sugar. Most people already don’t get enough water, especially while consuming Red Bull and other types of drinks. Drinking a Red Bull instead of water could further exacerbate a water deficiency. Red Bull’s representative Kim Peterson shares that the drink is definitely "not a ‘thirst quencher’ or fluid replenishment drink." So if you’re going to drink Red Bull, be sure to keep an eye on your water intake as well.

Red Bull can cause behavior problems

A Catholic high school in Britain had to ban Red Bull after several students exhibited changed behavior, and not for the better. Students became hyperactive, noisier, stopped responding to instructions, and began arriving to school later than they should. Although college students may be responsible enough to avoid such negative actions after drinking Red Bull, there’s no guarantee the drink won’t make you more impetuous and irresponsible.

Drinking too much Red Bull can make your heart stop

After drinking a large amount of Red Bull (approximately eight cans in five hours) a motocross competitor, Matthew Penbross, collapsed in 2007. His heart had stopped, and he needed defibrillation to be revived. At 28 years old and in "peak condition," his only other risk factor for a heart attack was smoking. He regularly drank four Red Bulls each day instead of eating, although labels warn against drinking more than two cans a day. The cardiologist who treated Penbross believes that "excessive consumption of energy drinks had precipitated the heart attack." Excessive consumption of Red Bull certainly seems to be dangerous, and should be avoided even on an occasional basis.
Caffeine intoxication can happen, and it’s scary

Red Bull packs a serious punch of caffeine, and too much can cause serious health problems. There is such a thing as caffeine intoxication, which can include tremors, anxiety, restlessness, rapid heartbeats, and sometimes even death. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University believe that Red Bull and other high-caffeine energy drinks should carry warning labels to alert users to their levels of caffeine content.

SOURCE



Florida teacher who punched student returns to classroom

An art teacher who punched an unruly high school student last spring is back in the classroom - but at a different school.

The St. Petersburg Times reports that 64-year-old Sandra Hadsock was present on the first day of school Monday to teach art to elementary students at a school in Spring Hill, north of Tampa.

She agreed to the move as part of a deal to keep her job.

Hadsock was arrested in May after punching a male student who called her a vulgar name and then advanced on her. The incident was caught on a student's cellphone video camera.

But prosecutors declined to press charges, saying the video didn't provide conclusive evidence that the veteran teacher wasn't acting in self-defense.

SOURCE



Britain thrashing about on student funding

Restricting enrolments at top quality universities and encouraging more enrolments at cheap universities seems very destructive

Institutions such as Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College could be stripped of undergraduate places next year in a move that effectively penalises universities charging the most for degree courses.

Manchester and Leeds – the biggest universities in the elite Russell Group – face losing up to 300 students each, while Sheffield Hallam, in Nick Clegg’s constituency, could be stripped of 450. The disclosure is made as part of Labour research into radical reforms to higher education funding in 2012.

From next year, 20,000 places are removed from all universities before being “auctioned off” to institutions that charge the lowest tuition fees.

Gareth Thomas, Labour’s shadow universities minister, said: “These figures confirm that places at high quality internationally renowned universities for the brightest and best students are set to be axed in order to fund a race to the bottom.”

The Government currently controls how many students each university can recruit. Numbers are capped because of the cost to the taxpayer of providing undergraduates with means-tested grants and upfront student loans to cover tuition and living expenses.

From 2012, English universities can charge up to £9,000 in tuition fees – almost three times the current rate. Figures show the average fee will stand at £8,393.

But to minimise the student loans bill, ministers are determined to ensure that most universities charge far less. In a controversial move, it has proposed creating a “flexible margin” of around 20,000 places to reward the cheapest universities. This would be created by stripping student numbers from each university on a pro-rata basis and awarding them to institutions that charge less than £7,500.

But this means many universities – particularly those charging close to the maximum amount – could be badly hit.

An analysis using data from the House of Commons library shows how many student places each one will lose on a pro-rota basis.

The Russell Group, which represents 16 English universities, faces collectively losing up to 2,300 places. Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and the London School of Economics could lose 50 students each. A further 2,100 could go at institutions belonging to the 1994 Group, which represents smaller research universities such as Durham, Lancaster and York.

But the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills criticised the analysis, which they said failed to take other reforms into account. This includes plans to allow the best universities to recruit unlimited numbers of students who get the best A-level results – at least two As and a B – potentially recouping places lost under the "flexible margin" system.

SOURCE



23 August, 2011

MA: State may seek “No Child” waiver

Massachusetts may join a growing number of states in revolting against an unpopular provision of a federal education law that has caused thousands of schools nationwide, including more than half the schools in Massachusetts, to be designated as in need of improvement.

The schools, nearly 1,000 in Massachusetts, have repeatedly stumbled in boosting state standardized test scores fast enough to fulfill what many educators consider to be an elusive and unrealistic requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act: that all students, regardless of a learning disability, lack of motivation, or any other academic barrier, will demonstrate proficiency - a solid command of grade-level material - on state exams by 2014.

It is a particularly high bar for Massachusetts, whose statewide standards for student attainment are among the toughest in the country. And the consequences of falling short are serious - including the possibility of the state taking over underperforming schools.

Mitchell Chester, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said in an interview last week that Massachusetts is giving serious consideration to filing for a waiver from the 100 percent proficiency rule, under a new program announced this month by the Obama administration.

“For me, the reason filing a waiver makes sense for Massachusetts is that [the rule] no longer does a good job of differentiating our strongest performers from our weakest performers,’’ Chester said. “We have many schools in the Commonwealth at this point that are failing the federal requirements but are not failing schools.’’

But in a state with a reputation for having some of the highest academic standards in the country, the possibility of abandoning the 100 percent proficiency rule is drawing sharp criticism from some education advocates.

A waiver could thwart state efforts to galvanize more school districts to develop innovative approaches to accelerate student achievement, said Christopher Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council and a former state board education chairman.

“The state with the best-performing students in the country shouldn’t need a waiver from a high expectation regulation,’’ Anderson said. “I don’t think Massachusetts should apply for a waiver to reduce expectations on what we expect kids to achieve.’’

The waivers have sparked heated debate in Washington, with many members of Congress arguing that the Obama administration has no legal right to waive the requirement. Administration officials contend that they do, as they deride the George W. Bush-era law for exaggerating the number of potentially failing schools and thereby preventing school districts from devoting their limited resources to the schools actually in greatest need.

More here



Being near a good school is top priority for one in three British homebuyers

More than a third of prospective homebuyers with young children say moving to an area with a good school is their top priority, research shows.

Moving into the catchment area of a good school was the top priority for 37pc of prospective buyers with a child aged 10 or under, according to a study for Santander Mortgages.

Many were willing to pay an extra £12,000 to secure the home – and school – of their choice. The average house price premium for moving to a good catchment area was £5,663. One in four of those with a child aged 11 to 17 named proximity to a good school as a major concern.

Homebuyers in the West Midlands were most concerned about moving into a good catchment area, the survey found, with 26pc citing it as a main priority, double the percentage concerned about the issue the last time they bought a home.

In the North East only 6pc of buyers showed a particular interest in the catchment area the last time they purchased a home, but 16pc of people planning to buy a property in the region now considered it a main priority.

The research suggested that women were much more concerned about moving into a good catchment area than men – they were willing to pay a £7,300 premium, compared with £4,450 for men.

Phil Cliff, a director of Santander Mortgages, said: "People are increasingly concerned about the value of a good education, and in some areas of the country there is a significant amount of competition for places at sought-after schools.

"This has led to many parents trying to move to a particular area deliberately to improve their child's chances of getting into their desired school. Some in-demand property features such as being located within the catchment area of a good school can increase the property value considerably."

SOURCE



School's milk crates fall foul of Britain's health and safety police

For 15 years, a set of disused milk crates had been providing children at an Oxfordshire school with old-fashioned fun. But that was before the health and safety zealots caught sight of them.

Now the 25 crates, which have been used as props for countless games involving ships, cars, dens and castles, have been taken away over fears that pupils could be injured on them.

"In all the time we have had the crates, we have not had a single child hurt themselves," said Anne Bardsley, a teacher at Wychwood Primary school, who described the decision to remove them as "outrageous".

The crates, once donated by a friendly milkman, were seized by Dairy Crest during a routine delivery.

Lyndsey Anderson, from the company, apologised for any distress. "Whilst we understand their disappointment at losing something they had come to view as playground equipment, it remains a fact that milk crates are not toys and current health and safety guidelines require that they should not be used as such," she said.

Mrs Bardsley explained that the pupils were always supervised while playing with the crates and that they helped creative learning. "The children absolutely loved them," she added.

SOURCE



22 August, 2011

Anti-Americanism Disguised as Ethnic Studies in Tucson Schools

The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is in a contentious fight with the state of Arizona over its controversial Mexican-American Studies program. A state law went into effect in Arizona on January 1, 2011, banning the teaching of ethnic studies in K-12 schools. It was prompted by an investigation into TUSD’s ethnic studies curriculum by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne when he was State Superintendent of Schools.

The program is known as “raza studies,” which means race studies, championed by organizations like the far left organization National Council of La Raza. The course does not simply teach Latino youth about their heritage, it goes well beyond that. The textbooks teach Latino youth that they are mistreated by America, training them to become radical anti-American activists. Textbooks include “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America.” Another text "gloats over the difficulties our country is having at enforcing its immigration laws." Benjamin Franklin is vilified as a racist. White people are referred to as “gringos” and “oppressors” of Latino people. “Privilege” is described as related to a person’s ethnicity.

At a TUSD school board meeting on May 10, one upset mother read excerpts from the textbook “An Epic Poem,” including,

My land is lost and stolen, My culture has been raped….we have to destroy capitalism…overthrow a government that has committed abuses….to the bloodsuckers, the parasites, the vampires who are the capitalists of the world: The schools are tools of the power structure that blind and sentence our youth to a life of confusion, and hypocrisy, one that preaches assimilation and practices institutional racism.

Under the new state law, which was drafted by Horne, schools will lose 10% of their state education funding if they are not in compliance. The law bans teaching that advocates overthrowing the U.S. government, returning portions of the U.S. to Mexico, promoting resentment towards a race, and advocating for one race.

In January, during the last days of his term as State Superintendent of Schools, Horne found Tucson’s schools in violation of all four provisions of the law. Arizona’s new Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal ordered an audit of the program earlier this year. 11 teachers and the director of the Mexican-American Studies Department refused to work with the auditors. Instead, they sued the state alleging the law is unconstitutional.

The audit was a failure, only analyzing 9 out of a possible 180 lesson units, or 5%, not enough to make any sort of objective analysis. The auditors gave the teachers advance notice of classroom observation, and allowed them to handpick students for the focus group. Nevertheless, Huppenthal found the program in violation of state law and gave the district 60 days to comply or lose funding. The program may also violate Proposition 107, the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, which passed last year banning preferential treatment or discrimination based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.

The TUSD school board is split over the program. However, at a hearing on Friday, TUSD Governing Board President Mark Stegeman and member Michael Hicks relayed their concerns about the program. Hicks said the program is not in compliance with state law, and Stegeman said the behavior observed in the course is almost cult like.

School board meetings discussing the program have been raucous, with students chaining themselves to board members’ chairs, which prevented one meeting from taking place, and the removal of several people from another meeting.

Former history teacher John Ward, who is Hispanic, is speaking out against the program. He taught Mexican-American studies for TUSD several years ago until it became radicalized. He objected to teaching an American History class which gave students American History credit for learning the history of the Aztecs, without teaching any American History. He was told to sit in the back of the classroom while an ethnic studies proponent without a teaching degree actually taught the class. Due to his objections, he was removed from teaching the class.

TUSD’s test scores are among the lowest in the state. Contrary to the claims of ethnic studies proponents, students who take ethnic studies classes perform worse academically than other students. A school board member asked the district’s statistician to compare those students’ academic success to others. The statistician found that students who take ethnic studies are less likely to pass the state’s AIMS (Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards) test than others. Clearly, the district would be better off transferring its efforts into improving academic scores.

The students are being used by a handful of radical adult activists with an agenda, who are employing classic Alinsky tactics to force through their extremist agenda. They cannot win through legitimate elections and democratic processes, so they resort to intimidation. District superintendent John Pedicone wrote an op-ed for the Arizona Daily Star exposing that adults were behind the students’ disruption at a board meeting, “Students have been exploited and are being used as pawns to serve a political agenda that threatens this district and our community.” In addition to filing bullying lawsuits, proponents have also sent threatening letters to various government officials.

It has been shown that students become angry and resentful after being taught this kind of propaganda. One high school student said she did not know she was oppressed until she was told so in one of these programs. The people of Arizona voted almost 60% in favor of Proposition 107 which banned ethnic preferences and discrimination. It would be an affront to the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., who used civil disobedience to defeat discrimination, if a handful of radical activists successfully use not-so-civil disobedience to bring discrimination back.

SOURCE



How the British Labour Party let a generation down with easy High School courses

The number of pupils studying core GCSEs more than halved under Labour, creating an under-skilled generation, figures have revealed. Experts said the decision to introduce a raft of easy GCSE-equivalent qualifications had led to dumbed-down teenagers deprived of key skills for survival in the workplace.

Only 22 per cent of youngsters - 152,000 - took GCSEs in English, maths, two sciences, a humanity and a language last year. This is a reduction from 50 per cent - 293,000 - in 1997 when the last Labour Government took power.

Instead of rigorous subjects such as physics, tens of thousands sat soft subjects such as a Certificate in Personal Effectiveness, which includes a module on how to claim the dole. Ministers have now called for pupils to sit the EBacc, a new qualification based on the old O-levels which focuses on traditional subjects.

Tory MP Damian Hinds said: ‘These figures show categorically how, over 13 years, the last Labour government undermined the life chances of a generation by steering them away from the subjects that employers value most.’ He said students need a ‘core of recognised key academic subjects’ to ‘compete in an increasingly global marketplace with their counterparts from countries like China and India’.

The figures, revealed today, emerge as around 750,000 children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland prepare to receive a bumper crop of GCSE results on Thursday. It is predicted that nearly one in four could be awarded at least an A grade and one in 12 exams could score a coveted A*. Last summer, the pass rate rose for the 23rd year in a row, with 69.1 per cent of entries achieving at least a C grade.

The figures showing the sharp decline in core subjects - revealed in response to a parliamentary question - followed a massive increase in non-academic qualification awarded since 2004. Some 115,000 non-academic subjects were taken in school in 2004 - and this soared to 575,000 in 2010. Most of these were taken at the age of 16 and included BTECs in subjects such as ICT, which is equivalent to four separate GCSEs.

An independent review by Professor Alison Wolf, of King’s College London, found that 350,000 young people each year are pushed into courses with ‘little to no labour market value’. She said schools have ‘deliberately steered’ pupils away from the more difficult core subjects to improve their league table rankings.

Official figures show that while only 22 per cent of pupils took five EBacc subjects, fewer than one in six achieved them last year. The EBacc measure was included for the first time in the league tables in January this year. It is thought that next year its effect will be seen in results, bringing a halt to the year-on-year rise of pass rates.

Union leaders are against the EBacc. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said it would do more harm than good. She added: ‘The pressure on schools and teachers of the league tables has already led to too much teaching focusing on getting pupils through exams.

‘The Government’s intention to devalue and limit vocational qualifications in league tables will tie schools’ hands and push many people into qualifications that don’t allow them to develop their talents and excel.’

SOURCE



Islamic school racket: Australian Federation of Islamic Councils siphons off taxpayer money meant for education

THE nation's peak Muslim body is extracting millions of dollars in rent and fees from a successful Islamic school in Sydney that draws most of its funding from taxpayers.

Documents reveal the Malek Fahd Islamic School paid the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils $5.2 million last year alone, an amount equal to one-third of the school's educational funding from the federal and state governments.

An investigation by The Australian has uncovered millions of dollars in funds charged to the school, including unexplained "management fees".

The school has also been charged $2.59m in back rent after AFIC retrospectively altered a lease agreement in 2009. Last year, it paid $3.15m in "management fees" to AFIC, which included $2.2m in "management fees back charge".

AFIC, also known as Muslims Australia, has not explained how the fees are being spent by the organisation, despite detailed questions from The Australian.

Malek Fahd, in Greenacre in Sydney's west, received $15.7m in educational funding from the commonwealth and NSW governments last year, accounting for 74 per cent of its overall income.

According to the school's financial statement, it received a total of $19.6m in government funding last year, with the figure boosted by cash from the federal government's Building the Education Revolution program.

The school of about 2000 students is widely considered a success story for Islamic education in Australia, rating 15th in NSW HSC system ratings last year and in the top 10 in 2007.

The school is listed as independent and is a separate legal entity from its landowner and founder AFIC. Government funds are given directly to the school, not to AFIC.

Both are not-for-profit organisations, with the school entitled to a range of tax concessions as a charitable institution.

In 2008, a lease was signed between the school and AFIC that set annual rent for the Greenacre property at $1.3m, but documents reveal that in 2009 the lease was changed to increase the rent to $1.5m a year. The agreement was backdated to January 2004, resulting in a one-off payment of $2.59m going to AFIC.

According to the school's last financial report, another deal saw the school hand over a lump sum of $2.2m in backdated management fees to AFIC, with another $959,800 handed over for management costs in that year.

Neither the school nor AFIC can explain what the management fees are charged for.

AFIC president Ikebal Patel, who has held the role since 2007, is also the chairman of directors of the school. He was briefly removed from the position of AFIC president by the AFIC congress in 2008, but was reinstated after a complex federal court challenge to the legitimacy of the vote.

When asked by The Australian how he explained the fees being charged to the school and where and how AFIC was spending the funds, Mr Patel said: "The financial statement is out there. If you want to discuss anything else I'm happy, but I'm not going to discuss any of this."

Mr Patel has not replied to questions in writing about how the large fees were justified or where the money was being spent.

Mr Patel would also not answer questions as to how much he or other members of the AFIC executive were personally drawing in income or any other payment from AFIC funds.

Intaj Ali, the school's principal, told The Australian that "all questions about the school's finances should be directed to the school's director, Ikebal Patel".

However, it is understood that Dr Ali - a respected educator who has been principal since the school's inception in 1990 - is privately furious over the manner in which AFIC has been using the school's funds.

Senior figures at the school and in the Islamic community are angry the school is being denied its funds to reinvest into the school, which has large classes and generally caters to students of non-English speaking backgrounds and of lower socioeconomic groups. The school receives proportionately larger government funding for this reason.

The Greenacre school site was purchased by AFIC in 1989 for about $2.2m with funds from the Saudi royal family. The school, which charges fees of about $1200 a year, has been responsible for funding the construction of its own buildings.

Along with Mr Patel as chairman of directors of the Malek Fahd, the school's board also has several other AFIC executives. These include AFIC vice-president Hafez Kassem, treasurer Mohamed Masood and assistant AFIC treasurer Ashraf Usman Ali.

Neither the commonwealth nor the NSW education department has provided comment on the matter, but The Australian understands the school's funding issue has been brought to the attention of NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell's office.

SOURCE



21 August, 2011


Texas Schools and crooked Leftist statistics

The canard about Texas school failure came up back in February when the innumerate and statistically incompetent New York Times columnist Paul Krugman tried to argue that low levels of public spending in Texas resulted in poor educational outcomes.

"Compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education."

This was shortly after the brouhaha over public-sector unions — which mostly means teacher unions — in Wisconsin. The Economist chimed in with a snide comparison:

"Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

South Carolina — 50th
North Carolina — 49th
Georgia — 48th
Texas — 47th
Virginia — 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country."

The whole Krugman/Economist thesis was decisively exploded by blogger Iowahawk in a March 2nd post. Iowahawk pointed out what everyone acquainted with psychometric or educational statistics knows: that the only meaningful population comparisons are those that have been disaggregated by race and ethnicity.

In fact, the lion’s share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students — regardless of state residence — tend to score lower than white students on standardized tests, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be … Whatever combination of reasons, the gap exists, and it’s mathematical sophistry to compare the combined average test scores in a state like Wisconsin (4% black, 4% Hispanic) with a state like Texas (12% black, 30% Hispanic).

Iowahawk went on to perform the necessary disaggregation, showing that:

"White students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.

Iowahawk got a huge email bag from that post. He responded with a follow-up on March 5th, from which:

"After controlling for ethnicity, compared to the running-dog Gang of Five non-collective bargaining states (TX, VA, SC, NC, GA), Wisconsin is a (1) middling performer for white students; (2) below middling for Hispanic students, and (3) an absolute disaster for black students."

If I were Rick Perry I’d have Iowahawk’s analysis displayed on billboards on state highways.

SOURCE






Sex education returns to classrooms of New York

For the first time in nearly two decades, students in New York City's public middle and high schools will be required to take sex education classes this year, with a curriculum that includes how to use a condom and discussions on the appropriate age for sexual activity.

The new mandate is part of a strategy the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has announced to improve the lives of African and Latin American teenagers. City statistics show that these teenagers are more likely than their white counterparts to have unplanned pregnancies and contract sexually transmitted diseases.

"It's something that applies to all boys and all girls," the deputy mayor for health and human services, Linda Gibbs, said.
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"But, when we look at the biggest disadvantages that kids in our city face, it is blacks and Latinos that are most affected by the consequences of early sexual behaviour and unprotected sex."

The change will bring a measure of cohesion to a system of programs largely chosen by school principals.

It will also involve New York in the roiling national debate about how much students should be taught about sex.

Nationwide between 2006 and 2008, one-in-four teenagers learnt about abstinence without receiving any instruction in schools about contraceptive methods, an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health found.

As of January, 20 states and the District of Columbia mandated sex and HIV education in schools. An additional 12 states, including New York, required HIV education only, a policy paper published by the institute said. New York City's new mandate goes beyond the state's requirement that middle and high school students take one semester of health education classes. It calls for schools to teach a semester of sex education in 6th or 7th grade and again in 9th or 10th grade.

The New York sex education program is part of a raft of public health efforts introduced by Mr Bloomberg's administration - including the push to reduce the intake of salt and sugary sodas - which has been criticised as interventionist. It is also unique because the city does not usually tell schools what to teach.

"We have a responsibility to provide a variety of options to support our students, and sex education is one of them," the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, Dennis Walcott, said.

Parents can have their children opt out of the lessons on birth control methods.

City officials said that while there would be frank discussions with students as young as 11 on topics like anatomy, puberty, pregnancy and the risks of unprotected sex, the focus was to persuade them to wait until they are older to experiment.

But, while knowing many teenagers are sexually active, the administration wants to teach them safe sex to reduce pregnancy, disease and dropouts.

Classes will include a mixture of lectures, perhaps using statistics to show that while middle school students might brag about having sex not many actually do; group discussions about why teenagers resist using condoms; and role-playing exercises that might include techniques to fend off unwanted advances.

New York high schools have been distributing condoms for more than 20 years but, in the new sex-education classes, teachers will describe how to use them and why, going into areas some schools have never ventured before.

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Britain has launched a revolution in its university system -- says Matthew d'Ancona

The ritual argument about the difficulty of A-levels strikes me as both rude and pointless. It’s hard to imagine anything more offensive or crass to those celebrating their results than telling them noisily that the currency has been debauched and devalued.

The fact is: they don’t have to be told any of this. Their conduct – the brightest teenagers taking six or seven A-levels to mark themselves out as the best – shows that they know the score, perfectly well aware that pass rates don’t improve for 29 years in a row if standards are stable. Today’s smartest sixth formers pursue A* grades with the same zeal that their forebears sought the old-fashioned A. They do whatever is necessary to distinguish themselves, with much greater ingenuity and industry than was necessary in the past.

It cannot be said too often: the row about grade inflation is a row about the failures of past policy-makers, not a critique of today’s teenagers. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is committed to an overhaul of A-levels, following a review of the examination commissioned by the Tories in Opposition and led by Sir Richard Sykes, a former rector of Imperial College London. The themes of the forthcoming reform are encouraging – fewer “modules”, more traditional written tests, the probable withering on the vine of the AS level, new exam boards – but the timetable is not yet settled. I would be pleasantly surprised if the poor, ailing A-level is healed in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Which is not to say that the pace of change in education has stalled. Quite the opposite, in fact: as we trot biliously through the traditional arguments of A-level and GCSE fortnight (“This boy has 36 As at A-level, and yet can’t even get a place at Simon Cowell University”, etc, etc), we risk missing the bigger, fizzing picture. As the aftershock of the August riots continues to pulse through the nation, it is easy to forget the violent mayhem in Westminster last November in protest at the prospective rise in university tuition fees. Inexcusable as those earlier riots were, they at least had a measure of political content: the changes against which the protesters bellowed are indeed revolutionary. In this context, the chaos in university clearing last week symbolised the death throes of the old, or, if you are of an optimistic cast of mind, the birth pangs of the new.

Many of those scrambling for a place last week were desperate to slip under the wire to avoid the new system, which will be implemented in the academic year 2012-13 and lift the annual ceiling for undergraduate fees from £3,500 to £9,000 pa. At present, 60 per cent of university funding is public, and 40 per cent private; those percentages will now be reversed. This represents a transformation, not only in higher education finance but in what, since Cardinal Newman, we have called “the Idea of a University”. It completes a shift that has its distant origins in the introduction of student loans in 1990 and, more decisively, in Tony Blair’s Teaching and Higher Education Act of 1998, which introduced fees of £1,000 pa and began the phasing out of maintenance grants.

It has taken more than 20 years, but the deeply entrenched assumption that a university education was an immutable entitlement which taxpayers (graduates or not) were required to subsidise in full has been replaced by the recognition that it is a privilege, positional good and lifetime advantage that ought to be paid for (in large part) by the beneficiary himself. The corollary is that universities will have to raise their game as teaching institutions if they wish to attract funding, and – an important change – publish details of the A-level subjects taken by successful applicants. As long as the fees they can charge are capped, Britain will not have the unfettered higher-education marketplace that it needs to compete globally. But the trajectory is clear.

One of the most significant proposals in the Higher Education White Paper published in June was that universities should be able to admit as many students as they wish with two As and a B at A-level (or better). In effect, this quietly grants the Russell Group – the top 20 universities – something close to market flexibility. “That’s a radical change,” according to one senior source. “It amounts to the quiet introduction of a higher education voucher.”

Co-payment by the consumer; the rudiments of a university marketplace; a discreetly introduced voucher system – so far, so Conservative. But this is not a Conservative Government; it is a Coalition held together by Sellotape and exhaustion. Although many Tories wish that the expansion of higher education could be halted, the Prime Minister and David Willetts, the Universities Minister, are not among them. Both men share the Lib Dems’ belief that campuses can be engines of social mobility and aspiration. For this reason, the new system will be progressive in every sense that matters. No graduate will pay a penny back until he earns £21,000 or more. Less affluent students will benefit from the new National Scholarship Programme, a fund championed by Nick Clegg that will give successful applicants at least £3,000 to offset the annual costs.

But there is still tension between the Coalition partners over the precise extent to which government should twist arms, pull levers and risk confrontation to force universities to admit applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. All 123 higher education institutions in England are planning to charge more than £6,000 – a decision that automatically makes them subject to much more stringent “access agreements”. Tory ministers are foursquare behind any measures that make universities look at the potential of candidates as well as their achievements. There is no quarrel over the need to get more state pupils into higher education.

The argument concerns means, not ends. Clegg is up for a fight with the vice-chancellors, and has said as much in private. Denied electoral reform at Westminster as his legacy, he demands measurable results on social mobility, especially in the composition of university admissions. The Lib Dems want everything short of formal quotas, which are illegal under the 2005 Higher Education Act. They believe that no progress will be made unless the Coalition bares its teeth. Their Conservative partners fret that the Coalition needs its remaining teeth intact for all the other battles that lie ahead.

Unexpectedly, universities have become the laboratory of this Government’s social ambitions. But these individual ambitions are not necessarily consistent. Is the higher education system to become an ever more independent marketplace of free institutions? Or a great Heath Robinson machine for social engineering? It cannot be both. This is the unanswered question that lurks beneath this year’s university clearing bedlam. Clearing for what, exactly?

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20 August, 2011

We should be philosophical about university

The heartburn Americans feel is over WHICH university or college their kid will get into. Everyone can get into something but what does the something deliver?

In Britain there is a real chance that the kid will get into no university at all, which is a very visible and upsetting failure for many families.

So how to deal with such upsets? I myself cannot help with personal insight as my son's admission to the best university in the State was never in question. He completed a full university subject (in mathematics) during his final High School year and got good marks for it.

So I turn to two approaches by British writers that may help soothe upsets. The first below asks whether bloated modern universities still offer a practical benefit to youngsters and the second points to later success by those who have initially missed the boat

1). What is a university? There’s a discussion in one of A S Byatt’s Frederica novels on the subject. One of the characters gives a beautiful description of the aims of such institutions: in essence, there’s a clue in the word.

A university must be universal: open to support inquiries concerning human understanding of medicine, law, the sciences, mathematics, the humanities. Open, too, in that it should recruit anyone for study; anyone who has the ability to benefit both themselves and the subjects in which they wish to be immersed.

I had the great luck to attend such a place, the University of Glasgow. Remember your alma mater, shouted the dean as we took our degrees, and I always will; the time I spent there remains among the best in my life. You, the British taxpayer, paid me to study for a first degree in a subject I loved: I was allowed, by you, to sink into my discipline and learn how to swim through it. You then paid me to complete doctoral research in one abstruse area of that subject which I found technically fascinating. You never once asked me to prove that the research was “worthwhile”, either in terms of the nation’s GDP or my own future employability; or that, other than through academic aptitude, I deserved the funding.

Neither before nor since have I been so free to pursue inquiry into a topic solely because of the random coincidence that I had a vague talent for it. I don’t exaggerate: I will die grateful to the society that let me do that. There were around 10,000 students at Glasgow when I started in 1986 – hold on to that number.

These days, young people (and their parents) are less likely to ask the philosophical question we opened with. Not so much “What is a university?” as “How much will it cost me to go there?”, followed by (understandably) “How much money will I earn when I’ve got my degree?” These days, there are around 20,000 students at Glasgow: double the number in just over 20 years. There are two other universities in the rest of the city, one extra over the same period. Something has to give when “access” is expanded like this: the vast fees, the concerns over degree quality, the sad complaint (because of what it says about how we view the point of education) that some graduates don’t earn huge incomes.

I do understand that it’s right that people who benefit from a system, as I have, should be expected to pay towards it. But it’s equally undeniable that the path I had through life – bright boy from a good state school goes to a great university; flourishes – is less open to the less wealthy than it was to me in 1986. And yet, more children than ever want a degree.

My partner says something similar about his career. Keith is an electrician, which he became after four years’ apprenticeship in the Department of the Environment: one day a week in college learning theory, and four days a week learning his trade. He received his “deeds” after taking an examination which sounds remarkably like my finals. These days, most skilled trade isn’t managed directly by institutions such as the one which articled Keith. The work is outsourced to third-party contractors, and so there are fewer long-term practical apprenticeships; and the exam now consists of multiple choice questions, which can be taken by anyone, regardless of how much practical work they’ve done. As with the universities, it’s not wrong to worry about a diminution of quality. It’s as though we want more electricians, but we don’t want to pay for them.

Testing the theory, I wrote to a friend who is that living emblem of quality, a London cabbie. I asked Richard how the Knowledge worked and if he had any worries about the maintenance of standards. The good news is that he doesn’t think so – yet. But he does fear that as governance of the Knowledge has moved from the Public Carriage Office (“old-fashioned but effective”) to something called “Taxi & Private Hire” within Transport for London, then one day costs – and access issues – will lead TfL to lump cabbies in with private taxi drivers. We would have more London cabbies, but one of our most venerable institutions would be gone. (Are you reading, Boris?)

This morning a huge number of children, desperate to get into university, might not make it – because the institutions, expanded beyond recognition, still don’t have sufficient places for them. Do we want yet more, vast universities? Or should we wonder if all these children will benefit from attending, in either the intellectual or the financial sense? Compared with 1986 there are more (debt-ridden) graduates, more electricians, more cabbies. The question is: are they better? Or has the drive for volume caused the loss of something precious, something universal, in our training?

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2). It’s the same every damn year. We are so busy totting up the A stars, that we forget about the flops with the D grades and less who’ve nothing to shout about. The newspapers are full of golden, jubilant boys and girls, whooping and crying as they rejoice in their brilliant results; hitting the road to adulthood like greyhounds after an electric hare. Forget the clogged-up clearing system, the desperate scrabble for a diminishing number of university and college places, the world is their oyster Rockefeller.

Good for them – and I mean it, although I’d argue for a legal limit on how many weeks their parents are permitted to bang on at dinner parties about their marvellous children. The mother who is doing her best to scoop Harry off the floor and dust him off into a semblance of employability can do without a running commentary on how Tabitha is getting on with her packing for Oxford.

There are two peaks in competitive parenting: When-will–he-walk? and the tougher, what’s-next-after-school? phase. Well, for those dealing with disappointment and despairing offspring, stay out of the game. The best way to get Harry et al back on track – and see some return on your investment in school fees and parenting time – is to boost their confidence so they can make something of their lives. First mantra: It really does not matter. No, it doesn’t. Somewhere inside that child is a seed of talent. School failed to help it germinate – that is the school’s failure, not yours or your child’s. Stick to this line. There are plenty who succeeded in the University of What Now?: Sir Michael Caine, David Beckham, Winston Churchill and John Major; Mary ''Queen of Shops’’ Portas; Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, and the Apprentice Master himself, Lord Sugar – all triumphed without a university or college education.

I remember a remark that radio presenter and screenwriter Danny Baker made on Desert Island Discs. A bright child growing up in London Docklands, he says he wasn’t tempted by grammar school. “If school made you clever, the Cabinet would be full of geniuses,” he said.

Even if you don’t believe it, pretend you do. My mother did. So abysmal were my results, so low my self-esteem, that I retreated into dead-end jobs with no prospects. But three years after leaving school, I began to read, read and read. I found ''it,’’ the thing I wanted (to do) when I was ready – and the chip fell from my shoulder.

So it will be for that boy or girl who now feels that all is lost. The truth is that flunking it will make an adult of your baby, faster than you can say tuition fees.

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Australian school system hit by faith in computers

Many custom built computer systems never work

It COULD be the next health payroll debacle - but this time it involves Queensland state schools. Problems with the OneSchool computer system have left hundreds of schools complaining of mix-ups with contractors' pay and other bills, leaving their budgets in disarray and "dangerous workloads".

One school was threatened with having its electricity disconnected after a bill was wrongly recorded as paid. Some schools have not paid contractors in time.

Staff have been working weekends to fix the problems, with some allegedly on the verge of nervous breakdowns.

Alex Scott, secretary of Together (formerly known as the Queensland Public Sector Union), said the problems mirrored the health payroll disaster because the department appeared to be in denial about how bad the problems were. "The department must delay the expansion of the rollout of the system until they get it right," he said. "Queensland schools can't afford a health payroll-style disaster."

But late yesterday Education Queensland director-general Julie Grantham said they had decided to delay the final rollout to all state schools, to allow time to fix glitches and support administrators. It followed an order from Education Minister Cameron Dick for more staff training and support.

The OneSchool system is used universally by state schools to produce academic reports, create curriculum and record student details. But it has been the third phase - the rollout of a financial module which was implemented in 635 schools during the last school holidays - which has sparked the most concern.

Queensland Association of State School Principals president Hilary Backus said their biggest concern had been the delays in getting help for problems, which included bills and accounts payable, invoices and bank reconciliations.

But she said QASSP was satisfied the department was doing everything it could to deal with the problems and the system would be better in the long run, once these were sorted out.

Mr Scott said the union had received "hundreds of reports of excessive and dangerous workloads being created by this system". "We've had reports of electricity and maintenance bills not being paid by schools, despite the system showing otherwise," Mr Scott said. "Schools staff are being pushed to the limit to make sure schools can do business."

Problems identified by The Courier-Mail include:

* Supplier details either uploaded incorrectly or not at all, resulting in wrong suppliers being sent invoices. Suppliers that should have been paid within certain time frames were not.

* One school was sent an electricity disconnection notice despite their system telling them the bill had been paid.

* Daily problems with the way bank information was uploaded.

* A budget tool not working, leaving principals with no idea whether they were on, ahead or behind on their budget.

* Staff losing almost-completed work data because OneSchool was timing out with no visible warning.

* Departmental IT support staff taking longer than a week to get back to schools on OneSchool problems.

Ms Grantham said the problems had been a mixture of glitches - which they were fixing as they came up - and human error, which was natural as staff got used to the system. She said schools which took on the system in the June/July holidays had all applied to do so, and said they were ready.

While the State Opposition has compared OneSchool problems to the payroll disaster, Ms Grantham has vehemently denied it. She said OneSchool had nothing to do with the staff payroll. "The system itself as a whole is a very good system, but yes, there have been some processing functions that haven't gone as smoothly as they could."

Mr Dick said OneSchool was a good program that was well supported. "School staff want more support and training and that is what I have directed the director-general to do to."

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19 August, 2011

A terrible puzzle: Black Scientists Less Likely to Win Federal Research Grants

It's no puzzle at all if you look at the facts. Blacks do markedly less well at every level of the educational system. Why should it be otherwise at the top of the tree? And when we account for affirmative action in university admissions and grading, even blacks who do get to the upper levels of the system are going to be less able

A research grant application from a black scientist to the National Institutes of Health is markedly less likely to win approval than one from a white scientist, a new study reported on Thursday.

Even when the researchers made statistical adjustments to ensure they were comparing apples to apples — that is, scientists at similar institutions with similar academic track records — the disparity persisted. A black scientist was one-third less likely than a white counterpart to get a research project financed, the study found.

“It is striking and very disconcerting,” said Donna K. Ginther, a professor of economics at the University of Kansas who led the study. “It was very unexpected to find this big of a gap that couldn’t be explained.”

The findings are being published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

At the N.I.H., which commissioned the study, top officials said they would follow up to figure out the causes of the disparity and take steps to fix it. “This situation is not acceptable,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., a federal medical research agency. “This is not one of those reports that we will look at and then put aside.”

The researchers said they did not know whether the panels that reviewed the grant applications were discriminating against black applicants, whether applications from black researchers were somehow weaker, or whether a combination of factors was at play.

In the study, Dr. Ginther and her colleagues looked at 83,000 grant applications from 2000 to 2006. For every 100 applications submitted by white scientists, 29 were awarded grants. For every 100 applications from black scientists, 16 were financed.

After the apples-to-apples statistical adjustments, the gap narrowed but still existed.

The medical research community has long struggled to recruit more minority scientists. For example, about 2.9 percent of full-time medical school faculty members are black, Dr. Collins said; according to census figures, blacks make up 12.6 percent of the population. But the study now shows that the few blacks who do enter research are not on an even playing field.

“It indicates to us that we have not only failed to recruit the best and brightest minds from all of the groups that need to come and join us,” Dr. Collins said, “but for those who have come and joined us, there is an inequity in their ability to achieve funding from the N.I.H.”

Members of other races and ethnic groups, including Hispanics, do not appear to run into the same difficulties. Asians were somewhat less successful, but the gap disappeared when foreign-born scientists — who may have difficulty with English in writing successful grants — were excluded.

Earlier studies have found that women have largely the same level of success as men in obtaining N.I.H. grants.

The grant applications are reviewed in a two-step process. In the first, an application is assigned to a committee consisting of 10 to 40 people, largely drawn from researchers outside the N.I.H. For each application, three committee members review it in detail and assign a tentative score, and then the full committee discusses the top 50 percent of the applications before assigning a final numerical score to each.

The study found that once final numerical scores were assigned, the second review treated scientists of all groups equally based on the scores.

On the grant applications, researchers are asked to identify their race and ethnicity, but that information is not passed along to the review committees. Still, because the applications are not judged anonymously, the reviewers may know the applicant, and often race is not difficult to infer from the name or academic details. For example, a person who attended a historically black university is likely to be black.

Dr. Otis W. Brawley, who is the chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society and is black, said the cause was not overt racism. “It’s not that they’re out to deny blacks funding,” said Dr. Brawley, who worked as an administrator at the National Cancer Institute, part of the N.I.H., in the 1990s.

Rather, it is more likely an unconscious bias, he said, with the reviewers more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to someone they are familiar with, and with black researchers tending to keep a low profile in the scientific world.

Dr. Collins agreed. “Even today, in 2011, in our society, there is still an unconscious, insidious form of bias that subtly influences people’s opinions,” he said. “I think that may be very disturbing for people in the scientific community to contemplate, but I think we have to take that as one of the possibilities and investigate it and see if that is in fact still happening.”

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11 Most Egregious Examples of Academic Dishonesty

Online colleges still lack acceptance among many people so the article from one of their organizations below shows that traditional colleges have their weaknesses too

Academic dishonesty is a serious concern on college campuses and secondary schools around the U.S., as it seriously undermines the entire purpose of education. Not only does it reflect poorly on students, but the institutions to which they are enrolled as well. While cheating and lying in the classroom is nothing new, in recent years the lengths to which many college kids (and their teachers) are willing to go has shocked and surprised many. This often leads to a call for stricter penalties levied on those violating academic honor codes.

No matter where you stand on cheating or how you feel it should be combated in a school setting, there is no doubt that these cases we’ve collected here are some of the most outrageous examples in recent history. We’d like to hope these eventually mark a turning point in student behavior, but as education becomes even more competitive and expensive, cheating isn’t likely to stop anytime soon.

Southern University Grade Changing

This Baton Rouge college was rocked by a huge academic dishonesty scandal in 2003, when it was revealed that 541 grades had been purposefully changed. Students, both former and current, had been paying a registrar’s office worker for the past eight years to surreptitiously alter their transcripts. Estimates posit over 2,500 individual scores ended up affected. After the revelations, 10 guilty parties had their degrees from the school revoked, 27 more lost credits and the worker who helped them change their grades could be facing up to 10 years in jail. What tipped school officials off? One of the cheating students tried applying to a graduate program there with credentials stating she had previously attended as an undergrad– a degree for which there were no records.

United States Naval Academy Exam Copying

While you’d think all that structure and discipline would deter students from cheating, even military academies aren’t immune from such scandals. In spring of 1994, it was discovered that 134 USNA seniors were involved in a cheating ring. A student obtained a copy of an electrical engineering exam and distributed it to his classmates — for a cost, of course. Others were caught bringing formulas and other information into the exam room. After a two-year investigation, 26 students were expelled and 62 more were found guilty of honor violations and given other, lesser punishments. The matter is still under dispute, however, as many feel the school played favorites and unfairly punished those who came clean, while letting students who lied about their involvement off.

University of Virginia Physics Cheating

Thomas Jefferson would be ashamed to have these students attending the school he founded, especially since the enrolled are bound to a strict honor code barring cheating, stealing and lying. Unfortunately, over 122 students couldn’t stick to it, and in 2001 were discovered cheating on an introductory physics class’ term papers. A student in the course alerted the professor to the issue (though only because he was bitter about his grade being lower) and subsequent investigation of the past few years’ papers revealed 60 as exact duplicates. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only cheating scandal to affect the school, as it was also discovered that over 30 economic graduate students had shared an answer key for a summer course.

Indiana University Dental School Cheating

Nearly half the second-years at IU SChool of Dentistry, a whopping 46, were involved in a cheating scandal in 2007. Either a student or a group of students gained access to protected files via a university computer and got a sneak peak at the exam, which was then shared with others in the class. Another enrollee, presumably appalled by the cheating, tipped off the professor. As punishment for cheating, several were expelled, others were suspended and the rest received letters of reprimand. Nearly all students were reinstated to the school or received lesser punishments after appealing their case.

Los Angeles Charter Schools Cheating Scandal

Six Los Angeles area charter schools were almost shut down for their involvement in a 2010 cheating scandal. The founder, John Allen, has been accused of ordering principals to break the seal on state standardized tests so that students could be quizzed on actual test questions before the formal examinations — ostensibly raising their scores considerably. The governing board of the charter schools suspended Allen and the principals who participated, but declined to fire any of them until an L.A. Times article publicly exposed the scandal. It was this decision that prompted the board to allow the schools to stay open, much to the relief of many LA parents and students.

Atlanta Teachers Change Test Answers

This cheating scandal shocked the education community, as it is the largest one involving American teachers and principals to date. Over 178 education professionals in the Atlanta Public School district are accused of changing student answers on standardized tests to help raise their scores. Additionally, it is alleged that the schools punished whistle-blowers and worked to hide any wrongdoing over the past few years. The scandal has tarnished the reputation of Superintendent Beverly Hall, who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009 largely because of the improved testing scores now believed invalid. Sadly, the school is part of a growing trend, as teachers and administrators struggle to raise test scores and get additional school funding and support. Programs relying too heavily on test scores as an indicator of success frequently leave them feeling as if they have little choice.

Duke School of Business Students Lack Ethics

Apparently shady business dealings don’t just happen in back alleys and board rooms, but classrooms as well. In 2007, Duke discovered that 34 first-year MBA students were cheating on an open-book, take-home exam (the students decided to work on it collectively rather than individually, as was required by the course). The professor noted the similarities in test answers and similar inconsistencies earlier in the year, eventually uncovering the cheating. Nine students were expelled, another 15 were suspended and nine others failed the course. These students aren’t alone, however, as 56% of business school enrollees admitted to cheating one or more times in the past academic year — a troubling stat for any MBA program out there.

Revere High School Honors Cheating

Think the smartest kids in school don’t cheat? Think again. Those highly competitive students often feel even more driven to dishonesty, and that’s just what happened in a Massachusetts high school physics class. Students took pictures of the exam with a cell phone prior to the scheduled date, which were then forwarded to others in the class along with an answer key. About the only thing it helped was creating a disproportionate amount of good grades and assurance that the cheaters all made similar errors. The issue was discovered by an online grading system, and it was later revealed that the majority of the guilty were in the top 10% of their class. Of the 320 students who took the exam, 60 were found to have cheated. The guilty got a zero on the exam and will be barred from participating in any academic honors events during their senior year.

West Virginia University Fake Degree Scandal

Sometimes cheating goes beyond copying test answers and changing grades. That was the case with this 2008 scandal at WVU. The school’s dean and provost awarded a degree to the West Virginia governor’s daughter — apparently without checking (or caring) to see if she actually earned the requisite credits. Heather Bresch, then the COO of Mylan, Inc., was 22 credits shy of the required course hours for the MBA she was awarded. When a local paper called to verify the degree with the school and were told she never graduated, a massive cover-up ensued, with falsification of records and misleading public statements regarding her qualifications. The provost resigned due to his role in the scandal, and has since apologized for putting WVU in a negative light.

University of Minnesota Paper Writing for Athletes

This scandal wasn’t the first time student athletes and athletic departments have been accused of cheating, and it more than likely won’t be the last. The 1999 University of Minnesota basketball season was brought to a halt by the revelation that an academic counseling office manager wrote over 400 papers for 20 different students during the past six years. The incident grew even worse when three other tutors also revealed they had been coerced or pressured into writing papers for basketball players as well. Coach Clem Haskins originally denied the claims, stating he has no knowledge or involvement, but it was later discovered that he paid over $3,000 for the paper writing services. He resigned in the wake of the scandal (and additional revelations that he had committed mail fraud, covered up sexual harassment and put pressure on professors to inflate grades), and the players accused of using paper-writing services were suspended.

University of Central Florida Exam Cheating

Professor Richard Quinn knew something wasn’t right in his strategic management course after students’ test scores were a grade and a half higher than they had ever been before. His suspicions were confirmed when a student anonymously tipped him off. The cheating came as a surprise to many in the class as well as the professor, as the exam room was equipped with anti-cheating cameras — the type found in casinos, even — to help stop just this kind of thing. Apparently, students had gotten a hold of an answer key and circulated it quite widely before the exam. Professor Quinn was furious with students and told them via a videotaped lecture that the guilty could complete the course only if they confessed and took an ethics course. All others would face the consequences from the university, possibly including expulsion. Even worse for the honest members of the class, all were required to retake the midterm exam — even if no evidence against them had been found — as incentive for the cheaters to come forward. All in all, nearly 200 students — a full one third, in fact — were found to have cheated. Many claim they weren’t being dishonest at all and merely thought they were using legitimate study materials to prepare.

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Record race for British university places ahead of £9,000 tuition fees means even pupils with new elite grades miss out

Hundreds of teenagers with straight A* grades were left without a university to go to last night in an unprecedented scramble for places. Despite picking up the elite A-level grade – introduced last year as a new ‘gold standard’ – they face a desperate battle through the clearing system. Only 40,000 places are available with 220,000 youngsters chasing them.

One star pupil from a leading private school learnt yesterday that she had achieved three straight A* grades yet has been rejected by the English departments of five universities. Four thousand students with straight As also had no offers. Unless they secure one through clearing, they face going to university next year when annual tuition fees treble to a maximum of £9,000.

One academic said the competition for places was the ‘fiercest in living memory’.Most of the leading universities did not even enter the clearing system, which allocates last-minute places.

Places are available only in lower-ranked institutions and in less sought-after disciplines such as computing, business studies and biological science. The scramble for places came as:

* Universities minister David Willetts claimed it would be ‘cheaper’ to start courses in 2012;

* Boys closed the gender gap with girls, getting the same number of top grades for the first time;

* Pass rates rose for the 29th consecutive year, with one in four awarded an A;

* Maths and science enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. Maths entries have risen 40 per cent over five years;

* Exam boards were braced for a record number of complaints following marking blunders.

The shortage of places was caused by 682,367 candidates applying for 350,000 places. Around 100,000 of these candidates will have now decided not to go to university, to take a gap year or to study abroad.

This leaves an estimated 220,000 hopefuls – including mature and foreign students and students who failed to get in last year – chasing the 40,000 places. Among them are 62,500 candidates who got their results yesterday and either had not been offered a spot or missed their grades.

It is estimated around 50,000 in clearing had grades equivalent to BBB or above. Although 10,000 extra places were made available, there were 40,000 more applicants than usual, probably because of the fees hike.

The rush saw the University and College Admissions Service website close down for much of yesterday morning as those who had missed their grades tried to secure offers. It failed to cope with a fourfold increase in the number of visits and normal service was not resumed until midday.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, claimed the system was in chaos. ‘It always happens when the pressure on the system is greatest, the cracks begin to show,’ he said. ‘Not only have the students been in the fiercest competition for places in living memory, but the support system for those who have missed out on their grades hasn’t worked properly.

‘Ucas normally does these things very smoothly, but today, of all days, it hasn’t been able to cope. It’s the worst chaos in university admissions history.’

Those students forced to start university in 2012 will graduate with debts of around £57,000, compared with £29,000 for those starting their studies now.

Those who fail to get into university must now decide whether to reapply for next year or look for work.

Exam boards, some of which have had to admit over the summer that they set impossible questions and made errors in papers, are expecting a record number of complaints as desperate students seek to raise their grades.

One board, OCR, has, for the first time, put all papers affected by errors on a website so pupils can see the examiner’s markings. Defending the chaos, Mr Willetts said: ‘What we’ve tried to do, as our bit to easing the stress, is we have delivered again the 10,000 extra places we delivered last year, so there will be once again a record number of places at universities for young people.’

But TUC deputy general secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘Because of the rush to avoid next year’s fees hike, and the Government’s refusal to fund extra university places, record numbers of students will lose out on higher education altogether.’

SOURCE



18 August, 2011

Scores show American students aren’t ready for college

75% may need remedial classes

For many students, getting a high school diploma doesn’t mark the end of a high school education.

Three out of four graduates aren’t fully prepared for college and likely need to take at least one remedial class, according to the latest annual survey from the nonprofit testing organization ACT, which measured half of the nation’s high school seniors in English, math, reading and science proficiency.

Only 25 percent cleared all of ACT’s college preparedness benchmarks, while 75 percent likely will spend part of their freshman year brushing up on high-school-level course work. The 2011 class is best prepared for college-level English courses, with 73 percent clearing the bar in that subject. Students are most likely to need remedial classes in science and math, the report says.

Although the results are slightly better than last year — 24 percent of the 2010 graduating class met ACT’s four thresholds — the report highlights a glaring disconnect between finishing high school and being ready for the academic challenges of college.

These ACT results are another sign that states need to raise their academic standards and commit to education reforms that accelerate student achievement,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday.

While often frustrating for professors who are forced to spend a semester teaching concepts their students should have learned by the end of 12th grade, remedial classes also carry more serious consequences.

Students are much more likely to drop out of college if they feel that they are simply repeating high school, said Bob Wise, former West Virginia governor and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Taxpayers also suffer, Mr. Wise said, by “paying twice” for students to take high-school-level classes again, since most remedial work doesn’t count toward college graduation.

In the 2007-08 academic year, the alliance estimates, remedial courses cost about $5.6 billion — $3.6 billion in “direct educational costs” such as taxpayer contributions to state universities and another $2 billion in lost wages, a result of giving up on higher education and missing out on the bigger paychecks that tend to come with college degrees.

“There simply has not been alignment or coordination between the K-12 system and the higher education system about what students need to know,” Mr. Wise said Tuesday.

“What we know about remedial courses is the student and the taxpayer are paying twice. You’re paying a lot of money to get back” to the academic level students should be at on the day they graduate from high school.

Even those at the top of their high school classes are often ill-prepared for college.

A 2008 report by the education advocacy group Strong American Schools found that 80 percent of college students taking remedial classes had a high school GPA of 3.0 or better.

The ACT results fuel critics’ argument that federal education policy, with its heavy focus on standardized tests, does little to advance real-world goals such as college readiness and career preparation.

“Test-driven policies which claim to be improving U.S. public schools have, in fact, failed by their own standards,” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director at the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. “Proponents of No Child Left Behind and similar state-level high-stakes testing programs … made two promises: Their strategy would boost overall academic performance and it would narrow historic achievement gaps between ethnic groups. But academic gains, as measured by ACT, are stagnant and racial gaps are increasing.”

More HERE



British pupils who take harder A-levels should be given priority for university places, says education minister

Pupils who have taken 'traditional' A-levels such as maths and foreign languages should take precedence in the race for university places, the higher education minister has said.

David Willetts said that more modern subjects such as dance and media studies should not be recognised as core academic subjects. His comments came as around 250,000 A-level students wait to discover their exam results tomorrow.

Mr Willetts told the Daily Telegraph that the points system used in university admissions 'sends a very bad message to young people by implying that all A-levels have an equal chance of helping them into university.'

Currently Ucas, which processes university applications, allocates points based on the grade achieved, regardless of the subject.

Mr Willetts added: '[Ucas] are operating a massive system with more than half a million applications, but they need to signal the importance of some A-levels more than others and that message is often hidden behind a tariff point model.'

He also said that work-based apprenticeships should be accepted as a way to get into university.

Concerns have been raised this year about students who fail to secure a university place and could face the daunting prospect of up to three times higher tuition fees in 2012.

Dr Wendy Piatt, of the Russell Group, which represents top universities, said that it was not realistic to expect every student who wants to go to university to get a place. She said: 'The costs to the taxpayer of a very generous system of student loans and grants make it unrealistic to think that the country could afford to offer a properly funded university place to everyone who would like one. 'In a tight fiscal climate, maintaining the quality of the student experience must be a greater priority than expanding the number of places.'

On Monday Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, expressed concern about the financial burden for those who miss out. She said: 'This year, more than ever, we fear for the thousands of students who miss out on a university place and face paying three times more next year or struggle to find careers advice following Government cuts.'

But Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, sought to play down the fears. She said: 'It must be very dispiriting for students who have worked hard for the results they're receiving to be faced with a barrage of gloom and apocalyptic predictions, that usually turn out to be incorrect. 'People making such unfounded forecasts, usually to score cheap political points, are quite irresponsible and they should consider the impact it has on applicants.

'I would advise people looking to secure a university place to speak directly to specialist advisers at Ucas and at universities.' She said that last year nearly 70 per cent of university applicants were accepted onto a course.

This summer's A-level and GCSE exam papers have been beset by errors. Around 100,000 students in total are thought to have been affected by mistakes found in 12 different exam papers this summer. The blunders ranged from wrong answers in a multiple choice paper to impossible questions and printing errors.

The five exams boards responsible for the errors have promised students that they will not be penalised, in what looks to be a record year in terms of top grades.

Education expert Professor Alan Smithers predicted earlier this week that one in 10 A-levels could be graded as A*, as this year teachers and students have a better understanding of what is required to gain the top result. However, he also suggested that the overall pass rate was likely to stay about the same, perhaps rising or falling by only 0.1 per cent.

SOURCE



Pay teachers on merit, OECD tells Australian government

TEACHERS' skills should be linked to career structure and pay, so that advancement is based on competency rather than years spent in the job.

An international report on Australia's school system, to be released today, endorses the direction of the Labor Government's education revolution, including national tests, reporting of school performance on the My School website, national curriculum and "commitment to transparency".

The OECD report also praises the introduction of national teaching standards, performance goals and the system's strong focus on students' results.

But it urges the Government to go further and identifies "a number of missing links", including that career structures for teachers are not tied to teaching standards.

"This translates into a detrimental separation between the definition of skills and competencies at different stages of the career, as reflected in teaching standards, and the roles and responsibilities of teachers in schools, as reflected in career structures," it says.

The report highlights the need to broaden the use of student assessment, including the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy, and warns against using the results to identify problems in individual students.

It says government has focused on using assessments to hold schools accountable but is yet to look at how the data can be used to make improvements in the classroom.

"The national education agenda has placed considerable investment in establishing national standards, national testing and reporting requirements, while it provides considerably less direction and strategy on how to achieve the improvement function of evaluation and assessment," it says.

The report recommends the performance of non-government schools be scrutinised more closely, saying the reporting of outcomes in private schools is "still limited to a simple set of compliance statements and does not focus on performance".

It also calls for independent reports evaluating schools to be published on My School to provide more comprehensive information about the quality of teaching and warns teachers against using the national literacy and numeracy tests to identify problems in individual students.

The report into student assessment in Australia is part of a broader review by the OECD of the different systems around the world for assessing and evaluating students and schools, and the way they can improve outcomes.

SOURCE



17 August, 2011

The Return of No Child Left Behind

School reform was one of the few prominent successes of former President George W. Bush -- and one that has actually been embraced by his successor, Barack Obama​. But you wouldn’t know it from last week's GOP presidential debate.

Certainly there was plenty of drama -- including the sparring match between Rep. Michele Bachmann and now-former candidate Tim Pawlenty​, and the cheers from attendees after Ron Paul​ declared that he would pull troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The debate and the straw poll that followed two days later have reshaped the race for the Republican nomination. But, interestingly, none of the candidates had anything to say about the steps they would take to follow up on Bush's efforts to address America's woeful public schools. Those schools are spurring a crisis of dropouts who will burden the nation's economy -- and weigh on the federal budget as welfare recipients -- for decades to come.

Save for Herman Cain, who passingly noted that "we need vouchers," none of the candidates offered any sort of coherent views on education policy. As for No Child Left Behind? They didn't even bother. Huntsman made it clear that he did not favor the law, while Mitt Romney -- the most prominent supporter of the law during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts -- couldn't even offer a thought on the Obama administration's announcement last week that it was essentially gutting No Child. The Administration is bypassing Congress and offering waivers to states that allow them to avoid scrutiny under No Child’s school accountability rules. And none of the GOP candidates said a word about it.

In fact, almost none of the candidates have taken strong positions on efforts to expand school choice or even how to overhaul the federal government's $100 billion a year in public-school allotments. The candidates who have some experience in this arena -- like Jon Huntsman -- are running away from their political records. As Utah governor, Huntsman vetoed one school voucher proposal and allegedly watered down another. This is why Huntsman's most prominent former backer, Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne (one of the nation's best-known supporters of school choice), proclaimed last week in Politico that he would never support Huntsman for a presidential bid.

Newly announced candidate Rick Perry​ is the one most likely to be vocal on education. He already won over RedState's Erick Erickson for mouthing off against federal education policy and sparring with the Obama administration over its Race to the Top initiative. He also opposed efforts by Administration-aligned conservative school reformers to coax states into enacting new reading and math curricula standards. From where Perry sits, "Texas is on the right path toward improved education" and doesn't need Washington butting in on its work.

If only. Perry unfortunately takes federal school dollars where he sees fit (belying his conservative credentials) and most of the Lone Star State's gains in student progress occurred under predecessor Bush (who modeled No Child on his work as governor). During Perry's tenure, Texas has fallen behind more aggressive reform-minded states such as Florida in improving student progress, further undermining Perry's credibility on education.

But the silence on school reform among GOP candidates -- and their retreat from No Child itself -- is deafening. Even before Bush teamed up with Ted Kennedy and John Boehner in 2001 to pass No Child -- and despite pretensions that education should be a state and local responsibility -- Republicans (and conservatives) have been as aggressive as Democrats in expanding the federal role.

In 1958, President Dwight David Eisenhower successfully pushed for the passage of the first major expansion of federal education policy, the Cold War-prompted National Defense Education Act of 1958, which led to the first major wave of standardized testing. During the 1970s, Richard Nixon​ fought for further expansion, including the creation of what is now the Institute of Education Sciences, which administers NAEP, the federal test of student progress. And it was Ronald Reagan​ who ushered in the modern school reform movement in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk. Besides spurring the creation of some 250 state and local panels focused on improving teaching and expanding school choice, it would also begin a series of federal efforts that would culminate in school reform moves by George W. Bush's father and Bill Clinton​, including efforts to get states to embrace an early form of national curriculum standards.

Even now, there are plenty of Republicans, including Sandy Kress (who wrote No Child) and former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who still support an expanded federal role in education. Congressional Republicans have also made sure to play their part in continuing a strong federal role, most recently in successfully reviving the D.C. Opportunity voucher program, which was launched a decade ago by another generation of congressional Republicans.

There are also suburban Republicans such as House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, who try to appeal to movement conservatives with talk of reducing the federal role even as they push for higher levels of spending. Even as Kline has pushed to gut No Child's accountability rules (while complaining about the Obama administration's effort to do the very same thing), he has enthusiastically backed increasing the $11 billion the federal government ladles out to special education programs. The fact that special ed has helped fuel the nation's education crisis by labeling illiterate but otherwise capable young men as "learning disabled" has never factored into Kline's thinking.

Meanwhile, Republicans -- especially movement conservatives -- are vocally rejecting anything that seems to increase the federal role in education. Remember the race for the Democratic nomination in 2004? Progressive activists, frustrated that Bill Clinton turned out to be the Republicans' favorite Democrat, rebelled against any candidate who dared embrace Clinton's legacy. The current GOP campaign is shaped by that same kind of rebellion, this time against the excesses of Dubya's presidency (and his legacy, on education, as the Democrats' favorite Republican). Movement conservatives may be generally supportive of expanding vouchers and charter schools, two of the most-prominent elements of Bush's education policy. But the very concept of No Child itself -- especially its accountability provisions -- has always been viewed as federal overreach. Add the very presence of the U.S. Department of Education (whose abolishment has long been sought by conservative reformers), and the Obama administration's effort to require states to adapt Common Core reading and math standards in exchange for federal funding, and No Child becomes a dirty word.

In reality, No Child did little to expand the federal role, or even increase Washington's nine percent contribution to the $591 billion spent annually on schools. If anything, No Child actually signaled the reality that states, not school districts, control the direction of education. Given that school districts, as local governments, are merely tools of state control, this has always been implied. But since the 1960s, successful efforts by teachers' unions to pass state laws forcing districts to bargain with them, along with school funding lawsuits and property tax reforms such as California's Proposition 13, have led to states taking a more prominent role in all aspects of education -- including picking up 48 cents of every dollar spent on schools.

No Child gives a lot of leeway to states when it comes to interpreting how to meet certain requirements, like the one assuring that all teachers be "highly qualified" for instruction. States may be required to improve graduation rates and test scores -- including the aspirational goal that all students are proficient in reading, math and science by 2014 -- but the federal government allows them to develop their own solutions in order to achieve them. The approach hasn't exactly worked out as Bush wanted, as states have figured out how to game the law's flexibility. But the law has shined a much-needed light on the abysmal quality of education throughout the country.

For reform-minded governors on both sides of the political aisle, No Child has proven to be the tool they need to beat back opposition from suburban districts and affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which have long dominated education at the state level. No Child, along with Race to the Top, is the leading reason why 13 states this year expanded school choice, either in allowing for the expansion of charter schools and starting various forms of school voucher plans. This fact (along with the preoccupation with addressing the debt ceiling and healthcare reform) is why congressional Republicans haven't moved forward on revamping No Child.

More HERE



Detroit: Raise education benchmarks now

Federal targets should be scrapped; state is on right track in hiking its own standards

Schools across the state are feeling the heat. Federal education requirements continue to increase while districts struggle to keep up, as recent data show. But parents and other stakeholders must brace themselves for additional poor scores as the Michigan Department of Education aims for higher testing standards on its own.

After comparatively good news last summer, this year's Adequate Yearly Progress numbers aren't sunny. Around 20 percent of Michigan's schools didn't make the objectives, which are key components of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The state Education Department says more schools failed to meet the provisions this past school year, despite overall improvements in test scores.

No Child demands 100 percent proficiency in key subjects by 2014, so states must raise standards each year to reach its unrealistic goal.

This time, 79 percent of schools and 93 percent of districts made Adequate Yearly Progress, down from 86 percent of schools and 95 percent of districts the previous school year. Detroit Public Schools, which met AYP last year with half of its schools reaching benchmarks, saw only a third of its 152 schools make it this year. Around 300 schools in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties did not meet the goals. To achieve yearly progress, schools are measured on a variety of factors, including attendance, English language arts and math scores and graduation rates. Schools also have to test 95 percent of students.

Education department officials weren't surprised by the drop as No Child requirements rose significantly last school year. In the 2009-10 school year, for example, schools needed to have 70 percent of third-grade students proficient in reading and 67 percent in math. Both of those targets rose by 8 percent this year.

Since each state sets its own proficiency benchmarks, some states have kept them low. Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center, says the No Child targets have actually encouraged states to lower their standards — the opposite of its intent. But states that have practically ignored the federal goals, such as Florida, have excelled by setting their own high proficiency and accreditation standards.

Michigan seeks to join these ranks. The State Board of Education has approved strengthening the measure of proficiency, and the board is expected to finalize the new requirements soon. State education officials recently applied for a waiver to the No Child requirements so schools wouldn't be punished as they're adjusting to tougher standards. The U.S. Department of Education is expecting other states to seek respite from the rising targets and has announced waivers in exchange for not-yet-released reform guidelines.

The waivers are a symptom of a bigger problem — after 10 years and billions of dollars, the No Child law hasn't worked.

The federal law should be scrapped. Michigan has a better answer: Raise its own standards and hold schools accountable for meeting them.

SOURCE



British bosses condemn 'useless' degrees which leave graduates unemployable because they lack basic skills

Millions of school leavers and graduates with 'fairly useless' degrees are unemployable because they lack basic skills, a major business lobby group will warn today. The devastating report, from the British Chambers of Commerce, reveals small businesses are frustrated at the quality of applicants, who they say can barely concentrate or add up.

Nearly half of the 2,000 firms surveyed said they would be 'fairly or very nervous' about hiring someone who has just finished their A-levels.

The report warns: 'Too many people [are] coming out with fairly useless degrees in non-serious subjects.' Its findings raise serious questions about the type and standard of education and skills training in Britain.

The group questioned the owners of 'micro-businesses', those with fewer than ten employees. Many have vacancies which they are desperate to fill but were scathing about the quality of candidates.

The report states: 'In general, younger people lack numerical skills, research skills, ability to focus and read, plus written English.'

One unnamed entrepreneur told researchers: 'Plenty of unemployed, mostly without experience in my sector. The interpersonal skills of some interviewed in the past have been very poor.'

Dr Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said the fault lies with the education system, not with the young people themselves. He said new courses spring up because there is demand from would-be students – but not necessarily from businesses.

Dr Marshall said: 'There may be a course in underwater basket weaving, but that does not mean anybody will actually want to employ you at the end of it.' He cited the American television crime drama CSI as a prime example. It sparked a huge growth in the popularity of forensic science courses, but Dr Marshall said demand for these graduates is low.

He said: 'Despite high levels of unemployment, many micro-firms are frustrated by the quality of applicants for vacant roles. 'There is a real mismatch between business needs and local skills supply. Many businesses are unable to find school leavers or even graduates with the right mix of skills.'

Dr Marshall said he is desperate for the country to listen to business and create the right courses to fit the jobs that are available.

More than half micro-firms want to employ new workers over the next four years, but fear they will not be able to find suitable candidates. When asked how they do hire workers, many said they rely on their own family, personal contacts and people who have been recommended.

The report comes amid the growing ranks of business leaders attack Labour’s record on education and skills.

The former boss of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy, described school standards as ‘woeful’ in 2009. His comments were echoed in the same year by former Marks & Spencer chairman Sir Stuart Rose, who said many school leavers were not ‘fit for work.’

Despite a doubling of spending on education since 2000, from £35.8billion to £71billion, Britain has plummeted down world rankings, according to the respected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: ‘We share the concerns of many businesses that too many of our young people leave school without the skills needed for work – in particular in the basics of English and maths. ‘It is good qualifications in these key subjects that employers demand before all others. That’s why we are prioritising them.’

SOURCE



16 August, 2011

Lawsuit Details Depth of Berkeley Jewish Student Harassment

A pattern of harassment and physical assaults by members of two Muslim student groups at the University of California, Berkeley crosses the line from allowing free speech into creating a hostile campus environment, an attorney representing two students argued in court papers filed this week.

Jessica Felber and Brian Maissy are suing the University of California and Berkeley President Mark Yudoff, along with Berkeley's chancellor, the Regents of the University of California, the Associated Students University of California and Berkeley's dean of students for failing to protect them from verbal and physical assaults.

"Defendants assert that this Court is powerless to stop this conduct, claiming that these student groups have 'First Amendment Rights,'" wrote attorney Joel Siegal in response to a defense motion to dismiss. "But these Defendants have an equal obligation to protect the health and safety of Jewish students under Title VI," which requires federally funded educational institutions protect students against discrimination.

The lawsuit claims Berkeley has tolerated years of programming by anti-Israel student groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) despite reports of Jewish students being cursed at, threatened and assaulted.

SJP's stated goal is to promote a "just resolution of the plight of the Palestinians" and employs boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns as well as mock checkpoints and mock "apartheid walls" on campuses throughout the U.S. to promote that cause.

MSA also has a history of supporting radicalism on Berkeley's campus. In 1995, the MSA at UC Berkeley conducted a rally in support of Hamas. In April 2002 the MSA publication at UC Berkeley, Al-Kalima, voiced its support of Hamas and Hizballah. MSA was established by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1963 to serve as a platform to spread Islam and Islamic ideas to college campuses in the U.S.

By continuing to authorize and fund SJP and MSA as official student organizations, the lawsuit alleges, the university allowed itself to become a dangerous and threatening environment for Jewish students. SJP and MSA sponsored "Apartheid Week" events, specifically the mock checkpoints that they stage on campus, create an actionable hostile environment harassment.

Students at the checkpoints carry "realistic looking assault weapons—'imitation firearms'—as part of the event," Siegal wrote, citing a California statute prohibiting such reenactments unless they are authorized by the school.

Declarations by Felber, Maissy, and Berkeley Professor Mel Gordon detail examples of incidents that they felt crossed the line into intimidation and harassment. Each complains that school officials failed to discipline the people involved.

Felber, who graduated in December, said she was physically assaulted on campus by an SJP member in March 2010. Hussam Zakharia, then leader of SJP, rammed a shopping cart into her back during simultaneous "Israel Apartheid Week" and "Israel Peace and Diversity Week" events.

She was treated for her injuries and later received therapy as a result of the incident. After that, Felber said, she was so intimidated that she was afraid to leave home without an escort.
Felber said she already felt intimidated on campus by SJP before that incident. She described an SPJ speaker at an event singling her out and calling her a "terrorist supporter" in front of 100 people.

Brian Maissy, a current student, similarly described the fear created by the annual "Apartheid Week" events. Maissy, who wears a yarmulke, said the students with the fake assault rifles yelled, "Are you Jewish?" at him and other passersby. The event occurs at the entrance to campus and is difficult to avoid, Maissy said.
University officials did not act to protect the students, he said, and he fears for his safety on campus.

The situation dates back at least a decade, according to Mel Gordon, a tenured theater professor at Berkeley. He described being physically attacked by SJP members in 2001 as they protested outside a campus building. When Gordon tried to go inside the building to teach a class, a student beat, spit upon, and kicked Gordon in the stomach.

Gordon sued his attacker and said he was awarded restitution in the case and a member of SJP was convicted. But, to his knowledge, SJP was not suspended or disciplined by school officials. The university continued to sponsor SJP and MSA as student organizations.

He described a letter he sent to school officials in 2008 after an altercation between members of SJP and the Zionist Freedom Alliance. In it, he said he told the chancellor about his experiences with SJP and urged something be done. He did not receive a response.

Jewish students also complained to school officials in 2008, saying they did not feel that the UC police and faculty were doing anything to curb SJP's intimidation and harassment. The officials denied that there was an anti-Semitic crisis on campus and "actively and intentionally" allowed it to continue, lawyers for the students say.

The lawsuit seeks damages, a five-year ban on MSA and SJP on campus, and a loss of university funding for the groups. The plaintiffs also argue that UC Berkeley must create an independent fact-finding body to handle student complaints of hostile environment situations on campus. The case is scheduled for trial September 22.

SOURCE



North Carolina University Puts Out List of 'Gay Friendly' Churches

Will they be putting out a list of theologically conservative churches too?

A North Carolina state university has put out a list of approved "gay friendly" churches for faculty and students raising concerns by at least one professor that taxpayers are inadvertently involved in "telling people where to go to church."

An office with the University of North Carolina's Wilmington campus began circulating the list late last month. It was compiled as part of a broader guide to gay-friendly businesses, nonprofits, health centers and other services in the area.

The "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and allied students, faculty, staff, and alumni" office described the document as a "local resource guide" for "lgbt staff and faculty." The head of the sociology department later suggested professors share it with their students.

But Mike Adams, a criminology professor on campus who went from atheist to Christianity, said the university should not be in the business of recommending churches. "It's just amazing," he told FoxNews.com. "It appears to me to be the height of not just silliness, but government waste."

In the guide, the office listed five Wilmington churches as "gay-friendly religious organizations." Included on the list were a Presbyterian church, a Lutheran church and a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

The LGBT office on campus could not be reached for comment.

But the guide follows a manual put out several years ago by the Georgia Institute of Technology that included summaries of how certain religions and denominations viewed homosexuality. A federal judge in 2008 ordered the religious references to be stripped, declaring the guide implicitly favored some religions over others.

Travis Barham, who worked on the Georgia case as part of the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which has defended Adams in a court battle with the university over a promotion he claims he was wrongly denied, said he's not sure whether the University of North Carolina Wilmington is in danger of a similar violation.
But Barham questioned whether it was appropriate for the university to put out such a guide.

"Whether they're promoting denominations or whether they're promoting individual churches ... that's not the business of a university," Barham said.

Adams, who wrote about the church guide in an online column Monday, has previously called for the abolition of the LGBT group as well as several other identity-related groups on campus. He said the university guide probably has not crossed the legal line, but the university should stop distributing it anyway.

"If I were to stand up and start recommending churches in the classroom, that would be a serious problem," Adams said, claiming a separate UNC campus took down a broader church guide a few years ago following his objections.

SOURCE



British universities crack down on resits of High School exams

Teenagers who attempt to resit their A-levels after failing to get decent grades this week face being shut out of top universities, it can be disclosed.

As applications hit a record high, growing numbers of institutions are cracking down on students who boost their scores by taking exams a second time.

Leading universities such as Edinburgh, Birmingham, Sheffield and University College London said students were often banned from retaking an entire A-level to get on to some of the most sought after degrees such as law and medicine.

Days before the publication of A-level results, other institutions said students taking exams twice would be expected to gain higher scores than the standard offer.

Some universities such as the London School of Economics, Imperial College and Cambridge insisted resits were not ruled out but academics “prefer students who achieve high grades at their first attempt”.

The disclosure is made as teenagers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland prepare to receive their A-level results on Thursday.

With competition for higher education places at a record high, it is believed that as many as a third of the 707,000 university applicants this year will fail to secure a degree course.

It is believed that many will reapply next year, even though annual tuition fees will soar as high as £9,000 for students starting courses in 2012.

The Council for Independent Education, which represents colleges specialising in A-level resit courses, said the number of enquiries to its members had doubled in July compared with the same period in 2010.

At present, students can resit individual A-level modules or retake an entire year. It is believed that between 30 and 50 per cent of pupils retake some papers. But headteachers warned that the sheer complexity of universities’ rules on resits risked damaging the career prospects of thousands of students.

Tim Hands, master of Magdalen College School, Oxford, said: “The more complex it is to get into university, the more it is going to deter people from going at all, particularly if they have not got access to the kind of advice they need to negotiate the applications process.”

Neil Roskilly, from the Independent Schools Association, added: “There are often valid personal reasons why a student has taken resits and there are not always opportunities to make that known.”

The Daily Telegraph gained data from almost 70 universities across Britain on their applications policies. The majority said resits were judged in the same way as first-time exams. Others said they devolved decisions in the issue to individual subjects departments. But the most selective universities often exercised more control.

Aberdeen said it considered students resitting their A-levels but not those applying for medicine degrees. Full A-level resits are also ruled out for medicine courses at Sheffield.

Birmingham said resits were “not allowed for medicine or dentistry” but may be considered on a case-by-case basis for other subjects.

At Dundee, students who fail to meet entry requirements in the first sitting “may be asked for higher [grades] depending on their individual circumstances”, a spokesman said.

Edinburgh insisted students would be expected to complete three A-levels “in one examination diet”, adding: “Candidates retaking A-levels will not normally be considered for selection.”

Imperial prefers exams “to have been taken in one sitting”, said a spokesman. Where students take tests a second time, information on exceptional circumstances such as illness may be taken into consideration. UCL said a “limited number” of courses – notably medicine and law – expected A-levels to be sat in a standard two-year cycle.

But Steve Boyes, chairman of the Council for Independent Education and principal of Mander Portman Woodward College in west London, said: “Once again demand for retaking will be very high.

“This may seem surprising with some vice-chancellors preparing for a collapse in the number of applications next year, due to the higher university fees payable in 2012. “On the other hand, just like last August, there are going to be more than 200,000 disappointed applicants this year, and a good proportion of these will want to re-apply with better grades.”

SOURCE



15 August, 2011

A secret primer from the teachers union on how to thwart parents and stop charter schools

Almost without fail, teachers unions respond to school reform drives by declaring their commitment to improving education collaboratively with parents and community leaders.

In one example, the United Federation of Teachers used just such an argument in fighting in the courts of public opinion and law to block the city from closing 22 failing schools.

Now, though, an internal report produced by the political shop of the Connecticut chapter of the American Federation of Teachers reveals the cynical falsity of the labor leaders' claims to have the best interests of students at heart.

Posted briefly on an AFT website, the document celebrated the weakening of parent-trigger legislation in Connecticut. A blogger named RiShawn Biddle saved the post for all to read.

A trigger law lets parents of kids in a persistently failing school vote to turn it into a charter school. Such a measure, on the books in California, threatens the jobs of unionized teachers.

When the idea surfaced in Connecticut, the AFT swung into action by lobbying the legislature to bottle up the bill in committee. This was described as "Plan A: Kill Mode." It failed.

Then the AFT went to "Plan B: Engage the Opposition," or, in honest terms, pretend to seek common ground by talking while making sure that "parent-trigger advocates ... were not at the table" in key meetings.

Then, in a classic jiu jitsu move, the union helped to write legislation that would create "advisory groups" with parent representation, essentially claiming to embrace an idea it opposed.

The AFT document bluntly admitted: Connecticut's parent committees are "advisory only and have no governing authority." The bill passed.

The union learned lessons, according to the presentation: The "absence of charter school and parent groups from the table" during negotiations was very helpful. And "toxic dialogue from ... parent trigger advocates" was damaging.

AFT boss Randi Weingarten, a former UFT president, was aware of how, er, toxic pulling back the curtain could be. She told a schools blog: "We are proud of the work in Connecticut, but disagree with the wording and what the wording ... represented."

But the strategy stands revealed: Commit to getting stakeholder buy-in as a means to get the unions' way.

SOURCE



"Giftedness"

NYC: On Aug. 7, Stanley Bosworth, the irrepressible, inimitable - and, some would say, impossible - headmaster of St. Ann's, the school I attended for a decade of my formative years, left this world for the next.

St. Ann's, the school he fashioned in his image, was a culture with a rich and rigorous academic curriculum, a total lack of grades ("How do you give a grade on an oboe's sweet, beautiful sound?" Bosworth was often given to utter) and - at the very same time - a rock-ribbed belief in psychometrics, the testing and measurement of intelligence.

It's the last of these that became a magnet for controversy. Beginning in the late 1960s, IQ testing had come under fire from progressive educators concerned that it was incapable of predicting real-world success and biased by gender, class and race. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the use of IQ tests in employment to prevent their being used to screen out racial minorities.

By the 1980s, the very idea of intelligence as a single, measurable quantity was under attack, as Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner successfully advanced the notion that there were at least seven discrete forms of intelligence.

Through all of this, Bosworth staunchly held to his belief in intelligence testing as a means to identify gifted potential. It wasn't the best or the most subtle tool, he acknowledged, but, like a wrench one might variously use as a hammer, a vise and a means of self-defense, in the absence of something better, it got things done.

To his credit, he was always open to challenge. I had the privilege of being accepted into his senior seminar, the one class he taught. In it, we argued about the abuse of testing and demanded that Bosworth define "intelligence" - something he was loath to do. His position seemed similar to the classic line about pornography: "I know it when I see it."

And now, in the decades since Stanley Bosworth built St. Ann's from what one fellow alum described as "an obscure school for bourgeois hippies" into a nationally celebrated institution, the use of IQ tests has gone mainstream.

Here in New York, the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, or OLSAT, is administered to pre-K kids to determine eligibility for gifted and talented programs. It generates an annual frenzy of underground preparation, not to mention massive upwellings of anxiety and rage. In my neighborhood of Park Slope, the cult of the exceptional child is in full effect, with parents doing everything in their power to optimize their offspring's chances at "giftedness" through early education, coaxing and coercion.

The sad thing about this latter-day embrace of psychometrics is that Bosworth, one of its greatest evangelists, refused to allow IQ testing to restrict St. Ann's admissions - forcefully stating that IQ scores were just part of a "holistic assessment" of the candidate, modulated by an understanding of background, special talents and openness to the world beyond pure academics: Music, theater, literature, the arts.

In 2008, the city schools eliminated just such "holistic assessments" for G&T placement, using OLSAT results as the exclusive tool for screening candidates. If only they'd learned the real lesson of Bosworth's legacy: that measuring the gifts and talents of children - like any high-wire act - isn't a matter of brute force and cold calculation, but of exquisite flexibility and balance.

SOURCE



Bright British students seek jobs instead of university

Bright teenagers are preparing to shun university in favour of finding a job amid intense competition for degree courses and fears over rising graduate debt.

Research by The Daily Telegraph shows a sharp rise in the number of students aged 17 and 18 directly applying to leading companies after leaving school and college.

Employers such as Network Rail, Marks & Spencer, Laing O’Rourke, the engineering firm, and the accountancy firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Grant Thornton are reporting huge rises in applications for A-level entry jobs this summer.

The disclosure, which comes days before students throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their A-level results, casts doubt on claims that degrees are a prerequisite for careers at top companies.

The exam results are expected to trigger the most intense scramble for university places ever seen as record numbers of students compete for courses before the introduction of annual tuition fees of up to £9,000 in 2012. With those who missed out on places last year adding to demand, it is believed 220,000 out of 707,000 applicants in total may be rejected.

The demand for places has already prompted an estimated third of universities to declare themselves “full” a week before results are published. In a series of other developments yesterday, it emerged that:

A record one in 10 A-levels could be awarded an A* grade — a rise of around one percentage point on last year — which will make it even harder for universities to pick out the brightest students;

The head of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said that schools were wrecking teenagers’ degree ambitions by advising them to study the wrong A-levels — leaving them locked out of the most academically demanding institutions;

One of Britain’s biggest exam boards, Edexcel, apologised after wrongly posting thousands of A-level results on its website on Saturday — almost a week early.

University still remains the main aspiration for most schoolchildren. But the competition for places is prompting more sixth-formers to seek other options.

These include applying to European universities where tuition fees are often a fraction of the £3,290 being charged in England from September. Yesterday, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, which charges £1,526 a year, said it had seen a 15-fold rise in applications from Britain this summer.

But some teenagers are shunning university altogether to focus on apprenticeships and other school entry-level programmes. According to figures from the Association of Graduate Recruiters, more than a quarter of leading businesses employ staff directly from schools and colleges and a fifth of other companies are considering opening up recruitment schemes to this age group. For the first time, Boots, the chemist, is running an apprenticeship scheme for sixth-formers this year.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has so far received 1,600 applications for just 100 places on its employment scheme for A-level students. Applications for the programme, which leads to a chartered accountant qualification in four years, have doubled in a year and increased almost fourfold since 2008.

Gaenor Bagley, the firm’s head of people, said: “Students are being forced to look at different options for their future and university may not be the right solution. Anyone who has a genuine interest in pursuing a career in business has options.”

Network Rail has received 8,000 applications for 200 places on its paid apprenticeship programme, up from just 4,000 in 2010. The firm said demand for positions was being caused by university leavers unable to find graduate jobs.

Marks & Spencer said applications for just 40 places on its management scheme had increased from 1,100 to 1,600 in a year. Laing O’Rourke said applications for its training scheme had increased by almost 10 per cent to 284 this summer, while Grant Thornton said it had 700 applications for school leaver-entry jobs.

The Government has created more than 100,000 extra apprenticeships for people aged 19 and over this year as an option for young people.

SOURCE



14 August, 2011

State of Illinois deems future soldier unfit for football after basic training

The usual anti-military hatred that pervades the educational establishment

In a shocking decision, the Illinois High School Association board of directors has refused to issue a waiver to a high school football player seeking to play in his school's first game who missed the start of preseason training while away on Army basic training in Georgia.

According to the Paxton Record's Cody Westerlund, Paxton-Buckley-Loda star running back and linebacker Eddie Nuss, who is a rising senior at the school, has been forced to miss nearly all of PDL's preseason training because he is still in the midst of Army basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia. He won't return until August 19, which is only one week before the school's football season opener.

That seven day preparatory period falls short of the 12 days of practice that the IHSA requires all student athletes to go through before participating in a varsity football contest. Knowing that Nuss' practice time could be an issue, the family had a lawyer draw up a signed liability waiver that would have cleared the IHSA and all affiliated groups from any responsibility if Nuss was hurt in the season's opening game, but the IHSA board rejected the waiver citing, "concern for the person's well-being."

"There's this overriding safety issue," IHSA executive director Marty Hickman told the Record. "Our sports medicine committee continues to feel that being in shape and being in football shape are two different things. We've had this issue a number of times. It's been brought to the board's attention, and they've consistently said that they're not interested in modifying this policy.

"Maybe something more from the person [could offer further protection for the IHSA]. But really at the end of the day, it's a combination of that and concern for safety that led the board to believe our currently policy should be enforced."

Not surprisingly, Nuss' father thinks both the IHSA's final ruling -- and the reasons behind it -- shouldn't apply to his son, who is in the midst of intense physical training.

"Four days a week, [Eddie Nuss] runs five miles with his gear and pack on," Pat Nuss, Eddie's father, told the Record. "That's an extra 20-30 pounds in 100-plus degrees. He'll be in better shape than any kid on the football field when he's out of basic training."

That day will come soon, though there is little chance for the younger Nuss to compete on the opening weekend barring a dramatic turn of events, or a court injunction against the IHSA. That second option remains a possibility, and is one that the family may take advantage of, though Nuss' father told the Record that he can't afford to pay thousands of dollars in prospective legal fees.

The drive for additional review of the issue has even been pushed by the local state senator for Paxton, Shane Culta, who brought the issue to the IHSA board and expressed frustration with the sense of hypocrisy he drew from board's final decision.

In the meantime, the returning two-way starter -- Nuss was a star running back and linebacker in 2010 for PBL -- will continue training for his military future, a path in which he will continue to follow in his father's footsteps; the elder Nuss was also a high school football player and is now a military veteran.

"I'm disappointed in them," Nuss' father, Pat, said of the IHSA. "It's not like he's on vacation. He's not running around doing something illegal. He's doing something good for the country."

SOURCE



Sex Education is Mandatory for Children as Young as 11 in New York City

Sex education will become a mandatory part of learning for New York City middle and high school students for the first time in almost 20 years. One of the lessons: how to put on a condom. That’s according to a report from the New York Times, which says the teaching will also advise students on the appropriate age for sexual activity.

The mandate calls for schools to instruct a sex education class in either 6th or 7th grade, and then again in 9th or 10th grade. Students are required to take one semester of the classes. This teaching, of course, brings up the long-time national debate about what, if anything, school should teach their students about sex.

“We must be committed to ensuring that both middle school and high school students are exposed to this valuable information so they can learn to keep themselves safe before, and when, they decide to have sex,” NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott wrote in a letter to principals and obtained by Fox News Radio.

This new requirement comes as a part of the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to improve the lives of young minorities in the city, according to the New York Times. The outreach is especially focused on young men.

“We have a responsibility to provide a variety of options to support our students, and sex education is one of them,” the chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, said in an interview with the New York Times on Monday.

Officials say the intent of the lessons is to get young adults to wait longer before experimenting with sex, but didn’t shy away from admitting there would be indiscreet discussion about graphic topics such as anatomy, pregnancy and puberty with children as young as 11.

Parents do have the option to remove their children from certain talks about birth-control methods. Also, local principals will be able to tweak the cirriculum to a certain extent, keeping their specific students and families in mind.

That said, school administrators say they are expecting some backlash from the community. “We’re going to have to be the bridge between the chancellor’s requirements and the community,” said Casimiro Cibelli, the principal of a Bronx middle school, where many of the students come from immigrant, religious families with traditional views on sex. “Hopefully, we’ll allay their concerns because of their trust in us.”

Ray Parascando, pastor of Crossroads Church, called the news “disheartening.” “Children are being forced to learn about this away from home,” he told Fox News Radio. “There’s nothing wrong with learning about the human body, but when you start going into discourses on sexuality, I worry that we’re opening students up to other agendas.”

While some have taken up arms, New York officials say sex education classes have been a point of contention before. They also point out that high schools in New York have been distributing condoms for more than 20 years.

The mandatory classes will begin in this coming school year for students in New York City.

SOURCE



Britain: Evangelical church application to set up new free school where it will teach creationism is approved

An evangelical church with creationism at the heart of its belief system has been given outline approval to run a free school. An application by the Everyday Champions Church, based in Newark, Nottinghamshire, has been accepted by the Department for Education. The church intends to teach the biblical belief that God created the world in six days, but evolution will only be taught as a 'theory'.

Education Secretary Michael Gove, had promised that creationism will not be taught in free schools. He is 'crystal clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact', the Department of Education confirmed.

But in January he said he would consider applications from creationist groups on a case-by-case basis.

Now it has emerged that a panel of civil servants interviewed Everyday Champions Church leaders last week after their initial application was approved. It is not known if they agreed to drop plans to teach creationism. Officials told the Daily Telegraph they could not comment on the application but each one would be treated with 'due diligence.'

Free schools can be set up by charities, universities, businesses, educational groups, teachers and groups of parents. They are independent from local authorities and do not have to follow the national curriculum. However, lessons must be 'broad and balanced.' As with independent schools, free school teachers will not need formal teaching qualifications.

The church wants to open the new 625-pupil school in September next year and says there are currently not enough secondary places available in the area.

Pastor Gareth Morgan, the church's leader, told the Independent: 'Creationism will be embodied as a belief at the Everyday Champions Academy but will not be taught in the sciences. Similarly, evolution will be taught as a theory.'

The church's website says the new school, with will be 'multicultural in philosophy and will welcome children from all faiths or none'. However, it adds that the 'values of the Christian faith will be the foundation of the school philosophy'.

The website says: 'We believe that the Bible is God's Word. It is accurate, authoritative and applicable to our every day lives.'

Secular groups have criticised education officials for accepting the application and were 'astonished ' it was even considered. Richy Thompson, of the British Humanist Assocaition, said: 'Everyday Champions Church have been very clear that they intend to teach creationism as valid, and sideline evolution as just ‘a theory’.

'Given this, how can the Department for Education have now allowed this proposal to pass through to the interview stage? '‘The creep of creationism into the English education system remains a serious concern, and the Department have a lot more work to do if they want to stop extremist groups from opening free schools.’

The Government has approved 35 free school applications to move to the business case and plan stage, and eight of these have been given the go ahead to move into the pre-opening stage.

SOURCE



13 August, 2011

Indoctrination Fridays With Social Justice Math

Those of us who attended public schools before “social justice” spread through the curriculum like a bad infection probably remember sitting in math class and working through problems such as this one:

Leroy has one quarter, one dime, one nickel, and one penny. Two of the coins are in his left pocket and the other two coins are in his right pocket. The coins have been randomly placed in the two pockets.

What is the probability that Leroy will be able to purchase a 30-cent candy bar with the two coins in his left pocket? Using the coins, explain your reasoning.

We didn’t know it at the time, but while we busily charted all of Leroy’s different coin combinations, we were actually being taught to tacitly approve of America’s exploitative capitalistic system.

Think that’s taking things a bit too far?

Read the words of a “fair trade” blogger and judge for yourself:

“Did you know that child slavery is a common practice on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest supplier of cocoa beans? Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t know – I didn’t either until a few days ago. But now I know and so do you. I’m a huge chocoholic but now there is no enjoying a non-fair trade bar of chocolate, knowing a child may have been forced to pick the beans. There’s no going back. … Picking cocoa beans is hard and dangerous work. It takes 400 beans to produce a pound of chocolate so these kids work long and hard to get enough cocoa for even a few bars. No wonder most chocolate bars are so cheap and fair trade chocolate is so expensive.”

The average American “oppressor” would say that the correct answer to sample problem is, “Leroy has a one-in-three chance of having the right combination of coins in his pocket to buy the candy bar.”

But according to the social justice crowd, the correct answer should be, “Leroy is contributing to the oppression of the cocoa bean pickers of the world by purchasing a non-fair trade candy bar.”(Students who suggest charging Leroy with a hate crime would be given extra credit.)

Proponents of incorporating social justice issues into math lessons argue that to ignore the child labor that was used to help produce the candy bar is to blind students to the plight of the cocoa bean pickers. Math, therefore, is perpetuating the problem.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the words of Paulo Freire, one of the pioneers of bringing social justice lessons into the classroom. Freire has said that "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

That sentiment is echoed throughout “The Guide for Integrating Issues of Social and Economic Justice into Mathematics Curriculum,” by Jonathan Osler. In his guide, Osler writes:

“ … [T]he systemic and structural oppression of low income and people of color in the United States is worsening. The number of people in prison continues to grow, as do unemployment rates. Billions of dollars that were once available for social programs and education have been diverted to pay for war. …

“These problems and many others are being addressed by community organizations and activists, and often find their way into assignments in Social Studies and English classes. However, in math classes around the country, perhaps the best places to study many of these issues, we continue to use curricula and models that lack any real-world, let alone socially relevant, contexts. A great opportunity to educate our young people about understanding and addressing these myriad issues continues to be squandered.”

The purpose of Osler’s guide is to provide ways in which teachers can bring social justice topics into their lesson plans.

For example, Osler suggests that a lesson about mathematical averages can used to critique the US’s war in Iraq. Students can “take casualty data for the past 12 months and calculate a monthly average from the perspective (of) a military recruiter and from an anti-war activist.”

Instead of discussing random coins in pockets, probability lessons can be used to raise awareness of racial profiling by exploring “the probability that a traffic stop should be (and is) a person of color.”

Geometry lessons can be used to “look at how many liquor stores/fast food chains are within a 1-mile radius or within 5 blocks of your schools. This can be compared with schools in other neighborhoods.” Better still is a geometry lesson that tackles “environmental racism” by having students “determine the density of toxic waste facilities, factories, dumps, etc. in the neighborhood.”

Lessons about war budgets, incarceration rates, AIDS cases and homelessness are also identified.

The social justice crowd knows that many Americans still cling to the antiquated notion that math teachers should stick to teaching students about math and not politics. Osler answers that criticism by arguing:

“Our classrooms are politicized spaces before we walk in the door because political parties in our country are dictating what should and should not be happening in our classrooms. What we’re supposed to teach, and how we’re supposed to teach it, has been predetermined by someone with a political agenda. My goal is to provide my students with varied sources of information and support them in coming to their own conclusions.”

Osler isn’t finished. He concedes that math can be used to help people, but argues:

“ … [M]ore often it has been used to hurt them. Math was behind the development of nuclear weapons. It is used to maintain an economic divide between a handful of wealthy, White people and the billions of poor people of color around the world. It is used as a rationale for depriving people of access to cheap, life-saving drugs. So my question is: what good has the progress of mathematics as an intellectual discipline done for people? Maybe if our mathematics had a background in social justice, we wouldn’t have so many people suffering around the world.”

There was a time when math class existed to train the next generation of engineers and researchers. Now, math class is being used to inspire the next generation of social activists and community organizers.

That is why it is not surprising that in 2009, only 40 percent of fourth graders had math skills that rated as proficient or advanced, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Even worse, only 32 percent of eighth grade math students tests at those levels.

Americans are continually reminded that “the Earth is flat,” meaning our economy is so entwined with the global economy, that U.S. workers are competing for jobs against workers in China, India and the rest of the world.

Despite these new realities, our public schools are promoting this silly “social justice” curriculum which substitutes the essentials for fuzzy concepts of fairness and equality. This is academic malpractice, and it is the economic equivalent of unilateral disarmament.

The laughter you hear is coming from China.

SOURCE



British university 'cannot be too choosy over postgraduates'

A top university was criticised today after academics were told they “cannot afford to be very choosy” when it comes to recruiting students. Birmingham – a member of the elite Russell Group – came under fire when it emerged a senior don had emailed colleagues telling them to go to desperate lengths to enrol large numbers of lucrative postgraduates.

Prof Helen Beebee, head of Birmingham’s school of philosophy, theology and religion, said more students were needed to avoid being fined by the university for under-recruiting.

In the memo, she urged staff to be “VERY generous” when assessing applications from postgraduate students, suggesting candidates should be given places even if they are not totally up to the demands of the course.

The comments will fuel concerns that universities are being forced to give special treatment to postgraduate and foreign students – who pay far more than British undergraduates – to boost their income.

Most postgraduates at Birmingham can expect to pay at least £4,650 from September, rising to £15,660 for foreign postgraduate students.

But Malcolm McCrae, chairman of the UK Council for Graduate Education, branded the email “unfortunate and ill-considered”, suggesting that students risked being accepted onto courses that they could not handle.

“It is well known that students whose capabilities are not on a par with the demands of the programme they are following always turn out to be much more work, accentuating the pressure to compromise academic standards in an effort to get already recruited students through to...completion," he told Times Higher Education magazine.

Prof Beebee wrote to colleagues at the end of July telling them that Birmingham’s college of arts – which incorporates the school of philosophy – was facing a £1m fine from the university’s finance chiefs for failing to recruit enough students.

The email – leaked to the Times Higher – urges academics to be “VERY generous in your judgement about whether the candidate is capable of undertaking the programme applied for”, adding that “we simply cannot afford to be very choosy”.

Prof Beebee says “NOBODY” should reject a PhD candidate simply on the grounds that they are too busy to closely supervise their work. "If anyone is carrying too high a burden because of increased (postgraduate) recruitment, we will look at ways of reallocating work once the academic year starts," she says.

Birmingham insisted that it had set recruitment targets – alongside financial rewards and penalties for individual department – since 2008.

In a statement, it said: "The University of Birmingham requires very high entry standards from students wishing to undertake postgraduate study. The quality of our postgraduate students is reflected in our standing as a leading global university.

"We make no secret of our ambition to recruit significant numbers of highly-qualified postgraduate students, who meet our entry criteria and whose chosen topics are within a field of expertise of their supervisor.

"We do not permit colleagues to accept students who do not meet our rigorous entry requirements. However we do expect students who meet those requirements to be accepted where possible and provide support to our staff in adjusting their workloads accordingly.

"The university manages its financial and academic resources responsibly. To assist in this it sets targets for a range of activities, including student recruitment. Planning of this kind is usual practice for a research-intensive university with a high level of postgraduate recruitment."

*The Government has been accused of “infantilising” higher education by ordering universities to give students more face-to-face tuition.

In exchange for tuition fees of up to £9,000, the Coalition has told institutions to improve the student experience by upping the number of lectures and tutorials given to undergraduates.

But writing in the Times Higher, Paul Ramsden, an education consultant and visiting professor at London’s Institute of Education, said the Government wanted students to be “spoon-fed”.

It should “make more effort to reverse the process of infantilising universities and the patronising culture of that defines undergraduates as immature beings who cannot look after themselves,” he said.

SOURCE



Australia: Parents deserting chaotic and run-down Victorian State schools

And abusing the parents is the answer, apparently

Parent snobbery is being blamed for an exodus from Victorian state primary schools. While class sizes hit record lows, increasing numbers of parents are opting for private schools. Since 2003, the number of primary school-aged children sent to state schools has dipped by almost 3000, equal to 170 classes.

Over the same period, the Catholic and independent systems have been bolstered by more than 13,000 pupils - filling more than 600 extra classrooms.

Parents Victoria executive officer Gail McHardy believes snobbery is partly to blame for the shift. "Often people firmly believe that something that looks better, costs more, will get a better outcome. And that's not necessarily true," Ms McHardy said.

"When you've got a bit more disposable income, rather than making a conscious choice of which system and which ethos suits your child, sometimes that decision is more easily influenced if there are more bells and whistles."

Figures from the Education Department's February schools census show the average number of students is 22 - down from 25 a decade ago. However, comparisons with data over the past eight years show the decline in public school confidence.

Melbourne University education expert Prof Richard Teese said preferences for private education had traditionally been stronger at secondary level, but had also crept down to primary level.He said parents were driven by their wish for a "competitive advantage".

Australian Education Union state secretary Mary Bluett warned the physical appearance of some public schools had proved a turn-off, and said more State Government funding for capital works was crucial.

SOURCE



12 August, 2011

ADF-allied attorney calls out Colorado professor for feeble “apology” to student

The stereotype of the arrogant, leftist professor in the ivory tower occasionally shows up in real life in a manner that shows that the truth is stranger than fiction.

Recent case in point: a biology professor at a Colorado college (let’s call him Dr. Jones) hotly ridiculed a student (let’s call her Ms. Smith) in front of her entire class for her lack of belief in the theory of evolution. In order to avoid legal trouble for his immense misstep, he agreed to settle the case in advance of litigation. Part of the settlement required a written apology to the student. Here is the letter of “apology” from the professor, followed by a response from Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney Barry Arrington that can only be said to…um…set the record completely straight:

Ms. Smith:

With regard to our conversation about your belief that evolution is not true, I apologize to you for appearing to denigrate your obviously strongly held beliefs. I had not intended to offend you in any way regarding your faith or your world view. That this was so perceived by you, I again offer my sincerest apology.

In making this apology to you, I am reminded of what happened to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) – considered by many to be the father of modern science. In 1610 Galileo determined through his telescope and various mathematical calculations, that the Earth moved around the sun, rather than the other way around which was, according to the Catholic Church “false and contrary to Scripture.”

In 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, forced to recant heliocentrism, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. As he was led away to begin his confinement, he said (to no one in particular) “and yet it still moves”.

Sincerely, Dr. Jones

Response from ADF-allied attorney Barry Arrington:

Dear Dr. Jones:

I am writing in response to your June 1, 2011 letter to my client Ms. Smith, in which you apologized to her for “appearing” to denigrate her strongly held beliefs. Sir, we both know you did not merely “appear” to denigrate Ms. Jones’s beliefs. You specifically intended to use your position of authority as a platform from which to denigrate Ms. Smith’s beliefs and humiliate her in front of her peers, and you accomplished your purpose. It saddens me that in your letter you decided to add mendacity to your boorish and abusive attack on your student.

You say you did not intend to offend Ms. Smith. Rubbish. I assume you are not an idiot, and only an idiot would not know that your words would demean and humiliate her, intimidate her into silence, and curb her natural desire for self expression in the face of the orthodoxy you represent. Do you really expect anyone to believe that it was an unfortunate and unintended side effect of your actions that she would feel hurt by the experience or perceive it as an assault on her personal dignity? Please do not insult our intelligence.

Finally, I cannot let your smug reference to Galileo go unchallenged. Firstly, as a matter of simple fact, your history is all wrong. Galileo never uttered the words you mistakenly placed in his mouth. I provide for your edification a primer on the matter under my signature.

More importantly, however, your letter illustrates an utter failure to grasp the significance of this figure from history. I will not spell it out for you. Instead, I urge you to go back and think about this one a little more. To assist you in that endeavor, please ask yourself and answer the following questions: As between Ms. Smith and you: (1) who is the pope (i.e., the authority figure with all of the power in the relationship)? (2) Who speaks for an unyielding established orthodoxy? (3) Who holds the minority dissenting view? (4) Who was willing to challenge the entrenched orthodoxy at significant personal risk to herself?

“But Galileo was right and his opponents were wrong!” you might respond. And that response would completely miss the point. The adherents of every entrenched orthodoxy believe not only that they are right, but also that everyone who challenges the orthodoxy is at least wrong if not wicked. Yet history is full of failed orthodoxies, collapsed paradigms, and discredited dogmas.

You are a high priest of the Church of Darwin. How easily you slipped into the role of inquisitor. You sniffed a hint of heresy from Ms. Smith, and you did not hesitate to put her on the verbal rack. In your letter you point to Galileo as a hero of free thought and expression against an entrenched orthodoxy. I hope you appreciate by now how richly ironic your appeal to Galileo is.

Sincerely, Barry K. Arrington

SOURCE



IBD: Administrative Bloat In Higher Ed‏

Why Are Tuitions So High? College students and their families have struggled to pay for the rising cost of tuition, a cost that has been driven in part by swelling administrative expenses.

Over a 20-year period, the growth in administrative personnel at institutions of higher education has outpaced the growth in both faculty and student enrollment.

Critics refer to this as administrative bloat and contend it shows that universities and colleges are inefficient institutions.

Defenders say colleges are adding administrative staff to meet student needs.

An IBD analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that from 1989-2009 the number of administrative personnel at four- and two-year institutions grew 84%, from about 543,000 to over 1 million.

By contrast, the number of faculty increased 75%, from 824,000 to 1.4 million, while student enrollment grew 51%, from 13.5 million to 20.4 million.

The disparity was worse at public universities and colleges, where personnel in administration rose 71%, faculty 58% and student enrollment 40%. Private schools also saw administration and faculty growing faster than student enrollment, although faculties slightly outpaced administration increases.

Administrative personnel are employees who are not engaged in instruction and research. The jobs range from university president and provost to accountants, social workers, computer analysts and music directors.

One reason administration at public institutions has grown faster may be that bureaucracies tend to expand their staff and programs over time, regardless of need.

"The increase has a lot to do with all the money these institutions pull in from third parties, like state funds and student financial aid," said Daniel Bennett, a research fellow at the conservative Center for College Affordability & Productivity. "They're using it to grow their staff rather than on students."

Since students are insulated from the full cost of tuition, administrators feel less pressure to spend more on faculty to teach students.

Bennett has also written that an onerous regulatory environment that higher education faces may be partially to blame. "In order to comply with the government's requirements, colleges need to employ a staff that is responsible for providing the multiple state and federal agencies with compliance reports and data," he wrote.

Acknowledging that some of the increase may be due to administrators wanting "to re-create themselves," Dan King, executive director at the American Association of University Administrators, claims it's also due to changing needs.

"Students are coming in less prepared, needing more remedial assistance," he said. "If they need help from a writing lab or math lab, that's usually done by administrators. That's something that universities didn't have to provide as much even 10 years ago."

SOURCE



Can't add up? We are either born with a mathematical brain or not

If you struggle with figures, you were probably born that way, research has suggested. Being good at mathematics may be entirely pre-destined – you either have it or you don’t.

And those who find the numbers never add up shouldn’t feel too dim – mathematical talent does not appear to be linked to all-round intelligence.

Previous research has indicated that ‘number sense’ is basic to humans. We use it to estimate such things as the number of seats in a cinema or crowd sizes.

U.S. psychologists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore made their finding after testing children too young to have been taught mathematics.

During the study, 200 four-year-olds viewed flashing groups of blue and yellow dots on a computer screen and were asked which colour was shown the most. The children then had to count items on a page, determine which of two numbers was greater or lesser, as well as read numbers.

They were also tested on calculation skills, such as multiplication. The participants’ parents were then asked about their child’s vocabulary.

The verbal test was done because language and maths abilities are thought to be linked through general intelligence.

The researchers wanted to be sure success in maths was not part of an ability to perform better in all sorts of tasks or to some children feeling more comfortable being tested than others.

The results, published in the journal Developmental Science, showed that children who got the best score in the dots test were also the most competent at the maths tests.

Dr Melissa Libertus, who led the study, said: ‘Previous studies testing older children left open the possibility that maths lessons determined number sense. ‘In other words, some children looked like they had better number sense simply because they had better maths instruction.

‘Unlike those studies, this one shows that the link between number sense and maths ability is already present before the beginning of formal maths instruction.

‘One of the most important questions is whether we can train a child’s number sense to improving his future maths ability.’

SOURCE



11 August, 2011

This Year Keep Your Kids Home From College

Mike Adams

I am frequently asked whether I would be willing to spend the money necessary to send my own kids to a four-year brick and mortar college. The answer used to be a qualified “yes.” But college isn’t what it used to be. So my answer is now a firm “probably not.”

While I once considered college to be a good investment for most high school graduates I have come to believe that it is a bad idea for most of them. Note that I am not saying that college simply doesn’t deliver the good things it once did. I am saying much more than that; namely that it often hurts young people. And it does so in at least four distinct ways:

1. Spiritually. Three out of four Christian teens walk away from church after they leave home. The fact that they do so is largely the result of what they encounter in college. Here in my department (Sociology and Criminology) at my university (UNC-Wilmington) the anti-Christian indoctrination begins in freshman survey courses. Feminist professors are seemingly incapable of discussing important issues like same-sex marriage without engaging in ad hominem attacks against Christians. For example, those who adhere to the majority view (in support of traditional marriage) are characterized by their feminist sociology professors as advancing “hetero-sexism” driven by “homo-phobia.”

It is no wonder that in classroom discussions the students voice support for the professor’s opinion. They want to avoid being attacked personally. And so a false consensus emerges. Eventually the students abandon their worldview in a move based on the false premise that their views are somehow out of sync with social progress.

Just in case the student retains some of his religious upbringing an array of special programs and special offices – designed to indoctrinate on religious issues –is there to reinforce your child’s spiritual drift. Our own LGBTQIA Office organizes specific lectures teaching kids that their biblical views on sexuality are actually a form of mental illness, or phobia. This helps explain the second way kids are often harmed by college.

2. Morally. I don’t know when it first hit me. Maybe it was when I saw our (former) Women’s Resource Center director handing out condoms to students during orientation. Or maybe it was when I read about the “sexual health expert” who gave a lecture (on a UNC campus) called “Safe Sodomy.” Or maybe it was the time they erected (sorry) a vibrator museum on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.

No, I think it was the time our Women’s Center put pictures of nude little girls in the lobby of Randall Library. Yes, that was the moment it really hit me. It was right after seeing the exposed breasts and pubic hair of a thirteen year old girl on public display (sorry) in the library that I arrived at an important conclusion: Our universities are being run by some deeply disturbed people who, with feet planted firmly in mid-air, are simply incapable of providing moral leadership. Incidentally, the child porn display was posted only a few feet from a display advocating national health care for, you guessed it, prostitutes. I’m sorry. Sex workers.

It is little wonder why these people attack our Judeo-Christian heritage. Sodom and Gomorrah University cannot thrive in the presence of God. And that is why your child stands almost no chance of being improved morally in the typical college environment.

3. Intellectually. Put simply, college makes most kids think less, not more (and certainly not better). If you don’t believe me try having a conversation with a current college student. And pick a topic like economics – one that should be dominated by reason, not emotion. Throw out a few rational observations and note the emotive responses. You might find yourself in a conversation like this one:

Adult (who went to college prior to the 1990s): Social security simply is not sustainable. When the program was established we had over twenty workers paying in for every retiree drawing out. Now we only have a few workers paying in for every retiree drawing out. If we do not abolish the program we will have to increase the age of eligibility.

Emotional college student: I feel like social security is a good idea. It would be calloused to abolish it and I feel like it would be wrong to increase the age of eligibility.

Adult: The stimulus package was a failure – even if we judge it only by the standards of its proponents. In other words, it fails objectively by the standards it was promised to deliver.

Emotional college student: Even if it failed before, I feel like it could work if we tried it again.

Adult: The national debt just reached the level of our current GDP. And the Dow dropped over 500 points recently. It’s tough to understand how we’re going to be able to afford national health care and another stimulus package.

Emotional college student: I just feel like national health care is something we need to do – something we need to provide for our weakest citizens. I feel like we could afford it if we would just stop fighting all these wars.

Author’s note: Unfortunately, you have just read excerpts from a recent conversation between this author and a college student who has never drawn a paycheck. The author will return to this issue momentarily.

4. Financially. My university is facing budgets cuts of over 15% in the coming academic year. We could easily cut more than 15% from the budget by doing two things: a) Getting rid of six-digit high level administrators who have overlapping jobs and limited responsibilities. b) Getting rid of the unnecessary offices that house unnecessary mid-level administrators. Start with the Queer Politics Center (The LGBTQIA Resource Office). But don’t stop there. Get rid of the Black Separatist Center (The African American Cultural Center). Then, close down the Abortion Politics Center (The Women’s Resource Center). Let these people pursue politics on their own dime.

It will never happen, though. The administrators will all stay employed and the offices will all remain open. They’ll just raise tuition to cover the shortfall from the proposed budget cuts. In this economy, that means that after your kid graduates from college his part time job as a bartender will become his full time job as a bartender. And he’ll need those extra hours because, guess what? Now he’s got debt! And the interest on student loans is about to skyrocket.

There are many jobs out there that require a college education. Doctors must have degrees before they can go to medical school. Lawyers must have degrees before they go to law school. But college is no longer affordable. And that means college is no longer a place to go to figure out what you want to do with your life. So if your teenager is uncertain about what he wants to do then tell him to stay home for a year or two and get a job. And save some money.

After your teen draws a paycheck for a year or two he’ll be less inclined to adopt an economic philosophy based on feelings, not reality. He will be able to use his savings to keep his debt under control should he decide to go to college later. And, best of all, he’ll gain some maturity that will shield him against the spiritual and moral decline his professors call “enlightenment” and “liberation.”

SOURCE



Higher Education Bubble Leads to Sex-for-Tuition and Kidneys-for-Cash Proposal; Moody's Questions Value of Liberal Arts Majors

College tuition has gotten so high that coeds are selling sex to pay for their inflated tuitions, and a professor recently suggested that students sell their kidneys.

But higher education isn’t worth what it used to be. A credit rating agency, Moody’s, is now warning student borrowers that college may not be worth the money for some majors. As Reason Magazine notes, a higher education bubble looms:

A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America’s next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition, and poor job prospects have resulted in growing delinquency and default rates on nearly $1 trillion worth of private and federally subsidized loans. Now the ratings agency Moody’s has weighed in with a chilling diagnosis: “Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand, and successfully complete their degrees on time, they will find themselves in worse financial positions and unable to earn the projected income that justified taking out their loans in the first place.”

Two law schools are being sued for fraudulent placement data in class-action lawsuits. Law school tuition has gone up 1000 percent since 1960 in real terms, even as law schools teach students few practical skills and little real-world knowledge of the law. A tenured law professor at a well-ranked law school admits that law school is a “scam” and that his faculty colleagues are “overpaid,” “inadequate teachers,” many of whom work just a few hours a day.

Due to market distortions like the proliferation of unnecessary state licensing requirements that require useless paper credentials, and financial aid that directly encourages colleges to raise tuition, colleges can raise tuition year after year, consuming a larger and larger fraction of the increased lifetime earnings students hope to obtain by going to college.

Meanwhile, college students learn less and less with each passing year. “Thirty-six percent” of college students learned little in four years of college, and students now spend “50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows.” Thirty-two percent never take “a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”

States spend hundreds of millions of dollars operating colleges that are worthless diploma mills, yet manage to graduate almost no one – like Chicago State, “which has just a 12.8 percent six-year graduation rate.” Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation, while Obama seeks to double it. Spending has exploded at the K-12 level: per-pupil spending in the U.S. is among the highest in the world, and “inflation-adjusted K-12 spending tripled over the last 40 years.”

SOURCE



Only half of British maths and science teachers have 'good enough' degrees to do their jobs

Many trainee maths and science teachers do not have good degrees in their subject, a study suggests. While nine in 10 classics trainees and almost four-fifths of would-be history teachers have a first or 2:1 university degree, this falls to around half for maths and science trainees.

Those training to be foreign language teachers are also less likely to have a 'good' degree, with more than a third holding a 2:2 or lower, the Good Teacher Training Guide 2011 found.

Researchers at Buckingham University's Centre for Education and Employment Research conclude there is a clear link between lower degree qualifications, low course completion rates and the numbers entering teaching.

About 80 per cent of English and history trainee secondary school teachers entered training after completing their course.

But this fell to 70 per cent for maths, 69 per cent for science and 66 per cent for modern foreign languages, all of which are subjects where the numbers with 'good' degrees are lower.

Report author Professor Alan Smithers said it means that teacher training departments have more choice when recruiting history or English teachers, but struggle with other subjects.

'Training departments are able to choose more carefully who they recruit, but if there are not enough people studying science and maths, the training departments really struggle to recruit and bring in people who don't want to be teachers and are not as well qualified,' he said.

This has an impact on the enthusiasm of pupils, who are then less likely to take up subjects like science and maths, Professor Smithers said. 'A teacher, to be really enthusiastic, has to have a full grasp of their subject, so the chances are if you have got a very well qualified historian or somebody teaching classics, they will make the subject come alive for their pupils.

'But if you have got somebody in maths, or the physical sciences who is really trying to keep up with it themselves, then they are not going to convey the same sense of enthusiasm.

'Young people can easily be exposed to very enthusiastic historians and people who are struggling with their own grasp of physics.'

Ministers have announced plans to scrap public funding for teacher trainees who do not hold at least a 2:2 in their degree.

The report concludes: 'The low entry qualifications of some postgraduate and undergraduate trainees, as the Government recognises, has to be tackled. 'No one wants to see teachers attempting to teach subjects which they do not fully grasp themselves.

'But if not enough people with the necessary expertise put themselves forward, the difficult question that has to be faced in formulating policy is: is it better to have an able graduate who has not studied a subject at university or someone who has studied the subject at university but not done very well in it?

'Is it better, for example, to have a good biologist or a poor physicist teaching physics?'

SOURCE



10 August, 2011

Justice Department sues profitable Goldman Sachs college company on a technicality

The Department of Justice and several states have filed a fraud lawsuit against the Education Management Corporation, the second-largest for-profit college company in the United States.

The lawsuit charges that the company enrolled poor applicants who were not qualified for its programs – signing up students without computers for online education programs, for example – in order to collect state and federal financial aid payments for the students. The company received $11 billion worth of financial aid payments from July 2003 through June 2011.

The complaint against Education Management was originally filed four years ago by two former employees who’d worked in admissions and training for the company. The New York Times explains why this suit is significant:

While the civil lawsuit is one of many raising similar charges against the expanding for-profit college industry, the case is the first in which the government intervened to back whistle-blowers’ claims that a company consistently violated federal law by paying recruiters based on how many students it enrolled. The suit said that each year, Education Management falsely certified that it was complying with the law, making it eligible to receive student financial aid.

“The depth and breadth of the fraud laid out in the complaint are astonishing,” said Harry Litman, a lawyer in Pittsburgh and former federal prosecutor who is one of those representing the two whistle-blowers whose 2007 complaints spurred the suit. “It spans the entire company — from the ground level in over 100 separate institutions up to the most senior management — and accounts for nearly all the revenues the company has realized since 2003.

Pittsburgh-based Education Management enrolls about 150,000 students in 105 schools that are part of four chains: Art Institute, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University. Goldman Sachs owns 41 percent of the highly-profitable company.

Illinois, Florida, California and Indiana filed the lawsuit along with the Justice Department on Monday, and on Tuesday, Kentucky requested to join the group, Bloomberg reports. The Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority has paid more than $6 million in need-based and merit-based financial aid grants to Brown Mackie Colleges in the state since 2004.

Education Management denies any wrongdoing, the Associated Press reports. "The pursuit of this legal action by the federal government and a handful of states is flat-out wrong," Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general and member of the state Board of Regents who is an adviser to the college's legal counsel, said in a statement.

SOURCE



Affording private school fees in Britain

What price education? Quite a lot, it turns out, with the average school fees for a private pupil now £4,393 a term according to the Independent Schools Council. New research today shows that parents who want their children to be educated independently are having to get savvier, thanks to above-inflation fee increases and the economic downturn.

Figures from Schroders suggest that some parents are now choosing to send just one child to private school, while the rest are educated in the state system. Others are cutting the pie a different way, with a quarter of parents with children under 15 in the state system considering switching their offspring into a private school sixth form just for their final pre-university education.

“Families are being forced to make extremely tough decisions in the current economic climate, as inflationary pressures erode monies available for discretionary spending on private education,” said Robin Stoakley, managing director of Schroders’ UK Intermediary Business.

His solutions are predictable enough – invest in high quality funds that can “realistically deliver inflation-beating growth”. However, anyone who has been looking at the sea of red that has been London’s stock market in recent days might be forgiven for wondering whether their investments are really going to deliver enough to pay eye-watering school fees – especially with university fees being an issue as well.

Janette Wallis, editor of the Good Schools Guide, said that many families found it distasteful to send one child private but not another, but that they are having to save money. “We have seen lots of people save money by targeting their spending,” she said, saying that GCSEs can be a popular time. “It’s perfectly possible to send a child private for two years – age 14 to 16 – and then move them on to a state sixth form.”

“Parents should think more in terms of equivalency of experience, rather than parcelling out the exact same experience to each child. So, if for example there is a good boys’ grammar school in your area that your son can attend, but no equivalent for girls, then it may make sense to pay for your daughter to attend a private school, while taking advantage of state provision for your son.

Money can be saved and a bit extra be made available to the son for tutoring or similar educational add-ons. So long as it is discussed openly and both children are content there’s no cause for guilt,” she said.

If you are panicking about how you will educate your children, you need to start thinking realistically. The longer you have to plan, the better, but whatever stage you are at, there are things you can do to take the sting out of the prices.

SOURCE



Australia: No national curriculum for NSW students

Much of its content was designed by a former Communist

NSW students will not study the new national curriculum in 2013 after the state government yesterday delayed its implementation.

Cracks are appearing in the federal government's curriculum reform, with NSW the first state to pull out over concerns about its content.

Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said he was still committed to a national curriculum but was delaying its introduction into NSW schools until at least 2014. He would not rule out further delays if the commonwealth failed to address concerns.

NSW schools were due to teach the national curriculum in English, maths, science and history for kindergarten to Year 10 from 2013.

The Board of Studies raised concerns over the content and advised the government not to proceed.

Mr Piccoli said teachers needed training before teaching the new syllabus, which will cost $80 million over four years, and needed to be funded by the federal government.

Federal Education Minister Peter Garrett said there was no reason for the backdown by NSW, which was jeopardising students' education.

SOURCE



9 August, 2011

Obama Skips Congress on No Child Law

Rule by decree?

President Barack Obama’s administration will bypass Congress to override the nation’s main public-education law, granting waivers to states if they agree to his schools agenda.

States can avoid the No Child Left Behind law’s 2014 deadline for achieving 100 percent proficiency on standardized state reading and math exams if they sign off on yet-unspecified administration “reforms,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes said Aug. 5 in a press briefing.

Saying Congress has failed to take action to fix the nine- year-old law, the U.S. Education Department will offer states waivers as soon as this school year. Duncan opposes the legislation’s focus on holding schools accountable only through testing proficiency, which he has said encourages dumbed-down standards. About 80 percent of U.S. schools risk being labeled failing if the law isn’t changed.

“I can’t overemphasize how loud the outcry is for us to do something now,” Duncan said.

Duncan in June said the administration would grant the waivers if Congress failed to approve legislation changing it by the start of this school year -- a deadline the legislature isn’t likely to meet.

Washington Gridlock

The administration’s waivers “could undermine” congressional efforts to change No Child Left Behind, John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the House education committee, said in a statement. Kline said he will be monitoring Duncan’s actions “to ensure they are consistent with the law and congressional intent.”

Kline’s committee is working on a series of bills to change the law. They include promoting the growth of charter schools -- privately run public schools -- and cutting spending by eliminating half of the federal education programs under the current law.

Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat and Senate education committee chairman, said he still hopes the Senate can produce a “comprehensive bill” reauthorizing No Child Left Behind.

“That said, it is undeniable that this Congress faces real challenges reaching bipartisan, bicameral agreement on anything,” Harkin said in a statement.

Duncan’s approach differs from past education department waivers -- supported by many Republicans as a way to ease regulatory burdens -- because the agency is attaching conditions to promote administration policies, said Jack Jennings, president of the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan research organization.

Executive Authority

“This is a bold use of executive authority by Duncan,” Jennings, a former general counsel for the House education committee, said in a telephone interview. “Duncan is certainly determined to bring about school reform while he’s in office.”

No Child Left Behind, signed into law in 2002, is former President George W. Bush’s signature education initiative. Officially called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the law requires schools to show that all students are proficient on state standardized reading and math tests by 2014. Schools also must demonstrate yearly progress toward that goal or risk losing federal money.

Though specifics haven’t been set for the waivers, schools would be released from that deadline and annual progress requirements if they agree to such changes as raising academic standards and evaluating teacher effectiveness based on student achievement and other measures, Duncan said. The department will make details public in September.

“We can’t afford to do nothing,” Duncan said.

SOURCE




Public-school losses: private schools’ gain

As public school teachers face what may be the longest string of layoffs ever, the private sector gets a boost. Transport and janitorial contractors, online tutoring companies, and private schools are among those seeing a more talented workforce or an uptick in business

If there's a silver lining to the unprecedented teacher layoffs now taking place in America's public schools, it lies in places like Baylor School, a private school for sixth- through 12th-graders in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The applicant pool to teach at Baylor has become larger and stronger, says Scott Dering, the school's dean of academics. Even though four of his new hires haven't started teaching yet, he is already bragging about them. "We're getting an all-star team of public school teachers," Mr. Dering says.

For the first time since the government began keeping track in 1955, the number of workers in America's public schools has fallen two school years in a row. And it's likely that the 2011-12 school year will mark a third year of decline, perhaps the biggest so far. For instance, the state of New York, which lost about 10,000 public education employees in the past two years, will lose another 12,000 or so in the coming school year, according to New York State United Teachers, a federation of education employee unions.

Cuts in faculty mean bigger class sizes, fewer course offerings, and less individual attention for students. Public schools will struggle to maintain their education standards. But the loss of public school teachers may prove to be a boon for the private sector. While the number of public school workers dropped 2.6 percent between June 2009 and June 2011, the number of private education service workers has grown proportionately – 2.8 percent.

"Look at how the public sector is cutting back," says Peter Upham, executive director of The Association of Boarding Schools, based in Asheville, N.C. "Comparatively, our packages are more competitive."

Boarding schools have become more attractive, especially with the lure of free housing for teachers. Test-prep companies are on the rise, as are charter schools and online tutoring.

For instance, Tutor.com, a company that provides on-demand, online tutoring for K-12 and some college students, is increasing the number of school districts it contracts with. The number of people who want to work for the New York-based company has skyrocketed. In 2009, its waiting list of tutors ready to teach had about 4,400 people; now, it has more than 14,000.

"There's more general awareness that this [option] exists for teachers," says Jennifer Kohn, spokeswoman for Tutor.com. Most of its tutors are teachers who have left the classroom or those who want extra part-time work.

More here





Children's grasp of WW2 'sanitised' by books and films

Pupils’ understanding of the Second World War is being undermined by sensationalist films, television programmes and books, according to a leading headmaster. Children are increasingly distracted by the “prurient and commercial elements” of the conflict employed by the entertainment industry to make profits, it was claimed.

Graham Lacey, headmaster of the Berlin British School, a private international school in the German capital, said schools had a moral duty to “rescue” the subject by focusing on more challenging topics such as the Nazi’s exploitation of democracy and the state’s treatment of minorities. The comments come amid ongoing controversy over the way the conflict – from 1939 to 1945 – is taught in British schools.

Successive German ambassadors to London have criticised Britain’s “unbalanced” obsession with Nazi stereotypes at the expense of any aspect of the nation’s history beyond 1945.

Four years ago Labour also sparked outrage by suggesting that Winston Churchill – Britain’s wartime leader – should be erased from the secondary school curriculum in an attempt to give teachers more freedom to teach history.

Mr Lacey, former deputy head of Sevenoaks School in Kent, said schools “must be careful not to downplay the significance of a period when the world almost fell off its moral axis”.

But writing in an article today on Telegraph.co.uk, he suggested that the biggest threat to the subject was the entertainment industry, which prioritises a “populist narrative over objective analysis”.

It follows the success of films such as Saving Private Ryan and video games including Call of Duty: World at War. The Second World War is also one of the mainstays of satellite channels such as UKTV History and the History Channel, where recent programmes have included Hitler's Bodyguard, Hitler's Women, Nazi America and Nazi Guerrillas.

But Mr Lacey said: “The argument that this period should retain its elevated position in UK school history syllabuses has, ironically, been hindered rather than helped by the popularisation of the subject. “Students have been too easily distracted by its more prurient and commercial elements, whether it be the sex lives of its leaders or the pop memorabilia of the SS, for example.

“Even the horrors of the Second World War have been sanitised through books and films that have inevitably given higher priority to commercial success over factual accuracy, and populist narrative over objective analysis. “All this has undermined the pedagogical and moral justification for teaching the subject.”

The study of the two world wars is compulsory in English secondary schools. Pupils are also expected to study the Holocaust as a distinct topic.

But Mr Lacey said schools had a responsibility to focus on the “less familiar but more intellectually fulfilling topics of the period, to rescue the academic respectability of the subject as well as to ensure their students appreciate the relevance it holds for all who wish to protect the civilised values which the Third Reich displaced.”

The Nazi’s rise to power should be used as an example of how a small minority can exploit democracy or exert “undue political influence at a time of instability”, he said.

Mr Lacey added that a study of the Nazi’s murder campaign can also shed light on the “sanctity of human life and the state’s approach to the treatment of minorities”.

“Unless you fall for the myth that ‘it could never happen to us’, a study of the Third Reich still provides lessons for us all, and should retain its prominent place in the history syllabuses of the UK’s schools and universities,” he said.

SOURCE



8 August, 2011

Ninth Circus Rules Against Student Christian Groups At San Diego State U

The Ninth Circuit issued a disappointing decision yesterday against a Christian fraternity and sorority at San Diego State. The University allows campus organizations that it officially recognizes to exclude students who disagree with the message advocated by the group, unless the groups are religious. San Diego State views it as “religious discrimination,” in violation of the campus nondiscrimination policy, when a Christian group requires its officers or members to believe in Christianity. So that means the vegan club can exclude student deer hunters and those who advocate eating steaks at Morton’s, but the Christian groups must permit Buddhists and atheists to join.

When a Christian fraternity and sorority declined to agree to a nondiscrimination statement, the University rejected their applications to become officially recognized student organizations. That means the groups cannot meet in campus buildings for free, cannot set up tables in the main mall where students walk each day, etc. The Christian groups are in effect banished from the main avenues of communication with students and relegated to a second class status.

The 2-1 majority upheld the policy. Although the judges admitted that the policy as applied here treated the religious groups worse than non-religious student groups, it was constitutional because there is “no evidence that San Diego State implemented its nondiscrimination policy for the purpose of suppressing Plaintiffs’ [the Christian groups'] viewpoint…” Slip opinion at 9996. Intent is irrelevant. The government cannot excuse its policy that violates a group’s constitutional rights because “it didn’t mean to do so.”

There is some good news in the decision. The Ninth Circuit remanded the case to the trial court because we had raised sufficient evidence that San Diego State did not enforce its policy consistently across the board, and allowed other groups to exclude non-adherents, but not allowing the Christian fraternity and sorority to do so.

Judge Ripple, a visiting appeals court judge from Wisconsin, reluctantly agreed with the ruling because of precedent for the Ninth Circuit. But in his concurring opinion, he urged the Supreme Court to take the case, and rule strongly in favor of religious liberty:

"The net result of this selective policy is therefore to marginalize in the life of the institution those activities, practices and discourses that are religiously based. While those who espouse other causes may support their membership and come together for mutual support, others, including those exercising one of our most fundamental liberties – the right to free exercise of one’s religion — cannot, at least on equal terms."

We are examining our options about returning to the trial court, or appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Twice as many British universities now looking for A* grades

The number of universities requiring the elite A* grade for entry has more than doubled. Six more leading institutions want students to achieve the ‘super grade’ in one A-level this year, while a further two will require one from next year. And ten are considering adding it to their entry criteria, according to a Daily Mail survey.

In 2010 just four made it a necessity for a place – but all these have dramatically increased the number of courses for which it is required.

The elite grade was initially used to choose pupils studying pure maths or science courses, but it has been broadened to include psychology, philosophy, economics and law.

It comes as analysis indicates that independent schools are set to further tighten their grip on the elite universities following the introduction of the new top grade in 2010.

In the first year that the A* was awarded, pupils in independent schools won 4,112 A* grades in maths, compared with 3,420 in the comprehensive sector.

In languages, they achieved 1,068 A* grades, more than twice the total for comprehensives, according to figures obtained by Elizabeth Truss, a Tory MP on the education select committee. This is despite the private sector educating just 15 per cent of A-level candidates.

The statistics will increase fears that government pressure for leading universities to boost the numbers of comprehensive pupils they admit is being undermined by the poorer grades achieved in key subjects.

This year, for the first time, Exeter, LSE, Bristol, Sussex, Birmingham and Manchester are asking for an A* and two As. Oxford and King’s College London say they will require an A* for entry in 2012.

Last year, the only universities to make an A* a requirement were Imperial, Cambridge, UCL and Warwick. Except for Cambridge, these universities asked for the top grade in just a few courses. Cambridge’s standard offer was an A* and two As.

The trend comes as competition for places at university is fiercer than ever, with 220,000 predicted to miss out on a place this year.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said: ‘The A* was controversial but it is winning widespread acceptance. ‘There had been a marked rise in the number of top grades awarded, making it difficult for universities to distinguish between applicants.’

Eight per cent of A-levels taken last year were granted an A* – 62,665. But 17.9 per cent of independent school pupils achieved an A*, compared with just 5.8 per cent from comprehensives.

Miss Truss’s figures were based on the ten subjects deemed by the Russell Group of leading universities to be the most useful for winning a place.

She said: ‘Students at comprehensives are seven times more likely to take media studies than those at independent schools... in too many schools it is taken at face value that an A in media studies is worth the same as an A in any other subject. Students are effectively being misled.’

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Catastrophe of British school leavers who can't add up

Children should be taught maths up to the age of 18 to avert the ‘educational catastrophe’ of 300,000 teenagers a year failing to grasp the basics, a hard-hitting report claims.

By 16 there is a ‘colossal’ ten-year range in mathematical learning between students, the report by former Countdown presenter Carol Vorderman reveals.

She calls for a ‘mathematics for citizenship’ course to be introduced for those studying A-levels that don’t involve the subject. And she recommends splitting the maths GCSE into two qualifications, one designed for those going on to A-level.

Miss Vorderman, who studied engineering at Cambridge and has said maths is her ‘passion’, believes 16-year-olds should continue with lessons in the subject to develop the skills that are vital in today’s world. Many still struggle with numbers in the workplace and in their personal lives despite 11 years of being taught maths.

Universities and employers are being forced to hold catch-up classes while the lack of numeracy threatens the country’s economic prosperity. This is because almost half of teenagers ‘fail’ GCSE maths, meaning they do not get a grade C or above.

Even those students who ‘scrape’ a C ‘are still incapable of truly understanding how to calculate percentages and fractions or to interpret data’, according to Miss Vorderman.

She was asked by David Cameron and Michael Gove to head a taskforce reviewing maths education when the Conservatives were in opposition in 2009.

The findings of the report, A World Class Mathematics Education for All Our Young People, are likely to be considered as part of the Coalition’s review of the national curriculum in England. Last year, 41.6 per cent of students – more than 317,000 – failed to get a grade C or above in maths GCSE.
Carol's formula for success

About 85 per cent of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland give up maths after GCSE. However, in ‘almost every developed country, all, or nearly all’ students continue for a further two years.

The report says maths education must continue in ‘some form’ between 16 and 18. This would tie in with the reform to raise the age of participation in compulsory education to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015.

For the most able, continuing with maths study would involve AS and A-levels. However, new qualifications should be introduced such as the ‘mathematics for citizenship’ course aimed at those with a grade C or above at GCSE who are studying A-levels where no maths is involved.

Those with a C or below should sit a ‘mature GCSE’, which would involve studying vocational units in basic numeracy, financial calculations and spreadsheets.

The single maths GCSE should be withdrawn when twin qualifications being piloted become widely available in 2015. One, applications of mathematics, concentrates on more functional maths without going into great depth. The other, methods in mathematics, contains the formal elements such as algebra that students need if they go on to AS and A-level.

Improving the maths knowledge of primary school teachers, encouraging more daily maths activities in primaries and helping parents who ‘have a fear of mathematics themselves’ are also among the recommendations.

The report, released by the Conservative Party, adds that Key Stage Two national curriculum maths tests should end in their current form as ‘most secondary schools pay no attention to the results’.

Education Secretary Mr Gove welcomed the report and admitted the country is ‘falling behind our competitors when it comes to mathematics education’.

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7 August, 2011

Queer student taunted the wrong guy

A teacher testified Thursday that a gay student at a Southern California junior high school paraded around in makeup and high heels in front of a classmate who is accused of killing him the next day.

Arthur Saenz said he saw defendant Brandon McInerney sitting on a bench looking angry and upset while 15-year-old Larry King walked back and forth in front of him as other students laughed. "I saw a lot of anger and rage," the history teacher said about McInerney.

He said he did nothing about the situation because the school administrator walked up and saw the same scene. He said he assumed she would take care of it.

Saenz said that in hindsight, he thought the encounter "appeared to be sexual harassment."

McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the 2008 shooting at E.O. Green School in Oxnard, is being tried as an adult on first-degree murder and hate crime charges.

The defense is arguing that McInerney had a troubled childhood and had reached an emotional breaking point over unwanted sexual advances by King when he shot his fellow student in a computer classroom. The prosecution contends McInerney was driven by white supremacist anti-gay beliefs.

Saenz's testimony came after McInerney's aunt testified that she saw the young man's father physically and verbally abuse him.

Megan Csorba said she saw her brother sit on his son until he couldn't breathe, pull his thumb back until he screamed and punch him in the face, the Ventura County Star reported.

In cross-examination, a prosecutor asked Csorba why she didn't report the abuse to police. "I was going through my own abuse, and I wasn't going to do that to my brother," Csorba said.

She said that books on Nazi youth and videos on shooting at McInerney's home belonged to the defendant's older brother. She also testified, as did McInerney's half-brother, that the defendant had been molested by a cousin.

The cousin was scheduled to testify Friday. The trial was moved to Los Angeles County because of extensive media coverage in Ventura County.

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Must not laugh at blacks

A former student is taking Red Wing High School to court. Quera Pruitt, a 19-year-old who graduated from the Minnesota school last year, is suing for allowing what she sees as an offensive, racially-charged homecoming event to go on without punishing the offending students.

The event, called “Wigger Day,” was celebrated by students who commemorated it by coming to school in oversized jerseys, baggy and sagging pants, side-cocked baseball caps and, perhaps most indicative of the racial nature of the celebration, doo rags.

To opponents like Pruitt, the premise (not to mention the name) of the event was a play off of the infamous “n-word,” which is highly offensive to African Americans.

Pruitt is charging that Red Wing High School officials, including the principal, were well aware of the offensive nature of the event and that they simply ignored it. She is seeking $75,000 in damages, citing emotional distress, depression, stress, crying, humiliation and a plethora of other emotions.

As a result of the event, she claims she dropped out of cheerleading and student council; she even considered leaving the school.

Time’s NewsFeed provides more background about how the situation has devolved:

"Homecoming typically involves a flurry of themed events that lead up to the big game. In 2009, the student body designated Sept. 30 as “Tropical Day,” but according to the federal class action suit, about 70 students declared it “Wednesday Wigger Day” instead. Pruitt says the high school, where 3% of the 900 students are black, celebrated “Wigger Day,“ also known as ”Wangsta Day,” between 2007 and 2009.

The offensive nature of the event was captured when it first happened back in 2009. In an interview published on KARE11.com, Pruitt explained her take on the event as follows: ”They hurt my feelings. No one asked me how I felt about it.”

Another student, Alissia Humphreys, explained, “I have a right to be comfortable at school, and I don’t appreciate that being taken away from me and making me feel uncomfortable.” But, back in 2009, at least according to KARE11.com, school officials seemed like they were taking control of the situation:

Red Wing Superintendent Stan Slessor says the district is disappointed with the students actions and words — whether or not they were intended to be offensive. Officials did require the students to change their clothes immediately. No more punishment has followed, but the district does plan to use the incident to teach tolerance.

Interestingly, CityPages.com reports a fact that didn’t make its way into some other outlets: The principal did tell students to change their offensive clothing. Regardless of whether this is true with certainty, the news site corroborated the fact that no one was punished for participating in “Wigger Wednesday.”

There’s another element here, though, that further complicates the situation. Following the incident, it appears as though a Facebook group called “Wigger Wednesday” (which has now been removed) was used to potentially cyber-bully Pruitt. Apparently, it read, “let’s keep wigger wednesday goin til that [derogatory term] quits.” One wonders: Was this “quitting” in reference to Pruitt’s cheerleading? If so, the students’ efforts were successful.

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British Teenagers can earn university entrance by by going trekking, diving and whale-watching

Teenagers on gap years are being given university entrance points for adventures abroad. They can put experiences such as whale watching, trekking and diving towards a Certificate of Personal Effectiveness – equivalent to an A grade at AS-level.

Those who gain a level three in the CoPE receive 70 Ucas points, which could help them secure a university place. An A* at A-level is worth 140 Ucas points. Gap-year companies are promoting the certificate as a way for teenagers to secure university places.

But critics say the inclusion of such qualifications in the Ucas tariff system is ‘crazy’ and warn that the CoPE could give students a false sense of security when applying for courses.

There are also concerns that the extra points awarded for gap-year activities could see wealthier students edging out rivals who have the same grades but cannot afford to spend a year out travelling and volunteering.

The CoPE requires students to choose challenges from six modules: global awareness, enrichment activities, work-related activities, active citizenship, career planning and extended project.

They gain five credits for 50 hours’ activity, with at least 15 credits from three different modules required to complete the qualification.

The Frontier website, which provides gap-year advice, says the CoPE ‘will appeal to potential employers or university applications’. It adds: ‘If you just missed out on a university place or just want to boost your score, a CoPE would be a good way to do it.’

Holly Taylor, from Camps International, which specialises in expeditions to Africa and Asia, said acquiring Ucas points for overseas trips was a convenient way for ‘gappers’ to kill two birds with one stone. She said: ‘As well as doing a gap year they are able to come back and better themselves at university here.’

She added that the first two students from Camps International to achieve the CoPE secured their university places with the extra Ucas points they gained.

But Professor Alison Wolf, who led a government inquiry into education qualifications, said: ‘It underlines the craziness of trying to put points on everything that moves. ‘There is a danger that people will believe that universities will treat all points as equal and a terrible danger that the most vulnerable people will be misled and make choices they shouldn’t make.’

Professor Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Education and Employment Research, said: ‘To get into Oxford or Cambridge, I’m not sure these gap-year A-level points will make any difference. They are not going to rate very highly among A*s in physics, maths and chemistry.’

Overseas volunteering is a multi-billion-pound industry, with the average gap-year traveller, aged 18 to 24, spending £3,000-£4,000 on the trip, according to analysts Mintel. But the economic downturn and next year’s tripling of the limit on tuition fees have seen the numbers planning gap years fall from 20,000 in 2010 to 6,000 this year, Ucas figures show. And students who defer their places for gap years face paying fees of up to £9,000 next September.

A spokesman for The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said it was up to universities whether they wanted to charge those students under the current fee regime or at 2012 levels.

However, students can complete the CoPE without taking a year out or going abroad. It is aimed at anyone aged over 16 and some study for it by doing voluntary work during their A-levels.

A Ucas spokesman said it was possible to use activities gained ‘from a wide variety of experiences to inform a course of study’ and to attract tariff points.

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6 August, 2011

Beware Those "Radical" Ideas

Anticipating his entry into the presidential race, the Washington Post ran a long piece on Texas Governor Rick Perry's ideas about higher education. "A man of grand plans," the headline warned, "criticized as not sweating the details." Are the headline writers at the Post on summer break? Did the temps have to dust off headlines from the Reagan era? Reagan's ideas were constantly dismissed by the bien passant as "simplistic." So anyone who gets tagged as simplistic by the Post gets an immediate benefit-of-the-doubt from me. As Margaret Thatcher said at Reagan's funeral, " . . . his ideas, though clear, were never simplistic. He saw the many sides of truth."

So what has Perry done to earn this epithet? He's taken on the higher education establishment in Texas. He has proposed - gasp -- that Texas's four-year institutions develop a plan to offer bachelor's degrees for no more than $10,000. "Skeptics," the Post tells us, say that the goal cannot be achieved without sacrificing "academic quality and prestige." It shows, these same unnamed critics assert, that the governor has a "record of plunging into splashy ventures, at times, despite the complexities, constituencies, or sensitivities involved."

So it's half-cocked to suggest that universities, even public universities, reduce their fees. But when President Obama suggests digging ourselves ever deeper into debt to further subsidize higher education, that's a complex and nuanced approach? Has Obama thought deeply about the problem of the higher education bubble? Has he considered that for decades the federal government has been subsidizing college and graduate work (through grants and loans) and that as a consequence, institutions of higher learning have been jacking up their fees?

Mark Perry, at The Enterprise Blog, has offered a handy chart showing the trend lines for the consumer price index, housing prices and college tuition from 1978 to 2011.

"Between 1978 and 1997, home prices increased annually at about the same rate as general prices, but then appreciated at a faster pace over the next decade. In the ten-year period starting in 1997, home prices increased by 68 percent, or more than twice the 29 percent increase in overall prices, and that home price appreciation caused an unsustainable housing bubble that burst in 2007 and contributed to the financial crisis of 2008-2009.

During that same 1997-2007 decade that home prices increased by 68 percent and created a housing bubble, college tuition and fees rose even higher -- by 83 percent. In fact, college tuition and fees have never increased by less than 73 percent in any ten-year period back to the 1980s. And in the decades ending in 2009 and 2010, college tuition increased by more than 90 percent. The still-inflating increases in the price of higher education are starting to make the housing bubble look pretty tame by comparison."

In addition to suggesting that tuition be reduced, a panel appointed by Governor Perry suggested that professors were "wasting time and money churning out esoteric, unproductive research." Shocking. The panel suggested dividing the research and teaching budgets to encourage excellence in both, while also introducing merit pay for exceptional classroom teachers.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that students are flocking to colleges and universities in flat, freezing North Dakota to take advantage of lower tuition rates. Enrollment at public colleges has jumped 38 percent in the last decade, led by a 56 percent increase in out of state students. Colleges around the nation, the Journal advises, must now compete for a new kind of student: "the out-of-state bargain hunter."

Admittedly, North Dakota benefited from oil revenue and spent generously on its colleges and universities over the past 12 years. But in a time of straightened circumstances for everyone, how does it not make sense to have colleges and universities compete on price?

Obama seeks to forestall this commonsense solution by once again increasing government subsidies. Student loans, courtesy of Obama, can now be "forgiven" after 20 years of payment, or after 10 years if students choose "public service." Who pays the difference? You know who.

Just as it seemed to be such a great idea for everyone to own a home, we've spent decades subsidizing everyone who wanted to go to college. The result has been an upward spiral of prices, which in turn causes politicians like Obama to call for more subsidies.

And Perry is the simplistic one?

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Brainless British school authorities

British bureaucrats just love finding excuses to put other people out.



When her seven-year-old daughter complained of dry lips, Joanne Wilkins gave her a tiny tin of Vaseline to apply at school. But when Ellie-Maye went to use it, it was confiscated – because it is not a prescribed medicine.

And when Mrs Wilkins queried the decision, she was told if she wanted her daughter to moisturise her lips, she would need to take her out of school to apply the Vaseline.

‘This is health and safety gone mad,’ said Mrs Wilkins, 28, a project manager, yesterday. ‘Where has common sense gone? I can’t believe how my daughter was humiliated. ‘This harmless ointment was taken away in front of all her friends. She was made to feel naughty and as a result was close to tears – all over a tiny pot of Vaseline.’

Mrs Wilkins took advice over her daughter’s dry lips from her pharmacist. She said: ‘She recommended Vaseline Lip Therapy. It is the basic original Vaseline – just petroleum jelly - and is colourless and odourless. ‘She could apply it as often as she wished and it comes in a tiny pocket-sized tin that Ellie-Maye could easily carry in her schoolbag.

‘In fact, Ellie-Maye needed help opening the tin and the first teacher of the day helped her and had no problem with the Vaseline at all. But at lunchtime, when she went to apply the Vaseline again, a second teacher she asked to help open it said she shouldn’t have it in school at all. ‘Then in front of all Ellie-Maye’s friends, she took it away.’

The next day, puzzled as to why the Vaseline had been confiscated, Mrs Wilkins went to see Graham Prince, headmaster of Wistaston Church Lane Primary School near her home in Sandbach, Cheshire.

Mrs Wilkins, who also has a son Issac, two months, with her husband Nick, said: ‘Ellie-Maye was really upset and I thought there must be some mistake. ‘But he just confirmed that unless the Vaseline was prescribed then she was not allowed to use it in school.

‘I was shocked – especially when he suggested one way round it was to “medicate” Ellie-Maye by taking her out of school. ‘Alternatively, I could come to the school to apply it. I thought this was ridiculous that I would be expected to find time off work or that Ellie-Maye’s education should suffer in some way.

‘Anyone of any age can buy Vaseline in the supermarket. As she had my permission to use it and you don’t even need to buy it from a chemist, it seemed such an over-the-top reaction.’

Mrs Wilkins has now been forced to have the Vaseline prescribed with a doctor’s note – at a cost of £15. She said: ‘My GP said that as it wasn’t a medicine and doesn’t need to be prescribed, it shouldn’t be done under the NHS. It would therefore need a private doctor’s note.

‘It seemed ridiculous as the little tin to buy costs under £1. However, as Ellie-Maye still suffers from dry lips and I don’t want her to suffer, I’ve had no choice.’

Last night the school head refused to comment. However, a spokesman from Cheshire East Council said on behalf of the school: ‘The school has to be one hundred per cent certain that any ointment or medication that a child brings into school is safe to use.

‘Our school policy sets out that any type of oral ointment or medicine to be self-administered in school should be prescribed by a physician. ‘Our only interest is the protection of children in our care and it is with this in mind that we applied our school policy.’ [Rubbish!]

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Political pastor stands up for morality in Australian schools

THE Christian Democratic Party MP Fred Nile has used a parliamentary debate on his bill to remove ethics classes from schools to claim they teach the philosophy behind Nazism and communism.

The O'Farrell government used its numbers in the upper house to give Mr Nile's bill priority yesterday morning, allowing it to be introduced ahead of all other legislation.

It followed a meeting between the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, and Mr Nile 10 days ago where it was agreed that the government would allow the bill to proceed after Mr Nile threatened to use his party's votes to "torpedo " the government's wages policy.

Introducing the bill, Mr Nile said he did not believe children were being taught the difference between right and wrong in the ethics classes, which are being taught as an alternative to special religious education lessons.

"It's relative ethics, which is the basis of secular humanism, " Mr Nile told parliament. "I believe this is the philosophy that we saw during World War II with the Nazis and with the Communists. " The comments were branded "outrageous " and "an act of extreme cowardice " by opposition and Greens MPs.

The move to allow debate on the bill sparked renewed accusations that Mr O'Farrell had done a "deal " with Mr Nile in return for his support for the wages policy.

The Opposition Leader, John Robertson, said the arrangement was "the first down payment " and was "clear evidence that a deal has been done ". The Greens MP, John Kaye, said the government was "clearly delivering for [Mr Nile] on this. How far does this deal go? ".

The government supported a move by Mr Nile's colleague, Paul Green, to adjourn debate on the ethics bill until September 16. Mr Nile said the adjournment was "so that the Coalition can give further consideration to it".

Despite saying he would take Mr Nile's bill to cabinet and the party room for consideration, Mr O'Farrell insists the government will not support removing the classes from schools. Such action had been an election promise.

Mr O'Farrell has defended the decision to allow the debate by arguing that every MP has the right to have every bill they present debated in parliament.

Yesterday Mr Nile gave notice of a new bill that would close the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross, which was made permanent by the Labor government last year.

Asked during question time if he would support closure of the centre, Mr O'Farrell said the government "has no plans to close the MSIC" but that if it comes into the parliament Coalition MPs would be granted a conscience vote. He said Mr Nile had not raised the issue with him.

Earlier, the government combined with crossbench MPs in the upper house to block an attempt by the Greens to force it to table any documents relating to Mr Nile's meeting with Mr O'Farrell.

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5 August, 2011

Schooling Matt Damon

Actor Matt Damon is a walking, talking public service reminder to immunize your children early and often against La-La-Land disease.

In Damon's world, all public school teachers are selfless angels. Government workers and Hollywood entertainers are impervious to economic incentives. And anyone who disagrees is a know-nothing, "corporate reformer" ingrate who hates education.

Last week, the liberal box-office star addressed a "Save Our Schools" march in Washington at the behest of his mother, a professor of early childhood education. He attacked standardized tests. He praised all the public school teachers who "empowered" him and unlocked his creative potential by rejecting "silly drill and kill nonsense." Speaking on behalf of "an army of regular people," Damon decried the demoralization of teachers by ruthless, results-oriented free marketeers whom he mocked as "simple-minded."

What Damon's superficial tirade lacked, however, was any real-world understanding of the deterioration of core curricular learning in America. Students can't master simple division or fractions because today's teachers -- churned out through lowest common denominator grad schools and shielded from competition -- have barely mastered those skills themselves. Un-educators have abandoned "drill and kill" computation for multicultural claptrap and fuzzy math, traded in grammar fundamentals for "creative spelling," and dropped standard civics for save-the-earth propaganda.

Consequence: bottom-basement U.S. student scores on global assessments over the past two decades. Blaming the tests is blaming the messenger. The liberal education establishment's response to its abject academic failures? Run away. This is why the Save Our Schools agenda championed by Damon calls for less curricular emphasis on math and reading -- and more focus on social justice, funding and "equity" issues.

Out: Reading is fundamental.

In: Feeling is fundamental.

After his drippy pep talk absolving teachers of any responsibility for America's educational morass, Damon then lashed out at a young libertarian reporter who had the audacity to ask him about the negative impact of lifetime teacher tenure. "In acting there isn't job security, right?" Reason.tv's Michelle Fields asked Damon. "There is an incentive to work hard and be a better actor because you want to have a job. So why isn't it like that for teachers?"

It's elementary that people will work longer and harder if they know they will be rewarded. There's nothing anti-teacher about the question. (And before teachers-unions goons go on the attack, I am the child of a public school teacher and the mother of two children in an excellent public charter school by choice.) But Damon's hinges came undone when confronted with the mild question.

"You think job insecurity makes me work hard?" he retorted. "That's like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when she has tenure." Gathering all the creative potential he could muster, Damon unleashed crude profanities on Fields. "A teacher wants to teach," Damon fumed with his mother next to him. "Why else would you take a sh**ty" salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really loved to do it?"

Never mind that most out-of-work Americans would find nothing "sh**ty" about earning an average $53,000 annual salary plus health and retirement benefits for a 180-day work year.

Damon went on to deride standard, mainstream behavioral economic principles as "intrinsically paternalistic" and "MBA-style thinking." And when the young reporter's cameraman pointed out that there are bad apples in the teaching profession as in any profession, Damon called him "sh**ty," too.

Tinseltown stars can afford to put emotion over logic, progressive fantasy over practical reality. The rest of us are stuck with the bill. And those whom bleeding-heart celebrities purport to care most about -- the children -- suffer the consequences of bad ideas.

Interminable teacher tenure in America's largest school districts, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, has produced a rotten corps of incompetent (at best) and dangerous (at worst) educators coddled by Big Labor. As the D.C.-based Center for Union Facts reports, "In many major cities, only one out of 1,000 teachers is fired for performance-related reasons. ... In 10 years, only about 47 out of 100,000 teachers were actually terminated from New Jersey's schools."

By contrast, as the educational documentary "Waiting for Superman" (produced by avowed liberal turned reformer Davis Guggenheim) pointed out, one out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine, and one out of every 97 lawyers loses their license to practice law.

In Los Angeles, it's not just meanie tea party terrorists making the case for abolishing teacher tenure. When the Los Angeles Times exposed how the city's tenure evaluation system rubber-stamped approvals and ignored actual performance, the district superintendent admitted: "Too many ineffective teachers are falling into tenured positions -- the equivalent of jobs for life." USC education professor Julie Slayton acknowledged: "It's ridiculous and should be changed."

Pop quiz: Would multimillionaire Matt Damon apply the same warped employment practices and dumbed-down curricular standards to his own accountants that he champions for America's public school teachers? Film at 11.

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Elite ISN'T a dirty word as Eton headmaster says it's time to reclaim tarnished term and celebrate success

Society should not be ashamed of elitism, the headmaster of Eton College has insisted. Tony Little believes the term should be ‘reclaimed’ because striving for excellence is vital for success in all walks of life.

He says that elitism has become mistakenly confused with ‘social exclusion’. The headmaster of Britain’s most exclusive school, where fees are £30,981 a year, agreed that Eton was ‘elite’.

He added: ‘But what we need to do is reclaim the word elite. ‘We live in a very strange society where it is possible to talk with impunity about elitism in football, but not in medicine or plumbing or other aspects of life. I would like the plumber I engage to be an elite plumber, and I want to see an elite doctor – it’s to do with excellence. ‘And we are unashamed that excellence is at the heart of what we do. The word has become muddied of course by the notion of social exclusion and that is an important issue.’

His comments come amid concerns that mediocrity has been institutionalised in state schools by encouraging teachers to neglect the brightest pupils, alongside a ‘prizes-for-all’ culture. A recent report by the Policy Exchange think-tank revealed that teachers focused on bumping up pupils from a grade D to a C, rather than those in other grade divides, to improve their rankings in school league tables. And in Key Stage Two results released this week, the number of 11-year-olds exceeding the standard for their age group fell in English, with a dramatic slump in reading prowess.

Mr Little, interviewed for magazine publisher Archant Life London, rejected claims that Eton is restricted to the wealthy and privileged. He said: ‘Eton is more of a mixed clientele than most people would appreciate. For example, 20 per cent of our boys come here with significant financial help, so there is a wider range of backgrounds than I expect people would be prepared to accept or understand.’

Financial help at the school in Berkshire, where most of the 1,300 students enter at age 13, comes in the form of scholarships and means-tested bursaries which can be up to 100 per cent of the fee.

Mr Little said: ‘It’s not just the people who can’t afford anything. ‘It’s the people who used to be able to afford it who now can’t. We are talking about swathes of Middle England – the GP, the country solicitor – who would now find it nigh impossible, unaided, to match the fees of a place like Eton.’

Mr Little wants Eton to have ‘needs blind’ admission in future, which would further widen access to less well-off families. A handful of independent schools currently aim to fund enough bursaries to achieve this, among them St Paul’s School in South-West London.

However only the wealthiest institutions, with wide networks of former pupils in highly-paid jobs, have a realistic chance of raising the millions to fund bursaries for any pupil who needs them.

The Eton admissions process involves testing students’ skills and abilities, evaluation of a report from the pupil’s current school and a face-to-face interview. Five assessors with no knowledge of family financial circumstances then decide who will be offered a place.

Mr Little said: ‘We are ‘‘needs blind’’ in the sense that we look at boys purely in terms of their calibre as candidates to come to Eton. ‘But we are only ‘‘needs blind’’ up to the limits of our bursary pot. That’s what we are working on, to try to build up more money.’

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More universities to be created under British government plan

Specialist colleges with just 1,000 students will be allowed to call themselves universities for the first time under Government reforms being published today.

More than a dozen small-scale institutions – often specialising in media, the arts, education or agriculture – could win the right to full university status as soon as next year, it is revealed.

Currently, higher education colleges must attract at least 4,000 full-time students – at least 3,000 of whom must take degree courses – before winning the prestigious title. But the Coalition is proposing to slash the minimum threshold to just 1,000.

Ministers claim the move will improve the status of many small-scale colleges that can already award degrees to undergraduates.

It is likely to herald the biggest expansion of universities since more than 60 former polytechnics and higher education colleges were awarded the title by the Conservatives in the early 90s.

The reforms come as part of wider proposals to create more competition and diversity in English higher education. It follows the publication of alternative plans to grant full degree-awarding powers to private colleges and give students greater access to subsidised grants and loans to take part-time courses.

But the move is likely to anger traditionalists who fear a further expansion in the number of full universities risks devaluing the status of the higher education system and making it even harder for employers to differentiate between institutions.

Prof Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said universities should be required to teach a range of courses. “What worries me slightly about some of these higher education colleges is that they are very highly specialised,” he said. “An important criteria for me is whether the spread of the courses offered is what you would expect from a university. “It is an essential part of the university experience to learn one subject but interact with a wide variety of students specialising in a number of different fields.”

But David Willetts, the Universities Minister, told the Telegraph: “I want to see a more diverse higher education sector without in any way sacrificing higher education standards.”

Ministers will set out proposals in a consultation document being published today to introduce “wider access to [the] university title for smaller institutions”.

Under plans, higher education colleges with 1,000 full-time students – at least 750 of whom are studying for a degree – would be able to apply for the university title.

Those able to qualify include institutions such as Norwich University College of the Arts and University College Falmouth, which specialise in art, design and media courses, and Bishop Grosseteste University College, which specialises in education and teacher training. Others include agricultural and veterinary science colleges such as Harper Adams and the Royal Agricultural College.

In all, it is believed the title could be extended to around 14 institutions. Those eligible for the change already have degree awarding powers and carry out Government-funded research.

Prof Peter Lutzeier, principal of Newman University College, Birmingham, a Catholic institution specialising in a range of academic subjects, welcomed the change. “While we operate in the same way as universities – conferring our own degrees comparable in quality to those from full universities – we are currently prevented from using the universally-understood term of ‘university’ due to size alone," he said.

"This creates a real perception challenge that means smaller higher education institutions have to spend additional time and resources educating students and employers about the nature and quality of their institution, as well as finding it more difficult to develop international links due to a perceived ‘lack’ of full university status.

“This state of affairs is not only confusing for the public but is also something of an anachronism given that many of our most prestigious full universities actually operate on a smaller, collegiate system. "The collegiate approach is widely praised for allowing students to benefit from high levels of one-to-one tuition and support so why should newer institutions effectively be penalised for following a similar model?"

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4 August, 2011

MO: Law banning teachers, students from Facebook “friendship”

A controversial new law in Missouri designed to protect students from sexual misconduct bans direct contact between educators and students on social networking websites, but has prompted criticism from those who say it goes too far in its effort to clearly define digital boundaries.

Senate Bill 54, also known as the "Amy Hestir Student Protection Act," was signed into law on July 14 by Gov. Jay Nixon. The law requires state school districts to report allegations of sexual abuse to authorities within 24 hours, and holds those districts liable if they fail to disclose suspected or known abuse by past employees.

It also bans registered sex offenders from serving on local school boards and strengthens criminal background checks on school bus drivers.

But one provision of the bill -- section 160.069 -- also prohibits teachers in elementary, middle or high schools from establishing, maintaining or using a "work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian," effective Jan. 1. "Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student," the new law reads.

The new law is believed to be the first of its kind nationwide. Other states and school districts have only recently formed guidelines and policies on student-teacher online interaction.

In Massachusetts, some districts have adopted a model by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that bans "improper fraternization" via Internet and telephone.

Elsewhere, teachers in several districts in Toledo, Ohio, have been told they can communicate with students when it directly relates to school matters. But some teachers say Missouri's approach, although well-intended, is heavy-handed and will ultimately hurt students by restricting access to educators.

"Throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to social networking is bad policy," said Todd Fuller, spokesman for the Missouri State Teachers Association, which represents 44,000 members statewide. "There's so much gray area in this bill that it's difficult for us to define them," Fuller said.

MSTA officials have recently received calls from educators on an "hourly" basis regarding the provision. Some callers have inquired about potential ramifications of the social networking clause, while others are concerned about breaking the new law unwittingly.

"What happens if I use a third-party website to communicate with students?" Fuller said, mimicking an educator. "That's not public. There are lots of elements beyond Facebook that are part of social networking that I don't think this bill takes into account."

State Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, sponsor of the bill, told FoxNews.com that the social networking provision bans solely "exclusive access" between a teacher and a student. "We are in no way trying to stop communication between educators and students," Cunningham said Monday. "We are allowing school districts to form their own policy with this and to police themselves. The social media aspect comes in because we're finding that it's an early pathway to sexual misconduct."

The bulk of the legislation, which was approved unanimously by the state's Senate on April 7, will take effect on Aug. 28 -- just in time for the new school year.

Districts will have several additional months to implement the social-networking aspect of the new law. "Frankly, a teacher that has nothing to hide will be real pleased by this, because it's going to show their good work," Cunningham said. "A good teacher is going to like this."

Randy Turner, a communication arts teacher at East Middle School in Joplin, Mo., told FoxNews.com he's fearful districts will ban usage of social-networking sites altogether to eradicate any potential gray areas. "I understand people have concerns about who their children are having as friends on Facebook, but I know many teachers who have used Facebook, and all of them have been professional," Turner said. "We're not getting on there to be pals. It's a professional service."

Turner said he's also worried that the new law removes an important "avenue" for contact between teachers and students -- both during times of emergency and during the everyday grind of homework. "A student having difficulty with a classroom assignment probably won't want to advertise on Facebook that he or she is having a problem with it," he said.

Under the new law, Turner said teachers wouldn't be able to respond directly to seemingly innocuous questions like whether school will be in session tomorrow or to directly disseminate information during times of emergency. Turner said he used Facebook extensively in May following the tornado that killed at least 116 people in Joplin.

In a statement to FoxNews.com, Facebook officials said a growing number of teachers everyday use social networks as a "valuable educational tool" to answer homework questions or to identify bullying. "It is imperative that this law does not limit schools' and teachers' ability to use technology in this way to educate Missouri's students, and we are working with the education and legal communities to investigate," spokesman Tucker Bounds wrote in an email to FoxNews.com.

Meanwhile, Robert Sigrist, assistant principal at Central High School in St. Joseph, Mo., said Cunningham's primary intention with the new law was to ensure that "inappropriate communication" does not take place between teachers and students online.

"This is an evolving thing," he told FoxNews.com. "It still has to be worked out as to what is acceptable. This is new technology, especially for people who don't tweet and aren't on Facebook, so there's always concern for the unknown."

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NYC: Exam cheating is next cry for anti-test, anti-school reform activists

When the state releases the 2011 public school test scores on Monday, New York City kids may very well show gains over last year. If so, the children will continue an upward trend in achievement with improvements that are all the more impressive because the state has toughened the material and raised the passing grade.

Applause will be in order, but parents instead can expect stepped-up efforts to discredit the results. The better the children do, the louder the attacks will be. This is because anti-testing activists have formed an alliance with teachers unions to undermine the credibility of standardized exams in general. The activists are simply wrongheaded; the unions are calculating.

New York is among the states that are moving toward gauging teacher performance and deciding tenure based on how well students learn, with one big measure being progress on standardized tests. Discredit the exams, and no teacher can be held accountable.

The latest tactic is to raise the specter of widespread test cheating. The logic: When you raise the stakes for teachers, teachers will improperly help kids boost scores. For example, by erasing wrong answers and replacing them with correct ones.

Cheating can happen, and has happened recently in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington. So, aha, it must be happening on a grand scale in New York City - never mind that there has never been any hint of widespread fudging here. The instances that have come to light have been scattered and far from prevalent enough to drive up scores in 1,700-plus schools.

Meanwhile, the last independent investigation found zero evidence of cheating. Then-Controller William Thompson conducted the probe as he was running for mayor against Michael Bloomberg, giving Thompson incentive to prove reading and math improvements during the Bloomberg administration were a fraud.

Despite an 18-month-long audit, Thompson reported that he found "no instances of cheating" on any of the four tests in three subjects he examined during the 2008 and 2009 school years.

Recognizing that unions and activists will use scandals in other cities to stave off accountability, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and state Education Commissioner John King are setting up a high-level panel to ensure the integrity of student testing in New York.

That's a good thing, provided that Tisch and King take a statewide approach and do not suggest, without evidence, that the public has any reason to doubt student test performance.

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Strong Australian dollar offers education bargains overseas

The $A used to buy around two thirds of a greenback. It now buys around $US1.07, roughly a 50% increase in buying power. It's been similar with the pound sterling. It's more realistic to look at it the other way around however. The Greenback and to some extent the pound have drastically lost value while the better managed "colonies" (Australia and Canada) have remained stable. So an $A now buys a lot more in the USA and the UK. And that makes private school fees look cheap overseas. Australians are big users of private schools. About a third of Australian students are educated privately and for High School the percentage is even higher

Japanese yen buy a lot of Greenbacks at the moment too. Even though the Japanese economy is in a bit of a pickle these days, Japanese politicians are nowhere near as destructive as Mr Obama

FORGET Sydney's breeding grounds for the rich and privileged - if you want to give your child a shot at being a prince, prime minister or poet it's now cheaper to send them to Eton.

Thanks to a robust Aussie dollar, parents can now bypass Sydney schools like Knox Grammar and The King's School and send their young blue bloods into the land of future lords and ladies at top British schools.

The tuition and boarding fees of elite private schools such as Cranbrook, Newington, The King's School and The Scots College are now more expensive than their once more posh English counterparts - yet lacking the illustrious alumni.

Cranbrook can boast gambling magnate James Packer as an old boy, but Eton has the pride of the parade in princes William and Harry.

However, what local schools lack in old boy status, they make up for with value for money, according to executive director of the Association of Independent Schools, Geoff Newcombe. "The quality of boarding here is very different from what it was a few years ago," Dr Newcombe said. "Many kids have to board because they live in distant places.

"There has been an incredible effort to make their accommodation more like home. It's on a very different level from the English schools. Eton is pretty basic.

Annual fees for board and tuition at Cranbrook for a Year 12 student top $51,621, while Eton charges $46,137.

At The Scots College, board and tuition is more than $49,000 for access to its honour board, which features Hollywood film director Peter Weir and artist Brett Whitely.

But Winchester, the most expensive boarding school in England, costs just $46,686 and boasts cricketer anti-hero Douglas Jardine and Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon among its famous alumni.

At Trinity Grammar the annual fees are $48,650 for an association with rock singer Richard Clapton, at Newington (nursery of chef Neil Perry and Wallaby captains Nick Farr-Jones and Phil Kearns) they are $45,432 and at The King's School (which produced Hollywood film director Bruce Beresford and former deputy prime minister John Anderson) they are $44,082.

Those fees rival the costs of top boarding schools in the US.

St Paul's in New Hampshire, which boasts among its old boys media baron William Randolph Hearst and US presidential contender Senator John Kerry, charges $45,000. Groton School in Massachusetts asks $44,266 and prides itself for the fact that most of the Roosevelts went there.

And Middlesex School in Massachusetts charges $43,809 and can gush about actors Steve Carell and William Hurt hurtling through its hallowed halls.

One of the cheapest of the best in the US is Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. For just $38,558, students can walk in the famous footsteps of author Gore Vidal, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown.

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3 August, 2011

The calling of teaching

Key to the future of liberty

I’m spending this week speaking at an Institute for Humane Studies seminar for college students interested in libertarian ideas. This follows my participation two weekends ago at another IHS seminar, one for graduate students and faculty members interested in becoming better teachers. One great thing about both experiences is the opportunity to be around, and inspired by, other great teachers. It’s also great to teach in a room where the students are all thrilled to be there and excited to hear you talk. As comedians would say, it’s an easy room.

The two seminars have also got me thinking about teaching and its role in the liberty movement. Having spent my career at an institution where I teach a lot and where teaching is highly valued, I’m long used to thinking about the power of the classroom for young people in general.

However, only recently has the libertarian movement begun to think seriously about how important really good teachers are to opening people’s minds to our ideas, especially at the high school and college levels, when students are most amenable to them. Part of this new focus has been driven by the realities of higher education, where we have done well at producing more Ph.D.s but face a climate where tenure-track jobs are dwindling and competition makes it hard for everyone to get one at a research-oriented school. More libertarian academics are going to wind up at places like mine, and to be successful both as a professor and at generating student interest in liberty, they will need to be excellent teachers.

Greatest Impact

Not everyone will be the next Hayek. Most of us will have our greatest impact in the classroom, where the number of students we teach over a career can add up very quickly. That’s going to be many more people than the number who read our relatively obscure scholarly articles (though not this column!).

So how does one become an excellent teacher? At the evening reception the other night, one of the students here asked me precisely that question, and I answered with three terms: passion, empathy, and love.

Expertise and excellent teaching have the same source: passion about the subject. If you aren’t passionate about what you do, I’m not sure how you can be a truly excellent teacher. That same passion should also lead you to become knowledgeable about your subject. I love economics, and it’s what drives me to know more, to write, and to master the discipline. I think my passion comes across in my classroom and in other public speaking. Every year Israel Kirzner gives an introductory lecture for graduate students at FEE’s Advanced Austrian Economics Seminar. Even in his early 80s he gives that talk with the passion of someone doing it for the first time and as though it was the most important thing in the world. That is a mark of an excellent teacher.

Seeing the World as Students See It

Empathy is the ability to see the world as your students see it so you can offer explanations they can grasp. I don’t mean just using examples that touch on their culture but something deeper. An excellent teacher has to be able to explain concepts and use words that are accessible to the student. This often means eschewing the technical language of the discipline, or at least not starting there. Really great teachers are really great “explainers” because their audience perceives them as clear communicators. Doing that requires knowing your audience, and that requires this sort of empathy, which is often the result of careful listening to the questions students ask. Great teachers aren’t just great speakers but great listeners too.

Love here is not about the subject matter; it’s about the students. Great teachers really like and respect their students. They treat them fairly, they treat them as adults, and they hold high expectations for them. They also listen sympathetically and try to give them the benefit of the doubt until they demonstrate they don’t deserve it. Students respond to teachers whose default mode is to love them in this sense. If you don’t like and respect your students, that will come across quickly in the classroom and you will lose many of them in the process.

The power of great teachers is never to be underestimated. If we are to move forward to freedom, a key part of that process will take place in the classroom, where young people’s views of the world are up for grabs. No matter how right we think the ideas of freedom are, they have to be communicated and taught in ways that are powerful and effective. That means great teaching. The more great teachers we have and the more we think about how to do the job well, the better the prospects for liberty.

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'Million Teacher March' Falls About 992,000 People Short

Teachers unions and their supporters hoped to draw 1 million people to Washington D.C. last weekend for their "Save Our Schools" rally. They apparently fell about 992,000 people short.

The embarrassing attendance underlined one major truth – there is no mass movement to maintain the status quo in our nation’s public schools. The only people defending the current system are those who profit from it, like the leaders of the nation's teachers unions.

The "Save Our Schools" message was honest in one respect – the union goal is to save public schools as they currently exist. Notice that there was no call to improve the quality of education for students, because that's not what the unions are fighting for.

Their only concern is to maintain a system that has kept unions financially health for decades. The fact that American students are struggling in this system is not on their agenda.

The unions certainly did their best to draw a crowd, even going as far as inviting Matt Damon to be a keynote speaker.

The burning question in my mind was if Damon would draw more people to this rally than he did to his recently flopped film "Green Zone." The answer was a definite no. And he got a little temperamental when pressed by a reporter from ReasonTV:

Person behind the camera: Aren't 10 percent (of teachers) bad though? Ten percent of teachers are bad. Ten percent of people in any profession should think of something else.
Damon: Well, okay, but I mean, maybe you’re a shi**y cameraman. I don't know.

A popular theme of the rally was to attack student testing. See, if the establishment can get rid of any sort of objective measure of student performance, then they can dicker about subjective measurements for employees, such as how much they work, how much they care and how hard they’re trying. It has been a full-frontal attack on objective measurements, which they’ve deemed "high-stakes."

The unionists were also complaining about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, collective bargaining reform in Ohio and boogeymen such as the Koch brothers.

Once hoping for 1,000,000 teachers in front of the White House, they could only rustle up about 8,000 attendees, according to unofficial Parks Department estimates. Even grading with a curve, that’s a big fat "F."

But never fear, they have millions of people behind them, Damon said. They just happened to be at the beach or on vacation because, after all, it’s summer, you know. Perhaps the real reason for the poor turnout is that millions of union teachers throughout the nation disagree with their leaders' rejection of necessary reforms.

Either way, the poor turnout demonstrated that there isn't much enthusiasm nationwide for maintaining our public school system in its current form. Most people want change, and all the union bluster in the world will not alter that fact.

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Top A-level students to be offered cut-price degrees and cash incentives at British universities

Students with top A-level grades are set to be offered cut-price courses and cash sums by universities desperate to attract them.

These deals are being aimed at pupils with grades of at least two A's and a B after the Government announced they can take-on as many students as they want as long as they meet those standards.

At Britain's top universities 85 per cent of people will achieve those grades, meaning many will benefit from the bidding war.

In the wake of tuition fees rising to a maximum of £9,000 from 2012, it has also been claimed today that some middle-ranking universities may perform a U-turn and reconsider charging the full fees. The decision sparked days of violent student protesters causing chaos and millions of pounds worth of damage in central London.

This change of heart has come a matter of weeks before the next cohort of A-level students apply for university places across the UK.

Sir Steve Smith, outgoing president of Universities UK and vice chancellor of Exeter University, says changes brought in by the Coalition will force many institutions to offer enticing deals to students. 'They are going to have to work out if they start buying AAB students,' he told the Sunday Times. 'One of the implications is that those students become like gold dust for their reputation. So you might have an incredibly strong series of incentives.'

Cash deals are already being offered in Essex and Kent to attract students for next year, where students getting three A's will get a £2,000 scholarship regardless of their financial circumstances.

Goldsmiths College in London is to waive the £9,000 fees for ten of the brightest students from the borough of Lewisham, where it is based.

De Montfort University in Leicester is also offering £1,000 to students with AAB grades or above at A-level.

Meanwhile it seems students going to less prestigious universities will also benefit from a fee cap of £7,500. Universities Minister David Willetts has taken 20,000 student places and put them in a central pool only for institutions up to that price bracket.

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2 August, 2011

Who cares about the poor in the education debate?

Have you ever noticed that when members of Congress argue with each other on national television, they do more than just disagree? They invariably seem to describe their opponent’s position using very different language than their opponent uses.

For example, a conservative’s support for pro-growth tax cuts becomes “tax cuts for the rich” to a liberal opponent. A liberal’s case for investing in people becomes “wasteful, big-government spending” to a conservative.

I once viewed these word twists as a mere debater’s ploy. But then I came to realize much more is involved. There are quite a few liberals who actually believe their opponents want nothing more than to cut taxes for the rich. There are more than a few conservatives who really believe that liberals favor wasteful government spending as such.

Psychologists might call this “projection.” Instead of trying to understand what other people are trying to say, the projector imposes his own world view on others — in effect, assuming that his reality is everyone else’s reality.

I assume something like this goes on in the minds of many sports fans. They act as though they have something in common with the athletes they root for. The home team winning becomes a surrogate for local values, customs and mores triumphing over foreign values, customs and mores. In reality there is no connection at all between the fans and the athletes other than the fact that the home team pays the players’ salaries.

There is a difference between football and politics, however. In football it doesn’t really matter who wins. In politics, it does matter. If you are at all rational, you want good policies to win out over bad ones.

You would think that academics whose professional job is to approach the world as scientists would be immune from the psychological tricks people play on their own minds. But you would be wrong. Academics can be among the worst offenders.

Writing at Health Affairs the other day, Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt described the current budget impasse in Washington by declaring that this country has been in:

"A long ideological war fought over the distribution of economic privilege in this country, a war that has been raging unabated for over three decades now. One side in this war believes that the current distribution of income and wealth in this country is fair, as it rewards generously those who contribute commensurately to the economy and properly gives short shrift for those who do not — e.g., unskilled workers… The opposing faction believes that the current distribution of income and wealth no longer is the product of a genuine meritocracy, and even if it were, that health care, education and legal care are so-called social goods to which rich and poor should have access on roughly equal terms, regardless of their own ability to pay."

Is this your understanding of what the fight is all about? It’s certainly not mine. I’ll save health care for another day and take up education.

There has indeed been a three decade struggle — involving hundreds of millions of dollars spent on referenda, lobbying, court cases and elections. Just about every large city in every state in the country has been in the thick of the battle, including Washington, D.C., the one city that is controlled by Congress.

Hardly anybody in this struggle uses words like “equality” or ‘distribution of privilege,” however. This struggle is all about liberating poor (mainly minority) children from bad teachers and bad schools. The specifics are varied. They involve taxpayer-funded school vouchers, privately-funded vouchers, public school choice, private school choice, tax credits for private schools, charter schools, etc.

In every case, the reformers are pitted against the teacher unions. The issue is always the same: are schools essentially a jobs program, serving the interests of the people who work there? Or is their primary purpose to serve children?

[I realize there are many other reform efforts underway, including massive spending by the Gates Foundation. These efforts generally are not controversial, however, and therefore involve no “struggle.” That’s because they almost never involve firing a bad teacher or closing a bad school. For that reason, noncontroversial reforms may amount to little more than throwing good money after bad.]

The three-decade-old school reform struggle is not partisan. It has attracted many people of good will. Some have been willing to spend millions of dollars of their own money on the effort, including the late Milton Friedman, the Nobel Laureate economist.

However, I would guess that 90% of all people actively involved on the reform side of the struggle are conservative Republicans. The opposing teachers’ unions give almost all their campaign contributions to Democrats. When the Washington, D.C., voucher issue came to a head in Congress, the Obama administration sided with teachers against students, along with almost all the Democrats on Capitol Hill.

I mention these partisan factors only because of Uwe’s very strong implication that the political left in this country supports equal educational opportunity while the political right does not. Not only is that observation wrong, if anything the reality is quite the reverse. Not only has the political left consistently supported unions against kids, I find no evidence of a belief in equal educational opportunity in their personal lives. Is there any liberal Democrat in Congress who sends his/her children to D.C. public schools? Or do they all send them to the very private schools to which they would deny poor children admission by means of a voucher?

What about liberal professors at Ivy League universities. Where do they send their children to school? Do they select institutions of privilege? Or do they send their children to the same schools ordinary parents do?

Most conservatives in this country do not profess to believe in equal educational opportunity. They’re not hypocrites. But many of them have been willing to give inordinate amounts of time and money in an effort to liberate those at the bottom of the income ladder from poor quality schools.

These days, the folks on the right are not the ones standing in the schoolhouse door, telling poor minority children they cannot come in. The ones doing that are at the other end of the political spectrum.

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Third of British 11-year-olds fail to grasp the 3Rs: 200,000 pupils STILL struggle to read, write and add up

One in three pupils is leaving primary school without a proper grasp of the basics, official statistics reveal today. Around 200,000 still struggle to read, write and add up, despite billions of pounds poured into education under the last Labour government.

The figures, unveiled by the Department for Education, will raise fears that thousands of pupils will find it hard to cope with the secondary curriculum from next month and may fall even further behind.

The Coalition has already pledged to drive up poor standards with a focus on arithmetic and the ‘synthetic phonics’ reading scheme, where children learn the 44 letter sounds and how they blend together.

There will be a toughened up literacy test for 11-year-olds in spelling, grammar, punctuation, handwriting and vocabulary from 2013. And a reading test is also being introduced for six-year-olds next year. Currently, children sit three exams in reading, writing and maths during the final May of primary education. The results are then published in Key Stage Two national league tables in December.

Last year, 35 per cent failed to reach the expected standard, known as ‘level four’, in all three tests. The figure is expected to be about the same this year.

But Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said there may be ‘a bit of improvement this year’ as schools pay more attention to the measure. ‘The Government distinguishes between performance measures and accountability measures,’ he explained. ‘This combined figure (for reading, writing and maths) is a performance measure and therefore public information. Schools recognise this is being presented so they’re putting more effort into it.

They would pull out the stops if it became an accountability measure.’

Last year, the proportion of pupils passing English, combining the reading and writing paper, was 81 per cent. This was up from 80 per cent in 2009, but no better than in 2008. In the reading paper, just 84 per cent of pupils hit national targets, down from 86 per cent in 2009 and 87 per cent in 2008. Results in writing increased from 68 to 71 per cent. The proportion of pupils reaching the standards in maths rose from 79 to 80 per cent. Overall, 65 per cent of children reached ‘level four’ in reading, writing and maths, up from 62 per cent in both 2009 and 2008.

Previously, all 600,000 Year Six pupils used to take science SATS and the results were also used to compile school league tables. But now a representative sample takes the test. Last year, 81 per cent achieved ‘level four’.

This year’s national curriculum tests were hit by controversy as almost 2,000 headteachers reported problems, raising concerns that pupils had been let down by poor marking. More than a third of heads questioned by the National Association of Head Teachers said that the problems with marking were ‘severe’ or ‘outrageous’.

Reaching the required ‘level four’ in maths means 11-year-olds should be able to do basic tasks such as multiply in their heads. For reading, they should understand themes and refer to the text when explaining views. Pupils should also be able to use grammatically complex sentences and spell accurately.

Last year, Ofsted estimated the cost of delivering Labour’s literacy and numeracy programmes since 1998 at £4.5billion.

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Australian church school bans lesbian partners

STUDENTS at a leading Perth girls school have launched a campaign for the right to bring same-sex partners to their school formal.

A group of more than 40 past and present St Mary's Anglican Girls School students have confronted school authorities and started a Facebook campaign to argue for better gay rights. But they say school bosses are refusing to back down and have told them that bringing a same-sex partner to the school ball is "inappropriate".

WA Equal Opportunity Commissioner Yvonne Henderson said the school could be breaching the Equal Opportunities Act by discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

Kia Groom, 24, who graduated from St Mary's in 2003 is leading the campaign. She said she formed the online group St Mary's Anglican Girls School Diversity this month. She said "there are students at the school who don't feel comfortable" and the school policy was "damaging".

Other former students claimed the school chaplain, who is a member of the Facebook group and supported acceptance of gay students, was fired for being "too different" and "open-minded".

St Mary's declined to answer questions when contacted several times this week.

Ms Groom said gay rights had been raised many times at the school and each year students had elected representatives to approach the principal about bringing same-sex partners to the formal. And each year they were denied. Students were now determined to change the policy ahead of the next formal early next year. "To me that is just unacceptable and it just shocked me ... there was no further explanation as to why," Ms Groom said.

"As a result, my school ball experience was fairly sub-par because I didn't get to spend the night with who I wanted to ... the whole thing was tarnished."

Ms Groom, who is bisexual, said coming to terms with her sexuality was made more difficult by the school. She said it tried to "nip lesbian behaviour in the bud".

Association of Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said schools could make their own policies.

The Education Department said it supported healthy growth and development of students and ensured people were treated fairly in public schools.

But Ms Yvonne Henderson said though there were some exceptions for religious schools, anyone had the right to lodge a complaint if they felt they had been treated "less favourably". "Our stance is the Act and the Act makes it quite clear that it is unlawful," she said.

Gay and Lesbian Equality WA co-convenor Kitty Hawkins said other public and private schools had similar policies. Some public school students were required to meet school heads to "prove they were gay" or in a same-sex relationship before being allowed to bring a same-sex partner.

"I understand that many single-sex schools wish to foster environments where they are able to mix with other genders, but this is still an inadequate reason (to exclude same-sex couples)," she said. "Same-sex attraction and trans-genderism are not contagious and allowing one or two same-sex couples to attend a dance together will not insinuate that the entire year will then follow suit."

Ms Hawkins said same-sex couples and trans-gendered students were bullied and teased, which often led to mental illness, self-harm, substance abuse and even suicide. "Schools public or private have an obligation towards their students to ensure that they are able to learn within an environment that is safe, respectful and accepting," she said. "To bar same-sex couples from a dance sends a strong message. For a young person in such an environment, this can be devastating."

SOURCE



1 August, 2011

Obama's Early Learning Challenge and Our Failed Education System

The Obama administration is seducing states with $500 million grants to get them to enroll kids into accredited, pre-kindergarten programs. The Early Learning Challenge (ELC) is yet another bribe under Obama’s “Race to the Top,” the $4.35 billion incarnation of an endless stream of education “reform” projects implemented since President Dwight D. Eisenhower catapulted education to national prominence in 1957 following Russia’s launch of Sputnik.

ELC is run jointly by the U.S. Departments of Education (DoE) and Health and Human Services (HHS). All grants will have been awarded by year’s end. While at least two states have already received windfalls for signing on ($700 million for New York and Florida), some 14 states’ education agencies are still dithering. They know only too well that carrots come with strings, many of them turning out to be unfunded mandates.

State Departments of Education are virtual clones of the federal parent, typically referred to as a State Education Agency (SEA); they receive pass-through money from the U.S. DoE plus revenues from state taxes. Every time an SEA takes federal bait, it loses more of its autonomy through federal oversight, although at this point it’s hard to imagine how much more state and local agencies have to lose. ELC follows a textbook oversight scenario, typical of federal agencies providing grant monies to states:

The federal department grades each state’s application according to a scale. Winners then use the grant money to implement their “own” proposed reforms — which must reflect the current administration’s political agenda — and federal officials judge how well each grantee is “complying,” often by sending their department's own inspection agents to the site. This is how the U.S. Department of Justice, for example, conducts its grant inspections for everything from the Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s anti-gang initiative grants. In the case of ELC, the Education Department’s Implementation and Support Unit’s agents complete on-site program reviews of each state receiving monies.

For concerned citizens seeking a sea change in American politics overall, it is important to recognize that modern schools are the single most influential factor in a child’s development — even before parents. This is mainly due to the fact that government encourages, bribes, and even intimidates parents into handing over their youngsters to be institutionalized (e.g., early childhood programs) as soon as possible, preferably prior to the age of reason, which generally is determined by child experts and theologians alike as being around the age of 7 years. The rationale behind ever-earlier childhood programs is that most parents are ill-equipped to do the job — i.e., lacking in the required skills, psychology credits, time, and resources.

However, once a parent enters the child into the system — be it a public or private entity (exception: non-accredited neighborhood co-ops) — government oversight kicks in, monitoring the child and evaluating parents to a greater or lesser extent. If you don’t believe it, try keeping your child home from school for a week without some exceptionally good reason and see what happens.

The first thing any pre-school program does is to address the child’s socialization skills — i.e., how he relates to others, whether he makes friends, how well he cooperates. Now, for parents who are below the age of 55 — so-called “Gen-X-ers” and "Gen-Y-ers” (or “Millennials”) — which means a majority of parents at this juncture — this may seem normal. But it is, in fact, a huge departure from earlier eras.

Prior to the 1970s (and especially pre-1955), parents were considered the child’s first and most important influence, whether they actually schooled their offspring or not. They wielded authority and served as role models (as per 1950s sitcoms Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best).

Thus did youngsters learn the dynamics of group interaction through the relatively small setting of the family. They learned what behaviors worked and which didn’t. Discipline typically was doled out with a mixture of tough love and tenacity. Talking back, tantrums, disobedience, surliness, unresponsiveness, refusal to share workloads and belongings, not “catching on” to day-to-day routines, and frequent run-ins with neighborhood children — all these were noticed by parents and set off the appropriate alarm bells without any help from “experts.” Mothers, in particular, worked hard with youngsters who displayed any of these tendencies so that, by the time such youngsters attended school, around age 6 or 7, the lion’s share of such conduct had been brought under control, even if a child still remained, in most teachers' judgment, “a handful.” Every child was seen as an individual, each displaying certain characteristics, but “packaged” differently.

The job of the teacher, always in collaboration with the parent, was to smooth out the rough edges that every child naturally possesses, so that by Graduation Day at age 17 or 18, the pupil would be capable of making life choices that incorporated the best of his or her innate talents, goals, and tastes so that any weaknesses were less apt to hold the student back.

Today all that has changed. Early education, in particular, is intentionally built around peer pressure, so that the child learns to value his peers more than he does his parents, teachers, or other adult authority figures. This attitude carries on into the teen years, college or trade school, and adulthood. Thus does the child adapt by adopting the kind of blind conformity that borders on homogenized thinking as opposed to individuality — a situation which, at least for America’s experiment in freedom, is disastrous.

A nation will not get leadership, or “thinking outside the box”; it will not get innovative ideas or engage in healthy debate on issues-of-the-day as long as children are inculcated with this type of conformity — mislabeled “compliance” and “teamwork” — because what it morphs into is conformity of thought, not merely adherence to traditional norms. To modern parents, this may seem like splitting hairs. To our Founding Fathers, as noted historian Henry M. Wriston said in a 1952 commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania, it was the difference between self-determination and blind submission, the difference between innovation that leads to a high standard of living and a nation’s stagnation.

Today, we are rapidly losing the competitive edge and innovative spirit for which our nation was once famous. A major reason is 40 years of narcissism and psychotherapy passed off as education. It permeates our culture despite the few private schools that still attempt to invoke rigorous standards.

The typical graduate today emerges from school believing that being called a liberal Democrat is high praise. Its opposite, according to a joint National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) study, reprinted in an American Psychological Association bulletin, is to be “dogmatic,” “authoritarian,” “paternalistic,” “inflexible,” “rigid,” and possibly mentally ill. What our naïve graduate does not know is that these unsuspected Marxist leanings will summon the siren song of egalitarianism. But should he (or she) ever deviate from the Party line, that song will descend like a hammer.

SOURCE




Investing in their children's future: UK parents 'biggest spenders on private schooling in Europe'

Parents in Britain spend far more educating their children privately than those in any other European country, a study has revealed. In a damning indictment of our state system, 11.3 per cent of school funding in the UK comes directly from the pockets of parents – almost double the level in France.

The figures indicate that families are increasingly unhappy with the quality of our state schools – pushing them to opt out and pay expensive private fees.

By contrast, just 6.2 per cent of school funding in France comes from parents, compared with 4.8 per cent in the Netherlands, 3.2 per cent in Italy, and just 0.1 per cent in Portugal. Even in the U.S., household spending accounts for just 8.6 per cent of funding.

The results reflect not just the numbers of British children going to private schools, but the higher fees they are charged compared with Continental ones.

The report, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, also showed that money for education from private sources – including business funding for academy schools – soared under Labour, rising from 11.3 per cent to 21.9 per cent between 2000 and 2007.

Around 510,000 children in the UK are privately educated, with average fees at almost £4,200 a term. Top schools charge around £30,000 a year, however.

Fears over discipline and a dumbing down of the curriculum are thought to be driving the disenchantment with the state system.

Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, West Yorkshire, said: ‘Parents who send their children to private schools are not all rich and snobbish. They are people who make enormous sacrifices because they do not think state schools are up to scratch.

‘Private schools are popular because of the ethos they have which state schools are seen to lack. It’s to do with discipline, standing up when the teacher comes in the room, turning out nice people who treat people with respect. ‘And there’s the fact that exams have been dumbed down so much.’

Margaret Morrissey, of campaign group Parents Outloud, said: ‘There is a problem in cities, where parents have little confidence in inner city schools and so have to give up on something else and pay for their children to go private. ‘Part of this is the perception that the increasing number of children whose first language is not English would hold their child back.’

The OECD report also found that students in Britain pay more towards their university education than in any other European country – even before the huge rise in tuition fees unveiled earlier this year.

And parents here also have to contribute far more to their children’s nursery education.

In total, across all forms of education from age three to when students graduate from university, British households pay 21 per cent of education costs – with the Government contributing less than anywhere on the Continent.

The comparable figure in France is just 7 per cent, according to the report. The OECD figures are from 2007, the latest ones available for all countries.

SOURCE






Values in dispute: secularism and tolerance in Australian education

By theologian Joel Hodge

Religious education in schools remains a vexed question for our society that no longer knows what to believe - or perhaps knows too well what it believes (or at least, certain sections of the population do), particularly as some turn towards more activist forms of agnosticism and atheism. For example, in Victoria, certain groups, including The Age, continue to protest against religious education in its present form (e.g., The God Complexity, The Age, 24/7).

These "secular" or atheist groups are arrayed against religious education for various reasons. Some of these reasons coalesce around certain arguments, particularly to do with tolerance and secularism. Since these groups and The Age rarely define tolerance and secularism in any depth, it might be worth reflecting on the use of these terms for the current debate. I will give a succinct rendition of these arguments, and analyse the problems with these arguments.

Firstly, tolerance: it is argued that Australia is a multi-religious, multicultural society that should not impose certain religious beliefs on people, but should be tolerant of different beliefs, with the implication that different religions should be studied alongside each other. The first point that one should note about this argument is that it is a belief: tolerance is a belief and value that structures how we see and behave toward each other. No-one can scientifically prove tolerance to be a valid or fool-proof way of running a society. Certain facts can be argued in its favour, but in the end, it can only be believed as a good and fruitful way of relating and acting (as it is in the West, though not necessarily in other places). I personally believe that tolerance can be a positive force in some circumstances, though it is not enough to have a successful society. Tolerance often sounds more like forbearance to me, rather than real acceptance of and engagement with the other.

The second point that one can notice about modern tolerance is that it is a belief that subjects other beliefs to it. In other words, it equalises different beliefs or social forces by subjecting them to its form of belief. In the case of "religion", it subjects the more prevalent forms (such as Christianity) to itself in order to control them, and then, equalise them with smaller forms. It may just to give smaller belief systems a chance to profess what they believe. This is not what modern tolerance is only about, however. It involves a power-play by the dominant elite to subject those social movements and beliefs to itself.

This second point, then, leads to my third point: tolerance is usually not real tolerance in our society, and because of this, we apply tolerance selectively for particular gain. For example, in the realm of sport, we allow many different sporting expressions in Australian society, however we do not reduce the more dominant forms, such as AFL, to the level of the less popular forms, such as bowling or synchronised swimming, by giving them the same media exposure or forcing children to learn and play them, out of tolerance. If we did, we would probably have widespread civil unrest. Real tolerance is not subjecting everything to the same playing field, but allowing different religious and cultural forms to exist in their own way. Do we really do this in Australian society? Do we really allow different religio-cultural forms, such as New Zealanders, or Hinduis, or Arabic cultures, to exist in their own form? No, because there's an existing culture, language, belief system, and way of life in Australia to which other cultural forms adapt themselves.

Therefore, for the religious education debate, the argument about tolerance can be seen as a ruse to subject a certain dominant belief system (Christianity) to another, atheist secularism. Modern secularism has no great respect for different religious forms, but wishes to equalise and subject all of them to its agenda. This does not mean that "religion" can't be studied in some form in schools. I think it should, but we should be clear what religion is: it is not just Christianity or Islam, but involves studying all belief systems that structure how we think about ourselves and how we act toward each other, which could include forms of modern secularism, nationalism and sport.

Now to the second term that is used widely in the "religious education" debate: secularism. We are repeatedly told that we live in a secular society and that our education system is secular. Yet, the term "secular" is rarely defined. Often it is used to mean "anti-religion" (which really means certain forms of religion such as Christian) or "anti-sectarianism". Professor Peter Sherlock has given a short and insightful history of the debate over Christian education and secularism in Victoria schools (on the ABC religion & ethics page) that might help some to have a better appreciation of the complex history of this debate.

The way that secular is used in modern Australia usually means the exclusion of religion, specifically Christianity. Yet, the problem with this argument is that there is no way to properly define religion to the exclusion of other belief systems, such as nationalism, capitalism or sport. Furthermore, secular has not always meant "anti-religion". In some sense, it has meant the carving out of a space in which politics and religion are separate. However, we should note that in modern times the state took on particular powers in doing this, and over time, this has meant other incipient belief systems have taken over education and culture, such as forms of nationalism.

The final point to make in regards to this "secular" push is that it sees itself as defending a certain secular legacy against religious aggressiveness, which should not be allowed in the public realm. For example, the Christian educators in schools are made out by certain media agencies to be radical proselytisers imposing their beliefs on children. While this can happen, this kind of argument is unjust to the ordinary people trying to positively contribute to Australian society by affirming that children are loved, not just by imperfect humans but by their maker, God. Furthermore, it is a straw argument constructed to make out religious people as aggressors and secular people as righteous defenders. This kind of conflictual dualism is unhelpful to the debate and should be abandoned.

The defensiveness of certain groups in the religious education debate seems ultimately to do with the beliefs and values underlying Australian society. Each side to this debate has beliefs and values they wish to put forward, and we should be honest about this. Though this is not always the case, one of the problems with the state education system, as John Howard intimated, can be the lack of coherent and consistent beliefs and values that provide a foundation for children and society. This problem is an element in this debate that people often ignore (and contributes to the defensiveness of some). Christian churches (and others) have defined values that they offer, to which many parents are increasingly attracted as is shown by the growth in Christian schools and support for religious education (which, by the way, makes The Age's argument about moderate Christians turning against religious education dubious).

Nevertheless, some of the fear of Christian beliefs should also be better dispelled by Christians because, while Christianity does provide an over-arching framework for understanding our lives, it is not (and should not be) a closed system. God is often taken as the final answer, but God is just the beginning of a journey into the mystery of existence; one that Christians profess has to do with an open and affirming love which can orient us, but not control or overwhelm our freedom.

Therefore, we need to examine our beliefs in this debate much more deeply and not use smokescreens to cover our real intentions and agendas. In this way, we might be able to find common ground.

SOURCE






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.


The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray