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31 August, 2012

Disgusting school administration: Tell 3-year-old deaf student named Hunter to use a new hand sign for his name as it looks like a gun

Harassing a little kid! And a handicapped one at that

A school district has demanded a three-year-old deaf student named Hunter use a different hand sign for his name as the current gesture resembles a gun, his parents have claimed.

The Grand Island, Nebraska district reportedly has a policy forbidding children from bringing 'any instrument that looks like a weapon' to school.

School administrators claim Hunter Spanjer's name sign, which he makes by crossing his index finger and middle finger and then shaking his hands, violates that policy, his parents said.

While it is perhaps unsurprising that the sign for the name Hunter resembles a gun, supporters of the family have argued that it is not something the little boy will be aware of.

'Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way,' the boy's grandmother, Janet Logue, told KOLN.

'His name sign, they say, is a violation of their weapons policy,' his father, Brian Spanjer, added. 'It's a registered sign through S.E.E.' - which stands for Signing Exact English, a sign language system.

The boy has slightly modified the S.E.E. sign by crossing his fingers, which his family claims makes it personal to the youngster.

Grand Island resident Fredda Bartenbach added: 'I find it very difficult to believe that the sign language that shows his name resembles a gun in any way would even enter a child's mind.'

Speaking to KOLN, the school district was not forthcoming with details into the incident. 'We are working with the parents to come to the best solution we can for the child,' Jack Sheard, Grand Island Public Schools spokesperson, said.

Yet he later claimed the issue was a 'misunderstanding' which had nothing to do with weapons. It was 'not an appropriate thing to do in school' but Hunter was being asked to spell his name out by letters rather than using the sign, Sheard told the New York Daily News.

Hunter's parents have set up a Facebook group for support and said that lawyers from the National Association of the Deaf could become involved to make sure their son can keep his name. Howard Rosenblum, CEO of the association, told the Huffington Post it would be help the Spanjers with legal action if necessary. 'A name sign is the equivalent of a person's name, and to prohibit a name sign is to prohibit a person's name,' he said.

Hundreds of people have flocked to the family's Facebook group to voice their support and lambast the school district for its decision.

'We started this cause page to raise awareness of Grand Island Public Schools singling out of this little boy and attempts to try to change his name,' the family wrote on the page.

'I never realised that there were people who could be so ignorant about sign language and to treat a young child like that is unspeakable,' one commenter, Tracie Speed Setzer, responded.

SOURCE





Need $75,000 for a Sex-Change Operation? Enroll at UC Berkeley?

Under the student health care plan at the University of California (UC) – Berkeley, students can receive coverage of up to $75,000 for sex-change operations and other related therapy, documents obtained on Monday by Campus Reform reportedly indicate.

According to the “2012-13 UC Berkeley Student Health Insurance Plan Benefits Booklet,”the publicly funded university will provide up to 90 percent of the controversial procedure, which comes out to about $75,000.

Also covered under UC Berkeley’s health care plan are students who would like to have “hormone therapy” and “gender confirmation (reassignment) surgery.” Better yet, the university will also pay for some “certain travel costs” associated with a sex-change operation because there are only a “limited number of providers” near the school.

The Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform has more details:

* The costs for a sex change operation alone, without additional travel costs, can exceed $50,000. Many private health care providers do not pay for these operations due to their cost and questionable health benefits.

* The documents also reveal that the university health plan will cover up to 90-percent of costs [for] abortions.

* Despite multiple inquiries the UC’s administration did not reveal the number of sex-change operations or abortions provided under the plan or when the plan was amended to include these controversial operations.

When students are accepted into the university, they are automatically enrolled in its student health care plan and must apply for a “waiver” to be exempt from buying into it.
UC Berkeley’s website describes its student health care plan as “a comprehensive major medical insurance plan, providing medical, counseling, prescription, vision and dental services.”
Funny, it doesn’t mention sex-change operations.

SOURCE




Thousands of British students being 'hoodwinked' into taking courses for jobs they will never get

Armies of students are graduating from courses with qualifications for jobs that aren’t there.

Many are being trained in fields such as video games design, media, hair and beauty, forensic science and PR.

However, their numbers far outstrip the positions in the employment market. For example, colleges trained 94,000 students in hair and beauty in 2011, to fill only 18,000 new jobs.

Critics claimed young people were being ‘hoodwinked’ into spending thousands on college courses and university degrees that promise a dream career but in reality offer few prospects.

In contrast, there are dire shortages of trained staff in fields such as engineering and physics.

Research for a book on consumer society shows that 52 universities offer degrees in film studies, 37 run courses in cultural studies and 66 offer television studies.

In addition, 130 video games degrees are available but only eight are accredited by the industry body.

While 5,664 students were taking forensic science degrees in 2009, only 5,000 in total worked in the UK forensic science industry.

Figures also show that nearly 83,000 college students finished media courses last year at ‘level three’ – roughly equivalent to A-level standard – but only 65,000 vacancies were available.

In hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism, nearly 98,000 completed courses with only 43,000 jobs advertised.

In contrast, fewer than 40,000 students completed courses in building-related engineering – even though 72,000 jobs were available.

Steve McKevitt, a marketing expert who draws on the figures for his new book Everything Now, said young people were being failed by an education system which ignored the needs of employers.

‘The decision to supply the labour market with more graduates was taken without really considering what the needs of the labour market actually were,’ he said.

‘I do think it is a scandal that so many young people are being hoodwinked into studying for expensive degrees under the auspices that these qualifications are the key that will open the door to a dream career.’

Mr McKevitt argued that Britons increasingly measure success by their careers and how ‘interesting’ their lives are. Jobs in the creative industries are therefore attractive. ‘The irony is that while it is very difficult to get a job in the creative sector, it is usually very easy to gain a place on one of the supposedly related courses,’ he said.

‘The key point is not that studying for these degrees is a waste of time. There is nothing necessarily wrong with undertaking a degree in PR, media studies, video games or any of the others…Nor does it mean that if you study one of these then you won’t be able to get a job in your chosen field.

‘The fundamental issue here is that these degrees do not necessarily lead to a job in the sector so if that is your only reason for studying them, then you are probably better off studying something else.’

The warning follows research by the Local Government Association earlier this year, which found that Britain is ‘teaching too many young people the wrong skills’.

The Department of Business said: ‘Graduates continue to do better than non graduates and we must ensure they enter the labour market equipped to succeed.’

SOURCE




30 August, 2012

"Higher Education Bubble Spawns Demographic Decline Among Educated Americans"?

The Washington Times takes note of the burgeoning higher education bubble in a recent editorial:

The cost of a college education has soared far in excess of the cost of health care. This is in spite of — or, more accurately, because of — massive government involvement in subsidizing and running schools. . . Doing more of the same isn’t a realistic answer. America is in the midst of what University of Tennessee Prof. Glenn Reynolds calls the “higher education bubble.” As with the housing bubble, cheap credit is the primary culprit in inflating the price of schooling. Federal student loans subsidized by taxpayers have made learning more expensive, not more affordable.

The Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey estimates federal student aid increased by 372 percent between 1985 and 2010, from just under $30 billion to almost $140 billion. To put it another way, as Mr. McCluskey explains, “Taxpayer-funded outlays per degree rose from $58,755 in 1985 to $78,347 in 2010.” This flow of cheap money corresponded with rapid growth in tuition at rates well above average inflation. Mr. Reynolds reports that college tuition grew at almost 7.5 percent annually between 1980 and 2010, when average inflation was 3.8 percent. At less than 6 percent annually, even health care costs grew at a slower rate than the university tab.

Young people aren’t getting much in exchange for this huge outlay. While enrollment has increased, completion rates remain dismal. Barely a third of students complete their degrees in four years, and less than 60 percent earn their degree in six years, according to Mr. McCluskey. That means at least two out of five enrollees don’t finish and fail to reap the benefits of a post-high-school education. Even those who complete their programs of study and are fortunate enough to find employment find that in one out of three cases, their degree isn’t required for their work.

Earlier, I wrote about how exponentially growing student loans are driving up tuition and creating a demographic time bomb as well as a higher-education bubble that could explode in taxpayers’ faces.

As college costs and student loan debt soar (partly due to opulent university spending) and unemployment rises, young college graduates, crushed by student loan debt, are deciding not to have kids, resulting in demographic decline among the educated in America. In recent years, student loan debt has skyrocketed from $100 billion to nearly $1 trillion, creating a potential debt bomb for the American economy.

France and England now have higher birth rates than America. College-educated people in their 20s are definitely more likely to have kids there. “American fertility is now lower than that of France” and the United Kingdom, notes The Economist, even though American fertility was higher than France or England in 2007.

Why the recent change? Could it be because college graduates in England and France have less student loan debt? Tuition is lower there. Per capita expenditures are lower at their elite schools. France and England spend much less on physical plant for colleges and universities. Faculty salaries don’t get as high there.

The buildings at my French-born wife’s alma mater don’t look very impressive, although she studied and learned a lot there. If a French university outwardly looks more like a high school than a Harvard, that’s OK with them. What matters to them is the learning that takes place within, not whether it looks like a college marketer’s movie-set image of what a university should look like. French students also study a lot more than American students, so they may be more accustomed to not having spare time (something that may help prepare them to have kids after they graduate, since parents of young children have little free time).

U.S. colleges are borrowing lots of money for fancy, unnecessary facilities, gambling that they can pay the interest on their increased debt by increasing tuition on future students. This is already resulting in growing numbers of American universities facing “financial trouble,” notes The Economist.

As USA Today noted earlier, American college students learn less and less with each passing year, according to recently-released research. “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.” Less time spent studying gives students more time to work to pay their inflated tuition.

Actions by the Obama administration have increased college costs and driven up tuition. The administration has also discouraged vocational training needed for high-paid, skilled manufacturing work, contributing to a severe shortage of skilled factory workers — thus making it harder for factories to expand their operations and hire workers, including the unskilled workers among whom unemployment remains highest.

Countries’ success has little to do with how many of their citizens graduate from college. As Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson notes, “Some robust economies have workforces with a much smaller share of college degree-holders than the United States.” Tuition in American universities has also been driven up by the cost of administrative bloat, such as the growth of a vast and costly “diversity machine” in college administrations, and red tape that results in some colleges having more administrators than teachers.

SOURCE





Teachers unions’ pressure is failing

Hearing teachers unions complain about extending school choice to American families is nothing new. They have been spreading misinformation about efforts to break up their monopoly on education for years. With millions of students going back to school, we can, unfortunately, expect them to turn up the volume.

Yet every year, the unions’ grip on power loosens. Scholarships, education savings accounts, vouchers and other reform efforts keep proliferating. Worse, from the unions’ point of view, school choice keeps growing in popularity among parents and students. Forty-four percent of Americans now favor allowing students the option of attending private schools at public expense. That is up 10 percentage points from last year.

Small wonder that the Louisiana Association of Educators threatened last month to sue private parochial schools in the state that plan to accept voucher students this fall, or that the union-supported Obama administration has supported a plan to give federally issued paychecks directly to local teachers. Desperation must be setting in.

The calls for more taxpayer money persist despite the huge increases in federal education spending over the past decade. President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget request included another major increase for the Department of Education — 2.5 percent more than last year — to nearly $70 billion.

We’re now spending an average of $11,400 per student, a record amount. Yet test scores and other measurements of academic achievement continue to lag.

Given this state of affairs, we should be glad school choice is on the rise. Among the promising signs we see:

New Hampshire is one of 11 states to offer scholarships for underprivileged students to attend private schools. Parents unhappy with their local public schools have a choice. They can do something to get their children into schools they feel would better meet their needs. Businesses and individuals who donate to private-school scholarship funds receive sizable tax credits. The scholarships average $2,500 for students whose families earn up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

South Carolina has a tuition tax-credit program that lets children attend schools that are right for them. Who is eligible for the tax credit? Anyone who donates to the privately funded scholarships that have been set up for low-income and special-needs students. The program gives tax deductions of up to $4,000 to families to help cover the cost of sending their children to private schools, $2,000 for home schooling and $1,000 to help with expenses related to sending their children to out-of-district public schools.

North Carolina is home to an elementary school that has used online learning to move from the middle of the pack on student achievement into a tie for second place on state tests. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Juan Williams explains how:

“All of their textbooks, notes, learning materials and assignments are computerized, allowing teachers and parents to track their progress in real time. If a student is struggling, their computer-learning program can be adjusted to meet their needs and get them back up to speed. And the best students no longer wait on slow students to catch up. Top students are constantly pushed to their limits by new curricular material on their laptops.”

Home schooling. Heritage Foundation education analyst Lindsey Burke says it may be the fastest-growing form of education in the United States, rivaled only by charter schools. Data from the U.S. Department of Education show a 74 percent increase in home schooling since 1999 alone, with approximately 1.5 million children (2.9 percent of school-age children) being home-schooled in 2007. The numbers have only grown since then. Some analysts place the number of home-schooled children at more than 2 million.

These and other encouraging trends suggest that the status quo in education won’t necessarily remain the status quo much longer. The trend is flowing away from government control — and toward parental control.

“Parents are the first and the most important educators of their own children,” Pope John Paul II once said. “They also possess a fundamental competence in this area; they are educators because they are parents.” They, not Washington, are the ones who should be directing education. The more our education policy reflects this truth, the better off our children will be.

SOURCE





British govt. slashes health and safety guidance for schools

More than 95 per cent of health and safety guidance issued to schools has been slashed as part of a Coalition purge on red tape, figures show.

Under Labour, teachers were issued with 150 pages of guidelines designed to keep pupils safe in the classroom and on school trips but the number has since been cut to just eight, it has emerged.

The drop was outlined as official figures revealed for the first time the extent to which education bureaucracy has been reduced over the last two years. In total, more than three-quarters of official edicts issued schools under the last Government have now been abolished.

State primaries and secondaries in England are now issued with just 6,978 pages of guidance compared with 28,455 pages previously.

Axed documents include the all-out abolition of a 200-page guide to “reducing bureaucracy”, while guidance on “improving pupil performance” has been cut from 2,524 pages to just 174. Another volume on “pedagogy and practice“ has been reduced from 1,959 pages to 63.

The Coalition has faced criticism over its drive to cut education guidance.

Earlier this year, Jamie Oliver, the TV chef, claimed that the Government was jeopardising pupils’ health after announcing that a new wave of academies and free schools would be exempt from nutritional standards governing school dinners.

This month, it was revealed the ministers had abolished school sports survey – including a target that pupils must complete two hours of PE a week – prompting claims that it would undermine the Olympic legacy.

But Elizabeth Truss, the Conservative MP for South West Norfolk, who obtained the figures following a series of Parliamentary questions, said the last Government “bombarded teachers with bureaucratic, unreadable guidance” that actually undermined education standards.

“28,000 pages of guidance is not only a massive burden, it also diminishes the trust and responsibility that should be given to teachers,” she said.

“This Government has made huge strides towards reducing the burden of guidance on schools, slashing the total by three-quarters.”

New figures show that teachers are no longer given guidance on handling the media. In the past, they were issued with 188 pages on the subject.

Guidance on health and safety has been dramatically trimmed to just eight pages. This follows concerns that some schools were axing traditional science experiments or school trips amid fears over safety rules.

The number of pages of guidance on science, technology, engineering and maths was cut from 765 pages to nothing, while documents relating to work-based learning were also axed altogether.

Other guidance cut significantly relates to issues such as admissions, attendance, behaviour, the curriculum, equality, finance, qualifications, special needs, staffing and target setting.

SOURCE





29 August, 2012

What are Chinese colleges like?

For roughly three years I had the opportunity to live and work at two colleges out here in China. I could describe any number of observations but one that sticks out at this time is the role the Communist Party plays in curriculum.

While the days of the Little Red Book (Mao zhuxi yulu) and cult of personality may officially be in the past, the Party still maintains control over what is and is not taught in classes.

For example, at both colleges I taught at, each department had both a nominal civilian leader as well as a de facto Party leader. While I had little daily interaction with Party leaders (I did meet them several times a semester at faculty dinners and they were actually very friendly to me — gan bei!), this form of governance results in both direct overt censorship and self-censorship via “chilling effects.”

And because the faculty was limited to the Party approved curriculum, this hampered the instructors ability to inject new, different and simply foreign ideas into the classroom. Thus you cannot foster creativity in a classroom without first dealing with the elephant in the room — the entity whose presence currently engenders the status quo.

The WSJ recently published a report noting how new Chinese graduates are having a difficult time finding jobs in part because of a skillset mismatch between what they learned in college and what hiring firms currently demand.

Before quoting the paper, I wanted to share one additional anecdote that involves this skillset mismatch. While it may be hard to believe, but I never once in all of my teaching out here have espoused my personal opinions about libertarianism to the student body. Not only do I think it is unprofessional to do so but I think it is short sighted (e.g., I would immediately lose my job and be deported) — and would accomplish nothing because there is no legal opposition group to rally around. Thus martyrdom for laowai (which I do not encourage anyways) is self-defeating.

With that said, each semester there were always a number of students that would for better and for worse share their thoughts about the material they were studying in other classes. And a handful of students, those with cajones, would even mention the material by name: Marx and Mao.

You see, like many Western colleges, Chinese students are required to take specific courses each semester — with very few electives being offered (and none sometimes offered at all). In addition to studying subjects like Chinese and English, all students (at the colleges I taught at and most others on the mainland) require that their students take several courses on the literature and philosophy of Marx and Mao.

And while they may have been sent on a fishing expedition to get their laowai instructor to divulge (my) personal opinions, several students each semester — those with cajones (because you could be publicly reprimanded for it) — would verbally complain about having to study the works of Marx and Mao. Or in the words of one student I had two years ago, “if it doesn’t work in practice what good is learning an [anachronistic] theory semester after semester? How will this help us get a job?” [He tried to say anachronistic but it didn't come out that way]

So while the North American blogosphere might complain about the futility and practicality of Underwater Basket Weaving or Virtual Reality Gender Studies, the fact that 6 million Chinese graduated this past year being indoctrinated with Marx and Mao should give First World bloggers a moment of solace and perspective.

Now back to the comment my student said two years ago, how will this help them find a job? To quote the WSJ, it does not:

“High-end jobs that should have been produced by industrialization, including research, marketing and accounting etc., have been left in the West,” said Chen Yuyu, associate professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. Referencing the trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,the Taiwan-based company that makes gadgets for Apple Inc. and others in Chinese factories, he said, “We only have assembly lines in Foxconns.”

Solving the problem is complex, involving a gradual overhaul of China’s education system as well as efforts to add more service-sector jobs. China’s Ministry of Education in 2010 unveiled new guidelines pressing universities to shift away from their traditional focus on increasing enrollment. It is also experimenting with giving faculty greater say over curriculum and school operations, though universities remain tightly controlled by the Communist Party.

Oops. By directly and indirectly interfering with curriculum, the Party planners have unintentionally outsource — re-sourced — high skilled jobs to the developed world (see also tangentially labor arbitrage). This is not to say that there are not opportunities for say software programmers (I personally have about 10 business Chinese students at this time who work for a very large American semiconductor company as chipset and driver programmers in Shanghai) — but this is the exception rather than the rule.

And as the same WSJ article notes those graduates that do find jobs are not making big yuan:

A survey of more than 6,000 new graduates conducted last year by Tsinghua University in Beijing said that entry-level salaries of 69% of college graduates are lower than those of the migrant workers who come from the countryside to man Chinese factories, a figure that government statistics currently put at about 2,200 yuan ($345) a month. Graduates from lower-level universities make an average of only 1,903 yuan a month, it said.

Thus the next time you hear someone from the the Professional Protesting class such as the Occupy Wall Street movement complain about making a mere $10 an hour at Walmart, kindly explain to them that college graduates in the worlds 2nd largest economy make less than $3 an hour despite increasingly higher costs of living — which is another anecdote I can vouch for (seeing as hundreds of my former students have now graduated and began their sobering careers).

One last note

Chinese students wishing to further their education via graduate school on the mainland are required to take another lengthy entrance examination (akin to the original gaokao) in which a students knowledge of Marx and Mao are again tested. A foreign colleague of mine has a Chinese wife who bitterly complained about having to take those portions of the test simply to apply to a grad program in translation and interpretation. Several of her other, talented friends opted out and instead used guanxi to get government jobs.

Which brings me to this slight twist of fortunes: do you know what the #1 desirable job is now in China? According to a recent survey from ChinaHR: working for the government — for the old fashioned Iron Rice bowl (tie fan wan) once again.

SOURCE






Price Tag $500K: Baltimore Schools Under Fire for Wild Spending Spree (That Included a Trip to Hooters)?

The Baltimore school system is coming under fire after The Baltimore Sun obtained its spending reports through a Maryland Public Information Act request.

Though Americans are often told they need to pay more taxes for teachers (and “roads and bridges”), it seems as though the city of Baltimore mismanaged roughly half a million dollars of taxpayer money over the last year and a half.

The Baltimore Sun begins:

"Despite tightening school budgets and a perpetual rallying cry for more funding, Baltimore school administrators spent roughly $500,000 during the past year and a half on expenses such as a $7,300 office retreat at a downtown hotel, $300-per-night stays at hotels, and a $1,000 dinner at an exclusive members-only club, credit card statements show.

City school officials defend the majority of the credit card expenditures… as “the cost of doing business,” saying only a handful of “outliers” show questionable judgment or disregard for taxpayer money.

“We are working around the clock to engage our partners and move our agenda forward,” said Tisha Edwards, chief of staff for the school system. “Every transaction has a business purpose in mind.”

Among those transactions were a $450-per-person office retreat at the downtown Hilton, during which the 16 employees of the Information Technology Department were also treated to a $500 dinner at Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chao; and a $264 lunch for students at Hooter’s."

The Baltimore Sun continues:

"A review of credit card transactions and receipts by The Sun found that the bulk of the expenditures — about $300,000, generated by 16 central office employees — were made under a new procurement-card program that has operated with virtually no controls or oversight since it began in January 2011.

Card statements show that many of the expenditures violated the school system’s own protocols and restrictions for use of the cards, such as a prohibition on using them for travel or to buy gifts for employees....

Still, the schools chief — whose card, sometimes used by his assistant, incurred a $66.77 charge to Victoria‘s Secret on Valentine’s Day that was later removed after the system reported it as fraudulent — defended the program.

Tisha Edwards, chief of staff for the school system, said that $67,000 in travel to conferences for a handful of administrators– including an $8,000 trip to Las Vegas for a bullying conference– is merely an indication of the school’s “overinvestment in professional development.”

Other outrageous charges reportedly include, via the Baltimore Sun:

"One cardholder charged $97,000 worth of student leadership grant funds to the card to take students on several trips out of town.

Several cardholders exceeded the $500-per-transaction and $1,500-per-month limits imposed by the rules, and officials said that many of the cards were permitted to have no limits at all. And those who did have spending limits circumvented them by splitting charges into multiple transactions, which is also prohibited....

About $4,700 worth of transactions made by [Jerome Oberlton's] department included trips to retail stores like Bath & Body Works, Ross, Walmart, the Dollar Tree and BJ’s Wholesale Club to buy snacks and refreshments, and gifts and decorations for holiday banquets, birthdays and baby shower celebrations, records show."

City school officials have ordered Jerome Olberton to pay back $5,000 of the dishonest charges, saying: “We have to remind people that they are using resources entrusted to them by the citizens and that they understand that just because it might be good intent, it might not be right — or look right.”

Edwards added: “But we believe there’s almost always a purpose. And it always has to do with the work of children.”

Though an investigation is underway, City schools CEO Andrés Alonso tried to downplay the theft, saying: “These are a fraction of a budget, are budget-approved expenses and categories… The expectation is at the end of the day, the [educational] outcomes improve.”

SOURCE





Australia: High school teacher speaks out on undisciplined classroom behaviour

TEACHERS say efforts to raise literacy and numeracy standards in the state's schools are futile until a glaring issue is dealt with - bad behaviour in the classroom.

One high school teacher from the state's southwest has spoken out, attracting strong support from across the teaching spectrum.

Speaking in his role as a Queensland Teachers Union representative, high school teacher Paul Cavanagh said politicians and parents needed to know the degree of the learning problem affecting well-behaved pupils.

The QTU, Queensland Association of State School Principals and the Queensland Secondary Principals Association all agreed behaviour was a critical and daily issue confronting staff and called for more support, especially from parents.

Concerns have been raised about increasingly aggressive parents and a rising number of children with behavioural and mental health disorders.

In a recent letter to federal Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne, Mr Cavanagh warned: "Having students disrupting the learning environment is the No.1 factor that is holding public schools back, in my opinion."

Mr Cavanagh, 30, who is on leave this term, told The Courier-Mail that while violent attacks on teachers often made headlines, smaller daily behavioural problems were critical.

"It is the major contributing factor behind student performance at the moment - how does anyone concentrate or learn well with the constant disruption that is happening and nothing is being done?" he said.

"You get these lovely, quiet wonderful kids who are interested, who want to learn, and as a teacher it is heartbreaking to think that I can't spend more time helping those kids get from good to better because I am trying to get these uncontrollable kids to learn a bit of discipline.

"If I had a child of my own I would be so upset, not with the school or the teachers, but with other children to think that so much time was taken away from why my kids are there."

He said most parents really cared about their children's education and it was politicians he wanted to understand what was really happening in classrooms, given the current focus on education.

Queensland Association of State School Principals president Hilary Backus said behaviour was "getting worse and it is getting more and more critical that schools and homes work together".

Last year her organisation called for a co-ordinator at every primary school to deal with mental health, behaviour and social issues.

Queensland Secondary Principals Association president Norm Fuller said there was "no doubt" behaviour was an issue, and there had been an increase in parents wanting to argue with staff and "take some matters into their own hands".

QTU president Kevin Bates said there had been an increase in more violent behaviour among children, but this was a reflection of the community, not schools, with some parents actively working against teachers on the issue.

He said Mr Cavanagh's frustrations were shared by many teachers, and called for more positive learning centres for pupils with behavioural issues.

Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens' Associations president Margaret Leary said schools needed to be responsible for teaching, and parents for social issues.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said poor behaviour in school should not be tolerated, and urged parents to "take responsibility for the behaviour of their children to help ensure that all Queensland students have the best education experience possible".

Education Queensland assistant director-general Sharon Mullins said the department had measures in place to help teachers manage challenging behaviour, including support staff, suspensions and exclusions.

"Education Queensland expects parents to work in partnership with the school," she said.

SOURCE





28 August, 2012

It's the Curriculum, Stupid

It's the time of the year when children's smiles begin to look a little pinched. You can feel it when you walk through any school supplies store. While the colored pencils and lunchboxes on display evoke memories of "the good times," they also spark memories of all that filler work -- the spelling and grammar exercises, multiplication tables and the dates of the Revolutionary War.

It's also the time when parents think about what their children will study. We used to know the subjects assigned to the various grades, but common core subjects with common values were abandoned long ago, replaced by progressive theories and the dumbing-down of actual information. The emphasis was on methodology and social-activist doctrine, even in the lower grades. We continue to suffer for it.

America has never had an official national curriculum, but as E.D. Hirsch, the education critic, observes in his newest book, "The Making of Americans," "a benign conspiracy among the writers of schoolbooks (insured) that all students would learn many of the same facts, myths, and values and so would grow to be competent, loyal Americans." No more. A hodge-podge curriculum and splintered knowledge marks a decline in academic achievement, as compared to other countries.

Hence a reform movement is burgeoning in reaction to many of the changes of the last half-century. Although results are mixed, some are promising and deserve attention. New York City, with a million students in 1,700 schools, for example, became a focus for reform, with instructive lessons for the rest of the country.

After a child-centered focus for children was described as letting each child find his natural path for reading, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools chancellor at the time, Joel Klein, looked at the dismal reading scores of children in the lower grades and reread the criticism and creative ideas of E.D. Hirsch. In 2008, they tested the scholar's early childhood literacy program in the real-life laboratory of 10 elementary schools.

Hirsch had said that higher reading levels could be achieved when an emphasis was put on the content of old-fashioned subjects, like history, geography and science, as much as the mechanics of learning. It was something like rediscovering the wheel, but the wheel was soon rolled up the hill, getting positive results along the way.

After a year, the schools with the new curriculum achieved reading scores five times greater than schools with the old curriculum. Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute writes in City magazine that after three years, the results continue to be encouraging. It was time for other schools to take a look.

The Hirsch diagnosis could be summed up with a paraphrase of a familiar political campaign slogan: "It's the curriculum, Stupid." Hirsch emphasizes that specific shared content knowledge for each grade should be required. He believes the reform should start in the lower grades and work its way up.

Education reform is as complex as health care reform, but it's not exactly a dominant issue for current political campaigns. Despite the good intentions of No Child Left Behind, legislation written in the George W. Bush administration, teachers who "taught to the test" narrowed the scope of study.

The latest trend is "digital learning," where children work at their own pace on computers. It has technological value for the 21st century, but its emphasis on isolated computer teaching gives short shrift to the common cultural knowledge that was once the baseline for educating a child.

I find few high school seniors today who have read the old staples, like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, such as "Self Reliance." They're unlikely to understand the metaphorical use of an "albatross" around the neck for terms like "the deficit" or even the idea of Social Security.

When a politician's change of opinion is called a "flip-flop," who will understand Emerson's aphorism that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

It's been almost 30 years since E.D. Hirsch wrote the best-selling book "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know," emphasizing the importance of the study of common documents, literary, historical and scientific, that cut across generations, ethnic groups, the privileged and the poor. It was written before the spread of the Internet, Facebook and Google, and the fragmentation of information only makes such core knowledge more crucial.

We risk becoming like those exiled adults in "Fahrenheit 451," the science fiction novel of Ray Bradbury, describing how a few people memorized the great books for safekeeping in a world that burns books.

We don't burn books, but neither do we concern ourselves with the knowledge we hold in common. That's too bad. You might say it's another albatross we must bear. (Say what?)

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British Middle classes forced out of private education as costs rise at twice rate of inflation over 10 years

Thousands of middle-income families have been priced out of private schools by inflation-busting fee rises. Average fees have risen at nearly twice the rate of inflation over the past ten years.

The increases mean that private schooling is now beyond average earners in well-paid occupations, including pharmacists, architects, IT experts, engineers and scientists. A decade ago, these professionals would have been able to afford to pay fees out of earned income. Now, however, they would struggle without funding from other sources, according to the study.

The average annual fee for a day pupil at a private school is £11,457, up from £6,820 in 2002, researchers found. Charges have risen 68 per cent in that period, 1.8 times faster than retail price inflation over the same period, which was up 37 per cent.

Private school fees are considered affordable if they account for 25 per cent or less of the average annual full-time salary before tax.

But £11,457 represents 35 per cent of this average, which stands at £33,011, according to the study by Lloyds TSB Private Banking. In 2002, fees would have taken 27 per cent.

Suren Thiru, economist at the bank, said the rises make it ‘increasingly difficult for the average worker in many occupations to afford a private education for their offspring’.

Those who can most easily afford the fees include accountants, senior police officers, airline pilots and production managers as fees represent 19 per cent of their annual earnings.

The findings follow a warning this year from the former head of a top private school that the sector is losing public confidence by becoming the preserve of the super-rich.

Dr Martin Stephen, formerly of St Paul’s School, West London wrote: ‘Independent schools have put themselves in a very dangerous position; even more dangerous because they don’t realise the danger.

‘They are pricing themselves out of the reach of most normal people in the UK. The independent sector is becoming socially exclusive in a way not seen since Victorian times.’

Dr Stephen is now director of education at GEMS, an international schools group aiming to make private education ‘affordable’.

He added: ‘The sector has become too dependent on overseas parents and is profiting from a state sector in some turmoil as a result of radical change. Independents need to realign themselves with their clients.’

The biggest rises in fees have been in London and the South West, both up 79 per cent from 2002-12. Next were East Anglia (74 per cent) and the East Midlands and South East, both at just under 70 per cent.

The number of pupils enrolled at private schools has also fallen over the decade, according to the study.

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Record EU students to get 'free' Scottish degree

The number of university places available for Scottish students is being squeezed by record levels of youngsters from other EU countries taking advantage of the SNP’s offer of a taxpayer-funded degree, it has emerged.

Successful applications by youngsters from the Continent are up 3.6 per cent on the same time last year when the previous record was set. The annual £75 million cost of providing them with ‘free’ degrees appears certain to increase further.

Although SNP ministers have boasted of allocating a set number of “protected places” for Scottish applicants, this quota also includes places given to EU students.

A loophole caused by European anti-discrimination laws mean children from the Continent benefit from the SNP’s promise of “free” degrees for Scottish youngsters.

Mike Russell, the Education Minister, announced almost 18 months ago he was examining introducing a charge for EU students that would not apply to Scots but no proposals have been forthcoming since.

Scotland is now expected to be the only part of the UK where admissions by EU students will increase as elsewhere they have to pay tuition fees.

Opposition parties last night said it was another example of the SNP’s higher education funding policies restricting places for Scottish youngsters.

The Daily Telegraph last week disclosed last week how other Scottish universities are being forced to offer thousands of clearing places to fee-paying international and English students only.

Universities confirmed that the number of ‘protected places’ for Scottish and EU students effectively acts as a cap on the number they can recruit. They are threatened with fines if they go more than 10 per cent above their quota.

In the most extreme example of the two-tier clearing system, Aberdeen and Stirling universities said no Scottish students would be allocated a place on the 137 courses with spaces available.

Liz Smith, Scottish Tory Education spokesman, said last night: “Mike Russell has done nothing to resolve the EU loophole and that’s putting additional pressure on the number of places available to Scottish students.

“That is in addition to the clearing situation, where Scottish students are being turned away anywhere where the quota has been reached.”

According to official figures, 3,535 EU students had been accepted in Scottish universities by A-level results day last week, an increase of 123 compared to the same time last year.

The 3.6 per cent increase was more than the 3.1 per cent rise in the number of Scottish students given a place. Data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency has shown the number of EU students has almost doubled over the past decade to 15,930.

The Scottish Government said acceptances for fee-paying school leavers from the rest of the UK is 10 per cent up (419) compared to last year, while the total for international students from outside the EU is 7.7 per cent down (201).

Mr Russell has replied to a letter from his opposition shadows calling on him to reform the clearing system and give Scottish youngsters a level playing field.

He confirmed: “There is no question of a place protected for a Scottish / EU student being taken by a student from anywhere else.”

However, he brushed off questions about what happens when the Scottish quota is reached, stating that: “Places available through clearing for Scottish students have always been limited and the clearing system is becoming less relevant to the majority of Scottish students.”

Although this newspaper has been contacted by upset Scottish students unable to obtain a clearing place, he blamed the media for generating “highly regrettable and completely avoidable instances of anguish”.

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27 August, 2012

College officials’ excuses costing students and taxpayers

Finishing college shouldn’t be so hard. Completing challenging classes and mastering advanced material plus working to pay for increasingly expensive degrees is tough enough. But some institutions make it even harder for undergraduates because of their own shoddy administration.

Sacramento State undergraduate Starlight Trotter is starting her fifth year and shared her travails in a recent Sacramento Bee article.

“The 23-year-old psychology major thought she would be a counselor or therapist by now. Instead, she’s still in college and a student assistant in the theater arts department,” according to the Bee. “I just want to get out of here,” said Trotter, but students struggle to get into the over-packed classes they need to graduate on time.

“Just 8 percent of first-time, degree-seeking Sacramento State students who started classes in 2007 graduated in 2011, the lowest four-year graduation rate in a decade, according to data from the college,” the Bee reported.

The tragedy is that Trotter did everything she was supposed to do. She worked hard in high school and earned several scholarships, which have now run out because she’s had to stay in school so long. Trotter also works and uses financial aid to pay for her degree. But here’s the catch: unable to get into the classes she needs to graduate, she instead attends classes she doesn’t need to just keep her financial aid.

In a separate editorial, the Sacramento Bee (rightly) called Sacramento State’s graduation rate “abysmal and unacceptable.” Sacramento State officials have responded in the past by blaming students for not being academically prepared, having to work, and enrolling in the wrong classes. They also blame the legislature for cutting funding.

Hooey. It was Sac State’s choice to admit unprepared students. In response to the down economy, institutions that depend on public subsidies need to tighten their belts—just like the taxpayers who fund those subsidies are doing.

It’s was also Sac State’s choice to continue offering degree programs they couldn’t fill but continued paying for by pulling funds from other programs (called cross-subsidization). And, it was Sac State’s choice not to cut those programs at the expense of over-enrolled programs such as Trotter’s.

According to data reported to the U.S. Department of Education, Sac State’s core revenue in 2010 exceeded $350 million: $113 from tuition and fees; $128 from state appropriations; $72 million from government grants and contracts; nearly $1 million in private gifts, grants, and contracts; almost $2 million in investment income; and another $41 million in other core revenue.

All that money works out to more than $15,000 per full-time student. If Sac State, or any other public institution for that matter, cannot fulfill their obligation to provide undergraduates with the courses they need for their degrees, then they should return funds to students and taxpayers.

It is also worth noting that if Sac State were a for profit institution, the legislature, state and U.S.education departments would be demanding investigations for such mismanagement.

To avoid such mismanagement in the future, the California legislature should enact some common-sense reforms. Put an end to lump-sum state appropriations. Instead award appropriations to students directly in the form of grants that students could take to any California postsecondary institution, public or private, of their choice—about $5,500 based on Sac State’s appropriation levels.

If institutions wanted their share of state appropriations, then they’d have to improve their graduation and management track-records to attract and keep students—along with their state appropriation funding.

Another related reform is instituting outcomes-based appropriations. Rather than throwing good money after bad at mismanaged institutions, which leaves less funding for well managed ones, a certain percentage of funds should be awarded based on the number of students who successfully graduate on time.

Ohio adopted an outcomes-based funding system that was enacted in 2009. Today, 5 percent of community college funding and 10 percent of four-year university funding is based on outcomes, including degree and course completion plus incentives for course completion in STEM subjects and for at-risk students.

Tennessee has been using outcomes-based funding the longest, since the 1970s. There is a 40 percent weight on Pell-eligible students (so each counts for 1.4 students) if they graduate to help promote student success without restricting access.

Louisiana and Indiana also have outcomes-based funding systems for both four- and two-year institutions.

All postsecondary institutions must fulfill their obligation to undergraduates and taxpayers to use public funds responsibly and graduate students on time. Stronger accountability from the legislature in the form of better funding incentives, and more freedom for students to take their public education dollars to institutions that will get the job done are sensible first steps.

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British Universities minister defends plans to 'name and shame' useless degrees

David Willetts, the universities minister, has defended plans to “name and shame” degrees with poor job prospects under a new ranking system.

The measure is part of the most radical shake-up of the higher education system in decades, under which institutions will be ranked by graduate employment rates and salaries.

Mr Willetts said the Government was looking for a "transformation" in the amount of information students receive in proposals outlined in the long-awaited White Paper on higher education.

In an interview with BBC Breakfast, he said: "There are some courses that are far better at preparing young people for the world of work than others. At the moment, the student finds it very hard to get that information.

"In future, they are going to be able to see “if I do biological sciences at one university, I have got a much better chance of a job in a pharmaceutical company than if I do biological sciences at a different university”.”

The White Paper being published on Tuesday will outline plans to force all institutions in England to publish data on 16 different areas to give students greater choice between courses.

For the first time, all universities will be forced to release detailed figures setting out how many students leave with well-paid jobs as well as average graduate starting salaries.

Other data is expected to cover criteria such as teaching hours, lecture sizes, accommodation costs and standards of student facilities.

Under plans, the information will be fed into new price comparison-style websites that shame the worst-performing universities and allow students to apply to the best institutions.

The move is being seen as a trade off for allowing universities to impose far higher tuition fees – ensuring students gain maximum value for their additional investment.

It follows claims that some students are currently being misled by vague promises made in glossy prospectuses handed out as teenagers apply to different universities.

The changes will be outlined as part of a long-awaited White Paper designed to map out the future direction of higher education to coincide with a decision to almost triple the cap on student fees to £9,000 from next year.

It will propose creating a market-based system in higher education and promoting more competition between institutions.

The document – originally promised in the New Year – will also:

*Toughen up the Office for Fair Access in a move that could see universities hit with new fines for failing to admit enough students from poor backgrounds;

*Give students more powers to trigger an official inspection by the Quality Assurance Agency – the standards watchdog – if teaching is not good enough;

*Force universities to reveal the A-levels needed to secure entry onto different courses, ensure students pick tough courses in the sixth-form instead of “soft” options that are often rejected by selective institutions;

*Remove barriers for private universities to provide degree courses by ensuring more students can take out the same Government-backed loans to study at them;

*Create a new “kitemark” system in which top companies can accredit courses producing the most skilled graduates.

In a key change, the White Paper will also relax the existing strict quotas controlling the number of students each university can recruit.

Under the reforms being announced by Mr Willetts, up to one-in-10 undergraduate places will be placed into an “auction”, allowing universities to bid for extra students.

It suggests that institutions with the cheapest tuition fees will be allowed to expand to keep the student loans bill down.

Universities will also be allowed to compete against each other to recruit the 55,000 students currently leaving school with top A-level grades – two As and a B.

Each university will be able to admit as many of these students as they wish. The change is unlikely to cost the taxpayer any more money as almost all of these sixth-formers already go on to university, but it will create a “new elite” as the best institutions take more top students at the expense of competitors.

A Whitehall source said: “The reforms are all about ensuring that students get their money’s worth. We’re asking graduates to contribute more once they are earning so it is only right that universities deliver for students.

"Universities will become more accountable to students and they will have to be far more transparent about what they are offering.”

But John Denham, Labour’s shadow business secretary, said: “It is clear that this White Paper, already months late, will be another example of the Tory-led Government making it up as they go along.

“The White Paper will sacrifice quality in an attempt to tackle the fees crisis caused by Government incompetence.”

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Britain's 'A-grade' children can't even manage a paper round

By Peter Hitchens

How we used to jeer at the Soviet Union for claiming record tractor production, record wheat production and record economic growth. These fatuous lies were obvious falsehoods, in a country where the fields were full of weeds, the factories rusty museums of incompetence and waste, and life a series of queues for rare, wonky consumer goods and unfresh food.

But our own official figures are now just as laughably false. The worst of all are the annual claims that our schools are producing a new generation of brilliant wonder-children.

A Tory MP called Graham Stuart, who as chairman of the House of Commons Education Committee ought to know better, actually said on the radio on Thursday: ‘The standard of performance is better than it’s ever been, the teaching’s better and the children are cleverer than ever before.’

Presumably that’s why my local newsagents now employ pensioners to deliver papers, and most of the hard-graft jobs for young people in this country are done by migrants from Eastern Europe. Our own children are just too clever to do paper rounds, or work on a building site.

If Mr Stuart is typical of our lawmakers, it strikes me that they too could all be profitably replaced by pensioners or Poles.

Does he really believe what he says?

For more than a decade, people like me have been abused and denounced because we dared to point out that British school standards were falling, and that our benchmark examinations were being watered down.

There was good evidence for this. The Engineering Council noted 12 years ago that maths standards at A-level had fallen by objective measures. They blamed a softer syllabus.

Durham University, by equally objective methods, found a similar rise in grades – unmatched by a rise in standards – in other subjects.

Now our case is absolutely proved, by the sudden halt in ever-improving grades. This was caused by a simple warning from the government, requiring the exam boards to show that any more ‘improvement’ was justified by better-quality work.

And yet the lies continue.

The BBC, which in my view rightly doubts George Osborne’s pitiful economic policies, has never questioned the absurd Stalinist claims of our education industry, or our equally ridiculous crime figures, apparently compiled in Toytown by Noddy and Mr Plod.

That is because the causes of our wretched education standards, and of our ever-increasing disorder, lie in the failed Left-wing policies of the Sixties.

The BBC passionately supports these policies, and the Tory Party has adopted them just as their utter failure has become evident to anyone with a spark of intelligence.

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26 August, 2012

Teaching Kids Resolve to be True Scholars

Charles Payne

Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and extremely difficult -Samuel Johnson

Over the weekend, President Obama pitched his would-be jobs program under the guise of educational urgency, noting the loss of 300,000 school teachers as the reason America is slipping in the realm of education. While I'm all for a lot of great teachers teaching our children, I think there are issues that are actually more acutely responsible for the decline in America's educational prowess. Statistics used to prove the more teachers the greater the results are sketchy, and it's more of a touchy-feely kind of thing that sounds good, but in reality there are more important components. I think we are missing out on hitting that hot button that makes kids want to learn.

Moreover, for our economically disadvantaged students, we have given them so many excuses for failure that by the time they get out of the gate many expect to be subpar. This is why the direction of the country is problematic. People that make the least amount of effort are demanding to get a greater share of the end results. The so-called income inequality gap is being used to bludgeon the wallets and pride of achievers while excusing those that aren't living up to their own individual potential. Throwing money at problems alone never solves major issues. It hasn't solved poverty or education in the United States, but has helped to create another problem (debt) that has to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

Apparently, the best student to teacher ratio of 15.3 was achieved in 2008, and now at 16.0 (2010), we are back to 2000 levels.

In 2009 PISA reported that there was a section of resilient students defined as those in the bottom quarter of an index of economic, social and cultural status within a country that perform in the top quarter of students from all countries. In other words, these kids were at the wrong end of an equality scale but busted their backsides to perform with the best. What is it that drove these kids to perform so well? There were 25 such nations where the children were more resolved than those in the United States when it came to science literacy (we barely edged out Greece). I don't think it's the money they throw at the problem in Estonia or Mexico.

I'm convinced handing out excuses from the start is hurting poorer students more than a lack of funds. In wealthier schools, the idea everyone should get a trophy is a farce as well. I was on the board of a charter school in the poorest congressional district in America and we had a principle that called all the students scholars. I had a problem with that because the kids that were truly scholars got there through amazing effort that didn't stop when the final bell of the day rang. How did those kids feel when everyone was given the same praise? It hurts motivation.

The dumbing down of America has been a work in progress for a long time, lead by teachers unions looking to protect their jobs more than promoting achievement. It has been aided by communities that fought for easier curriculums so the children feel good. This entire process has eroded the need for resolve. In 2009 PISA tests of black students in America scored 409 which ranked them behind 53 developed and under-developed nations. It cannot be blamed on money. It can't be blamed on teachers not caring; over 80% of American students say teachers care, but less than 30% agree with that statement in Japan where their students run circles around all American students.

The problem is selling the notion of victimhood rather the notion of resolve. We can get it done. If President Obama and others want to remake America, where underachievers are rewarded from the pockets of overachievers, it's only a matter of time before there are fewer of the latter. That means more poverty for all, less liberty for all and no virtue for anybody.

Using children, teachers, police and firefighters to justify runaway spending is shameful. Not finding creative ways to make children embrace learning while promoting the idea they shouldn't be the best is beneath everyone, including politicians.

By the way ... if it was all about a lot of teachers then 2008 would have been the pinnacle of educational achievement. It wasn't.

* From 1995 to 2008, America went from second in the world in college graduation rates to 13th.

* From 1995 to 2008, America tumbled to the ranking of 26th in the world with respect to high school graduation rates.

By the way, it should be noted that Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls this the New Normal and has argued that low student-teacher ratios are more for an education model of the past and shouldn't be an excuse not to take a business-like approach to teaching our children. Sadly, when it comes to this administration, the New Normal takes a backseat to the Old Normal - spend, spend and spend some more. To be able to spend, tax, tax and tax even more (of course, borrowing has also been an integral part of "paying" for all that spending). In the meantime, toss resolve out the window and replace it with a false pity and false hopes.

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British junior high School results: furious backlash as pass rate slumps

It's going to be like getting addicts of drugs to wean some Britons off soft marking

GCSE results fell for the first time in the exam’s 24-year history on Thursday, prompting a furious backlash from teachers, who claimed that grades had been deliberately suppressed.

Up to 10,000 pupils are believed to have missed out on C grades in English — considered a good pass — as results registered their only annual decline since 1988.

Head teachers, local authorities and union leaders said grade boundaries had been “very substantially” raised at the last minute.

Many schools could now face closure or takeover for failing to hit key GCSE targets.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, moved to defuse the row yesterday, insisting that exam boards had operated “entirely free” from political pressure.

He also appeared to welcome the drop in grades, adding: “You cannot have a situation where exam passes continue rising forever and ever without … grades either falling or steadying.”

Business leaders also said results registered this summer were “now more reflective of the ability of those taking the exams”.

In all, it is believed that pass marks in English had been raised by as much as 10 per cent for some GCSE papers this summer compared with assessments taken in January.

Sources said this was because grade boundaries set at the start of the year were too lenient — risking grade inflation.

As more than 650,000 school­children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland received their results, it emerged that:

* The proportion of test papers marked at least A fell by 0.8 percentage points to 22.4 per cent — the first annual drop on record.

* Fewer GCSE papers were marked C for the first time, with marks down by 0.4 percentage points to 69.4 per cent.

* The proportion of C grades in science dropped sharply from 62.9 to 60.7 per cent after Ofqual, the qualifications watchdog, ordered a toughening up of test specifications.

* More pupils opted to study traditional academic subjects such as biology, chemistry, physics, history and geography following a government attack on “Mickey Mouse” qualifications.

* The gender gap at the heart of the exams system widened, with almost three quarters of GCSEs sat by girls graded C or better, compared with less than two thirds of boys’ papers.

The drop in the number of pupils awarded good results in English proved controversial. Nationally, 669,534 sat GCSEs in English language or a joint language and literature paper, but the proportion of C grades dropped from 65.4 last year to 63.9 per cent. It equates to a fall of just over 10,000 on the number of pupils expected to gain good marks.

Brian Lightman, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said his organisation had received complaints from “dozens and dozens” of schools.

“Students who were working at a C level throughout the year, who were told on their assessments that they were in line for a C, have found out today that this is worth a D,” he said. “This means they may not get their places at college and sixth form. It is morally wrong to manipulate exam grades in this way. You are playing with young people’s futures.”

The Welsh Assembly claimed that it raised concerns with Ofqual two weeks ago over the grading of English language GCSEs.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services, which represents local authority officials, called on the Department for Education to carry out an investigation into the marking of English papers.

Tory-controlled Westminster council claimed that the “goalposts had been moved” for pupils halfway through their GCSEs.

Mr Gove said grade inflation was finally being contained after decades of rising pass rates, but insisted that yesterday’s scores were a “result of the independent judgments made by exam boards entirely free from any political pressure”.

He said the decision to change grade boundaries was down to individual exam boards and was “fairly comparable” with previous years.

Between 1988 and 2011, A grades rose almost threefold, while the proportion of Cs increased by more than 60 per cent.

Mr Gove previously warned of the possible scrapping of GCSEs in favour of new qualifications modelled on the old O-level. Yesterday, he said the Government would bring forward proposals for GCSE reform in the autumn, adding: “We want to change them, to improve them.”

John Cridland, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said: “While the proportion of students attaining an A* to C grade in English and maths has dropped back a little, enhancing the rigour of our examination system will help to improve performance compared with our international competitors.”

Tim Thomas, from EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, said: “Whilst employers will be disappointed at the fall in pass rates, businesses may find that grades are now more reflective of the ability of those taking the exams.

“Previous pass rate increases have not always translated into attainment ­levels seen by businesses and have led to suggestions of grade inflation. “Employers often find that school-leavers lack the numeracy and literacy skills they require, as well as wider employability and communication skills.”

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said tougher standards were “good news for pupils and their parents”. “The point of GCSEs is to give them an accurate assessment of their capabilities as a guide to future choices,” he said. “Over-generous results could easily give the impression that someone was suited to something when they weren’t.”

But Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “We need to understand why results have fallen in these subjects. Is it because of pressure from Ofqual to shift grade boundaries?

“Concerns have been raised regarding the English GCSE. As well as ensuring standards remain rigorous, we must ensure pupils are treated consistently and fairly.”

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Australia: NSW State Govt. takes control of teacher numbers and class sizes

A NEW staffing arrangement for teachers was imposed on the profession yesterday, giving the state government discretion to control teacher numbers and class sizes.

The Department of Education gave the NSW Teachers Federation an ultimatum to sign a new staffing agreement by 5.30pm on Wednesday, but the federation refused. So the agreement was introduced as government policy instead of a formal industrial agreement, which means it does not legally bind the government.

The Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli, said he was committed to maintaining existing class sizes as "policy" and said the federation could still sign the agreement to make it formal until 2016.

"The principals wanted the flexibility to determine their mix of staff and we've given that to them," he said. The existing staffing agreement is due to expire within weeks.

The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maurie Mulheron, said he was not able to sign the agreement at "short notice" on Wednesday without first consulting his executive.

One of the sticking points in negotiations was the government's refusal to guarantee the number of senior teaching positions. It will be left to school principals to decide the number within a set budget.

Mr Mulheron said the staffing agreement would have formalised class sizes, but these were now at the minister's discretion.

He said the minister's action "confirms the fears of principals, teachers and parents that the government is intent on reducing the number of permanent classroom, executive and specialist teaching positions". "Without a formal staffing agreement, the class size policy can be changed at any time from term 4, 2012, onwards."

In a letter to staff, the director- general of education, Michele Bruniges, said four months of negotiations with the Teachers Federation over new staffing arrangements arising from the Local Schools, Local Decisions reforms had failed.

"Unfortunately these negotiations have not resulted in an agreement and as such the department will implement the new staffing procedures from day 1, term 4, 2012, by way of policy," Dr Bruniges said. "A key element of the Local Schools, Local Decisions reforms is putting an end to the centrally determined one-size-fits-all staffing model.

"The Minister and I have been very clear that the Local Schools, Local Decisions staffing reforms will maintain a statewide staffing system, which has greater opportunities for teachers to be selected at the local level to better meet student needs; maintain the department's class size policies".

The opposition spokeswoman for education, Carmel Tebbutt, said the new arrangement meant there was no protection for the present number of teachers or class sizes. "These will now be at the whim of the minister," she said. The Greens MP John Kaye said: "Classroom sizes and important administrative positions in schools have now been completely deregulated."

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24 August, 2012

Education Spending Doesn't Deliver

When a presidential candidate decries education cuts he's probably not serious about education. He's serious about winning elections.

The Obama campaign didn't waste time before attacking Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., on education, stating in its response to Ryan's being named Mitt Romney's running mate that Ryan proposed "deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid." The campaign hit education even before Medicare, illustrating just how much they must think voters will recoil at any diminution of education spending.

"But hold on," you're thinking, "isn't education vital? And if so, shouldn't we invest as much as possible?"

Those are reasonable questions for people with jobs, families, and not a whole lot of time to research education policy. After all, with most things, if you pay more you get something better.

But President Obama employs lots of people who assess education policy, and he must know what the statistics reveal: Washington spends huge amounts in the name of education but gets almost no educational improvement in return.

Begin with Head Start, a nearly $8 billion program that's politically untouchable, not only because it deals with education, but it's for preschool kids. It's almost tailor-made for demagoguery, with anyone who'd dare trim — much less eliminate — the program practically begging to be declared a rotten so-and-so who hates even the littlest of children.

But the fact is there's no meaningful evidence the program does any good. In fact, the most recent federal evaluation found that Head Start produces almost no lasting cognitive benefits, and its few lasting social-emotional effects include negative ones. Only the people employed by Head Start money — and the politicians who appear to "care" — are really benefiting.

This is repeated in elementary and secondary education, only with a bigger bill. In 2011 Washington spent almost $79 billion on K-12 education, and the latest federal data show inflation-adjusted federal outlays per pupil ballooning from $446 in 1970-71 to $1,185 in 2008-09. Meanwhile, scores for 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the "Nation's Report Card" — have been stagnant.

Oodles "invested," no return.

Lastly there's higher education. Once again, someone who hasn't had much time to study policy might reasonably think the key to improving and expanding higher education would be for the federal government to spend more on it. But again, reality differs: federal aid fuels tuition inflation and encourages massive waste.

The connection between aid and prices is somewhat intuitive if you think about it. Basically, if you give people $100 more to buy something, sellers will raise their prices $100. The buyers are no worse off, the sellers are better off, and the only losers are the people who furnished the money. With college aid, we call these losers "taxpayers."

Of course there's more to college pricing than aid, but the effect remains.

Studies have found that private colleges raise their prices a dollar for every extra buck students get in Pell Grants, and schools often reduce their own aid when government assistance rises.

Then there are the dismal outcomes that go with giving away college money.

First, only about 58 percent of first-time, full-time students finish a four-year degree within six years at the school where they started, and most who don't finish by then likely never will.

Next, a third of people with bachelor's degrees are in jobs that don't require them.

Finally, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy suggests serious watering down of a college degree. In 1992 about 40 percent of adults whose highest degree was a bachelor's were proficient in reading prose. In 2003 — the only other year the NAAL was administered — only 31 percent were. Among people with advanced degrees, prose proficiency dropped from 51 percent to 41 percent.

Again, spending hasn't translated into better education.

To someone who doesn't know about these sorry results spending federal money on education probably seems rational. But President Obama must know the facts, which means when he decries cuts in education spending, it can't be about what's educationally best. It must be about what's politically best for him.

SOURCE







Hundreds of British schools facing closure over stalling High School results

Hundreds of schools face being closed or taken over as GCSE results stall for the first time in the exam’s 25-year history.

Results for nearly 700,000 pupils this morning are expected to show little or no improvement on last year and grades falling in some subjects.

Ministers are also driving up the minimum GCSE performance target for secondary schools.

Heads must ensure that at least 40 per cent of pupils achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths – up from 35 per cent for the past two years.

Schools which miss the target risk being closed or converted into academies – state-funded schools outside local authority control.

Last year’s GCSE results suggest that more than 250 schools are below the tough new floor target.

If hoped-for improvements in results fail to materialise today, a similar number could find themselves falling short this year.

Moves by exam watchdogs to contain ‘grade inflation’ are expected to end the era of large year-on-year increases in results. In addition the number of pupils sitting easier vocational qualifications has been cut and science exams have been toughened.

Last week, for the first time in more than 20 years, A-level results showed a drop in the proportion of A grades awarded.

SOURCE






Australia: Empty education promises from the Federal Left

Who could ever deny our children the best education possible? It is of critical importance and Australia can offer no greater commitment to ensure the prosperity of the nation and its next generation.

But in this week's blizzard of words over the future of the Gonski report into education funding, the government is pulling a cruel hoax on Australia.

The government does not have the $26 billion required over a forward estimates period to cover its airy promises of better teachers and no school being left worse off in real terms.

All we have is a government addicted to making big announcements and locking in spending like there is no tomorrow, when in reality, all it is offering is false hope.

Recent history in Britain is a prime example of such false hope. The former Labour government led by Gordon Brown left David Cameron's government a crushing legacy of unfunded commitments with a series of unachievable promises.

Labor here are following the lead from their cousins on the other side of the world. Take, for instance, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, promised Labor would deliver. What Gillard and Labor have actually done is announce four NDIS trial sites. This is a long way short of committing the $8 billion that will be required to adequately service the NDIS every year.

If the government has really launched the NDIS, as it claims to have done, then the cost is not accounted for in its budget. Labor's only financial commitment is $1 billion for trial sites.

The best we get from the Prime Minister is an admission the government will have to make "substantial savings" to achieve her outcomes.

It was hard not to laugh when she said on Sunday "you've got to be prudent with every dollar, and we are". This is a Labor government that has made waste and mismanagement an artform, such as in the failed border protection policy that has incurred a $4.7 billion blowout or the $50 billion national broadband network that is a massive drain on the nation's resources.

The truth is that Labor will have no choice but to raise taxes to pay for its gargantuan promises. The Labor senator Doug Cameron said as much a fortnight ago when he said it was "inconceivable that this amount of government expenditure on building a good society could be funded from existing revenue".

In effect, the Treasury Secretary, Martin Parkinson, and now his predecessor Ken Henry are in agreement; Labor cannot continue checking expenditure against the nation's credit card. In the end, someone has to pay the bill.

With an election not due for possibly 15 months, the Coalition will not be making promises it cannot keep.

If a Coalition government is elected we have pledged, based on present information, a budget surplus in our first year and each year after that.

Unlike Labor, the Coalition is not hiding from funding its promises. Savings measures such as a reduction in the number of public servants have already been announced, with many areas of policy already costed and ready to deliver at the appropriate time. And if we are elected, a commission of audit into government finances will immediately begin a top-to-bottom review of government administration, identifying areas for immediate cuts to put an end to government waste and mismanagement.

Labor wants us to believe it will deliver a budget surplus in 2012-13 - a wafer thin $1.5 billion or just 0.1 per cent of gross domestic product. Contrast that with their record; just a year ago they forecast a $23 billion deficit for the 2011-12 financial year, which then turned out to be $44 billion. Four programs alone - schools funding, the NDIS, border protection and new submarines for the Australian navy - account for almost $75 billion in unfunded government promises.

Much rests on what will be revealed in the mid-year economic fiscal outlook due in November, and more importantly the budget in May.

Labor has introduced or increased 26 taxes since it came to power - including a carbon tax that was never supposed to happen.

Now the public has to suffer the indignity of a government providing nothing but false hope, for genuinely needed government programmes that have been promised but remain unfunded.

SOURCE



23 August, 2012

Educational Lunacy

Walter E. Williams

If I were a Klansman, wanting to sabotage black education, I couldn't find better allies than education establishment liberals and officials in the Obama administration, especially Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who in March 2010 announced that his department was "going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement."

For Duncan, the civil rights issue was that black elementary and high school students are disciplined at a higher rate than whites. His evidence for discrimination is that blacks are three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. Duncan and his Obama administration supporters conveniently ignored school "racial discrimination" against whites, who are more than two times as likely to be suspended as Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Heather Mac Donald reports on all of this in "Undisciplined," appearing in City Journal (Summer 2012). She writes that between September 2011 and February 2012, 25 times more black Chicago students than white students were arrested at school, mostly for battery. In Chicago schools, black students outnumber whites by four to one.

Mac Donald adds, "Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well."

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nationally during 2007-2008, more than 145,000 teachers were physically attacked. Six percent of big-city schools report verbal abuse of teachers, and 18 percent report non-verbal disrespect for teachers. An earlier NCES study found that 18 percent of the nation's schools accounted for 75 percent of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6 percent accounted for 50 percent. So far as serious violence, murder and rapes, 1.9 percent of schools reported 50 percent of the incidents. The preponderance of school violence occurs in big-city schools attended by black students.

Educators might not see classroom comportment as a priority. According to a recent hire, a Baltimore high school now asks prospective teachers: "How do you respond to being mistreated? What do you do if someone cusses you out?" The proper answer is: "Nothing." That vision might explain why a 34-year veteran of the school had to be taken from the premises in an ambulance after a student shattered the glass in a classroom display case.

Mac Donald reports that a fifth-grade teacher in St. Paul, Minn., scoffs at the notion that minority students are being unfairly targeted for discipline, saying "Anyone in his right mind knows that these (disciplined) students are extremely disruptive."

In response to the higher disciplinary rates for minority students, the St. Paul school district has spent $350,000 for teacher "cultural-proficiency" training sessions where they learn about "whiteness." At one of these sessions, an Asian teacher asked: "How do I help the student who blurts out answers and disrupts the class?" The black facilitator said: "That's what black culture is." If a white person made such a remark, I'm sure it would be deemed racist.

Some of today's black political leaders are around my age, 76, such as Reps. Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Conyers, former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, Jesse Jackson and many others. Ask them what their parents would have done had they cursed, assaulted a teacher or engaged in disruptive behavior that's become routine in far too many schools. Would their parents have accepted the grossly disrespectful public behavior that includes foul language and racial epithets? Their silence and support of the status quo represent a betrayal of epic proportions to the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors in their struggle to make today's education opportunities available.

SOURCE




Cramming for exam success 'is counterproductive'

Staying up late to ‘cram’ is actually counterproductive, according to a study which has shown that students who work into the small hours do worse in their exams.

But researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered American teenagers who took a more planned approach to their studies achieved better grades.

They looked at 535 teenage pupils who they followed for a number of years. The volunteers were asked to complete homework and sleep diaries for a fortnight in the ninth grade (at the age of 14), 10th grade (15 years) and 12th grade (17 years).

Those who regularly stayed up late to study reported more instances where they did not understand something in class or did poorly in a test. The research is published in the journal Child Development.

Andrew Fuligni, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral at UCLA, said: “Our results indicated that extra time spent studying cuts into adolescents' sleep on a daily basis, and it is this reduced sleep that accounts for the increase in academic problems that occurs after days of increased studying.

"Although these nights of extra studying may seem necessary, they can come at a cost."

He advised: “Academic success may depend on finding strategies to avoid having to give up sleep to study, such as maintaining a consistent study schedule across days, using school time as efficiently as possible, and sacrificing time spent on other, less essential activities."

SOURCE






Half of British pupils failing in High School maths and science

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers are being denied the chance to pursue highly-skilled careers after failing in science and maths at secondary school, according to research.

Jobs in engineering and technology are being “closed off too early” for as many as half of schoolchildren because of a lack of qualified teachers and priority being given to other subjects.

Figures show that in some areas fewer than a third of pupils finish compulsory education with at least a C grade GCSEs in maths and two separate sciences – seen as the minimum requirement for further study or apprenticeships.

The report, by Education for Engineering (E4E), a body representing the engineering industry, found that almost a fifth of pupils were not even entered for two sciences.

Rhys Morgan, the organisation’s head of secretariat, said: “For too many young people the pathway to a rewarding career in science and engineering is being closed off too early.

“The minimum qualifications for progression to science, engineering and technology roles would usually be A*-C grades in two science GCSEs and in mathematics.

“But we have found that only half of young people achieve this and strong evidence to suggest that of those that don’t, many are enrolling on less than the double science they will need to keep their careers options open.”

According to figures, around half of pupils currently fail to gain good grades in maths and two sciences, but performance differs significantly between local authorities.

Trafford in Greater Manchester had the highest participation and achievement rate in the country, with more than two-thirds gaining high scores in the subject. The worst performing area was Blackpool where just 31 per cent of pupils hit the target.

The study also showed that many pupils were being denied the chance to sit separate science GCSEs in biology, chemistry and physics. Only 18 per cent sat exams in the three sciences in 2010.

A further fifth of pupils failed to take at least two sciences and one-in-12 were not entered for any GCSEs in the subject at all.

Dr Morgan added: “Teachers and pupils work hard to achieve in their exams, but some pupils are enrolling on options that will limit them in the future.”

SOURCE



22 August, 2012

Massachusetts school district launches student condom policy

A Massachusetts school district will be contacting parents in the next two weeks to detail a new program allowing students ages 12 and older to have access to condoms.

The Springfield Republican reports that officials with Springfield's School Department will emphasize that parents and guardians have the right to opt out if they do not want their children to get condoms.

The access to condoms by school nurses is part of a "comprehensive reproductive health policy" that was approved in a 4-to-3 vote by the School Committee in April. The intent is to reduce teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted illnesses.

Letters and opt-out forms will be mailed before school starts, targeting families of middle- and high-school students ages 12 and older. Parents also will be contacted by phone.

SOURCE





Working-class pupils lose out because they are 'too polite'

What a load of bollocks! Lack of confidence or not knowing the answers I can believe but "polite" is just a politically correct gloss

Middle-class children are more likely to put their hands up in the classroom and ask questions than peers from working class homes, research suggests.

Pupils from wealthier households have more natural confidence at school after being taught by mothers and fathers to engage with authority figures, it was claimed.

The study found that children with working-class parents were more polite and courteous in lessons but often shunned teachers and attempted to solve problems alone – hampering their long-term academic development.

It was feared that the differences in classroom behaviour by the two groups may have knock-on effects in later life as poorer children slip further behind richer classmates.

The disclosure – in research published in the United States – comes amid continuing concerns over link between social class and educational achievement.

One British study earlier this year found that the highest-performing pupils from disadvantaged families lagged around two-and-a-half years behind bright children brought up in wealthy homes by the age of 15.

Despite an extensive Labour drive to boost access to higher education, it also emerged that the richest schoolchildren were around six times more likely to go on to a top Russell Group universities than the poorest fifth.

Jessica Calarco, assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University, assessed the classroom behaviour of primary-age pupils as part of the latest research. She said: "Even very shy middle-class children learned to feel comfortable approaching teachers with questions, and recognised the benefits of doing so.

"Working-class children instead worried about making teachers mad or angry if they asked for help at the wrong time or in the wrong way, and also felt that others would judge them as incompetent or not smart if they asked for help.

"These differences, in turn, seem to stem not from differences in how teachers responded to students – when working-class students did ask questions, teachers welcomed and readily addressed these requests – but from differences in the skills, strategies and orientations that children learn from their parents at home."

The study was based on observations of a class of state school children aged nine to 11 over a two year period. Children were assessed twice a week and then interviewed with their parents over the summer holidays.

Research revealed that pushy parents from all kinds of social backgrounds attempted to teach their children how to behave at school and work hard.

But a clear class divide in their methods emerged. Working class parents were more likely to emphasise the role of politeness and courtesy and being deferential to authority, it was revealed. They would also tackle assignments or projects but on their own without asking for help.

In contrast, middle class children were encouraged to raise their hand, ask questions and not be afraid to ask for help when needed.

These children are then more likely to be noticed by teachers who tend to reward such behaviour, said the study. It meant that they became more outgoing as they get older, which could help as they get jobs or have to deal with authority in other ways, it emerged.

SOURCE




Australia: Federal aid to private schools still an issue for some on the Left

It's just gone 50 years since what is now called the Goulburn Schools Strike. On Friday July 13, 1962, six Catholic schools in the Goulburn diocese closed and instructed their pupils to enrol the following Monday in the government school system. Some 2000 Catholic pupils applied for entry into the public school system, which had only 640 vacancies.

The immediate cause of the protest was the refusal of NSW health authorities to install additional toilet facilities at Our Lady of Mercy Preparatory School in Goulburn. It was driven by members of the Catholic laity who were frustrated that they received no government support for the funding of the Catholic school system, which had been formed at the end of the 19th century.

The story of the Goulburn School Strike is documented in Michael Hogan's book The Catholic Campaign for State Aid (1978) and in the Commonwealth Education Department's publication entitled A History of State Aid (2006). The incident attracted widescale national media attention. Yet it was not successful, and within a couple of weeks, the Catholic school children returned to their original schools.

In her speech to the Independent Schools National Forum yesterday, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, referred to that "first, famous Menzies science laboratories program which gave so many independent schools a historic boost". Correct. The reference was to the decision of Robert Menzies's Coalition government, on the eve of the 1963 federal election, to commit the Commonwealth to provide financial aid for the establishment of science blocks in both government and non-government schools.

This did not happen by chance. The Menzies government had achieved only a narrow victory in the 1961 election. It was saved by a strong first preference flow from the Democratic Labor Party, which had been formed as a consequence of the Labor Split of the mid-1950s. B.A. Santamaria (the president of the Catholic lay organisation the National Civic Council) and others convinced the Coalition of the need to make a gesture to the largely Catholic DLP voters.

The tactic worked in 1963. So much so that it was tried again four years later. In 1967, the Victorian Liberal Party premier Henry Bolte was worried that he might lose seats to the Country Party. This time Santamaria, working with the DLP, sent a message to Bolte that the DLP could well preference the Country Party ahead of the Liberals if the Liberals did not make a gesture to DLP supporters.

Bolte got the message. In 1967 the Liberal Party announced that, if re-elected, it would provide a form of per capita payments to children attending non-government primary schools. By the end of the 1960s, the principle of government assistance to non-government schools and students had been firmly established. Soon after, Labor, which had long opposed assisting non-government schools, came on board.

From time to time, sections of the left have tried to change the policy. Before she became Labor premier of Victoria, Joan Kirner was active in the Defence of Government Schools (DOGS) organisation - which was really an attack dog aimed at non-government schools.

Appearing on Jonathan Green's Sunday Extra on Radio National last weekend, Ben Eltham declared that the $6.5 billion annually needed to fund the Gonski Report "would easily be found if private schools, the elite private schools in particular, were not receiving any funding at all".

Apparently Eltham is unaware of the message of Goulburn half a century ago. If government funding to non-government schools ceased or was significantly reduced, there would be a movement of students from the private to the public sector. This would amount to a significant cost to the Commonwealth and state budgets.

Then there is the politics. Many families in the suburbs and regional centres - where most of the marginal seats are located - want their children to attend moderate-fee, non-government schools. Mainstream Labor understands this, even if many inner-city leftists do not.

The hostility of the education unions to private schools turns on the fact that some non-government schools challenge the public sector model. Quite a few private schools have larger class sizes than their public school counterparts. Moreover, all give principals the right to hire and fire teachers and to terminate poor performers. The teachers unions, on the other hand, frequently defend the incompetent and the lazy among their members.

In the United States, Britain and now Western Australia, governments are establishing "charter" or "free" schools, which are publicly funded but operate independently from the education bureaucracy. The Coalition, led by Christopher Pyne on this issue, is beginning to embrace this initiative.

Prime Minister Gillard has performed well in standing up to the education unions and introducing such initiatives as the My School website. Her support for independent schools is in this tradition.

The real test, however, will turn on funding. Her speech yesterday did not resolve this issue.

SOURCE


21 August, 2012

95% of last year's 882 NYPD school arrests involved minorities

NYPD school safety officers were ticketing or arresting students last school year at an average clip of eleven pupils per day, data released Tuesday revealed.

Black and Latino students were collared in 95% of the 882 total arrests, while blacks and Latinos make up about 71% of the city’s student body of about a million pupils.

The NYPD data, released to the City Council under a law passed last year, revealed that 1,666 tickets were also issued during the school year. Nearly three-quarters of the students arrested were male.

“If the Bloomberg administration is serious about helping young men of color succeed, then it must address these disparities and focus more resources on educating children, not arresting them,” argued Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Top NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Lieberman was ignoring the circumstances of the complaints that prompted the arrests. "The NYCLU’s kneejerk reaction to claim racism is as old as it is false,” he said. “It knows better than to compare arrests against population instead of description of suspects provided by victims.”

The data, which rounds out the first annual figures disclosed under the law, did not include arrests made by police officers based out of precincts.

SOURCE






'Mickey Mouse' subjects taken by 90% of British pupils: Soft courses to be axed from league tables

Nearly nine out of ten 16-year-olds last year took at least one ‘Mickey Mouse’ subject such as ‘cake making’, ‘party décor’ and ‘sugar confection’ which are being purged from school league tables.

Education Secretary Michael Gove is cracking down on the flimsy subjects which under Labour were billed as being equal in part or whole to GCSEs in maths and physics.

New information from the Department for Education revealed the extent to which children had been pushed on to the range of thousands of courses outside the core subjects.

Some 552,575 pupils took at least one of the so-called ‘equivalent’ qualifications last year. The number of pupils taking a core academic subject – such as maths, a science, English, languages, history and geography – halved under Labour to barely one in six.

Meanwhile the sheer number of qualifications on offer had become so unwieldy that 225 of them were taken by just a single pupil each, and 791 were taken by fewer than ten pupils.

Some of those qualifications that were deemed to be equal in part or whole to maths and physics GCSEs included a course in ‘drinks service’ which was taken by just five pupils.

Just one student took ‘sugar confection’. Nine pupils took qualifications in ‘call centre skills’ while ‘party décor’ was taken by 11 pupils. Cake decorating proved more popular – it was taken by 40 pupils, while pastry craft attracted seven students.

Tap dance was popular with 22 students who took one of seven qualifications in the subject.

Just one pupil took a qualification in ‘front of house ops’ while 31 opted for ‘soft furnishings’. And four students took ‘water sports’ as a school subject. Make-up was taken up as a GCSE equivalent by 202 students while 16 took a qualification in ‘jewellery making’.

A course on ‘health and safety’ was taken by 6,025 pupils while the ambiguous ‘working with others’ attracted 22,885 pupils.

There were a total of 1.9million entries in the so-called ‘equivalent’ qualifications.

Mr Gove has despaired over how few students take core academic subjects for their GCSEs. Just one in six 16-year-olds chose subjects such as English, maths, a science, history, geography and languages.

Ministers are cutting the value of more than 3,100 vocational qualifications from this year, ending their recognition in England’s school league tables. They hope the move will make it less likely for schools to offer such qualifications as they will no longer have any equivalence with GCSEs in more academic subjects.

By 2014, only 140 ‘equivalent’ subjects will count in GCSE tables. Tory MP Chris Skidmore said: ‘These figures lay bare how Labour lied to a generation, falsely giving them the impression that qualifications that employers will all too often regard as irrelevant were "equivalent" to GCSEs in rigorous subjects like maths and science. Hundreds of thousands of young people are now paying the price for their deception.

‘In tough economic times, we must make every effort to ensure that our children are learning the subjects that employers and universities value most so they can compete for jobs once they leave education.

‘That is why the Government is right to remove these courses from the league tables and to promote rigorous academic subjects through the English Baccalaureate.’

SOURCE





Australian private schools to get more Federal funding

With 40% of Australian teenagers going to private schools, this was a no-brainer. The parents concerned also vote. The Labor party has obviously not forgotten Mark Latham's rout over his threat to reduce private school funding.

It was a conservative government (in 1963 under Menzies) that initiated Federal funding for private schools and conservatives have owned the issue ever since

Australian parents have the sort of choice that American voucher advocates only dream of

THE Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, will today reveal that every independent school will receive an increase in government funding regardless of its wealth.

The announcement, a significant victory for the private school lobby, goes beyond the government's previous pledge that no school would lose a dollar under funding reforms.

It is designed to head off the Coalition scare campaign that private schools would have to increase fees because their funding would not increase in real terms under the long-awaited overhaul of school funding.

At an independent education forum in Canberra today, Ms Gillard will say there should be government support to educate every child from the poorest and most remote school to the best known and best resourced.

"Every independent school in Australia will see their funding increase under our plan," she is expected to say. "This plan will lift school standards, not school fees.

"No matter how rich or poor your parents are or where you go to school, our nation should provide a basic degree of support to your education."

Speaking to the Herald this month, Ms Gillard signalled she wanted to swing the national debate back to Labor policy strengths such as education, disability and industrial relations.

Today's funding pledge is a massive departure from former Labor leader Mark Latham's notorious private school "hit list", which would have resulted in 67 of the nation's wealthiest schools losing funding.

Labor has been determined not to antagonise the private school sector after the "hit list" was one of the policies blamed for its 2004 election loss.

David Gonski, who chaired the first major review into school funding in 40 years, was given the task of ensuring no school would lose a dollar as a result of its recommendations. But Ms Gillard will today go a step further and say every independent school will receive a funding increase.

The states and independent and Catholic education systems have raised concerns that modelling showed 3254 schools could lose out if the Gonski model was strictly applied. This includes 227 Catholic schools, 720 government schools and 103 independent schools in NSW.

However, the Gonski modelling assumes government and Catholic education systems would redistribute funding to ensure no school was worse off.

The federal government's final response to the Gonski review was initially expected this week but is now expected next month.

The review recommended the federal and state governments boost spending on education by $5 billion a year, with the majority to go to public schools.

The model aims to address disadvantage by allocating a standard amount per student, with loadings for students with a disability and those from low-income, indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds.

The Commonwealth is expected to tip in $3 billion - double the amount the Gonski review suggested - with the states also required to contribute.

However, the funding will be conditional on schools submitting a performance plan on how they would improve student results and more training and annual performance reviews for teachers.

SOURCE



20 August, 2012

The last laugh






Asinine Education Officials

September's coming, so let's look at the latest way our federal government screws up public schools.

Black students are suspended or expelled far more than white students - 350% more. President Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, claims it's because of white racism. I think that's baloney. Black students are disciplined more because they misbehave more, but it doesn't matter what I think. Liberals are in charge of the US Department of Education, most state education departments, and all teachers' unions. What they think is what matters. They think they can solve the problem the same way they try to solve so many other social problems - by blaming it on racism and spending money on it.

The result is always the same too: It gets worse and we go further into debt because nearly half the money they spend is borrowed from China. Obama Administration officials and civil rights advocates like to repeat one phrase, according to Heather MacDonald, writing in her City Journal essay Undisciplined: the "school to prison pipeline."

They think racist schools steer black students to prison. They believe white racist discrimination causes poverty and poverty causes crime. They're completely stuck in that sixties mindset and cannot think any other way. That would be fine, but they're running our schools and spending billions. MacDonald points out that white boys are suspended or expelled twice as often as Asian or Pacific Islander boys, but administration officials ignore that. It doesn't fit their world view. Neither do they seem to notice correlation between black misbehavior in schools and the black murder rate.

"The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined," writes MacDonald. "Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well."

Why the blindness? It's easy to explain. These officials are all devout members of the multicultural priesthood. They mustn't look at cultural clues among black students like fatherlessness, drug use, (c)rap music, domestic violence, graffiti, sexual behavior, "ebonics," generational welfare, domestic violence - to name just a few. It's okay to bring up those things if you're going to blame them on racism, but if you were to suggest that the black community itself might share responsibility for any of it - or might even foster it in some cases - you'd be quickly labeled "racist" and shunned.

In graduate school during the 70s, I was trained to apply standardized tests to students measuring intelligence, achievement, and various other learning abilities. If I obtained low scores measuring intelligence, there were items to rule out lest it skew an individual student's profile, and one was "cultural deprivation." It had to be considered when trying to determine if a student had enough gray matter to learn what the school was trying to teach. In other words, he might be intelligent but his culture was holding him back. But as I said, that was back in the 70s. Writing anything like that in a student's folder today would be dangerous to one's career.

When black students or any other students are suspended or expelled, follow them out to their cars. Watch them struggle to get in with their pants hanging down below their asses and their hats on sideways. What do you hear as they pull away? Even if you're deaf, you would likely feel the air around you literally vibrate from a deep base box in the trunk with a (c)rap music beat. Listen to the anger and hate in the "ebonic" lyrics. There are definite cultural clues there about what may be affecting their behavior, but Arne Duncan and his ilk have to ignore them. To acknowledge them would force a modification of their entire world view.

(C)Rap is the signature music of a sick, black subculture. Unfortunately though, it's celebrated in countless award ceremonies televised around the world. It's worshiped and glorified by Hollywood and by students of all races and it's not good. It's poison, and the solid black Christian culture from which emerged people like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wanes as the sick, black subculture spreads.

American Heritage Dictionary defines multiculturalism as: "The view that the various cultures in a society merit equal respect and scholarly interest. It became a significant force in American society in the 1970s and 1980s as African-Americans, Latinos, and other ethnic groups explored their own history." To the multicultural priesthood, I'm obviously a heretic and I don't march in their parade. I believe that good and bad are perfectly fine adjectives to use when describing culture. Cultural trends that degrade women and kill children are bad. Cultural trends that nurture them are good. Our educational elite doesn't seem to get this because they drink multicultural Kool-Aid every day. That's how they "race to the top" of their profession. And yes, the puns are intentional.

Regardless of race, students who misbehave must be removed from classrooms lest they deprive others students of their right to education. Anyone who doesn't understand that shouldn't be making education policy. They shouldn't be in the profession at all.

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British High School students must be told the whole truth about the value of a degree

"Mis-selling of higher education is one of the least remarked upon scandals of our time"

To listen to ministers talk about university education, it is as if Britain has entered an academic arms race with the rest of the world. China’s universities, we’re told, are spewing out six million graduates a year: we must compete, or we’re doomed. In the Blair years, a national target was set: half of all young people ought to enter higher education. They’d have to get into debt, but they were reassured it would be a worthwhile investment. Having some letters after your name meant going further in your careers and earning far more. Those without a degree, by implication, would enter the workplace at a distinct disadvantage.

It is surprising that David Willetts should continue this line of argument, because he is clever enough to know what simplistic nonsense it is. It is understandable for the Universities Minister to be in favour of studying, but the real picture of education in Britain is far more complex. The idea of a binary divide in the career prospects of graduates and non-graduates is not a picture that would be recognised by employers. In many lines of work, those who did not get the A-levels for university now have a future just as bright (or otherwise) as the graduates.

From the moment that John Major started to abolish student grants, the British government has been in the business of selling (rather than simply providing) higher education. Yes, studying costs, runs the argument, but it is an investment: what students pay is a small fraction of what they will get back.

Then came the proliferation of courses and institutions, from BA (Hons) in Golf Management at the University of the Highlands and Islands to Trade Union Studies at Blackpool College. The definition of a degree has changed massively, but the financial argument used for getting one has not changed at all.

When Mr Willetts trebled the cap on university fees, he justified this by arguing that a university degree will “on average boost your earnings by £100,000 over a lifetime”. If true, that would – more or less – justify the average £40,000 of debt which is expected to face those who start college this autumn. But it doesn’t take a A* in A-level maths to suspect that the £100,000 figure disguises a vast range of alternative scenarios, many of which imply disadvantage for those who, for whatever reason, give university a miss.

Last year the Government released a research paper that spelt it out. For doctors and dentists, a degree is a prerequisite. They will earn £400,000 more over a lifetime, as you might expect, having been fully trained for a well-paid profession. But for students admitted to less rigorous degrees, the premium quickly diminishes – especially for men. Those who graduate in the subjects I studied, history and philosophy, can expect to earn a paltry £35 a year more than non-graduates. For graduates in “mass communication” the premium is just £120 a year. But both are better value than a degree in “creative arts”, where graduates can actually expect to earn £15,000 less, over a lifetime, than those who start work aged 18.

With employment, it’s not much better. The old joke – “What do you say to an arts graduate? 'Big Mac and fries, please’”– has all too much resonance now. Of recent graduates, almost a third are in jobs that don’t require anything more than GCSEs. One in 10 recent graduates is now on the dole. All youth unemployment is tragic, but there is something especially scandalous about young people who have been sold a vision of graduate life, only to find it was a piece of spin to sweeten the bitter pill of student loans. The mis-selling of higher education is one of the least remarked-upon scandals of our time.

The simplistic argument – that the brightest get the best grades and go to the best universities – would be more convincing if Britain had a meritocratic education system. But here, perhaps more than any other country, the quality of exam results are linked to background. For all the egalitarian aims of the comprehensive school system, it has produced the opposite: a system where a direct relationship can be drawn between pupils’ exam results and their families’ wealth. Scandalously few of those who live in our sink estates will have done much celebrating after their A-levels yesterday.

The league tables, showing the best state schools, bear a suspicious resemblance to prosperity indices. And this is not, to paraphrase Neil Kinnock, because British children from poor backgrounds are thick. It is strange how, after each set of A-level results, there is a uproar about how many pupils who qualified for free school meals are admitted into Oxford University – but less interest in how these children do so much worse at school, from primary years onwards. Employers have learnt that bright children don’t necessarily have the best GCSEs.

The ministerial focus of education as an economic tool risks missing the larger point. David Cameron’s Government is doing much to make the system work better. The most pernicious equation in public life, between wealth and GCSE results, cannot be found in the new breed of Academy schools. The Harris Academy group, which runs 13 schools in deprived inner-city boroughs, announced yesterday that it is sending pupils to Bristol University for maths, Warwick University for law and Imperial College for medicine. These sixth-formers would have enrolled at the school when it was a fledgling New Labour project; now there are hundreds of Academy schools. It is perhaps the most rapidly vindicated social experiment of modern times.

Even for undergraduates, things may be on the turn. Tuition at Britain’s best universities has always ranked among the best in the world; it is the lower-ranking colleges that have tended to short-change students. Mr Willetts’s decision to remove the cap on places for students with AAB at A-level should soon have universities competing for pupils with such grades. Next year, this will hold true for pupils with ABB results. Having introduced the bad side of a market system (fees), the proper side (competition for custom) will finally get under way.

By next year, all universities will be forced to release information on graduate employment rates for each course. This will help students work out if they are being conned. If all goes well, the number of good courses will expand, and the courses that serve neither students nor society will be exposed. And while there has been a dip in university applications, it has come from wealthier students. The offer of bursaries for students from the lowest-income families seems to be having the desired effect.

Much has been written about the "jilted generation" and how twentysomethings feel betrayed, saddled with debt and robbed of prospects. Unemployed graduates, all 130,000 of them, will be richly entitled to such resentment. Theirs may well end up being known as the transition generation, those sold university education for a hefty fee, before they were able to know what they were buying. But there is an upside to all this. If a degree is no guarantee of success in modern Britain, then the lack of one is no guarantee of failure. For those whose A-level results have precluded university, there is still all to play for.

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Australia: Ombudsman slams Victorian University over soft marking allegations

VICTORIA'S Ombudsman has slammed Swinburne University in his annual report.

According to Ombudsman George Brouwer, a whistleblower reported that “a supervisor had directed a teacher to pass all of their students to ensure the university received upcoming federal government funding".

Mr Brouwer referred the allegation to the university for independent investigation, which found the claim was baseless.

However the Ombudsman criticises the process on seven counts, including a refusal by the investigator to address the federal funding issue and because; “the conclusions did not contain any analysis of the facts and findings of the investigation; specifically, there was no discussion of evidence that appeared to support the allegation”.

Although the university revised the report when challenged by the Ombudsman’s staff, “even the revision was inadequate, addressing only four of the concerns I had raised".

"I determined to finalise the matter in any case, as I considered that the outstanding issues were unlikely to significantly affect the outcome of the investigation, especially at such a late stage,” Mr Brouwer’s report states.

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19 August, 2012

Tax Raisers Slam Voters For ‘Lack of Investment’ in $355 MILLION Florida School District

Earlier this week, voters in Florida’s Marion County school district went to the polls and defeated a union-supported effort to raise property taxes, which would have “saved” music, art and library programs.

In response to the narrow 52-48 percent vote, tax increase advocates became unhinged. The superintendent of schools, who made no mention of reforming compensation packages for employees, told the Ocala Star-Banner , “(The vote) means that the community does not support music, art and library programs.”

The group pushing for the tax, Marions United for Public Education, offered a more searing indictment, courtesy of its president, Nancy Noonan, “… (T)he lack of investment in Marion County schools will haunt the district in the months and years ahead.”

What is Marion County taxpayers “lack of investment” exactly? According to a budget posted on the school district’s website, taxpayers already cough up $355 MILLION for school operations, including $98.8 million in property taxes alone.

If a third of a billion dollars apparently isn’t enough to maintain art, music and library programs in Marion County, Florida, then voters would be wise to take a good, hard look at who they’ve hired to run their schools and analyze just what their priorities are.

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Ending Free Pension Giveaway Would Save Cleveland Schools $35 Million

For a school district facing possible bankruptcy, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District was very generous with its employees during the 2010-11 school year.

For example, taxpayers may be surprised to learn they paid the pension contributions for the district and the teachers during 2010-11. So instead of just paying the district’s $49 million contribution to the State Teachers Retirement System, taxpayers took care of the teachers’ $35 million contribution, too.

Of course, taxpayers didn’t really have a choice in the matter. That agreement had already been written into the district’s collective bargaining agreement with the Cleveland Teachers Union.

Education Action Group discovered the pension giveaway – and many other budget-busting provisions – during its recent analysis of CTU’s collective bargaining agreement with the school district. Using Freedom of Information requests, EAG was able to track where some of the CMSD’s money goes, and propose how the district could save approximately $57 million.

Other remarkable findings:

* Cleveland Public Schools paid out nearly $11.6 million in total substitute teacher costs in 2010-11. The district’s 3,547 full-time teachers took a total of 45,757 days off during that school year (40,675 sick days and 5,082 personal). That averages to nearly 13 absences per teacher.

* Cleveland Public Schools paid out just over $4 million in reimbursement for unused sick days for teachers and others covered by CTU’s collective bargaining agreement in 2010-11.

* The Cleveland school district spent $3.9 million on automatic, annual “step” raises for teachers and other employees covered by the teacher union’s contract in 2010-11.

* The Cleveland school district paid out $116,423 for salary and benefits for the union president, who never taught during the 2010-11 year.

While the teachers’ contract requires the union to reimburse the district for the CTU president's salary, there is no mention of reimbursement for the cost of a replacement teacher. And if no replacement teacher was hired, then the district is, in effect, loaning money to the union to pay its president that could be used to hire at least one full-time teacher.

These are the hidden costs of an increasingly expensive government education system. Taxpayers would be wise to scrutinize how their schools are spending dollars before turning over even more hard-earned money.

The report, titled, “Sucking the Life Out of America’s Public Schools: Part 6 – Cleveland Teachers Union Contract,” is the latest in a series which includes Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

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Dropping the Holocaust from history lessons? What some British Schools are doing so that they Avoid Offending Muslim Students

British teachers are also reluctant to discuss the medieval Crusades, in which Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem: lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

In Cheshire, two students at the Alsager High School were punished by their teacher for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class.

In Scotland, 30 non-Muslim children from the Parkview Primary School recently were required to visit the Bait ur Rehman Ahmadiyya mosque in the Yorkhill district of Glasgow. At the mosque, the children were instructed to recite the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith which states: "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger." Muslims are also demanding that Islamic preachers be sent to every school in Scotland to teach children about Islam, ostensibly in an effort to end negative attitudes about Muslims.

British schools are increasingly dropping the Jewish Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, according to a report entitled, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills.

British teachers are also reluctant to discuss the medieval Crusades, in which Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem: lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

In an effort to counter "Islamophobia" in British schools, teachers now are required to teach "key Muslim contributions such as Algebra and the number zero" in math and science courses, even though the concept of zero originated in India.

In the East London district of Tower Hamlets, four Muslims were recently jailed for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls; and 85 out of 90 schools have implemented "no pork" policies.

Schools across Britain are, in fact, increasingly banning pork from lunch menus to avoid offending Muslim students. Hundreds of schools have adopted a "no pork" policy, according to a recent report by the London-based Daily Telegraph.

The culinary restrictions join a long list of politically correct changes that gradually are bringing hundreds of British primary and secondary education into conformity with Islamic Sharia law.

The London Borough of Haringey, a heavily Muslim district in North London, is the latest school district to switch to a menu that is fully halal (religiously permissible for Muslims).

The Haringey Town Council recently issued "best practice" advice to all schools in its area to "ban all pork products in order to cater for the needs of staff and pupils who are not permitted contact with these for religious reasons."

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17 August, 2012

School at home or homeschooling?

Over the past several years an educational phenomenon has been exploding across America. Fed up with the homogenized, secular indoctrination; embrace of dysfunctional and sexualized behavior; and tolerance for rebellious and unruly children that largely define public education in the United States, an increasing number of parents are pulling their kids out of the local schools and opting instead for a home education plan.

According to Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), as of 2010 there were, by best estimates, over two million homeschooled students ages five to 18 in the United States, with the population of home educated students growing by up to six percent every year. While the reasons parents choose to teach their kids at home may vary, what is clear is that homeschooled kids outshine their public-schooled counterparts on just about every level.

Home-educated students typically score 15 to 30 points above public-school students on standardized achievement tests – and they do so regardless of their parents’ level of formal education. These taught-at-home students also typically score above the average on the SAT and ACT tests colleges use for admission – which means that most universities love having them, and in many cases actively recruit them. And while opponents warn that homeschooled students miss out on crucial opportunities for socialization provided in a public-school setting, the truth is that children educated at home typically score above average in tests of social, emotional, and psychological development.

Dr. Ray told The New American that increasingly parents throughout the United States are turning toward home-based education because “they want solid academics for their children, values and worldview that they choose rather than what the state chooses, stronger family relationships, and individualized education rather than a one-size-fits-all system.” He added that many concerned parents are fed up with the lax behavioral standards prevalent in most public schools.

Over the past 30 years, the traditional homeschool model has earned a reputation for providing the foundation many parents want for their children. With the help of private, free-market homeschool curriculums like A Beka, Bob Jones, A.C.E., and Alpha Omega – all with Christian foundations – tens of thousands of families raised a generation of Americans with solid academics, along with crucial scriptural training and the principles of Americanism that are essential to the nation’s future.

As homeschooling gained widespread popularity throughout the 1990s, the public-education establishment found it increasingly difficult to stop the exodus of families seeking something better for their children. But with the introduction of online learning in the late 1990s, a core of education “entrepreneurs” suggested that, using the charter-school concept, public schools might just offer their own version of homeschooling that would allow students to fulfill all the requirements set by a district – but instead of going to a classroom they could use an online curriculum.

One of those entrepreneurs was former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett, who in 1999 helped found a company called K12, which has gone on to be a leading player in what has become known as the “Virtual Academy.” Companies like K12 contract with school districts to provide curriculum and education consultants, in return reaping part of the local, state, and federal tax money that the district gets for each student. The families that sign on to these public-school virtual academies get “free homeschooling” for their kids – which typically includes “free” computers and other perks – while the school district retains the per-student monies it would have lost had those families gone with another homeschool option. It all sounds like a win-win scenario, right?

Wrong! Companies like K12 and Connections Academy have exerted great effort to convince the public that they are providing a quality homeschool option through public schools.

But homeschool experts point out that these public-school virtual academies have little in common with traditional homeschooling. Dr. Ray noted that while traditional homeschooling has always been privately funded and privately pursued, public-school virtual academies are tax-funded, state-run, and state-controlled. Ray emphasized that in the virtual academy model, “the state chooses and controls the curriculum – that which is used to teach, train, and indoctrinate the student.”

By contrast, he said, “in home-based education and private schools, parents and private organizations get to decide what is used to teach, train, and indoctrinate children. The center of power and control with a virtual academy is the state; in private education, it is parents, family, and freely-chosen private associations.”

While K12 boasts that online public school offers “powerful choices for parents,” and other virtual academies insist that their curricula give parents and students flexibility, a majority of those “choices” and flexibility are lost when it comes to one important element that has always been essential to a majority of homeschool parents: Christian instruction. Israel Wayne, a noted education expert, author, and publisher of the Home School Digest, explained that when parents contract with a state-run virtual academy to teach their kids, they are essentially surrendering their right to teach biblical concepts to their children in their homes (or elsewhere) during the scheduled school day.

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Making college affordable

In late June Congress froze the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans at 3.4 percent for another year. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus claimed the extension would "make a high-quality education affordable for millions of students across the country."

President Obama was more dramatic. "If Congress does not get this done," he warned as Congress considered the rate freeze, "the average student with federal student loans will rack up an additional $1,000 in debt over the coming year . more than 7 million students will suddenly be hit with the equivalent of a $1,000 tax hike."

White House press secretary Jay Carney equated the extension with "offering hardworking students a fair shot at an affordable education."

In reality, extending the 3.4 percent interest rate for an additional year will save students with federal loans approximately $7 to $10 per month: enough for a couple of burgers with fries. But it will cost taxpayers $6 billion and do virtually nothing to make college more affordable.

That's because federal aid has not made college more affordable. There is ample evidence, in fact, that federal "aid" has helped drive up college costs and extending the lower interest rate just kicks the can down the road.

The College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 implemented a five-year, incremental reduction in federal student loan rates, with interest rates ranging from 6.8 percent during the 2007-08 academic year to 6.0 percent in 2008-09, 5.6 percent in 2009-10, 4.5 percent in 2010-11, and 3.4 percent in 2011-12.

If Congress had failed to freeze the rate at 3.4 percent, none of the existing loans would have been affected. Instead, it would have meant only that future loans - those taken out after July 1 of this year - would have closed at 6.8 percent, the rate that existed in 2007.

Some 6 million to 7 million out of approximately 19.7 million college students would have been affected.

College tuition has been increasing at about twice the general inflation rate for decades. The American Institute for Economic Research has calculated the increase from 2000 to 2011 at 112 percent.

Much of the increase in college costs has been due to administrative bloat, overbuilding, the proliferation of special-interest centers on campus, and light faculty teaching loads.

One recent analysis by Jay Greene, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, found that the number of college and university administrators had increased more than twice as much as the number of instructors over a 15-year period. This is significant since dozens of mid-level and senior-level administrative positions command six-figure salaries, compared to the relative handful of faculty positions in that range.

Meanwhile, the percentage of students at public universities receiving their degrees within six years of enrolling as freshmen has remained just below 55 percent for a decade. The percentage graduating in four years has been stuck around 30 percent.

Federal subsidies have encouraged this situation. The reason is simple: Colleges are eligible to receive federal funds regardless of their productivity.

College students - and the taxpayers who often help support them - deserve real change, not spare change. Rather than tinkering with loan interest rates, policymakers should focus on key basics.

Legislators should demand that taxpayer-subsidized institutions provide accurate information, including details about their graduates' success in the job market. We study everything else; why not this? Then students could make better-informed decisions about the costs of their degrees and their future job prospects.

Policymakers also should require postsecondary institutions to earn their subsidies by implementing "outcomes-based" reforms that provide federal assistance based on course and degree completion rates, instead of enrollment.

And they should encourage alternatives to the traditional four-year college, such as online courses. This would foster meaningful competition for students and introduce powerful pressure on existing institutions to be more efficient.

Such innovative reforms would do far more than a one-time, one-year interest rate freeze to make - and keep - college affordable.

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Anger as distinguished British primary school teacher, 63, is tried for giving ‘worst pupil in 40 years’ a clip round the ear after he had attacked ten pupils

A dedicated teacher was subjected to a five month court ordeal after he was accused of assaulting an 'uncontrollable' pupil who had hit 10 classmates.

Roy Cope had to restrain a pupil at St Bartholomew's Church of England Primary School in Great Harwood, Lancashire, who displayed the 'worst behaviour' he had seen in his 41 years in the job.

The 63-year-old deputy head was accused of holding the boy by the wrists and slapping him on the side of the head after the youngster went berserk and flew into an 'incandescent rage.'

This child, not named for legal reasons, had lashed out at other pupils with his satchel, pinned one to the wall by the throat and shouted at a teacher.

Mr Cope was asked to intervene when the boy was ordered out of class and was spotted in a corridor shouting at another member of staff.

Blackburn Magistrates Court heard that the case, which cost taxpayers thousands, and if Mr Cope was convicted could have faced up to six months jail, but to huge cheers from the public gallery he was acquitted.

He claimed all along the boy slammed his head against his hand while violently swaying and rocking in a bid to run away.

Chairman of the bench Graham Parr said: 'We accept that there were aggravating facts presented to us in that the boy was behaving in an unruly manner. We really have doubts over whether the contact constituted an assault.'

After the case was thrown out Mr Cope’s son Robin, speaking on his behalf, said: 'The family have had overwhelming support over my father’s case but it should never have come to court in the first place.

'The fact is there is an issue today with unruly children and it has come to this where dedicated teachers are repeatedly appearing before the courts on their say-so. 'It caused a lot of distress and all because of one child where there were not enough measures in place to deal with him.'

A retired detective inspector and a parent gave evidence at the hearing praising Mr Cope as a dedicated and professional teacher of the 'highest standards.'

James Oldcorn, a parent, PTA member, governor at the school and former senior police officer, said: 'I always found Mr Cope a very enthusiastic teacher. 'He continued the very idea of a Christian School, where every child mattered.'

Wendy Litherland, the mother of a pupil at St Bartholomew's, said: 'Mr Cope is an absolutely outstanding teacher, he has dedicated his life to St Bartholomew's and all the parents are 100 per cent behind him. 'This is because of one child. There are not enough measures to deal with this.'

The court heard how the incident occurred last March while Mr Cope, from Accrington, was involved in a rehearsal for a forthcoming school production of Wind In The Willows.

The boy had become 'hysterical and out of control' in a class and one teacher, Thomas Lowe, said the pupil was in such a rage he grabbed railings to stop him being taken to Mr Cope’s office, continuously shouting ‘get off me, get off me’.

He said he saw Mr Cope hit the child and threaten to do it again if he did not calm down. He told magistrates: 'Mr Cope was not using a technique I knew, but he seemed in charge. He was being forceful but fair.

'The child’s arms were flailing and he kept on shouting, getting more and more hysterical. Mr Cope released or lost control of the boy’s left arm and then he struck him across the face.'

Mr Neil White prosecuting said: 'Mr Cope has a long and distinguished teaching career with many decades behind him. He is a well-respected and well liked deputy head at the school. 'But the prosecution say that you cannot slap a boy across the face.'

Speaking in court Roy Cope responded: 'As a teacher with over 40 years’ experience this allegation has come as a great shock to me and caused me and my family great distress.

'Since the boy started school he was a disruptive and aggressive pupil and frequently disrupted the school. He is probably the worst of the pupils I have ever taught in 40 years of teaching and on occasions he is uncontrollable. 'He worked himself into an incandescent rage, I knew it was all bluster and knew he would eventually calm down. I had to be calm but firm with him.'

Another teacher went to Mr Cope’s aid as the tried to restrain the boy and calm him down.

But Mr Cope said: 'Because he had just been restrained he was more agitated than he had been and was trying to break free from his arms. 'I was trying to get him to stop wobbling round because he was getting more agitated and he slammed himself into my hand. He just kept rolling and rocking and trying to get rid of the restraint. All the time I was speaking in a calm quiet voice saying ‘calm down’ but once I had let go of his hands I may have said, ‘do you want me to do it again’ to stop his hands from moving. 'But I do not believe a slap across the face is a method of controlling children.'

Graham Boyes, a former headteacher at the school said: “Roy has worked to the highest of standards. He was an example to other members of staff. 'I have to say, over a long period of time the school functioned well and a lot of that was down to Roy’s work in the school.'

Mr Cope’s lawyer Simon Farnsworth said: 'The boy was an unruly pupil and has been since he started nursery. In Mr Cope’s experience the worst in over 40 years’ teaching.

'Mr Cope had been forceful but fair and went to assist as the boy’s arms were flaring. He is someone who deals with unruly pupils and he has dealt with these for many years. 'He is not the kind of man who would deliberately strike a young boy like this. This matter has got out of hand.'

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16 August, 2012

Ratio Christi

Mike Adams

In one week, it starts all over again. Thousands of young people will enroll in classes in the sixteen-campus University of North Carolina system. Before the first day of class is over, the professors and administrators will begin the assault on students and their Judeo-Christian values. Parents will have spent their entire lives saving money that will ultimately be used to turn their children against them. Students will unlearn everything they were taught about the foundations of liberty, the basis of morality, and will even begin questioning the very existence of truth. Before long, many parents will realize they have risked bankruptcy funding a legacy of intellectual and moral impoverishment.

I realized the situation was bad when a military officer wrote me a few years ago. While he was off serving his country, his twin teenaged girls were enrolling at Rice University. During “O” week, Rice orientation week, their orientation leader told them it was time to “experiment with their sexual liberty” now that they were off at college and away from their parents. The military officer was outraged over the incident – as he should have been. More parents would be outraged if only they were paying attention.

Later that same semester, I sat through an excruciating graduation speech by a feminist sociologist. She smugly told the parents of graduating seniors that she hoped their children were leaving college with a “different perspective” than the one they brought with them. She said nothing about knowledge during her speech. She spoke only of “perspective” – smugly asserting that hers was better than the one held by the parents who were paying her salary.

If I sound a little edgy when I broach this topic there is good reason for that. I abandoned my faith as an 18 year old college freshman – a mere two months into my first semester of college. It is true that I carried some anger into my freshman year, which fueled that abandonment. But it is also true that I took my first psychology class from an atheist professor who used the classroom to evangelize students.

There may have been a legitimate reason for my psychology professor’s decision to discuss Sigmund Freud’s theory of how man created God, not vice versa. But when he talked about how B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning “explained away” religion it bordered on obsession. The psychology professor who feels compelled to rid students of their faith is no less perverted than the orientation leader who feels compelled to rid students of their chastity.

I eventually made my way back. And reading apologetics played a huge role in my spiritual transformation. For years after that transformation, I wondered why there was no national organization dedicated to bringing resident apologists to campuses in order to establish Christian apologetics groups that would challenge campus atheists.

Then it finally happened. After hearing a speech I gave at Summit Ministries (www.Summit.org) in Colorado, Professor Lonnie Welch of Ohio University invited me to speak at the national conference of Ratio Christi (www.RatioChristi.org) in October of 2011. I did not even know that my friends John Stonestreet of Summit Ministries and ADF attorney Casey Mattox were on the Ratio Christi board.

While I was there to speak, I was also there to learn. And what I learned was that Ratio Christi is the ideal campus Christian organization. There may be scores of Christian organizations already. But none prior to Ratio Christi were focusing on apologetics training. Such training is desperately needed to keep kids from falling away during college. How can students remain firm in their faith if they are not hearing both sides of the story? And how can they remain grounded if they were never grounded in the first place?

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British independent school adopts the International Baccalaureate high school exam

King Edward's school, the first school in Britain to scrap A-levels in one go in favour of the International Baccalaureate, has had some stunning results

This year’s A-level results will be announced tomorrow but King Edward’s School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, already knows how well it has performed – because not one of its pupils took the exam. Two academic years ago, Chief Master John Claughton decided that the school would become the first in Britain to ditch A-levels in one go in favour of the International Baccalaureate, an examination system as unfamiliar to the teachers as to their pupils.

For a school (founded 1552, fees £11,000 a year) whose alumni include Enoch Powell, Bill Oddie, Field Marshal Slim and JRR Tolkien, it was a sizeable risk. “We did a lot of research, spoke to a lot of people, had a lot of meetings with parents, and yet I still couldn’t quite free myself from the anxious feeling that I might be blowing the reputation of the entire school,” says Claughton, himself a King Edward’s Old Boy. “All the time, I was aware that there were plenty of schools out there, waiting like jackals and all too happy to feed on our failure.”

He needn’t have worried. When the IB results were announced last month, the King Edward’s boys had achieved scores every bit as high as at A-level – if not higher, if you accept the notion that the Baccalaureate is more bruising, both in terms of workload and intellectual demands.

Not only had 37 out of 113 boys scored more than 40 points (held to be the equivalent of four A* A-levels), but three had notched the maximum score of 45, achieved by only 109 pupils worldwide, out of a total 119,000 IB entrants. Overall, too, marginally more King Edward’s boys had won university places than their most recent A-level predecessors, with 17 getting into Oxbridge and 16 into medical school.

But what had made the Chief Master decide to set a new course through such stormy seas? “It was a feeling that the school was no longer the intellectual and academic powerhouse it had once been,” he replies. “Over the years, the intellectual life of the school had been diminished by the way the A-level course had been divided up into compartmentalised modules, and by the way in which pupils were required to sit AS-levels in the first year of sixth form. Teachers had lost a lot of the freedom they had enjoyed, when it came to teaching bright kids the things they wanted to teach, in the way they wanted to teach them. As a result, a certain sterility had crept in. On top of which, there was also a growing disenchantment with A-levels, both with the way the content had been dumbed down and with the massive grade inflation at results time.”

So much so that when the moment came, the school decided not to opt for a “dual economy” (running IB alongside A-levels) but to go for the Big Bang, and become fully IB-operational from the first day of the autumn term 2010.

During his days at King Edward’s, the young John Claughton had been able to get away with studying just three subjects at A-level (Latin, Greek and Ancient History), whereas his pupils are now having to do six IB subjects, including English, mathematics, one science subject and one foreign language – as well as a community-service project, a 4,000-word Extended Essay (on the subject of their choice) and a philosophical-type course, Theory of Knowledge.

This meant teachers were being presented with the challenge of not just keen young men who had chosen their subject out of interest, but a fair number who were having to do certain subjects in order to fulfil IB requirements. The Baccalaureate regulations specify that you can take three subjects at Higher Level (harder) and three at Standard Level (easier), plus Maths Studies (even easier). There are seven maximum points per subject (42 in total), with the remaining three points allocated for the Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge.

The downside, therefore, is that the IB is harder work for everyone. The upside, however, is that a good score enables pupils to outshine their A-level rivals in university applications.

This is the bit that interested 18-year-old Jimi Oluwole (who scored the maximum 45 points, and is off to study engineering at Cambridge). “I was attracted by the fact that the Higher Mathematics would be more rigorous,” he says. “I felt that would be recognised by Cambridge. I also enjoyed writing my Extended Essay, which looked at how temperature affects a can of soup rolling down an incline. That gave me a lot of things to discuss with the professors at my interview, who were very interested in the whole idea.”

The pleasure of being stretched and tested is a theme echoed by Oluwole’s contemporaries. “I really enjoy a challenge; that’s what keeps me going,” says 18-year-old Ihsaan Faisal, who scored 43 points and is to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. “I’m the kind of person who frets if they’re not busy, and the good thing about the IB is that there’s no time to put your feet up.”

But what about being forced to carry on with subjects that you’re not so good at? “My best subjects are science and maths, so at first, I wasn’t too keen on having to do English and French,” says 18-year-old Ravin Jain, another 45-pointer, who’s off to read physics at Oxford. “Gradually, though, I found myself enjoying those subjects, too. I even watched a whole Shakespeare season on the television, which was something new for me.”

The view from the common room, meanwhile, is that the boys will be far better equipped for life than their A-level counterparts. “Firstly, having done the IB, there’s no way they will have their socks knocked off by the pressure of work in their first and second years at university,” says Paul Golightly, head of history.

“Career-wise, too, no matter what road they go down, it will be an advantage to have a good command of a foreign language, and to be able to call upon their English language skills when writing reports.”

At the same time, the staff all say that the course has reinvigorated them. “With the IB, we have enjoyed far greater freedom, not least because we haven’t been confined to reading texts written in the English language,” says Tom Hosty, head of English. “Instead of plodding through a familiar old A-level text, we can study Greek tragedy, Ibsen plays, Russian novels, you name it.”

And there is similar breathing room in history. “In the normal A-level module exploring the one-party state, you’d typically look at Hitler and Stalin,” says Paul Golightly. “On our course, we also took in figures like Castro and Peron.”

The more unexpected spin-off is that it turned teaching from a one-way into a two-way street. “We are having conversations we never had when we were teaching A-level,” says Tom Hosty. “I remember engaging in the most fascinating half-hour debate with one of the school’s star mathematicians, over why Euripides was a better dramatist than Sophocles.

“There’s no question about it: doing the IB, pupils get drawn into the topics they are studying, and the intellectual life of the school has improved immeasurably.”

Which counts as quite a result for the Chief Master. “It has all worked out very well, and we are delighted with the points our boys have scored,” says Claughton, whose son James was among the pioneering IB cohort. “Yes, there were two or three boys who only got scores in the 20s, but by and large, they were the ones who would only have got a couple of Cs at A-level.

“The reason the new system has worked is because we introduced it for genuine, philosophical reasons, as a means of helping boys think and work in a less compartmentalised way, and not just as a more effective way of getting our boys into university. That said, there were some dark, nerve-racking times along the way, both for staff, students, and for the silly head who had the idea in the first place.”

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Australia: School has to be cool

TASMANIANS must change attitudes about education, demographer Bernard Salt said yesterday. Unskilled jobs were evaporating from Australia and skills training was imperative. "It needs to be cool to stay on and uncool to leave school at 15," he said.

"Every Tasmanian must send the right message to kids, that the expectation is to get some form of training.

"Ten years of focus on this could change the shape of the state." Without a cultural shift, the Tasmania of the future could be a dangerous place, he said, with social discontent increasing as large numbers of people fell into welfare and became disconnected from the rest of society.

"The best thing you can do is make sure kids have some education," he said.

Mr Salt was visiting Hobart yesterday to outline the changing patterns of work and life in Australia to a national workshop of motoring clubs, organised by the Australian Automobile Association and the RACT. "Australia is not a great, bland amorphous place," he told the workshop. "It is a patchwork."

He pointed to fundamental shifts in Australian life, which threw up many challenges. One was the geographic shift of people from country to coast and city.

Within urban areas, two kinds of cities were emerging, with a growing clash of cultures between the inner-city elite and the outer suburban culture of "middle Australia".

The ethnic make-up of large parts of Australia was changing too, with the arrival of aspirational Indian and East Asian students and migrants.

One of the biggest changes was the mass retirement of the baby boomers. Here he saw opportunities for Tasmania.

"The lifestyle and value for money here is appealing to many baby boomers in Melbourne and Sydney," he said.

"Hobart is grooving up. It is becoming quite a metropolitan, cosmopolitan and fashionable city."

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15 August, 2012

Animation Teacher Faces Termination For Refusing To Sell His Students Unnecessary Books

The standard of being a good teacher tends to be the same at most schools. It involves sharing one’s experiences and knowledge, pushing students to develop their existing talents and inspiring them to discover new ones, and preparing students to succeed in their chosen field. Animation artist Mike Tracy claims that his school, the Art Institute of California—Orange County, judges teachers by another criteria: how many e-textbooks each teacher sells to their students.

Tracy, who has taught drawing and digital painting for eleven years at AIC—Orange County, felt that his class didn’t require the textbooks he was suddenly being asked to sell and told the school that he would prefer to teach without them. Tracy’s reward for working in the best interest of his cash-strapped, loan-burdened students was a termination notice from the school. Tracy explained the story and posted a preemptive farewell on his Facebook page:

As many of you know, I have been in a dispute with our school, the Art Institutes, for some months now, over their policy of mandatory e-textbooks in classes where their inclusion seems arbitrary, inappropriate and completely motivated by profit. In July I asked the US Department of Education, the California Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education and WASC (our accrediting agency) to look into my concerns. Since that time, the school and its parent company EDMC have escalated the pressure on me to select a book for a class I teach that I don’t think requires one.

Today, the President of the school, Greg Marick, presented me with an ultimatum; either choose a book by Tuesday, Aug 14th or the company will terminate my employment for insubordination. My response, of course, is that I will not change my mind on this issue and that I’m determined to resist the policy however I can. I think this means that, as of this week, I will no longer be teaching at AI.

I want you, my students and colleagues to know that it has been my great honor and privilege to have worked with you over the last 11 years, and that I will miss the opportunity to work for you and with you. I have enjoyed my time as a teacher very much, but it appears as though it is now time to move on. Furthermore, you can count on me to continue the struggle that I have instigated on this issue, if only from the outside. Although it aint over till it’s over, it looks like a 99.5% deal, barring an 11th hour change of heart by the corporation, which would surprise me.

In his letter, Tracy mentions the school’s parent company EDMC—otherwise known as Education Management Corporation, a for-profit corporation that is 41 percent owned by Goldman Sachs and that operates over one hundred individual schools. The college giant gained notoriety last fall when it was sued by the United States Department of Justice and four U. S. states as part of a multi-billion dollar fraud suit. The case is still winding its way through the legal system.

The biggest losers in this story are the students at Art Institute of California—Orange County because Tracy is, by most accounts, regarded as one of the school’s finest teachers. As a show of support, his students—past and present—have launched THIS PETITION urging the school to “not force a teacher’s resignation, over unnecessary e-textbooks.” In just one day, the petition has been signed by over 500 supporters. The dozens of passionate comments in the petition portray Tracy as a solid and caring teacher, but spare few kind words for the school’s overall operation.

Tracy appears to have plenty of teaching experience at other southern California art institutions, and if he’s dismissed from the Art Institute, he’ll land on his feet at another school that will value his teaching over salesmanship skills. The bigger story though is the Art Institute of California’s alleged shakedown of its student body—if there is any truth to Tracy’s allegations, it may only be a matter of time before the school’s unethical behavior is exposed.

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Credit Agency Blames Chicago Teachers Union for District Downgrade

Fitch became the second credit rating agency in as many months to downgrade Chicago Public Schools’ outlook from “stable” to “negative.”

Fitch, in its assessment, put the blame squarely on the Chicago Teachers Union.

“The Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU) has filed a number of suits against the board and has voted to authorize a strike over what it considers unsatisfactory terms of a proposed new multi-year contract.

“Fitch believes continued litigation and the strike threat indicate an increase in the already high level of discord between the CTU and CPS, which will make the competing goals of managing expenses and improving educational standards difficult to achieve.”

The district’s increasingly bleak pension picture also contributed to the downgrade.

“Pension funded ratios have dropped significantly in the last several years due to a combination of lower-than-expected investment returns and payment deferrals for the CTU plan in fiscal years 2011-2013. As of June 30, 2011 the plan was 59.9% funded, or 51.4% using a 7% return rate, compared to 79.7% and 68.4%, respectively, in fiscal 2008. District non-teachers participate in even more poorly funded city of Chicago plans.”

With this disturbing yet unvarnished analysis, the moment has arrived for the board of education to get serious about completely reforming the school district. It has continued to attempt to operate in the outdated model of collective bargaining, a strategy which is obviously working to the district’s detriment.

Collective bargaining – that is, setting policy and spending in stone for several years at a time, based on unaffordable agreements with the union – is what got the school district into this financial mess. Does the board of education have the backbone to do anything about it?

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British universities accused of social engineering after drawing up plans to favour pupils from poorer backgrounds

Universities have been accused of social engineering after drawing up admissions schemes that favour applicants from poorer backgrounds. Instead of selecting students solely on merit, four institutions – Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham – have devised systems which boost the grades of children from low-income homes.

In some cases, this can see a disadvantaged child with three Bs at A-level winning a place over a privately-educated child with three A*s.

Critics said the system could discriminate against middle class children whose parents have sacrificed a lot to give them a good education.

Ministers have previously urged universities to consider backgrounds – or ‘the contextual data’ – when deciding whether to offer a place, and most do this on a case-by-case basis. But the latest plans are different – and more controversial – because they give each applicant a numerical score based partly on social background.

Freedom of Information requests reveal the points awarded by Edinburgh for going to a very low-performing school boost the score of a child with three Bs beyond that of one with three A*s from a better school.

At Leeds, the system allowed medicine applicants to be given so many points for coming from a poor area that three B grades effectively became three A*s. It was suspended earlier this year.

Bristol is implementing a points system where pupils from poor schools ‘will be given an automatic weighting to their total academic score’, while Birmingham has drawn up a similar policy but is not yet using it.

Tim Hands, headmaster of the independent Magdalen College School in Oxford, said admissions which scored contextual data could be ‘bordering on generic discrimination’. ‘Students deserve transparency and accuracy, not hasty measures which risk appearing subservient demonstrations of political correctness.’

But Rebecca Gaukroger, head of admissions at Edinburgh, said: ‘We don’t accept that the scoring of academic grades or contextual data undermines the holistic assessment of applications.’

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14 August, 2012

Teachers unions defend institutional incompetence

No good deed goes unpunished.

Take Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s brave decision to lay off 3,600 employees — including teachers and principals — of 24 of New York City’s worst-performing schools, all with an eye toward rebooting them with new staff, management plans, and curricula. The outgoing staff were told they could reapply, but would have to compete with thousands of new applicants. The goal: Turn around the schools by turning them inside out.

Naturally, the teachers’ unions pitched a fit, and have done everything they can to thwart the Mayor’s plan.

The irony is that, as is so often the case, unions brought this pain on themselves. Bloomberg’s original plan was to institute a comprehensive instructor evaluation plan in order to, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board put it, “smoke out the lowest performing educators.” But New York’s powerful United Federation of Teachers (UFT) strongly objected to this effort to locate incompetent instructors, forcing Bloomberg into his plan B — mass layoffs at the two dozen worst-performing schools.

To no one’s surprise, this, too, was unacceptable to the UFT, which claimed the city’s actions violated the teacher’s collective bargaining agreement. And so off the case went to arbitration, where the Mayor got his hat handed to him: sole arbitrator Scott Burchheit scrapped the planned reboot of the failing schools because, he found, “a wish to avoid undesirable teachers was the primary, if not exclusive reason” for the closings.

In other news, mice like cheese.

The Mayor’s office appealed the decision, but suffered another defeat on July 24 when State Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis sided with the arbitrator, who had sided with the unions, all of whom sided against the kids languishing in NYC’s educational hell.

Explained Lobis of her decision: “Since I find that the staffing questions are covered by provisions in both the collective bargaining agreements, I believe the arbitrator was within his authority to determine this grievance.” The judge seemed especially swayed by the union’s argument that the firings violated so-called “first-in, last-out” seniority rules that make it almost impossible to fire long-ensconced teachers. “The issue of staffing is intertwined with the questions of seniority, excessing and discipline of teachers and supervisors, all of which are specifically covered by the collective bargaining agreements,” noted the Judge.

What will happen in the wake of these union victories? UFT attorney Adam Ross made union demands clear, boasting that the Mayor and his allies have, “now lost at arbitration level, they’ve lost at Supreme Court,” and that the union “would like to get to the business of staffing these schools and getting ready for the opening of schools in September.”

Bloomberg’s crew is putting up a brave front. “The mayor and chancellor will not allow failing schools to deprive our students of the high-quality education they deserve,” said the city’s chief council Michael A. Cardozo after Lobis’ decision. “Although we will of course comply with the judge’s ruling, we strongly disagree with it — and we will be appealing.”

But with the state appellate courts out of session, and the new school year rapidly approaching, the fired employees of the 24 schools — all of which have a graduation rate under 60 percent, and some as low 39 percent — will now likely be unfired, and thousands of children will be subjected once again to the indifference and incompetence of teachers shielded from accountability by the UFT protection racket.

According to the New York State Education Department, only 60.9 percent of New York high school students graduate within four years, even as unions consistently block any attempt to impose teacher accountability.

Maybe it’s time Gotham students formed a union of their own.

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Rid schools of anti-risk culture, says British PM

Bringing back competitive sports for primary pupils will help rid schools of their “bureaucratic and anti-risk” culture, David Cameron has said.

Speaking on the last day of the Olympic Games, Mr Cameron said the entire ethos of British schools must change to show pupils that “winning and losing is an important part of growing up”.

Earlier this week, Mr Cameron promised to put competitive sports such as netball and football into the national curriculum for primary school children.

His pledge came after he backed the Daily Telegraph’s Keep the Flame Alive campaign to revive competitive games in schools and get more people volunteering.

Yesterday, Mr Cameron revealed that two of his own children attend a state school without any green space to play on and called on schools to recognise the value of competing.

“We are saying out with the bureaucratic, anti-risk culture which has led to a death of competitive sport in too many schools and in with the belief that competition is healthy, that winning and losing is an important part of growing up,” he said.

The Prime Minister is now under pressure to make competitive sport compulsory in every school, as free schools and academies do not have to stick to the national curriculum He yesterday insisted that greater competition to attract pupils and their parents will mean these exempt schools will voluntarily want to offer as much sport as possible.

“Competition, choice and diversity will help to drive up provision, but at the heart of the national curriculum should be a few simple ideas about what we mean when we talk about sport in our schools,” he said.

Mr Cameron is now supporting a new push to get more volunteers for local sports clubs, which starts this weekend with the national Join In campaign Sports enthusiasts, including Olympic volunteers will be encourage to sign up to help out at local sports facilities for good. Mr Cameron said local clubs are the most important place for children to develop their sporting prowess, as he unveiled plans to make sure Britain builds on its best haul of Olympic medals for more than a century.

He promised to keep funding for sports at its current level for at least four years and said there is “no expectation” this will change for the rest of the decade.

British athletes will get at least £125 million per year to help repeat the rush of Olympic medals won by Team GB.

Politicians are also trying to harness the positive national mood created by the games to help dispel criticism that Britain is “down and out” during the recession.

Speaking from Downing Street, Mr Cameron said the games showed the “best of Britain” and proved that its “time has come”.

“Over the last couple of weeks we have looked in the mirror and we like what we have seen as a country,” he added, saying the public had proved itself “the greatest member of Team GB”.

Businesses can take heart from the fact that “Britain delivered”, he said. The Prime Minister even claimed the hard work of athletes could show people how to get the economy out of recession.

“We do face a very tough economic situation and I do not belittle that at all,” he said.

“But in a way, what these Games show is that if you work hard enough at something, if you plan something, if you are passionate enough about something, you can turn things around.”

His words echoed those of Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, who said bankers should learn from Olympic athletes that “motivation is more than mere money”.

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Australia: Top schools ban homework on weekends and holidays

Probably a reasonable balance

AT least two of WA's top private schools have banned homework for younger children at weekends and during school holidays "to allow kids to just be kids".

The policies are in line with international expert Phil Beadle, author, trainer, speaker and a former UK Teacher of the Year, who says the traditional form of homework is akin to abuse for primary school children.

Presbyterian Ladies' College has ruled out homework at those times for Years 7 and 8, and Methodist Ladies' College does not advocate "traditional" homework for primary pupils.

Mr Beadle, who is in Australia as a teacher-in-residence at Sydney's Knox Grammar School, told The Sunday Times this week: "We blithely accept homework as an intrinsic part of schooling, despite the fact that everyone (teachers and students) hates it.

"No educator is in receipt of hard, incontrovertible evidence that homework is entirely necessary. However, any parent will tell you that at certain ages it has an enormously destructive effect on family life."

PLC principal Beth Blackwood said homework remains "an area for debate".

"For every piece of research that says homework is beneficial, there's another piece that says it's not," she said. "I think there are other benefits of homework not just achievement orientated.

"It's about developing good study habits and skills, developing self-direction, organisational skills, independent problem-solving, and it's also about parents getting involved in the schooling process.

"With that research in mind, we did look at our homework policy for the middle school. We were trying to strike a balance between the benefits of homework and having some homework but also allowing the girls to just be girls, and to have down time, and family time and time for recreation."

Ms Blackwood said she expected Year 12 students to complete at least 18 hours of homework and study each week, but expectations on younger students were not so high.

"It is not that effective in primary school and yet parents will judge schools by the amount of homework that is given," she said. "I think the most important thing is getting that balance." At MLC, based on research indicating that traditional homework does not work in younger years, primary school students are encouraged to read every day and engage in 30 minutes of nature play or outdoor activities.

"Our main objective is to move away from the negative connotations of home learning and celebrate true learning," the school said. "The second objective is to challenge today's technocentric society and move children away from spending too much time watching TV, playing computer games or surfing the internet.

"We want students to learn because it's enjoyable, stimulating and worthwhile. We have designed a new approach towards home learning that encompasses our philosophy of nurturing academically able and emotionally confident young women."

For students in Years 7 to 9, MLC recommends one, 1 1/2 and two hours of study each weeknight respectively, but homework is not set over long weekends or holidays, and a 24-hour deadline is usually avoided.

Mr Beadle said homework for primary school children should be illegal. He believes children would benefit more from "developing a love of reading and writing for fun", than homework.

"I think all children have a right to leisure and joy," he said. "Making their after-school life one in which they are compelled to obey the dictate to slave for something that is almost entirely intangible could be argued to be abusive.

"Yes, after a certain age, you will be unable to complete the essay in class time. Yes, after a certain age you will need to broaden your knowledge at home but really the most important thing you can receive at home is love and care and perhaps a love of reading.

"Spending your home life, constantly engaged, at the age of seven, in compulsory acts of negligible benefit should be illegal."

Education Department statewide services acting executive director Martin Clery said every public school set its own homework policy and there was no "blanket rule".

Many schools encouraged younger students to read every night with their parents to boost literacy and develop a joy for reading, but it was not technically considered homework. However, the department expected homework, when set, to relate directly to school work and "increase accordingly" throughout the year groups.

Education Minister Peter Collier said "primary school aged children don't need to be doing hours of homework each night" but it should be balanced with family time and revision of school work.

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13 August, 2012

Academic merit denied

The Coalition of the Silence (a local minority advocacy group) plus the NAACP have filed a 16 page long complaint with the US Department of Education alleging that the highly selective Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA discriminates against black, Latino and disabled students. In particular, Fairfax County (which administers the high school) fails to identify these minority students sufficiently early and thereby shuts them out in an admission process heavy on past academic accomplishment and test scores.

The admission percentages are unambiguous-blacks and Hispanics comprise 32% of the Country's population but only 2.16% of those admitted (only three African American students in a student body of 476). Forty six percent are Asian; 43% are white (Asians are 20% of the school district, whites 44%).

Fairfax educators have attempted to help black and Hispanics (the Young Scholars Program), but according to the lawsuit, efforts are insufficient. The suit demands a total overhaul of the school systems, commencing in kindergarten: more money to help minorities, programs to identify gifted black and Hispanic students early on plus enrolling more minority students in academically oriented middle schools.

To condense a long story, leveling will fail, many whites and Asians will leave these schools if the lawsuit is successful but rest assured, implementing a panacea will cost taxpayers a fortune while undermining public education in Fairfax County and elsewhere. What school district can afford the legal costs in today's economy?

Rather than dwell on past failures, let me instead outline the radical egalitarian playbook. These are quite alluring, sometimes seemingly harmless ideas disguised by lofty rhetoric. It will be a "controversial" tour but better to risk the unPC label than watch our schools go down the toilet.

Radical egalitarians always begin by asserting that all racial/ethnic groups are identical in academic ability so only wicked discrimination explains unequal representation in elite schools. Martina Hone, head of the Coalition of the Silence states this boldly: "Look at any study of giftedness. It is equally distributed across humanity. God did not change that rule when he got to Fairfax County." Now, I can't dispute God's power, but nearly all scientists reject Ms. Hone's assertion and this evidence is overwhelming. Experts only disagree on the source of these differences. There is no other way to put it: Ms. Hone and other egalitarians are either ignorant or lie.

Even if all groups were equal in innate intellectual ability, differences in culture and work habits can explain unequal admission. Asians (among others) venerate education; other groups favor entering the workforce early or playing sports versus hitting the books. Nor can group differences be explained by unequal school funding. Again, the research here is unequivocal and even massive infusion of funds to minority dominated schools has not produced equal outcomes. Moreover, fiscal equality has existed for decades and to give one contrary example, in 2009 Washington DC's schools spend an average of $29,409 per pupil compared to the national average of $12,500 and had dismal test scores and graduation rates. As before, egalitarians seem oblivious to facts.

What might Ms. Hone and the NAACP suggest to cure this inequality? After all, nearly a half century of programs and billions has failed, so what's their major bullet? More Head Start? Compulsory Sesame Street? Better nutrition? More after-school tutoring? More black and Hispanic teachers and principals? Everything, absolutely everything has failed, so what's next?

The next step in this playbook is to assert that any gap in achievement is a "problem requiring a solution" and that the newly identified problem requires government intervention. That group differences are ubiquitous, often rooted in biology impervious to government tinkering never seems to cross the minds of these egalitarians. What about group differences in sports, perhaps the most merit-driven institution in American?

The egalitarian argument then shifts to defining "gifted" so that even those who cannot academically compete with whites and Asians should be admitted to Thomas Jefferson since, it is claimed, they too are "gifted" though their talent has nothing to do with academics. The "hero" in this re-definition of "gifted" is the Harvard education professor Howard Gardner. For Gardner, being academically gifted is just one form of "gifted." Gardner posits eight "multiple intelligences"-linguistic, visuospatial, logical-mathematical, musical, interpersonal, intra-personal and bodily-kinesthetic (this list grows as Gardner discovers additional "intelligences"). Everything, moreover, it anchored in a particular culture so among the Navajo, a talented basket weaver is considered "intelligent."

Such linguistic gymnastics easily opens the door to admission by race/ethnic quotas. After all, everybody is gifted, not just Asians skilled at math, so the only way to be fair is to imposed strict proportionality. Yes, Asians will continue to excel at math, but blacks will now excel at bodily-kinesthetic activities like dancing and sports. Jefferson will thus remain an elite institution and one that, happily, mirrors the population of Fairfax Country but not in science and math.

This hardly exhausts the war on intellectual talent. Ironically, a major culprit here was President George W. Bush and his ill-fated No Child Left Behind. Under NCLB schools all across America were pressured into uplifting the bottom and attempted to "solve" the problem by abolishing (or sharply reducing funding) all gifted programs to release funds into de facto remedial education. Surveys of teachers reported that many re-directed their efforts away from smart kids to help strugglers since focusing on smart kids offered no professional benefits. Meanwhile, the federal Javits program that originally targeted helping bright kids was redirected to discover exceptional ability among blacks and Hispanics who otherwise lagged behind academically.

Our brief account only skims the surface but it should make clear that the attack on Thomas Jefferson HS is not an isolated event. Its aim is destroy merit and level America into intellectual mediocrity. Claims of fairness, inclusiveness and all the rest are just battle slogans.

That said, what can be done? Let me be unfashionably blunt: in today's politically correct climate, any opposition to any proposal to help blacks and Hispanics that draw their ire will be condemned as racists, if not hateful. But on the other hand, giving Martina Hone and her ilk a free pass undermines American education and, ultimately, America itself.

Fortunately, there is an escape from being tarred as a racist: just demand hard, scientific evidence. Where are the studies showing that early intervention can close racial/ ethnic gaps in academic achievement? What data demonstrate that all groups are equally academically bright versus just have various "talents" having zero to do with school? What makes a gap in professional sports acceptable while graduating with degrees in molecular biology in an unacceptable gap?

In other words, put the burden of proof on radical egalitarianism. How is asking for evidence "racist"? Admit that yes, it would be lovely to have an elite academic high school that perfectly mirrored Fairfax County, but absent eliminating all academic standards, how, exactly is this to be accomplished? Demanding proof from closed-minded ideologues may not be easy, but consider the alternative-a dumbed down nation where education only serves to inflate underserved self-esteem.

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'Creationism' in Britain's free schools: the whiff of a witch-hunt

The British Humanist Association is trying to whip up anxiety about "Creationist" free schools scheduled to open in 2012 and 2013. This is from a BHA press release:

"Grindon Hall Christian School in Sunderland, currently a private all-through school but approved last October by the Department for Education to open as a Free School from this September, has a "Creation Policy" on its website in which they "affirm that to believe in God’s creation of the world is an entirely respectable position scientifically and rationally" and state they will "teach creation as a scientific theory"; while Sevenoaks Christian School, a secondary school in Kent approved to open from 2013, sets out the creationist beliefs of the school’s founders, and explains that creationism will be taught in Religious Education (RE)."

Needless to say, the Guardian is on the case: "The education secretary, Michael Gove, has approved three free schools run by groups with creationist views, including one with a document on its website declaring that it teaches "creation as a scientific theory"."

But, reading the BHA's fulminations, I can't help wondering if it isn't indulging in a little intelligent design of its own.

Don't get me wrong: I don't believe we should permit hardline Creationist schools to operate in this country. Why? Because they would teach children pseudoscience. Evolution is not merely one "theory" among many. The evidence for evolution by natural selection – and that includes the evolution of homo sapiens from its predecessors – is overwhelming. Nothing in biology makes sense without Darwin's insights.

But none of these free schools will be allowed to teach "scientific" Creationism, with its brazen manipulation of the fossil record to "fit" the Book of Genesis, in science classes. Nor can they teach the marginally more sophisticated intelligent design, once nicely summed up as "creationism in a cheap tuxedo".

Will these free schools merely shift Creationism's fake science from biology to RE lessons? Michael Gove says they won't be allowed to. Clearly, the situation needs to be monitored – in Islamic schools as well as Christian ones. (Islam is far and away the most important disseminator of Creationism in the modern world, a point rarely stressed by the BBC/Guardian.)

Actually, I'm not clear that these new schools are Creationist. The evangelical Christians who run them may privately reject evolution, in which case it's the Government's job to make sure that they don't undermine the discoveries of scientists in any lessons. But Grindon Hall says the following: "[We do] not share the rigid creationist’s insistence on a literalistic interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis … We are therefore very happy to believe that God could have created the world in six days. But we do not feel that it is helpful to affirm it as an unarguable fact." That's what I regard as a traditional Christian viewpoint rather than anything an American fundamentalist would recognise as Creationism.

The nearest any of these schools get to "scientific" Creationism are the following statements from Grindon Hall:

* We vigorously challenge the unscientific certainty often claimed by scientists surrounding the so-called “Big Bang” and origins generally.

* We will teach evolution as an established scientific principle, as far as it goes.

* We will teach creation as a scientific theory and we will always affirm very clearly our position as Christians, i.e. that Christians believe that God’s creation of the world is not just a theory but a fact with eternal consequences for our planet and for every person who has ever lived on it.

These sentences are too loosely phrased for us to be clear what, exactly, the school means by creation – or science, for that matter. Attempts to reconcile belief in God-as-creator and empirical data often produce evasive statements, not least in unthreatening mainstream denominations. As I say, if there's a hidden agenda, then it's the Government's job to make sure it isn't implemented.

The key challenge is distinguishing between religious cosmology and false empirical claims – not easy, but it has to be done. There is a difference between saying that God's creation of the world doesn't conflict with science and is therefore in some way "scientific", and extracting bogus science from the Bible or Koran. There's also a difference between saying that evolution doesn't explain everything (which is true) and claiming that there are significant holes in the theory (which there aren't).

The reason I've used the word "witch-hunt" in the headline is that I suspect the real target of the BHA/Guardian campaign is not the teaching of pseudoscience in classrooms, but Christianity in general (this poisonous piece by Hadley Freeman captures the ultra-secularist mindset perfectly). Plus, of course, the institution of free schools, the success of which has infuriated the Left.

It poses the question: what do "humanists" fear more – the teaching of bad science, or the freedom of parents to run their own schools?

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The great PE revolution: Every school child in Britain to play competitive sports

Every pupil in Britain will be expected to play competitive team sports under plans to be outlined by David Cameron tomorrow.

The Prime Minister is to reveal the primary school National Curriculum will be rewritten this autumn to ensure all pupils play proper sports. The move will end the culture of ‘prizes for all’ which has afflicted some schools since the educational establishment decreed no one must fail in the 1960s.

It will also see trendy exercise classes in schools, such as ‘Indian dancing’, replaced by sports.

Mr Cameron will make compulsory competitive sport a centrepiece of his plans to secure a sporting legacy for Britain after the success of the Olympics.

Senior Government sources have told the Mail that the National Curriculum for secondary schools, which is expected to be revised next year, will also be changed to ensure those aged 11 to 18 engage in competitive sport.

At present, the curriculum covering PE is a jargon-filled eight-page document. This will be torn up and replaced by a one-page document, including a requirement for all primary school children to take part in competitive team sports.

Mr Cameron yesterday attacked the substitution of exercise activities for competitive sport at some schools which are simply trying to fill the two hours of sport a week required under Labour. The Government has scrapped the two-hour rule to encourage schools to do more.

He said: ‘I see it with my own children. The two hours that is laid down is often met through sort of Indian dancing classes. ‘Now, I’ve got nothing against Indian dancing classes but that’s not really sport.’

The new guidance will also teach older children to compare their performances so they can keep improving their personal best.

A commitment to teach all children to swim will remain in place.

Education Secretary Michael Gove will publish the new primary school rules in the autumn.

A senior Government source said: ‘There will be similar moves to boost competitive sport to be contained in the forthcoming secondary curriculum as well.’

Data from the Government’s PE and Sport Survey in 2009/10 showed that only 40 per cent of pupils did competitive sport regularly within their own school.

When he makes the formal announcement, Mr Cameron will say: ‘I want to use the example of competitive sport at the Olympics to lead a revival of competitive sport in primary schools. We need to end the “all must have prizes” culture and get children playing and enjoying competitive sports from a young age, linking them up with sports clubs so they can pursue their dreams.’

The Prime Minister yesterday said that in future schools will be expected to ‘have a proper sports day where we hand out medals’.

They will also be urged to ‘get athletes and Olympians’ into their schools to encourage pupils and link up with local sports clubs.

Ministers will stop short of telling schools how many hours a week they should dedicate to sport. But Mr Cameron claimed yesterday that the two-hours-a-week target had led many schools to ‘think they’ve done their bit’ by meeting it when it wasn’t enough.

He also made clear that he would maintain funding for elite athletes, which has driven the success of Team GB at the London Games. He said: ‘We will absolutely learn the lessons of the Australian experience,’ – referring to the fact that the country has slumped down the medal table since the Sydney Games of 2000 after funding cuts.

The Government has already committed to maintain funding until 2014. The Prime Minister is expected to signal tomorrow that that will be extended to cover the Rio games of 2016.

It is already pouring an extra £500million into sport via the National Lottery and has committed to spending £1billion over four years on school sports.

But Mr Cameron came under pressure from Labour leader Ed Miliband, who called for a ten-year cross-party plan for sport. ‘It’s no good blaming the teachers, or blaming everybody else, for what’s happening in our schools,’ he said.

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12 August, 2012

Triumph for a British selective school

Alistair Brownlee, Britain’s gold medal-winning triathlete, has backed The Daily Telegraph’s Keep the Flame Alive campaign and revealed the critical role that was played by his former school, Bradford Grammar, in his journey to Olympic glory.

As the London Olympics approach their final weekend, the campaign aims to further increase the number of volunteers in sport and ensure that competitive sport is accessible to children in all schools.

Brownlee, whose brother Jonny also won bronze, doubts that he would have made it to the top of the podium at these Olympics were it not for the extracurricular, and largely voluntary, input of his teachers.

“So much comes down to chance,” said Brownlee. “I think one of the biggest things about legacy is that it’s not about money. It’s about the attitude. It’s about inspiring teachers at schools to go that little bit further to help their kids learn a sport. It’s about inspiring the kids themselves to try sport. It’s about inspiring parents to take their kids to the local club.

“It’s about giving people that attitude to give it a go, to enjoy doing it and wanting to compete. If anything comes out of the Olympics, legacy-wise, that is the most important thing.

"I wholeheartedly back the Telegraph’s 'Keep the Flame Alive' initiative. For a 'legacy' to be fulfilled we need the basic infrastructure in place to help achieve it and big components in making that a reality are attracting more volunteers in sport and to ensure schools include sport as a vital part of the curriculum.”

Brownlee, 24, feels fortunate that he and his brother had the opportunity to develop their rare athletic talent from a young age at Bradford Grammar. "I was lucky enough to go to a school which gave flexibility around education and sport," he said.

"We had a 1hr 30min lunch break and were able to train during this time. My school career was absolutely crucial to me. As an endurance athlete, some of the most important years are maybe when you are 16, 17, and 18. For me getting that right was very important and my school allowed me to do that.

“It was actually a French teacher who was really into running and he took groups of lads out running of a lunch-time. It created a culture where you could go running every lunch-time in the school. If that hadn’t have happened, I probably wouldn't have got into running that much and then never done that well at triathlon.

“It was also the attitude of the school – the fact that a teacher was willing to give up his lunchtimes and weekends to take groups of boys running.”

Brownlee added: “Schools are really, really important. It gives you access to every kid in the country. It gives you a massive pool of people to see who might be talented at different sports. It allows kids to try sports. Kids can be inspired all they want but if they can’t go out and try a sport then it’s no good. And the school should be the avenue to try those sports.

“In the same way as you have to inspire the parents and teachers of the next generation, you also have to inspire the officials and the coaches, the people who give up their spare time. One of the fantastic things about sport in this country is that you can go to local running clubs and find people who give up their spare time to coach children and adults.

“Everywhere I have been involved all through sport there has been hundreds of volunteers involved – people who give up their spare time for the love of the sport. But, to inspire more kids, you need to inspire more volunteers to help them.”

Kevin Riley, the head of Bradford Grammar, said that the school had tried to give equal encouragement to pupils, regardless of whether their sport was traditionally a mainstream activity.

“The school has always had this sense that if you are good at something, we will develop it,” he said. “The Brownlees, as good as they are athletically, you would have thought the school might have said, ‘never mind all this running around and swimming lark, you need to play rugby and cricket’. But it didn’t, the school developed their individual talent because it was very obvious from an early age and the school really encouraged that.”

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Obama Administration Hunts Phantom Classroom Racism

In March 2010, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that his department was “going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement” in the nation’s schools. What was the pervasive racial injustice that led Mr. Duncan to redouble such efforts? Black elementary and high school students are three and a half times more likely to get suspended or expelled than their white peers, according to federal data.

And so the Departments of Education and Justice have launched a campaign against disproportionate minority discipline rates, which show up in virtually every school district with significant numbers of black and Hispanic students. The possibility that students’ behavior drives those rates lies outside the Obama administration’s conceptual universe. The theory behind this school discipline push is what Obama officials and civil rights advocates call the “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to this conceit, harsh discipline practices—above all, suspensions— strip minority students of classroom time, causing them to learn less, drop out of school, and eventually land in prison.

The feds have reached their conclusions, however, without answering the obvious question: Are black students suspended more often because they misbehave more? Arne Duncan, of all people, should be aware of inner-city students’ self-discipline problems, having headed the Chicago school system before becoming secretary of education. Chicago’s minority youth murder one another with abandon. Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city, mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic.

Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well.

Like school districts across the county, the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school system has been on a mission to lower the black suspension rate, following complaints by local activists and black parents. The district has sent its staff to $350,000 worth of “cultural-proficiency” training, where they learned to “examine the presence and role of Whiteness.” The system spent another $2 million or so to implement an anti-suspension behavioral-modification program embraced by the Obama administration.

Aaron Benner, a fifth-grade teacher in St. Paul, scoffs at the notion that minority students are being unfairly targeted for discipline. “Anyone in his right mind knows that these [disciplined] students are extremely disruptive,” he says. He overheard a fifth-grade boy use extremely foul language to threaten a girl. (“I wanted to throw him against the locker,” Mr. Benner recalls.) The boy’s teacher told him that she felt powerless to punish the misbehavior.

“This will be one of my black men who ends up in prison after raping a woman,” he observes. Racist? Many would so characterize the comment. But Mr. Benner is black himself—and fed up with the excuses for black misbehavior. “They’re trying to pull one over on us. Black folks are drinking the Kool-Aid; this ‘let-them-clown’ philosophy could have been devised by the KKK.”

The research base for the Obama administration’s claim that minority students receive harsher punishment than whites for “the same or similar infractions” is laughably weak. None of the studies alleging disproportionate discipline actually observed students’ behavior or examined students’ full disciplinary histories, including classroom interactions and warnings, teacher and counselor observations, and efforts at informal resolution that preceded more formal measures. A principal might have had two dozen conversations with a student before deciding to suspend him; none of those conversations would have been included in the researchers’ models.

Disproportionate rates of minority discipline were already ending school officials’ careers before the feds stepped in. Now that Washington has entered the fray, the pressure to bring those rates into alignment has grown even more intense. In Christina, Delaware, one of the districts under Education Department investigation, a six-year-old white boy faced expulsion in 2009 for bringing to school a Cub Scout tool (“a combination of folding fork, knife, and spoon,” reported a local TV station) with which to eat his pudding. After public outcry, the district removed kindergarten and first-grade students from its zero-tolerance policy for weapons.

Also in 2009, however, the Christina school district expelled an 11-year-old black girl after a box-cutter fell out of her jacket pocket. The girl said that she had no idea how the box cutter had got there, according to Wilmington’s News Journal. The U.S. Department of Education presumably chose Christina to investigate because it agrees with the girl’s mother, who brought a complaint to the Delaware Human Relations Commission, that only racism can explain why a school would distinguish a six-year-old’s possession of an improvised pudding spoon from an 11-year-old’s possession of a box cutter.

Might the school officials know something that federal bureaucrats do not regarding the girl’s previous run-ins with authority and the likelihood that she had no knowledge of the box cutter? Not in the eyes of a Washington paper-pusher, who takes his own omniscience as a given.

“Teachers are petrified to discipline students,” says a high school science teacher in Queens, New York, who blogs under the name “Chaz.” Students will tell a teacher to shut up or curse him when asked to open their notebooks, but the teacher’s supervisors will look the other way. The amount of insubordination now tolerated in New York schools is destroying them, says a former head of discipline for the city’s school system. Yet in June of this year, the schools chancellor proposed to officially ban suspensions for all but the most extreme infractions. Teachers would no longer be allowed to remove from class students who disrupted their fellow students’ ability to learn, engaged in obscene behavior, or were insubordinate. Advocates and the city council speaker, who is the leading mayoral candidate, complained that the changes did not go far enough.

The clear losers in all of this are children. Protecting well-behaved students’ ability to learn is a school’s highest obligation, and it is violated when teachers lose the option of removing chronically disruptive students from class. Nor does keeping those unruly students in class do them any favors. School is the last chance to socialize a student who repeatedly curses his teacher, say, since his parent is obviously failing at the job. Eliminate serious consequences for bad behavior, and you are sending a child into the world who has learned precisely the opposite of what he needs to know about life.

Though Barack Obama broached the taboo topic of personal responsibility on the 2008 campaign trail, now that he’s in the White House, he and his underlings have maintained a resolute silence on the behavioral components of inequality. Mr. Duncan’s public pronouncements have avoided any mention of what students and parents can do for themselves, such as paying attention in class, respecting your teacher, and studying, or monitoring your child’s attendance, homework, and comportment. Such an exclusive emphasis on victimhood plays well with Mr. Obama’s base, but it seriously distorts reality.

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Obama Administration Aggravates The Minority Achievement Gap, Increases Risk Of School Violence

The attempt to generate inter-group disharmony is of course pure Marxism. It's deliberate, not foolish

If you want to fix the achievement gap between black and white students, you must first fix the behaviors that contribute to it, like the disorder and violence in inner-city classrooms that make it hard to teach or learn in such schools, and disproportionately affect the black students in such schools.

But the Obama administration is doing just the opposite, discouraging school districts from imposing meaningful discipline on violent or disruptive black students if they have already disciplined “too many” black students, as Heather MacDonald notes in the current issue of City Journal. Since more black kids come from high-crime areas, it is only natural that infraction rates are higher among black kids than, say, Asian kids (Asians have much lower infraction rates than whites, who in turn have much lower infraction rates than blacks, notes MacDonald).

So it is entirely foreseeable, and not the product of racism by a school, that more black kids than white kids get disciplined for misconduct in many schools. The Obama administration argues that higher minority suspension rates presumptively violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by constituting “disparate impact,” even though the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Sandoval (2001) that such “disparate impact” doesn’t violate Title VI.

Such discipline is not racism, or something that is harmful to minorities in the long run; instead, discipline is a valuable form of instruction that both teaches students how to interact properly with others (a skill that a kid will need both to maximize his own learning, and to handle a job when he reaches adulthood) and also teaches them essential moral values.

Depriving disruptive or violent minority students of such discipline based on their race is itself a form of racial discrimination, since it deprives them of “equal access” to an essential educational “benefit,” namely, moral instruction and instruction in how to get along with others. See Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 650 (1999)(civil rights laws forbid denying students access to an educational “benefit” based on their sex or race). Employers require their employees to follow rules and get along with co-workers, and expect them to have “soft people skills,” all traits that are instilled through discipline in school and in the home.

But the Obama administration can’t see this, since it is wearing ideological blinders. Contrary to what it seems to think, it does not help a black kid if a school official is prevented from disciplining another kid for beating him up just because the kid who beat him up is also black. (Violence is usually committed against other members of the perpetrator’s own race.) Doing so is an example of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that undermines educational achievement among African-Americans.

The State of Maryland plans to do something even more extreme, proposing a rule that would mandate racial quotas in school discipline. As I previously noted, quotas in school discipline clash with a federal appeals court ruling that schools cannot use racial proportionality rules for school discipline, since that violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. See People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d 528, 534 (7th Cir. 1997). That court ruling also said that a school cannot use race in student discipline to offset racial disparities not rooted in school officials’ racism (known as “disparate impact”).

Racial “disparities” in student discipline rates are not the product of racism by school officials, but rather reflect higher rates of violence and other disruptive conduct among African-American students. (The Supreme Court’s Armstrong decision emphasized that crime rates are not the same for different races, and that racial disparities in crime rates and conviction rates are not proof of racial discrimination.) Stopping school officials from disciplining black students who violate school rules just because they previously disciplined more black than white students is as crazy as ordering police to stop arresting black criminals just because they previously arrested more blacks than whites.

As the Manhattan Institute’s MacDonald notes,

Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city [of Chicago], mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic. In 2009, the widely publicized beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert by his fellow students sent Duncan hurrying back to the Windy City, accompanied by Attorney General Eric Holder, to try to contain the fallout in advance of Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics (see “Chicago’s Real Crime Story,” Winter 2010).

Between September 2011 and February 2012, 25 times more black Chicago students than white ones were arrested at school, mostly for battery; black students outnumbered whites by four to one. (In response to the inevitable outcry over the arrest data, a Chicago teacher commented: “I feel bad for kids being arrested, . . . but I feel worse seeing a kid get his head smashed on the floor and almost die. Or a teacher being threatened with his life.”). . .

Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well. . .

Aaron Benner, a fifth-grade teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota, scoffs at the notion that minority students are being unfairly targeted for discipline. “Anyone in his right mind knows that these [disciplined] students are extremely disruptive,” he says. Like districts across the county, the St. Paul public school system has been on a mission to lower the black suspension rate, following complaints by local activists and black parents. A highly regarded principal lost his job because his school had “too many” suspensions of black second- and fourth-graders. The school system has sent its staff to $350,000 worth of “cultural-proficiency” training, where they learned to “examine the presence and role of ‘Whiteness.’ ” The district spent another $2 million or so to implement an anti-suspension behavioral-modification program embraced by the Obama administration.

Benner sees the consequences of this anti-discipline push nearly every day in the worsening behavior of students. He overheard a fifth-grade boy tell a girl: “Bitch, I’ll fuck you and suck you.” (“I wanted to throw him against the locker,” Benner recalls.) The boy’s teacher told Benner that she felt powerless to punish the misbehavior. “This will be one of my black men who ends up in prison after raping a woman,” observes Benner.

Racist? Many would so characterize the comment. But Benner is black himself—and fed up with the excuses for black misbehavior. He attended one of the district’s cultural-proficiency sessions, where an Asian teacher asked: “How do I help the student who blurts out answers and disrupts the class?” The black facilitator reminded her: “That’s what black culture is”—an answer that echoes the Obama administration’s admonitions to teachers. “I should have said: ‘How many of you shouted out in college?’ ” Benner remarks.

“They’re trying to pull one over on us. Black folks are drinking the Kool-Aid; this ‘let-them-clown’ philosophy could have been devised by the KKK.” . .school systems are jettisoning whole swaths of their discipline practices in order to avoid disparate impact. . .According to a recent hire, a Baltimore high school now asks prospective teachers: “How do you respond to being mistreated? What do you do if someone cusses you out?” The proper answer is: “Nothing.”

Predictably, disorder has arisen. A 34-year veteran of the school had to be taken from the premises in an ambulance after a student shattered the glass in a classroom display case.

At a widely-read education blog, a teacher describes the violence and disorder that occurred when her school adopted racial quotas in school discipline:

I was the homeroom teacher in an incident in a school that tried to implement just this criteria for discipline. One kid (scrawny 7th grader) had the {bleep} beaten out of him by a 6-foot, fully-muscled 7th grader – two different races. The little kid was suspended before his copious blood had been cleaned up off the floor. The big kid never did have ANY punishment – that particular ethnic group had been disciplined too many times.

Need I mention that it was a tough month, as word quickly spread that violence against the “under-disciplined” ethnic group was treated as a freebie?

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10 August, 2012

For Unpaid College Loans, Feds Dock Social Security

More retirees are falling behind on student debt, and Uncle Sam is coming after their benefits

It's no secret that falling behind on student loan payments can squash a borrower's hopes of building savings, buying a home or even finding work. Now, thousands of retirees are learning that defaulting on student-debt can threaten something that used to be untouchable: their Social Security benefits.

According to government data, compiled by the Treasury Department at the request of SmartMoney.com, the federal government is withholding money from a rapidly growing number of Social Security recipients who have fallen behind on federal student loans. From January through August 6, the government reduced the size of roughly 115,000 retirees' Social Security checks on those grounds. That's nearly double the pace of the department's enforcement in 2011; it's up from around 60,000 cases in all of 2007 and just 6 cases in 2000.

Tens of thousands of retirees have fallen behind on student loans--and the feds are coming after their Social Security benefits. SmartMoney's AnnaMaria Andriotis has details on Lunch Break.

The amount that the government withholds varies widely, though it runs up to 15%. Assuming the average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker of $1,234, that could mean a monthly haircut of almost $190. "This is going to catch an awful lot of people off guard and wreak havoc on their financial lives," says Sheryl Garrett, a financial planner in Eureka Springs, Ark.

Many of these retirees aren't even in hock for their own educations. Consumer advocates say that in the majority of the cases they've seen, the borrowers went into debt later in life to help defray education costs for their children or other dependents. Harold Grodberg, an elder law attorney in Bayonne, N.J., says he's worked with at least six clients in the past two years whose problems started with loans they signed up for to help pay for their grandchildren's tuition. Other attorneys say they're working with older borrowers who had signed up for the federal PLUS loan -- a loan for parents of undergraduates -- to cover tuition costs. Other retirees took out federal loans when they returned to college in midlife, and a few are carrying debt from their own undergraduate or graduate-school years. (No statistics track exactly how many of the defaulting loans fall into which category.

Most consumer advocates and attorneys who work with seniors in this predicament told SmartMoney.com that their clients were unwilling to speak on the record, because of shame or fear. But they all stress that stakes involved can become very high for older people on a budget. Deanne Loonin, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, says she's been working with an 83-year-old veteran whose Social Security benefits have been reduced for the past five years. The client fell behind on a federal loan that he signed up for in the '90s to help with his son's tuition costs; Loonin says the government's cuts have left the client without enough cash to pay for medications for heart problems and other ailments.

Roughly 2.2 million student-loan debtors were 60 and older during the first quarter of 2012, and nearly 10% of their loans were 90 days or more past due, up from 6% during the first quarter of 2005, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "It's really a unique problem we haven't had to face before, and it's only going to grow," says Robert Applebaum, founder of Student Debt Crisis, a nonprofit advocacy group in Staten Island, N.Y.

More HERE






Technology and the world of educational possibilities

My first PhD-level course at the University of Arkansas was math for economic analysis. I entered the course with two degrees in elementary education, but the highest math course I had taken was college algebra for educators. As you can imagine, I was not prepared for the course.

I spent hours studying content that it was assumed an econ PhD student would already know and regularly received help from classmates. The most help, however, came from a former hedge fund analyst and professors at MIT. While I completed my math for economic analysis course, I also watched MIT lectures on linear algebra. I visited Khan Academy regularly to learn how to use the chain rule or product rule when finding derivatives. The videos were more effective in teaching me than my professor, because I could pause the videos, re-watch them, and practice as they played. I am sure the professor would have been quite frustrated if I demanded that he repeat what he said as much as I replayed those videos.

Recently, one of the founders of Coursera, a free online program that delivers free, high-quality college level courses to people around the world, gave a TED Talk on the ability of technology to reinvent how we deliver education (see also Salman Khan’s TED Talk).

High-quality education programs are increasingly being provided for free. There is a real opportunity for schools, especially K-12 schools, to see tremendous benefits from these programs. Imagine a high school student taking introduction to finance, while the student at the computer next to him or her takes Greek and Roman mythology. The technology is available, so what is stopping us from utilizing the power of technology to change how we educate students? Tradition and government regulation.

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Tuition fee rise HAS turned thousands of middle class British students off going to university

No surprise to any economist

Thousands of middle-class pupils have been priced out of studying at top universities, according to an independent commission.

The most prestigious universities have seen a sharper drop in applications than less selective institutions following the controversial tripling of tuition fees.

Demand for places at the leading universities, which charge the highest fees, has fallen most sharply among teenagers from wealthier families, the panel found.

Most middle and higher-income students fail to qualify for grants, bursaries or fee discounts and take out a maximum loan to cover fees and living costs.

The commission, set up to monitor the impact of the £9,000-a-year maximum fees coming into effect this autumn, found early evidence that the fees hike is denting university aspirations.

In today’s report, it points out that the number of English applicants seeking university places this autumn has slumped by 37,000 from the 2010 level while demand in the other home nations, where fees are lower or non-existent, has remained buoyant.

The percentage of 18-year-olds from the poorest fifth of households – earning £15,000 a year or less – who applied to at least one of the 30 most selective English universities rose fractionally to eight per cent this year.

Among households earning up to £30,000, the percentage dipped only slightly from 12.9 per cent to 12.7 per cent.

Demand dipped more sharply among middle-income families earning between £30,000 and £50,0000, falling 0.5 points to 17.3 per cent. Among higher earners, with household incomes of £50,000 to £75,000, the proportion of applicants dropped 1.1 points to 24 per cent. And among the richest fifth of the country, earning £75,000 and above, demand slid from 38 per cent in 2010 to 37.1 per cent this year.

The report said that among 18- and 19-year-olds applying to the top universities, there are ‘larger relative declines from applicants in the most advantaged areas’.

Will Hutton, chairman of the commission, said the panel was ‘pleased to see that at this stage there has been no relative drop-off in applicants from less advantaged neighbourhoods’.

Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, representing 24 leading universities, said: ‘Prospective students know that in tough economic times a degree, especially one from a leading university, remains a smart investment.

‘We are especially pleased that .... the increase in fees has not had a disproportionate impact on application rates for prospective students from more disadvantaged backgrounds.’

Liam Burns, president of the National Union of Students, said: ‘After next week’s A-level results the clearing process will start, and we remain concerned that applicants, particularly those from certain backgrounds, may not be in a position to choose whether and where to study.’

The Department for Business said: ‘The proportion of English school-leavers applying to university is the second highest on record and it’s still not too late to apply.’

SOURCE





9 August, 2012

Silver lining in teacher shortage

Most states use teachers and school staff inefficiently. Since 1970, nationwide student enrollments have risen 8.5 percent, but teaching staff has increased more than 90 percent. Today, North Dakota averages one teacher for about every 12 students--a very low ratio.

The state doesn’t just need more teachers, but more excellent teachers. On average, children who have a teacher in the top 20 percent learn approximately three times as fast as children with one in the bottom 20 percent, according to a recent Public Impact report. Children two years behind their peers academically almost never catch up--unless they have an excellent teacher four years in a row, according to research by Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek. Better teachers mean better future earnings and likelihood for more fulfilling jobs.

Top teachers favor opportunities to advance and control their careers. Current school structures do not allow this. They should. State leaders should remember technology makes it possible for teachers to reach more students, saving taxpayer money and teacher housing scrambles. It’s an opportunity for the state to explore how to extend excellent teachers’ reach, so more children can get the best instruction possible. Starting now will put North Dakota in the national lead.

The report suggests several ways to do this. One is reducing teachers’ administrative work. Don’t have them grade or administer tests or fill out paperwork. Let a computer or aide do that. Another is letting one excellent teacher manage several classrooms staffed by junior teachers she can mentor along with their students. A third is letting star teachers reach more children in more locations by teaching online.

These options also will free money to attract these valuable employees with higher pay. One of the biggest reasons teacher pay cannot rise quickly is today’s teacher can teach only a similar number of students as a teacher 100 years ago. Other professionals have seen their pay rise because improving technology reduces the need for labor, making salaries in the smaller workforce go up because fewer people can do the same amount of work. This has not been true for education--until now.

Letting teachers work remotely part- or full-time also means they can live in areas with no housing shortage and lower living costs. This is an excellent potential benefit to localities beyond the oil boom. It multiplies value further by also allowing students to work remotely full- or part-time, meaning better taxpayer savings from less busing and cafeteria costs.

State leaders already have taken some unprecedented steps toward relieving the shortage. They have agreed teachers certified in other states count as certified in North Dakota and made it easier for qualified professionals to enter education. The state offers teacher loan forgiveness, and districts are working to secure housing.

Officials can do even more--innovative options abound. North Dakota could, like Alaska and New Hampshire, give parents funds and support to homeschool their children. As in Arizona, some or all of the state’s $9,000 per-pupil spending could be tied directly to children, depositing this into an account parents control and can split among various education options, allowing teachers, schools, and other providers to specialize and compete and families to mix and match options.

North Dakota occupies an enviable position among states, with little unemployment and increasing tax revenue. Now is the time to secure that position and lead the nation long-term.

SOURCE





Is Algebra Necessary?

An article from the NYT below. The destruction of American education marches on

A TYPICAL American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I've found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn't.

My question extends beyond algebra and applies more broadly to the usual mathematics sequence, from geometry through calculus. State regents and legislators - and much of the public - take it as self-evident that every young person should be made to master polynomial functions and parametric equations.

There are many defenses of algebra and the virtue of learning it. Most of them sound reasonable on first hearing; many of them I once accepted. But the more I examine them, the clearer it seems that they are largely or wholly wrong - unsupported by research or evidence, or based on wishful logic. (I'm not talking about quantitative skills, critical for informed citizenship and personal finance, but a very different ballgame.)

This debate matters. Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent. In the interest of maintaining rigor, we're actually depleting our pool of brainpower. I say this as a writer and social scientist whose work relies heavily on the use of numbers. My aim is not to spare students from a difficult subject, but to call attention to the real problems we are causing by misdirecting precious resources.

The toll mathematics takes begins early. To our nation's shame, one in four ninth graders fail to finish high school. In South Carolina, 34 percent fell away in 2008-9, according to national data released last year; for Nevada, it was 45 percent. Most of the educators I've talked with cite algebra as the major academic reason.

Shirley Bagwell, a longtime Tennessee teacher, warns that "to expect all students to master algebra will cause more students to drop out." For those who stay in school, there are often "exit exams," almost all of which contain an algebra component. In Oklahoma, 33 percent failed to pass last year, as did 35 percent in West Virginia.

Algebra is an onerous stumbling block for all kinds of students: disadvantaged and affluent, black and white. In New Mexico, 43 percent of white students fell below "proficient," along with 39 percent in Tennessee. Even well-endowed schools have otherwise talented students who are impeded by algebra, to say nothing of calculus and trigonometry.

California's two university systems, for instance, consider applications only from students who have taken three years of mathematics and in that way exclude many applicants who might excel in fields like art or history. Community college students face an equally prohibitive mathematics wall. A study of two-year schools found that fewer than a quarter of their entrants passed the algebra classes they were required to take.

"There are students taking these courses three, four, five times," says Barbara Bonham of Appalachian State University. While some ultimately pass, she adds, "many drop out."

Another dropout statistic should cause equal chagrin. Of all who embark on higher education, only 58 percent end up with bachelor's degrees. The main impediment to graduation: freshman math. The City University of New York, where I have taught since 1971, found that 57 percent of its students didn't pass its mandated algebra course. The depressing conclusion of a faculty report: "failing math at all levels affects retention more than any other academic factor." A national sample of transcripts found mathematics had twice as many F's and D's compared as other subjects.

Nor will just passing grades suffice. Many colleges seek to raise their status by setting a high mathematics bar. Hence, they look for 700 on the math section of the SAT, a height attained in 2009 by only 9 percent of men and 4 percent of women. And it's not just Ivy League colleges that do this: at schools like Vanderbilt, Rice and Washington University in St. Louis, applicants had best be legacies or athletes if they have scored less than 700 on their math SATs.

More HERE





British High Schools students could miss out on top marks as exam boards 'fix' grades to stop year-on-year rise of pass rate

Pupils expecting GCSE or A-level results this summer could miss out on top grades after exam boards were told to fix pass rates and grades to match last year.

The move, outlined in a policy document from the exams regulator Ofqual, is intended to halt year-on-year rises in exam success after the pass rate soared for the 29th year in a row last summer.

This comes after exam boards were heavily criticised for making errors in papers and handing out unfair grades, as 220,000 pupils battled for just 40,000 university places.

However, critics claim it could stop exam-takers from reaching the highest grade that they could have done in other years.

This is the first year in which 'comparable outcomes' will be used in both GCSEs and A-levels.

Results will be predicted based on previous cohorts and the past performance of the exam takers - so at A-level, GCSE grades will be taken into account, and at GCSE level, markers will look at pupils' results from SATs tests aged 11.

An Ofqual document said of the method: 'If we aim for comparable outcomes, roughly the same proportion of students will achieve each grade as in the previous year..... If necessary we will require exam boards to change their grade boundaries.'

Teachers have claimed the move is a return to 'norm referenced' A-levels, in which a fixed 10 per cent of pupils would be awarded an A grade each year.

Since this was scrapped in 1987, the percentage of A grades has risen from 10 per cent to 27 per cent and the pass rate has gone up from 70 per cent to 97.8 per cent.

Exam boards received a record number of complaints last year, with 200,000 resubmitting their papers for remarking.

A-levels results will be released on 16 August this year, with GCSE results coming out on 23 August.

Nansi Ellis, head of education policy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: 'If Ofqual is just ensuring consistency in exam standards with last year then that is good news.

'However, we would be concerned if any changes mean that students don’t get awarded the grades their hard work merits if the grades have been set so that a fixed percentage of students are awarded A*s and As.'

But Ofqual's chief executive Glenys Stacey insists genuine improvements in teaching and learning standards will still be recognised.

The policy of 'comparable outcomes' was in fact introduced at A-level last year and was one of the reasons A* grades only rose from 8.6 per cent to 8.7 per cent.

Headteachers have warned it will make it impossible to deliver on Education Secretary Michael Gove's demand schools increase the percentage of A* to C grade passes at GCSE in maths and English.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: 'We are determined to raise standards across the board. It is vital that all pupils get the grades their work deserves.

'Ministers have been clear that it is only fair to every hard-working young person that there is no grade inflation or dumbing down in the exams system.'

SOURCE



8 August, 2012

Malignant British Leftist accuses others of malignancy

That he and his ilk have destroyed government schooling by their woolly-headed and unproven educational theories and their virtual abolition of discipline he does not confront.

And I KNOW what they have destroyed. In my youth I went to a government school where corporal punishment for infractions was routine and I got as good an education as one could want. I have the most positive memories of my schooling, unlike the unfortunate children of the egotistical Jonathan Miller

At school in a small Australian country town I learnt Schubert Lieder, translated poetry by Goethe, was introduced to Bach, Smetana and the Greats of English literature (I still spout Chaucer at the slightest opportunity), learnt enough physics to identify global warming immediately as absolute hokum, still remember some chemical formulae and acquired a degree of familiarity with Latin that is still useful. And although my mathematics has always been weak, I did end up teaching statistics at a major Australian university. What more could I have gotten from school? Others undoubtedly got less from the same school but it was all readily there for those who wanted it.

And the school was even multicultural. There were people from all over Europe there. I was taught German by a Ukrainian!

Socialist Sir Jonathan Miller has admitted being 'ashamed' that he is supporting his grandchildren through private school.

In a war of words with his own son William, the renowned theatre director said the decision was made to ensure they got a good education.

Sir Jonathan added he was furious about 'belonging to a society which makes such as sharp distinction' between Britain's rich and poor.

There was 'something deeply malignant about a structure which makes it necessary to make these invidious choices,' he said.

He sent his own children to state schools but his son William called the decision a 'cavalier social experiment'.

William has sent his own children into private education, which Sir Jonathan says he is contributing towards.

'I do give them a little bit just to ensure there is some sort of security, but I feel rather ashamed of it and I feel ashamed of belonging to a society which makes such a sharp distinction between the prosperous and the assured, whose future is guaranteed, and those who are not,' Sir Jonathan told the Sunday Times this week.

'It all ought to be state education. It’s part and parcel of this profound and malignant separation of the prosperous from the poor.

'People who have huge amounts of can afford to wrap their children in all sorts of protective educational devices which guarantee that they will become like their parents.'

William Miller claims that he and his two siblings would have fared better had they been sent to public schools and Oxbridge, like their parents, but instead they were sent to state schools to appease the couple's socialist principles.

'It turned out to be a cavalier social experiment that saw all three of his children fail to gain a single qualification. He is right to feel guilty: it was a wholly avoidable disaster,' he wrote in 2009.

Miller grew up near London's Regent's Park where his parents' neighbours were intellectuals including Alan Bennett, George Melly, Shirley Conran and AJ Ayer. He started school at Primrose Hill state primary in 1969 and went on to Pimlico comprehensive in 1975.

He says: 'If you were to ask me what I remember about learning, I think I could just about recall that the Romans long baths and hated the Scots.'

But Sir Jonathan himself went to the prestigious St Paul's School in London and then on to Cambridge University.

'One wants to have freedom of choice – it is a very important thing – but there is something deeply malignant about a structure which makes it necessary to make these invidious choices to guarantee your children are enveloped in protected devices,' he said.

SOURCE





Toward a More Inclusive Sexuality

Having read the course listings for several departments of Women’s Studies at places that were once universities, such as Dartmouth, I am considering becoming a deep-sea squid. Many considerations recommend this course. Squids are more dignified than people. They make less noise. Universities run by squids do not have Departments of Lesbian, Gay, Cross-gendered, Transmogrified, Transvestite, and Deeply Puzzled Squid Studies. Lady squids are less infuriated than human females in such courses, and frequently better-looking. Departmental offerings of fascinating import abound:

WMST488R Senior Seminar: Queering the Global South (D)

Or:

WMST698D Special Topics in Women’s Studies: The History of Drag. C. Schuler

I can’t imagine anything more appropriate to a college education than the history of drag. Perhaps there is a chapter on Elizabethan Englishmen, who wore brightly colored pantyhose and swords. Where I come from in West Virginia, any man who wore panty hose would need a sword, so maybe it made sense. I am not sure how one queers the global south, but I believe I will move north and, just in case, get a Kevlar codpiece.

There was a time, long, long ago, in another universe, when universities were not chiefly comic. We have evolved. Today you can pay fifty thousand withering dollars a year to let your daughter be an extra in Saturday Night Live at, say, Yale, solemnly studying erotic peculiarities. The appeal is multi-faceted. A major in Women’s Studies (or would it be a majorette?) would simultaneously satisfy the teenager’s natural prurience, allow her a pleasant sense of advanced moral superiority, and permit her to avoid any danger of an education.

A tone of aggressive smugness pervades these not-very-scholarly hives, and a whine of misandry like the sound of a dentist’s drill in an adjoining room. Many have noticed that immaturity in today’s society lasts years longer than it did when the young had to work and raise families. This, plus the control of universities by the students, has allowed the coagulation of adolescent consciousness into whole departments. In these academic sandboxes the idea of critical thought seems to have died, equipping students with the self-awareness than one would expect of a peanut-butter sandwich. A department of militant sexism warring against sexism would be an embarrassment to more-logical beings, such as, I suspect, any other beings.

There is in such courses much nattering about Women of Color. The inmates of these refuges from adulthood apparently regard themselves as being at one with oppressed women of the Third World, which in all likelihood they have never seen one of. If they had any idea of what an actual Nicaraguan woman thinks of pampered brattesses lolling about a pseudo-educational theme park paid for by their fathers, they would hide under their beds.

However, I subscribe to the Californian principle that if a thing is not worth doing, it is worth doing to outrageous excess. After exposing myself to an afternoon of such course descriptions, I decided that I would get into the spirit of the thing, that perhaps I was being retrograde in not having a sufficient respect for cross-gendered, bicephalous, transalpine, trisexual people of pigment. I decided that maybe the dyspeptic children of Dartmouth and worse had a point. Maybe we should study aberrant, non-traditional sexualities. I’m not sure why, but these days the question appears not to be important.

It seemed reasonable that bestiality should be our next front in the ongoing battle for sexual liberation. While our Victorian and Puritan inhibitions have driven this form of love into the shadows of fear and repression, history shows that it has had a vibrant existence in more-tolerant societies of the past. Among the ancients there were Europa and the white bull, and Leda and the swan. More recently we have had the Lone Ranger and Silver, and Bill and Hillary. Many clandestine amors have been reported of shepherds in the lonely moors of the Scottish Highlands. (It is reported that Scotsmen wear kilts because sheep can hear zippers, but this may be slander.) Taxonomic miscegenation is thus seen to have a lengthy lineage. It merits exploration.

In furtherance of this idea I tossed together a few collegiate courses that seemed to me a good beginning at legitimizing trans-species relations. Proposed offerings:

BSSAP 101
Introduction to Bestiality. This marginalized sexuality will be considered in the light of historical intolerance, oppression, and the liberation struggle. Basic concepts to be explored: The sheep as social construct. Countering institutional humano-centrism. The eroticism of the orangutan in the cultural context of the rain forest. The Bolivian anteater, insertor or insertee? A Latina perspective on the donkey and the Tijuanan folk tradition. Laboratory twice weekly, covering practical techniques to include stepladders and the camel, and positioning the iguana.

BSSAP 301
Managing Cross-Phylum Relationships, with interdisciplinary emphasis on the Cephalopod. The role of tentacles. Animals of Color, centering on the cockatoo.

BSSAP 302
The Concept of Species: Socially Constructed or Injection Molded? The course will consider this complex subject from perspectives of sociology, gender struggle, and plasma physics. Accommodating differing reproductive sexualities: Budding vs. the egg strategy. Instructor: Señora Rosalita Consolador y Alicates

BSSAP 348
Bestiality and the Law. Barking and the principle of informed consent. Recent Supreme Court decisions. Date rape: When “Moo” means “No.” Negotiating with parents: the danger of trampling.

In my paroxysms of liberational afflatus it occurred to me that a truly inclusive sexuality would have to embody necrophilia, which suffers today from grave discrimination. It seems unmodern to bar people from the consolations of love merely because they are dead. Cannibalism being nothing but culinary necrophilia it seemed reasonable to combine the two. As the reader can see, I’m nothing if not reasonable.

NECCAN 202 Snuff: The Problem of Finding a Lasting Relationship. Techniques for digging up a date on short notice.

NECCAN 402 Fattening prisoners. Soy substitutes in time of peace. Sausages, gravies, and organ meats. The problem of deserts. Kosher. When baby dies. Road kill. Cannable vs. bottleable.

Enough. Much as I want to contribute to social advance, I believe I will stick with becoming a squid. It will be less embarrassing.

SOURCE







Australia: Queensland Teachers' Union rejects flaw claims in assessments

QUEENSLAND'S senior student assessment system is open to rorting, is prejudicial towards well resourced schools and creates unrealistic student and teacher workloads, a group of teachers claim.

But academics and the Queensland Teachers' Union say the system, set to be reviewed by the State Government, is world class.

The heated and long-running debate hit a new high last week with the Queensland Studies Authority releasing a defence on its website to teachers' claims.

"The QSA welcomes feedback from the education and wider communities ... However, it is vital that debate and discussion about curriculum and assessment is based on factual information," the QSA website states, before addressing 11 "issues".

The Courier-Mail has heard from about a dozen of more than 100 teachers who met recently to step up claims against Queensland's externally moderated school-based assessment system.

Represented by James Cook University academic Professor Peter Ridd, the teachers dismissed views of Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond and Australian College of Educators chair Professor Robert Lingard that Queensland's system inspired higher-order thinking skills among students and was world class.

However, the teachers say the system is open to rorting, with better resourced schools able to facilitate continuous student drafts until written pieces were effectively done by the teacher. They also claim teachers are more likely to teach to the test because they are writing them and can more easily manipulate marks.

The teachers are calling for more external exams, for some maths and science assessments to have a lesser workload and to be allowed to use numerical marks rather than "confusing" criteria.

Prof Ridd said academics who thought the system was world class lived "in fairyland".

"It is the overuse of writing, it is the overuse of assignments which is one of the biggest problems," he said.

A QSA spokeswoman said elite schools and those in disadvantaged areas had similar student result curves, proving there was no bias, and while any system had a potential for rorting, no evidence had been offered.

SOURCE



7 August, 2012

Successful School Curriculum Under Attack

 Ken Blackwell

As a longtime school choice advocate, I am always in favor of giving parents the tools they need to ensure their children receive a high quality education, which is necessary to compete in today's global marketplace. And as a visiting professor of law at Liberty University and former associate professor at Xavier University, I know how a rigorous education is critical for students to be prepared to get the most value out of their time at college.

Therefore, I am disturbed by a recent development in states such as Idaho, where members of the school board are questioning the worth of this program despite its value to students. Or in New Hampshire, where fringe activists claiming to be members of the Tea Party are supporting bills to shut down a rigorous education program. You may be familiar with schools which have advanced placement (AP) classes, where students are given the opportunity to take accelerated classes. The program in question, International Baccalaureate (IB), was started in 1968 and is even more rigorous. Offered in 1,311 primary and secondary American schools, IB has a track record of helping shape young minds into accomplished life-long learners and ethical leaders. And for poor minority students in rough neighborhoods such as Chicago, IB has been a ticket for many motivated students out of dependency and poverty.

IB is accepted by more than 1000 U.S. universities- such as MIT, John Hopkins, and the Naval and Air Force academies- as an exemplary mark of academic achievement. Some universities automatically enroll high school students who finish the IB Diploma Program. And hundreds of universities offer college credit for IB classes, which saves students time and money.

In addition, according to a recent study by the Stanford Research Institute, not only are IB students much more likely than other students to attend a selective college, most (81%) finish their program within 6 years. That is compared to the national average of 57%, which has been a strain on taxpayers and has added to our current student loan default crisis.

So, what is the objection to IB? Because the program is available across the globe, encourages students to learn a second language, and teaches students about other cultures, it appears that the conspiratorial-right is claiming the program is part of a plot to erode American sovereignty through the United Nations and create a one-world, socialist government.

It is a shame William F. Buckley is not alive today because he spent a lifetime building a respectable and electorally-successful conservative movement, while rejecting kooks from organizations such as the John Birch Society. Our movement needs to be concerned about actual threats to our sovereignty, such as unelected judges who cite international law in their decisions or inappropriate treaties such as the Law of the Sea. No one can fill WFB's shoes, but I am here to insist that an intense and vigorous education to prepare students for a global world is a good thing! To claim otherwise makes self-labeled conservatives sound anti-intellectual, paranoid, and detached from legitimate political discourse.

As Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said while visiting an elementary school with a successful IB program, "I think the one-size-fits-all (model) coming out of Washington is not the way to go. I think we need to empower innovative, creative, talented principals and teachers to do their jobs and let the success come." Programs such as No Child Left Behind and the elimination of voucher programs are examples of how busybody bureaucrats inflict permanent damage on entire generations of students.

We were each endowed with abilities from the Almighty. And education policy must free up local communities to offer programs to allow students to maximize their God-given potential. School choice, parental control, and a vigorous, classical education are at the heart of conservative philosophy.

SOURCE





Hypocrisy of the rich British liberals who buy their way out of the schools calamity their dogma created

Sometimes, a spotlight shone harshly into one private life can starkly illuminate a calamity for an entire society.



It was reported yesterday that Sir Jonathan Miller, the theatre and opera director, playwright, neurologist, polymath and icon of the Leftist intelligentsia, is helping pay for at least some of his grandchildren to attend independent schools.

This is all the more notable since Sir Jonathan's profound aversion to private education is well known. In accordance with his principles, in the Seventies he sent his own children to Pimlico comprehensive school in Central London.

Some years ago, however, his son William revealed his fury at having been forced to endure an education that he said had blighted the lives of himself and his siblings, all to conform to their parents' political beliefs.

In a newspaper interview he revealed the bullying and poor education that he had endured at Pimlico school, calling the experience a 'wholly avoidable disaster' arising from a 'mistaken ideology'.

Eventually, Sir Jonathan and his wife relented and sent William to the fee-paying Bedales school in Hampshire.

Now William says that he and his wife have decided to educate their primary school-age children privately to ensure that they, too, do not become - as he has characterised himself and his siblings - the 'victims of the most cavalier of social experiments'. And his father is helping foot the bill.

Of course, it is not just the Millers but hundreds of thousands of other children who, for several decades now, have been forced to pay a devastating price for this 'cavalier' experiment.

They were the victims of their parents' ideological fixation with abolishing privilege - a fixation expressed by refusing to give their children the educational advantages that all too often they themselves had enjoyed.

Sir Jonathan, for example, was educated at St Paul's, one of Britain's top public schools. Like a number of other ex-public school pupils, however, he turned venomously against the education system that had provided such advantages.

Whether as the result of personal guilt or socialist ideology, such people decided that selective schools discriminated against both poor and less academically-able children.

So through an utterly misplaced idealism, they resolved that if everyone could  not benefit from such schools, then  no one should.  Accordingly, the principle of equality of opportunity that lay behind selective education - including that provided in the state system by the grammar schools - was replaced by the doctrine of equality  of outcomes.

The result was a disastrous confluence of comprehensive schooling with child-centred educational theories, which in the interests of eradicating both 'illegitimate' adult authority over children and equally 'illegitimate' differences in achievement, simply undid the very concept of education altogether. The result was countless numbers of children abandoned to ignorance and under-achievement, with middle-class ones such as William Miller bullied at their comprehensives - and with those at the very bottom of the social heap, who depended most of all upon school, left locked into disadvantage.

This was because the aim of this experiment had nothing to do with education and instead everything to do with social engineering - to create a society without privilege. But this aim was always unattainable.

The result was that education was now geared to the lowest common denominator, producing a catastrophic decline in standards from top to bottom of the system.

The damage done by this experiment has been incalculable. The further irony is that it actually increased the numbers going to independent schools. 

To avoid the poor standards of education and discipline at so many comprehensives, more and more desperate parents proceeded to impoverish themselves to educate their children privately - just to give them the kind of education they once would have received at the grammar schools.

Yet even now, Sir Jonathan Miller appears to have not an iota of insight into the disaster to which he subscribed. Indeed, his hatred of independent schools remains as strong as ever - even while he pays towards his grandchildren's education.

Obviously, he is reported to have said, he wanted to secure his grandchildren's safety and future. Nevertheless, he felt ashamed of doing so, and of belonging to a society which created a 'profound and malignant separation of the prosperous from the poor'.

And he went on to rail at the 'protective educational devices' of independent schooling provided by 'prosperity and big money' which guaranteed that such pupils would 'become like their parents'.

It is obvious to Sir Jonathan that he should look after his grandchildren's interests by helping fund their private education. How extraordinary that he thinks this is, nevertheless, 'malign' and 'invidious'.

This seems to be because he thinks that parents' motivation for educating their children privately is to turn them into clones of themselves.  But this is not what drives such parents at all. They merely want their children to have a good education so that they can make the best of themselves in life. Isn't that what the vast majority of parents want?

So why does Sir Jonathan assume independent school parents have less noble objectives? It must be because he believes that the better-off are wholly driven by self-interest, whereas the poor are not.  This is as absurd as it is offensive. It's also more than a bit rich coming from Sir Jonathan who is himself?.?.?. well, rich.

So does he think, therefore, that he himself is motivated only by self-interest? Plainly not, when he was prepared to sacrifice the interests of his own children supposedly to further those of the poor. So why does he damn independent school parents as an apparently obnoxious breed apart?

One thing he does say, which is correct, is that the gulf in education between rich and poor is even wider now than it was when he chose comprehensive schools for his children.

But what he utterly fails to acknowledge is that the cause of this widening gap is the very doctrine of educational equality that he supported. That doctrine was swung like a wrecking ball at the very foundation of British society.

It is no coincidence that, back in the Sixties, Sir Jonathan Miller was also a founding member of the seminal Beyond The Fringe satirical troupe, whose anti-establishment views started to unravel the skein of Britain's entire moral framework.

But then, those from the Left can never admit they can be wrong - because they assume that they embody virtue itself.  Accordingly, they demonise and sneer at all who dare disagree. Pinning their faith on utopian fantasies, they tend to regard theoretical ideas as having more substance than what's going on under their noses.

Sir Jonathan has previously expressed disappointment that his children seemed indifferent to his work. None of them, he complained, identified with or took pleasure from the world in which ideas and the life of the mind took priority.

But the life of the mind surely should not take priority over life in the actual world. To allow it to do so is to lose sight of reality altogether - which is surely the whole problem with the Left-wing intelligentsia.

In the past, Sir Jonathan has also expressed deep regret, and even shame, that he chose the theatre over being a neurologist, which he said he felt he was 'meant to do'.

Sometimes, parents unwittingly force their children to pay a price for the parents' own resentments. How sad if Sir Jonathan's difficulties played a part in creating  such bitterness and disappointment in  his family.

But how sad also for Britain that such a brilliant mind became so twisted by socially destructive dogma, when it could have been used to contribute immeasurably to helping the most vulnerable instead of knocking the ground from under their feet.

SOURCE





Australia: Olympic boss calls for more sport in schools

With Australia trailing Kazakhstan, you can see why

AUSTRALIA'S Olympic boss John Coates believes there needs to be a greater emphasis on sport in schools in the hope of finding the next Cathy Freeman or Ian Thorpe.

The Australian team so far has failed to live up to Coates' expectations of a top-five finish at the London Games, languishing at 24 on the medals tally after the first week of competition.

The Australian Olympic Committee president says before the next Olympics in 2016 Australia needs to "talent-build" by making sport a focus in schools.

He has called on the federal government to consider changing its policy and funding to give priority to school sports.

"Perhaps the area that needs a lot of attention - and if not, funding and government intention in terms of policy - is getting sport back into the school curricula," Coates told the ABC on Monday.

The British were making "a big thing" of that being one of the legacies they're looking towards, he said.

"They've been achieving that, a greater emphasis on sport in the schools."

Some children would benefit from the health and fitness, but the next Freeman or Thorpe may also be discovered, Coates said.

Federal Sports Minister Kate Lundy is happy with the level of sports participation in schools.

"What we're seeing over at the Olympics at the moment is that we're coming so close so many times ... and it's just not going our way," she told ABC radio.

"But we're still way up there with the best of the best in the world in sport."

Senator Lundy said it was important to continue to innovate to keep sports programs strong.

"Australia's great strength is we've always punched above our weight in sport and we need to be smarter about how we use our resources to stay right up there," she said.

SOURCE



6 August, 2012

The bottomless pit of teachers' union demands

Union apologists fail to quantify their “fully funded education” demand.

Teachers unions and their apologists constantly talk about the pressing need for a “fully funded” education system. We at EAGnews.org have yet to see anyone actually quantify that argument and clearly define what “fully funded” means.

In 2006, New Jersey school districts spent an average of $14,630 per student while the national average was around $9,138. Does that mean New Jersey’s system is “fully funded”? Considering the fact that the statewide graduation rate is 83 percent, it seems the Garden State’s government education system has some problems to address. Of course the educrats would reflexively say New Jersey schools need even more money to get the job done.

Such is the case in Chicago. There, a union shill group, the “Chicago Teacher Solidarity Committee,” has been circulating a pledge form to gather names and contact information for union sympathizers who buy into the “money equals quality education” argument.

The language on the SocialistWorker.org that the CTSC was “first proposed by the Occupy Chicago Labor Outreach,” responded to my email:

“It's difficult to quantify ‘fully compensated’ and ‘fully funded’ because there are a lot of variables in play - work hours, class size, curriculum quality, job security, etc. We are advocating that the budget and salary negotiations be considered with all of those things as priorities, rather than with charter schools and standardized testing and other private profit making endeavors as priorities.”
She then referred us to a document on the Chicago Teachers Union website.

So, in fact, she was really saying, “I don’t know, it’s not on my sheet of talking points, go ask the union.”

It’s obvious there is no amount of money that will fix the problems of government education. If there was, the problems would have been fixed long ago. The United States is among the world leaders in public school investment, and the returns have been disappointing for decades.

But citizens still fall into the trap of wanting a “fully funded” education system, whatever that means.

And “fully compensated” teachers? We think that’s already been accomplished in Chicago.

CBS2 reports the average Chicago teacher salary is $76,000 a year, and that doesn’t include benefits. The school district said that made Chicago’s teachers the highest paid in any city in the nation. The CTU disputed that, saying they’re just the second highest – behind New York City. Big whoop.

But who cares about comparing teachers to teachers? How about comparing them to private sector employees, who work 12 months a year, compared to nine months in a typical government school. The median household income in Chicago is $50,897, according to CLRsearch.com.

It seems as though Chicago’s teachers have it pretty good – likely better than Stavroula Harissis. So what exactly is a “fully compensated” teacher? One with a bigger pension and lower deductibles and co-pays for health insurance? Bigger sick leave payouts? Who knows?

But the talking points are working like a charm, especially with average citizens and an overly-compliant Chicago media that never presses the CTU and its allies to back up their absurd claims.

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Shake up sport so more state pupils can win: Olympics chief blasts 'unacceptably' high number of privately educated Team GB medallists

They could start by DOING more sport in Comprehensive schools.  Many of them do very little

The high proportion of privately-educated Team GB medallists is 'unacceptable', the chairman of the British Olympic Association said yesterday.

Just 7 per cent of the population go to independent schools - but more than half of Britain's golds in the 2008 Beijing Games were won by former private school pupils.

So far, Team GB has nine gold medallists in the 2012 Games. Four were privately educated, and a fifth went to school in Germany.

BOA chief Lord Moynihan, himself a former public schoolboy, called for an overhaul of school sport policy to provide more chances for state pupils.  'It's one of the worst statistics in British sport,' he claimed.  'It is wholly unacceptable that over 50 per cent of our medallists in Beijing came from the private sector.

'It tells you that 50 per cent of the medals came from 7 per cent of the population. 'There is so much talent out there in the 93 per cent that should be identified and developed. That has got to be a priority for future sports policy.  'I have spoken about it many times and I will continue to speak about it until there is not breath left in me.'

The Conservative peer continued: 'The balance of professional football is that around 7 per cent of players come from the private sector, which is an absolute mirror image of society.

'That should be the case in every single sport, and that should be the priority in each and every sport, and that is something that every government should strive for.'

At the previous Olympics, a third of Team GB went to independent schools.  They included multiple gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy, who attended George Watson's College in Edinburgh, and every equestrian medallist.

Non-state schools can afford to devote more time to sport. They usually have better facilities and often boast top-class coaches.

The discrepancy is especially noticeable in sports whose basic entry costs are high, such as equestrian events and sailing.

Rowing has already taken action to address the imbalance, with Mo Sbihi, who won bronze in the men's eight on Wednesday, among the beneficiaries.  The Start programme, launched more than a decade ago, has encouraged rowing coaches to visit comprehensive schools and scout teenagers with the necessary physique to become elite rowers. As a result, half of Team GB's rowers at the London Games are from state schools.

When asked if too many medals were being won by former public school pupils, David Cameron said: 'We need to spend on state school sport and we are spending a billion pounds over the next five years.

'We need to make sure people have those opportunities. Frankly, one of the best things will be the Olympics and the legacy and the inspiration for young people to take part.'

Tory MP Charlotte Leslie  said the statistics were 'really, really worrying'.  She told BBC Radio 4's PM  programme that state schools were often reluctant to promote competition.

'There's a massive problem with sports and facilities in our schools, but it's also a much deeper problem,' she said.  'I wonder if it's a problem to do with culture. The reason the private sector does well in education is that it's very unapologetic about competition - there are winners and there are losers - and this is certainly not the case for all state schools.'

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Australia:  Back to school for Queensland teachers who get Ds

UNDER-PERFORMING teachers will be identified and given extra training and development under a new national framework signed off by Education Ministers yesterday.

School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework, which entitles teachers to annual performance reviews, would be rolled out in Queensland schools from next year.

While Queensland teachers currently undergo performance reviews, not all schools carry them out annually.

"For the first time, teachers will be entitled to a yearly review of their progress, and will receive ongoing support and training throughout their career to help them become even better teachers," Mr Garrett said.

"Once implemented, the new agreement signed off today means that schools will offer their teachers feedback on their performance, based on evidence including classroom observation, parental and student feedback and student results.

"Teachers will have to set goals for the year and will be helped to reach their goals. Those who are found to be under-performing or who need extra support will be given access to more training and development opportunities."

The new framework will assess teachers against the National Professional Standards for Teachers developed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL).

Under the standards teachers will be able to apply to become a highly accomplished or lead teacher and receive a one-off bonus in 2014, based on their status in 2013.

Ministers also endorsed the Australian Charter for the Professional Learning of Teachers and School Leaders.

AITSL chair Anthony Mackay said the endorsement reinforced that developing teachers was the best way to improve student learning.

Education Ministers also agreed to continue working on improving the regulation and oversight of non-Government schools to ensure public funds are spent appropriately and a national curriculum for the National Trade Cadetships scheme Years 11 and 12.

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5 August, 2012

Liberal profs admit they'd discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement

'Impossible lack of diversity' reflects ideological intimidation on campus

It's not every day that left-leaning academics admit that they would discriminate against a minority.

But that was what they did in a peer-reviewed study of political diversity in the field of social psychology, which will be published in the September edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, surveyed a roughly representative sample of academics and scholars in social psychology and found that "In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues."

This finding surprised the researchers. The survey questions "were so blatant that I thought we'd get a much lower rate of agreement," Mr. Inbar said. "Usually you have to be pretty tricky to get people to say they'd discriminate against minorities."

One question, according to the researchers, "asked whether, in choosing between two equally qualified job candidates for one job opening, they would be inclined to vote for the more liberal candidate (i.e., over the conservative)."

More than a third of the respondents said they would discriminate against the conservative candidate. One respondent wrote in that if department members "could figure out who was a conservative, they would be sure not to hire them."

Mr. Inbar, who volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008, cautions that the finding reflects only what respondents said they would do - not necessarily what they actually would do in real life.

Generally speaking, the more liberal the respondent, the more willingness to discriminate and, paradoxically, the higher the assumption that conservatives do not face a hostile climate in the academy.

To Massimo Pigliucci, chairman of the philosophy department at the City University of New York-Lehman College, the problem is not that conservatives face discrimination; it's that any hint of political bias, whether conservative or liberal, necessarily flouts the standards of objectivity to which scholarship must adhere.

"It is to be expected that people would reject papers and grant proposals that smacked of clear ideological bias," he says. Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammers, he says, should have examined the extent of bias against liberal-leaning papers and grant proposals. If the degree of bias against liberals and conservatives is similar, maybe the data on discrimination against conservatives would not be so alarming after all.

But Harvey Mansfield, a conservative professor of government at Harvard University, argues that the anti-conservative bias is real and pronounced. He says conservatism is "just not a respectable position to hold" in the academy, where Republicans are caricatured as Fox News enthusiasts who listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Beyond that, conservatives represent a distinct minority on college and university campuses. A 2007 report by sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons found that 80 percent of psychology professors at elite and non-elite universities are Democrats. Other studies reveal that 5 percent to 7 percent of faculty openly identify as Republicans. By contrast, about 20 percent of the general population are liberal and 40 percent are conservative.

Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammers found that conservatives fear that revealing their political identity will have negative consequences. This is why New York University-based psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a self-described centrist, has compared the experience of being a conservative graduate student to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.

In 2011, Mr. Haidt addressed this very issue at a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology - the same group that Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammer surveyed. Mr. Haidt's talk, "The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology," caused a stir.

The professor, whose new book "The Righteous Mind" examines the moral roots of our political positions, asked the nearly 1,000 academics and students in the room to raise their hands if they were liberals. Nearly 80 percent of the hands went up. When he asked whether there were any conservatives in the house, just three hands - 0.3 percent - went up.

This is "a statistically impossible lack of diversity," Mr. Haidt said.

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Education: No Longer a Panacea for Blacks

A recent article in the Washington Post highlighted a particular segment of the nation's struggling unemployed. That is in itself is not surprising. After all, black unemployment exceeds the unemployment level for handicapped people and many other challenged groups within our nation. The group that the Post profiled was people with Ph.D.s in the sciences. An increasing number of chemists, biologists and other scientists who have invested heavily in their education are finding themselves jobless. Of those who are employed, thousands are doing lower-wage "post-doc" work in laboratories, as opposed to heading up research projects or teaching in universities.

I have always believed that education is one of the vital keys to upward mobility and overcoming poverty. Ph.D. unemployment however, is a startling fact for African Americans who have been taught that education is the great racial equalizer. They have been encouraged to sell or sacrifice almost anything to achieve the highest levels of education. The Washington Post, however, shows us that the most sought-after Ph.D.s may not be the great career makers. Those who are advising today's students often imply that a college or graduate degree is some sort of financial guarantee. The Post article noted the loud clamoring by groups like the National Science Foundation and the current administration for more American students to pursue advanced degrees in the sciences.

These groups fail to mention that highly-trained students may not find jobs in their field when they finish their degrees.

I'll never forget a discussion I had with my father at the ripe old age of 12 years. He told me that he was not going to give me a traditional inheritance. He informed me that there would be no money left. Instead, he would give me my inheritance now. My inheritance would be in the form of him financing my entire education as far as I chose to go. The only thing that he asked in return was that I would commit myself to being the best I could be at whatever career path I chose. I thank God for his wisdom and because of his guidance I excelled in a private high school, a private college and in Ivy League graduate school. I will never forget that somebody had to pay for my schooling and I will never forgot that Dad had to work very hard to pay it off.

Students from wealthy or upper-middle class families may find themselves out of work for a while, but they likely have a support system to help them change course and find something else to do. Poorer students, however, particularly those who may be the first in their families to go to college, often borrow huge amounts of money just to obtain a bachelor's degree. And it is not just the students themselves who are affected: parents or grandparents have often co-signed for the loans, only to find themselves deeply in debt during their retirement years.

Education is an investment, and like any investment it requires thorough research beforehand. There is nothing wrong with majoring in social work, for example. But you should not borrow tens of thousands of dollars to obtain a degree that leads to a career with an average annual salary of $30,000. Students must research the job market, as well as the salaries they can reasonably expect to earn upon graduating before taking out loans that can cripple them financially for decades to come.

Nationwide, we are now facing almost $1 trillion dollars in student loan debt. A 2010 report from the College Board Advocacy and Policy Center revealed that black college graduates have more student loan debt than any other racial group. Twenty-seven percent of African Americans with bachelor's degrees are carrying at least $30,500 in student loan debt, compared to just 16% of their white counterparts and 9% of Asian American college graduates. The top 1% of all borrowers is facing over $150,000 of debt!

What is the consequence of all this debt? It hinders the very progress we want all students, and racial minorities in particular, to make. Debt ridden graduates are hindered from buying houses and delay getting married and having children. Common sense would indicate this has not helped our nation's slowing economy.

Many experts have offered policy proposals in response to the mounting student debt crisis. Some have proposed complete student loan forgiveness. Besides being impractical, this is markedly unfair to the adults who declined opportunities to attend high-priced prestigious institutions in order to avoid such debt. Others, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, have called for making four-year college free, just as K-12 education is. But that will still cost money.

Personally, I want to call on all education advocates to start being honest about what a college education is and is not. It is a vital part of improving one's prospects in life. It is not a magic bullet that guarantees financial security regardless of major or debt burden. Every family should research the most affordable option for college, as well as the job market for various majors. All students should make plans for how they will realistically use their degrees upon graduation.

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Rise of the IGCSE: Hundreds of British state schools go for  tough new exam

State schools are turning away from the traditional GCSE and offering pupils a tougher exam based on O-levels, figures show.  The number teaching the international GCSE has soared by 300 per cent since Education Secretary Michael Gove gave them more freedom to do so.

Two-thirds of public schools already enter students for the IGCSE, which does not focus on coursework.

Labour had banned state schools from adopting IGCSEs in key subjects amid fears they would undermine the domestic version.

According to data published by the University of Cambridge International Examinations, which offers the qualifications, increasing numbers are offering the IGCSE instead of the traditional exam, with English, history and biology particularly popular.  Four hundred state schools now teach IGCSEs compared with 97 in 2010 and 220 last year.

Some 500 public schools are also using the exams, up from 302 two years ago and 350 in 2011. Overall, schools made 50,000 IGCSE entries this year, the exam board said.

Peter Monteath, UK schools manager for CIE, said the structure of IGCSEs, which means pupils sit exams at the end, rather than throughout the course, is popular.  'The feedback we are getting from schools is that they like the flexibility of these syllabuses, which gives teachers more scope to explore different topics with students,' he said.  'Their linear structure also gives students space and time to study topics in depth.'

The Department for Education said it was excellent news that schools were taking advantage of new freedoms and giving pupils the chance to leave school with the same set of qualifications as their peers at top private schools.

Government sources said the figures justified Mr Gove's plans to replace GCSEs with a tougher,  O-level qualification - which are being resisted by the Liberal Democrats.

'Employers and universities are desperate for the exam system to be fixed,' said one source.  'GCSEs and A-levels are not preparing pupils for work or further study. That is why we are restoring universities' role in A-levels and why we are fixing the broken GCSE system.

'Those complaining should spend a day in Oxford or Cambridge to understand the effects of the disastrous devaluation of exams over 20 years.'

Mr Gove, in an interview with the Catholic Herald newspaper, said he was passionate about reforming education because 'earned success is the route to happiness'.

'People say I want children to learn by rote. I don't. I want them to learn by heart,' he added.  'Think of musical scales. It's only when you really know your scales backwards, when they are ingrained, that you are able to be creative..... and to understand music.'

Mr Gove said he was unapologetic about his focus on discipline, rigour, standards and foreign languages.  'There are people out there who are victims of an invincible prejudice, who believe that teaching, for example, classical languages is ipso facto for the elite,' he added.

'But the synapses connect in a different way when you learn a foreign language. The mind is framed to assess knowledge.

'I simply want young people to be exposed to the very best that has been thought and written.  'There's no reason why children should be denied the opportunity to understand history, to discover the story of those who made them, on the basis that it is assumed they are incapable of appreciating it.'

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3 August, 2012

OMG! The free market works!

An unintentionally hilarious piece recently appeared in the Pravda of contemporary progressive liberalism, The New York Times.

This lachrymose report laments the fact that major public school districts around the country are losing customers — oops! students — and the result is layoffs. Of teacher union members, no less! Quelle horreur!

Between 2005 and 2010, Broward County (FL), Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus (OH), Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Bernardino, and Tucson have all lost students, some massively.

The article tells some tragic tales. LA let go of 8,500 teachers in the face of an enrollment drop of 56,000 students. Mesa Unified District lost 7,155 students and had to close four middle schools and lay off librarians — the ultimate evil.

The cutbacks are threatening offerings in art, foreign languages, and music.

But to what do the authors of this mournful article attribute this decline? They mention declining birthrates, unemployed parents moving elsewhere to find work, and illegal immigration crackdowns. But they also mention — tentatively and skeptically — the movement of students from regular district schools (essentially run by the teacher unions) to charter schools (run more or less autonomously, i.e., not under the unions’ thumb).

In Columbus, enrollment in charter schools rose by 9,000 students while enrollment in the public school district dropped by 6,150. One honest parent explained, “The classes were too big, the kids were unruly and didn’t pay attention to the teachers.” So she sent her dyslexic daughter to a nearby charter school, where — GASP! — “one of the teachers stayed after school every Friday to help her.”

In an institution where pleasing the customer is actually important, it’s no surprise that her daughter received the help she needed.

Nationwide, while the number of kids in regular public schools dropped by 5%, the number in charter schools rose by 60%.

Naturally, the public school system special interest groups — greedy unions, self-righteous teachers, callous administrators, and so on — are hysterical. For example, one Jeffrey Mirel, an “education historian” at the University of Michigan, bleated that public schools are in danger of becoming “the schools nobody wants.”

Wrong! Public schools have been for some timethe schools that nobody wants. Before the 1960s, teachers unions either didn't exist or — where they did — didn't exert the control they assumed in the 1970s. Teachers unions run schools for the benefit of their members only. So the problems started accelerating.But what’s happening right now is that some few lucky kids are being given the choice to get out — and they’re taking it.

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The National Education Association Shows Its Politics

Political conversation in the media is full of chatter about how to cut spending and debt, but it reminds us of the comment attributed to Mark Twain: "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." There's a lot of talk about how to cut back on entitlements, but why doesn't somebody suggest cutting the extravagant federal dollars spent on education, which is not even an entitlement?

The billions spent on education have not achieved any of their designated goals, which were to raise the test scores and to close the gap between kids from upper-income and lower-income families. The handouts, however, produced a lot of cheating by teachers and administrators trying to hide their failure to achieve designated goals.

We hear about increasing the role of the states in other areas such as Medicaid. But the most important area where the states should have primary responsibility is education.

The most powerful union of government employees is the National Education Association, which held this year's annual national convention, as usual, over the Fourth of July weekend, attracting 9,000 delegates. To no one's surprise, it resembled a re-election campaign rally for Barack Obama, with the pressure on delegates to identify themselves as EFO, Educators for Obama.

Many delegates wore Obama campaign buttons and T-shirts and sported banners with messages such as "You are our knight in shining armor." The official NEA newspaper, called RA Today and published every day during the week-long convention, featured a very political full-page endorsement of Obama headlined "Do your part and pledge to be an educator for Obama today!"

In preparation for the convention, NEA leaders had been urging their members to hold house parties to teach their friends why Obama deserves their votes. House parties were one of the successful tactics Obama used to win his election in 2008.

The NEA convention passed its usual scores of anti-parent, anti-school-choice, pro-feminist, pro-homosexual resolutions that morph into the NEA's Legislative Program. This authorizes the highly paid NEA staff to lobby Congress, state legislatures, education departments and school boards to adopt NEA policies.

One significant new resolution adopted this year reads: "The Association also believes that members have the right to have payroll deduction of both Association membership dues and voluntary political contributions." That should make it clear that the way to cut the NEA's political power is for state legislatures to pass paycheck protection laws that prohibit the racket of state governments deducting political contributions out of the paychecks of teachers and turning the money over to the NEA bosses to elect Democrats.

We can get a look at NEA's political clout by reading a memorandum distributed to the delegates by NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. It reveals the amount of money available in the NEA Ballot Measures/Legislative Crises Fund in the current year, beginning with $1,563,775 and projecting $26,939,129 by the end of the year.

Already this year, the NEA powers-that-be have approved $270,000 to four state affiliates to use in ballot measure campaigns, $7,163,492 in assistance to 17 state affiliates for legislative battles, and $2,500,000 for lobby-campaign efforts related to the congressional reauthorization of federal education appropriations.

Another memo Van Roekel distributed to delegates gave detailed information about the NEA Media Campaign Fund for the 2011-2012 fiscal year. These two funds are supported by a special dues assessment on every NEA member.

The NEA state affiliates that received NEA money from this Media Fund during the current year include: NEA Alaska $75,000; Delaware State Education Association $43,500; Florida Education Association $135,000; Idaho Education Association, $115,000; Illinois Education Association $400,000; Michigan Education Association $308,000; Education Minnesota $125,000; South Carolina Education Association $70,0000; Utah Education Association $105,000; Vermont NEA $108,500; and West Virginia Education Association $35,000.

The NEA's official Legislative Program includes many items that implement radical liberal ideology but have nothing to do with educating students. This column isn't long enough to list the 31 pages of fine print detailing the NEA's legislative demands, so I'll just mention a few to give you the flavor.

To nobody's surprise, the NEA supports "national health care that will mandate universal coverage." The NEA supports a long list of United Nations treaties, all of which would limit U.S. sovereignty and meddle in our domestic laws and customs.

The NEA supports adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would mandate "equality of rights ... on account of sex." To reinforce that goal, the NEA supports passage of a federal statute to assure "sexual orientation" rights.

The NEA supports "confirmation of Supreme Court Justices and federal judges who support civil rights." According to the NEA, "civil rights" includes both "reproductive freedom" and "prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression."

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Eurozone crisis 'driving students to British universities'

Rising numbers of students from crisis-hit European countries are flocking to British universities to flee economic chaos at home, according to research.

Demand for courses abroad has soared by more than 150 per cent among students from Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, figures suggest.

Britain is the most popular destination for young people educated in southern European countries which have been hardest hit by the sovereign-debt crisis dogging the eurozone.

The rise will drive concerns that British students may face added competition in the race for degree courses at top universities this summer.

Undergraduates from other European Union countries are eligible for the same Government-backed loans as British students and count towards strict limits on the numbers of places available at each institution.

The disclosure is revealed in a report by Study Portals, an EU-funded website set up to help young people apply to university courses elsewhere in the continent.

According to figures, the number of enquiries made through the website from Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese students has soared by 80,000 in 2012 compared with a year earlier.

Demand to study outside their own country is up by more than 180 per cent among Italian students, 162 per cent from Greeks, 157 per cent from Spaniards and 140 per cent from Portuguese students.

The study said the figures reflected the link “between students’ economic perspectives at home and their ambition to study – and ultimately work – in better performing economies”.

It emerged that the four countries have higher youth unemployment rates than almost anywhere else in Europe, with the proportion of jobless young people ranging from more than a third in Portugal to 52 per cent in Greece.

According to researchers, Britain is the most popular destination among these students.

British universities accounted for 26 per cent of total enquiries from the four countries, it was revealed. This compared with a fifth of applications being made to Dutch universities and less than one-in-10 enquiries made to German and Swedish institutions.

The increase recorded in the study comes despite evidence that the total number of applications made to Britain from across the EU has dropped this year.

Last month, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) said that total demand was down by 13 per cent – 6,132 – this year compared with 2011, although the data failed to provide a country-by-country breakdown. This suggests that southern European countries may be bucking the trend.

It coincides with the introduction of higher tuition fees in September, with students paying up to £9,000 a year – almost three times maximum in 2011.

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2 August, 2012

Teachers Unions Go to Bat for Sexual Predators

The system to review misconduct is rigged so even abusive teachers can stay on the job

By resisting almost any change aimed at improving our public schools, teachers unions have become a ripe target for reformers across the ideological spectrum. Even Hollywood, famously sympathetic to organized labor, has turned on unions with the documentary "Waiting for 'Superman'" (2010) and a feature film, "Won't Back Down," to be released later this year. But perhaps most damaging to the unions' credibility is their position on sexual misconduct involving teachers and students in New York schools, which is even causing union members to begin to lose faith.

In the last five years in New York City, 97 tenured teachers or school employees have been charged by the Department of Education with sexual misconduct. Among the charges substantiated by the city's special commissioner of investigation—that is, found to have sufficient merit that an arbitrator's full examination was justified—in the 2011-12 school year:

 *  An assistant principal at a Brooklyn high school made explicit sexual remarks to three different girls, including asking one of them if she would perform oral sex on him.

 *  A teacher in Queens had a sexual relationship with a 13-year old girl and sent her inappropriate messages through email and Facebook.

If this kind of behavior were happening in any adult workplace in America, there would be zero tolerance. Yet our public school children are defenseless.

Here's why. Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem.

For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing the unions (whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unions—believing that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual predators—prefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged with inappropriate sexual conduct. The effects of this policy are mounting.

One example: An arbitrator in 2007 found that teacher Alexis Grullon had victimized young girls with repeated hugging, "incidental though not accidental contact with one student's breast" and "sexually suggestive remarks." The teacher had denied all these charges. In the end the arbitrator found him "unrepentant," yet punished him with only a six-month suspension.

Another example from 2007: Teacher William Scharbach was found to have inappropriately touched and held young boys. "Respondent's actions at best give the appearance of impropriety and at worst suggest pedophilia," wrote the arbitrator—before giving the teacher only a reprimand. The teacher didn't deny the touching but denied that it was inappropriate.

Then there was teacher Steven Ostrin, who in 2010 was found to have asked a young girl to give him a striptease, harassed students by text, and engaged in sexual banter. The arbitrator in his case concluded that since the teacher hadn't actually solicited sex from students, the charges—all of which the teacher denied—warranted only a suspension.

Michael Loeb, a middle school teacher in the Bronx and UFT member, calls this a "horrible situation," telling me "if you keep these people in the classroom, you are demeaning our profession."

Parents I spoke with described their tremendous fear about what is happening in the classroom. Maria Elena Rivera says her 14-year-old daughter was stalked by one of her Brooklyn high school teachers (who resigned from his position before the Department of Education decided whether to send the case to arbitration). Today her daughter is in counseling, says Ms. Rivera, and doesn't trust anyone: "It so messed her up. I can't protect her."

Local media have begun to get the word out, yet the stories come and go with trifling consequences or accountability. New York City's schools chancellor and districts statewide must have the power to fire sexual predators—and the final say cannot be that of an arbitrator with incentives to lessen the punishment.

Fortunately, state Sen. Stephen Saland has proposed legislation in Albany to do just this, removing arbitrators' final say while still giving teachers due process and the opportunity to appeal terminations in court. But the buck would stop with those officials in charge of our schools and tasked with protecting our kids: the chancellor in New York City, and school districts elsewhere in the state.

Mr. Saland's initiative has little chance of success without union support—which is hardly assured. "I don't understand how they think this could be a gray area," says Natalie Harrington, who teaches English at New Day Academy in the Bronx. "I worry that if the union goes to bat [against] this, it makes it seem like they will do anything to keep anyone in the classroom."

Michael Loeb still supports his union but says it "treats teachers like interchangeable widgets"—defending all teachers no matter what they have done.

The union has reached a moment of truth. With responsible legislation on the table, the right course of action is obvious. At stake is the safety of kids, the reputation of the unions, and the standing of every good and responsible teacher throughout the state.

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Maryland Board of Education seeks racial quotas in school discipline

Racists!

As a lawyer who used to bring civil-rights cases for a living, I am very disturbed by the Maryland State Board of Education’s proposed rule on race in school discipline...

This proposed rule violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution by pressuring schools to discipline students based on their race, rather than their individual conduct and the content of their character. That is at odds with court rulings like the federal appeals court ruling in People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d 528, 534 (7th Cir. 1997), which forbid both racial-balancing, and quotas, in school discipline.

Crimes and infractions are not evenly distributed among racial groups, as the Supreme Court noted in United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456 (1996). As that 8-to-1 Supreme Court ruling emphasized, there is no legal “presumption that people of all races commit all types of crimes” at the same rate, since such a presumption is “contradicted by” real world data. For example, “more than 90% of” convicted cocaine traffickers “were black” in 1994, while “93.4% of convicted LSD dealers were white.” Crime rates are higher in some ethnic groups than others.

But the Board of Education seems to have forgotten that reality in proposing a rule that would require school systems to discipline and suspend students in numbers roughly in proportion to their racial percentage of the student body, and require school systems that currently don’t do so to implement plans to eliminate any racially “disproportionate impact” over a three-year period. Thus, it is imposing quotas in all but name.

The Board has also seemingly overlooked a federal appeals court decision that ruled that schools cannot use racial proportionality rules for school discipline, since that violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. See People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d 528, 534 (7th Cir. 1997). That court ruling also said that a school cannot use race to offset “disparate” or “disproportionate impact,” and that doing so is not a valid kind of affirmative action.

The proposed rule, COMAR 13A.08.01.21, is found on page 25 of the Report of the Maryland Board of Education: School Discipline and Academic Success: Related Parts of Maryland’s Education Reform. It reads as follows:

A. The Department shall develop a method to analyze local school system data to determine whether there is a disproportionate impact on minority students. B. The Department may use the discrepancy model to assess the impact of discipline on special education students. C. If the Department identifies a school’s discipline process as having a disproportionate impact on minority students or a discrepant impact on special education students, the school system shall prepare and present to the State Board a plan to reduce the impact within 1 year and eliminate it within 3 years. [boldface added]

Thus, the Board seeks to ban “disproportionate impact” – the term for something not motivated by racism that nevertheless unintentionally affects or weeds out more minorities than whites – in school discipline. But it has done so without the qualifications and limitations to that concept that apply in court. The Supreme Court has allowed minority employees to sue over such “disparate impact” in limited circumstances, but it has refused to allow minority students to sue over it. Its ruling in Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), said that individuals could not sue under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for “disparate impact,” only intentional discrimination. Title VI is the federal law that covers racial discrimination in schools and other institutions that receive federal funds. (The Board’s proposed rule is not needed to prevent racism or deliberate discrimination, since there are already several laws banning discriminatory treatment of anyone based on their race, as opposed to disparate impact, that students victimized by racial discrimination can already sue under, like 42 U.S.C. 1981, and Title VI).

The fact that there are disparities in suspension rates between different ethnic groups does NOT prove racism by school officials, or discrimination. For example, in a ruling by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Supreme Court said that it is “completely unrealistic” to argue that minorities should be represented in each field or activity “in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population.” (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 507 (1989)). In an earlier ruling, Justice O’Connor noted that it is “unrealistic to assume that unlawful discrimination is the sole cause of people failing to gravitate to jobs and employers in accord with the laws of chance.” (See Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust Co., 487 U.S. 977, 992 (1988).)

Many racial disparities in suspension rates are clearly NOT the product of discrimination. For example, Asians generally have lower infraction and suspension rates than whites and other ethnic groups, but no one would suggest that Asians are racially favored by school officials. Indeed, on occasion, school officials have discriminated against them: school officials in Philadelphia recently turned a blind eye to attacks on Asian students by African-American students in some of the city's schools, resulting in a federal investigation of the school system. In past generations when racism was more common, East Asians suffered extreme forms of discrimination by government officials, such as the California Supreme Court's turning Chinese immigrants into legal non-persons in the 1850s (it said they could not even testify in court, essentially creating an open season on their lives and property) and the federal government's internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s.

The Constitution does not forbid “disproportionate impact” or “disparate impact.” The Supreme Court made that clear in Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 248 (1976), where it noted that it cannot be denied “that a whole range of tax, welfare, public service, regulatory, and licensing statutes” are “more burdensome to the poor and to the average black than to the more affluent white,” yet they are still constitutional.

The fact that a higher percentage of black students are suspended than whites in most schools is not, for the most part, the product of racism by school officials, but rather reflects greater infraction rates tied to lamentable factors like poverty and single-parent households. As a scholar at the Brookings Institution points out, “children who spend time in single-parent families are more likely to misbehave, get sick, drop out of high school and be unemployed.” As the National Center for Health Statistics notes, while most whites and Asians are born to two-parent families, most blacks and Hispanics are not. See National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 60, No.2: Births: Preliminary Data for 2010 (Nov. 17, 2011).

Since infraction rates are typically higher among such minority groups, their discipline and suspension rates are naturally higher as well, even if that is bureaucratically defined as “disproportionate impact.” This is a reflection of unpleasant realities, not school officials’ racism. Preventing such discipline will only cause more disorder and violence in the schools, especially in predominantly black schools, thus harming the very disadvantaged people the Board of Education seeks to help. Students are commonly victimized by members of their own race and peers of the same ethnicity. So watering down discipline for members of a racial group does not help that group. The fact that black students have been shortchanged by the larger society is not a reason to add insult to injury by depriving them of an orderly school environment and effective school discipline, or subjecting them to the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Pressure to discipline minorities and whites in numbers proportional to their percentage of the student body may also lead to other forms of racial discrimination in discipline, such as needless suspensions of white and Asian students for technicalities that would result in nothing more than a warning for a black student.

Writing in the Summer 2006 edition of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, educator Edmund Janko explained how informal pressure from bureaucrats to suspend students in numbers proportional to their race (what Maryland’s Board now seeks) led him to engage in unfair racial discrimination against students, such as suspending white students for conduct that “would mean, in cases involving minority students,” merely “a rebuke from the dean and a notation on the record or a letter home”:

More than 25 years ago, when I was dean of boys at a high school in northern Queens, we received a letter from a federal agency pointing out that we had suspended black students far out of proportion to their numbers in our student population. Though it carried no explicit or even implicit threats, the letter was enough to set the alarm bells ringing in all the first-floor administrative offices. . .

There never was a smoking-gun memo . . . but somehow we knew we had to get our numbers “right”—that is, we needed to suspend fewer minorities or haul more white folks into the dean’s office for our ultimate punishment.What this meant in practice was an unarticulated modification of our disciplinary standards. For example, obscenities directed at a teacher would mean, in cases involving minority students, a rebuke from the dean and a notation on the record or a letter home rather than a suspension. For cases in which white students had committed infractions, it meant zero tolerance. Unofficially, we began to enforce dual systems of justice. Inevitably, where the numbers ruled, some kids would wind up punished more severely than others for the same offense.

I remember one case in particular. It was near the end of the day, and the early-session kids were heading toward the exits. . .The boy was a white kid, tall, with an unruly mop of blond hair. He was within 200 feet of the nearest exit and blessed freedom. But he couldn’t wait. The nicotine fit was on him, and he lit a cigarette barely two yards from me. I pounced, and within 20 minutes he was suspended—for endangering himself and others.

Janko’s article is aptly titled, It Still Leaves a Bad Taste, and is available  here. His disturbing and unpleasant experience may be mild compared to what Maryland teachers and principals will experience if the proposed rule, COMAR 13A.08.01.21, is adopted in its current form. The federal agency that pressured Janko is the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) — where I used to work as a lawyer. Its disparate-impact regulations — which are of dubious validity in banning any kind of disparate impact at all, after the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Alexander v. Sandoval barring lawsuits against practices with a disparate impact — never purported to require school systems to eliminate all racially “disproportionate impact,” the way the Maryland Board of Education apparently seeks to do in school discipline through the proposed rule. Its rules never reached all statistical disparities.

Moreover, even if a school’s policies’ did have a meaningfully “disproportionate impact,” the school only needed to demonstrate to OCR a “substantial legitimate justification for its practice,” to keep using it. See Ga. State Conference of Branches of NAACP v. Georgia, 775 F.2d 1403, 1417 (11th Cir. 1985). No such common-sense exception for educational justifications is spelled out in the proposed rule. In short, Janko discriminated as he did because of bureaucratic dictates that were far less extreme than what may result from COMAR 13A.08.01.21. This is far more extreme. If the proposed rule is adopted in its current form, discrimination far worse than what Janko recounts will occur in Maryland’s schools.

SOURCE




Men can wear skirts at Oxford University as academic dress code is changed to 'meet needs of cross-dressing students'
 
For centuries, the sight of Oxford students in their distinctive academic gowns has been as familiar  in the city as its dreaming spires.

But the ancient university has been forced to rewrite its traditional dress code – to avoid upsetting transgender students.

From next month, men will be allowed to wear skirts or stockings to exams while women can choose suits or white bow ties.

Under the old regulations, male students were required to wear a dark suit with dark socks, black shoes, a white bow tie, and a plain white shirt and collar beneath their black gowns when attending formal occasions such as examinations.

The dress code is strictly enforced by the university's authorities, which have the power to punish students deemed in breach of the rules.  Punishments range from fines to rustication – the suspension of a student for a period of time – or expulsion, known as 'sending down'.

However, the university's council, headed by Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton, has dropped any distinction between the sexes by deleting all references to men and women.

While students are still required  to dress appropriately for formal occasions and exams, they no longer need to ensure their 'sub-fusc' – the clothes worn with full academic dress – is distinctive 'for each sex'.

The reforms were introduced following a campaign by the student union, which argued that transgender students, including transvestite or 'gender confused' men and women, could face punishment if they wore 'inappropriate' dress.

Jess Pumphrey, the union's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer executive officer, said the change would make a small number of students' exam experiences 'significantly less stressful by eliminating the need for trans students to cross-dress to avoid being... disciplined during their exam'.

She said there was 'an active  transgender community' in Oxford, and every member she had spoken to 'had found sub-fusc, under the old regulations, to be stressful'. But one unnamed law student told the university newspaper Cherwell: 'This seems a bit unnecessary. It only applies to a tiny percentage of the student population and it seems unlikely that a trans student would really be confronted about what they are wearing.'

Former students also voiced their concerns about the change. Ann Widdecombe, who graduated from Lady Margaret Hall in 1972, said: 'If men want to prance around in skirts, that is entirely up to them.

'In my day, it would have been unthinkable – men were men and women were women, and we dressed accordingly. But I think the university is just saving itself from a silly row, and from that point of view I'm on their side. Why go courting a silly row when they don't need one?'

A spokesman for Oxford said: 'The regulations have been amended to remove any reference to gender, in response to concerns raised by Oxford University Student Union that regulations did not serve the interests of transgender students.'

SOURCE



1 August, 2012

Racist Obama backs race-based school discipline policies

This would just about complete the destruction of American public school education

President Barack Obama is backing a controversial campaign by progressives to regulate schools’ disciplinary actions so that members of major racial and ethnic groups are penalized at equal rates, regardless of individuals’ behavior.

His July 26 executive order established a government panel to promote “a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools.”

“African Americans lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools, and challenging college-preparatory classes, and they disproportionately experience school discipline,” said the order, titled “White House Initiative On Educational Excellence.”

Because of those causes, the report suggests, “over a third of African American students do not graduate from high school on time with a regular high school diploma, and only four percent of African American high school graduates interested in college are college-ready across a range of subjects.”

“What this means is that whites and Asians will get suspended for things that blacks don’t get suspended for,” because school officials will try to level punishments despite groups’ different infraction rates, predicted Hans Bader, a counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Bader is a former official in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, and has sued and represented school districts and colleges in civil-rights cases.

“It is too bad that the president has chosen to set up a new bureaucracy with a focus on one particular racial group, to the exclusion of all others,” said Roger Clegg, the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

“A disproportionate share of crimes are committed by African Americans, and they are disproportionately likely to misbehave in school… [because] more than 7 out of 10 African Americans (72.5 percent) are born out of wedlock… versus fewer than 3 out of 10 whites,” he said in a statement to The Daily Caller. Although ” you won’t see it mentioned in the Executive Order… there is an obvious connection between these [marriage] numbers and how each group is doing educationally, economically, criminally,” he said.

SOURCE





Ethnic minority pupils' underachievement to be tackled by 'blind marking' in bid to remove British teachers' prejudice

A good idea for all

Teachers could 'blind mark' pupils' work in an attempt to raise exam scores of children from ethnic minorities. The controversial plans are designed to reduce inequalities between races.

Under the proposals, teachers would not know the identities of pupils when marking their work.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat party and Deputy Prime Minister, is believed to be in support of the policy.

A study by education watchdog Ofsted in 1999 showed that children with African or Asian-sounding names were likely to be given lower marks of up to 12 per cent in some cases.

Statistics show that almost half of young black people and 31 per cent of young Asian [mainly Pakistani] people are unemployed.

It is believed Liberal Democrat communities minister, Andrew Stunell, along with Clegg, want to introduce the policies soon despite opposition from other ministers.

A senior Whitehall source told The Guardian: 'We waited a long time to get the integration strategy out the door, but we're now keen to get on with the job of implementing it.

'A lot of the projects supported by the integration strategy have slipped by under most people's radars, but Andrew is keen that we turn up the volume and speak out much more often and much louder on race issues.'

There are also proposals to ethnic monitor banks but it is feared that this could compromise people's privacy.

Only six per cent of black Caribbean and African people are self-employed or own their own business compared with 15 per cent of white people.

The plans are expected to be published in a report by Liberal Democrat Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece later this year.

SOURCE







Australia: Exclusive Brethren's Agnew School one of Queensland's best for academic performance

This should put to bed allegations that students at fundamentalist Christian schools suffer academically.  The EB are VERY fundamentalist

IT is perhaps Queensland's least known and most misunderstood school.  It is also one of the state's top consistent academic performers.

Clearly the Agnew School  --  run by the Exclusive Brethren  --  is doing something right, recording the state's highest OP1 to 15 percentage regardless of school size over the past five years.

It is one of a handful of small schools not included in top-performing OP charts each year because of potential statistical anomalies that can happen in tiny sample sizes.

But analysis of five years of OP data shows those top scores are consistent, recording 100 per cent of OP-eligible students achieving an OP1 to 15 in three out of the five years.

Principal Norm Sharples was quick to point out the school had only a small number of OP-eligible students each year, with between five and 22 recorded between 2007 and 2011.

He said small class sizes  --  about 10 to 12 students per class  --  a commitment to academic excellence by the school's board and strong parental support was behind consistent top student performances.

Contrary to popular belief, students at the school use "plenty" of technology, including video conferencing at its six campuses across southeast Queensland.

Mr Sharples said the school also encouraged students to enrol in tertiary studies.

"We try not to be distracted by outside elements we do sports internally. Our motto is learning to learn. We have schools in other states which we are often comparing results and we look at how we could be doing better," Mr Sharples said.

The school currently has 359 Year 3 to 12 students at its six campuses, including Brisbane, Bundaberg, Maryborough, Nambour, Toowoomba and Warwick, which is only primary.

Its website states: "The School is conducted in accordance with the beliefs and teachings of the Brethren and the Directors are committed to ensuring that the Ethos, Values and Guiding Principles are enshrined in all aspects of school life".

SOURCE






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


Keynes did get some things right. His comment on education seems positively prophetic: "Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”


TERMINOLOGY: The English "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".


The BIGGEST confusion in British terminology, however, surrounds use of the term "public school". Traditionally, a public school was where people who were rich but not rich enough to afford private tutors sent their kids. So a British public school is a fee-paying school. It is what Americans or Australians would call a private school. Brits are however aware of the confusion this causes benighted non-Brits so these days often in the media use "Independent" where once they would have used "public". The term for a taxpayer-supported school in Britain is a State school, but there are several varieties of those. The most common (and deplorable) type of State school is a "Comprehensive"


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.


Another true modern parable: I have twin stepdaughters who are both attractive and exceptionally good-natured young women. I adore both of them. One got a university degree and the other was an abject failure at High School. One now works as a routine government clerk and is rather struggling financially. The other is extraordinarily highly paid and has an impressive property portfolio. Guess which one went to university? It was the former.


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.


Popper in "Against Big Words": "Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so."


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