The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Immigration Watch, Food & Health Skeptic, Gun Watch, Socialized Medicine, Eye on Britain, Recipes, Tongue Tied and Australian Politics. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing) See here or here for the archives of this site
****************************************************************************************



31 December, 2010

Teacher evaluations and superstition

Discipline in the classroom and the IQ of the kid are the main things that make a difference

Megan McArdle has a long post on the issue of measuring teacher quality. Meanwhile, The New York Times profiles James Heckman, whose careful research suggests that by the time a child reaches school age it is too late to make much difference.

If the best evidence is that it is almost impossible to make a long-term difference in education, then the statistical evidence on teacher quality is bound to be highly unreliable. What appears to be teacher quality is likely to be random variation. The low rate of replication of statistical teacher evaluations that Megan discusses is consistent with that.

There is a term that Daniel Klein alerted me to called "white hat bias." What it means is that findings that favor a popular political viewpoint will be published, while those that contradict that viewpoint will tend to be discarded. So many people have a vested interest in believing that teachers make a difference that one has to be very wary of white hat bias in studies that purport to show such differences.

Along these lines, I am afraid that I am skeptical of Rick Hanushek's claim that the best teachers are really effective and the worst are really ineffective. If that were true, then I think we would observe private schools dramatically outperforming public schools, holding student characteristics constant, and I do not think that is what the data say. Instead, when we see differences, those differences typically do not persist over time.

In education research, intensive efforts are made to find differences caused by teachers or other inputs. This is a worthwhile effort, but whenever studies are published showing such differences, they need to be discounted heavily for the biases induced by various filters in the research and publication process. The likelihood of any strong difference holding up in repeated study is quite low.

SOURCE






Plans to increase university fees leave British parents querying value of higher education

Controversial plans to raise university fees to £9,000 a year are leaving parents concerned about the cost and questioning the value of higher education. A survey reveals almost a third of the parents said they no longer expected to be able to afford to help pay their child's fees, which means they will be unlikely to be able to go to university.

The survey of more than 1,000 parents, conducted by parenting website Netmums, reveals their deep fears over higher fees. They worry that they will be unable to help their children with the cost of university, while others say they will have to start saving now.

The Government policy, which sparked riots in London and demonstrations around the country last month, means English universities will be able to charge students up to £6,000 per year in fees from 2012. In 'exceptional circumstances' fees could be as much as £9,000.

Almost one in five said they were unlikely to be able to help fund the cost of the fees, but were happy that their child could apply for a Government loan to cover the cost. And more than one in 10 (11.3 per cent) said they no longer wanted their child to go due to the fee rise and the debt they would leave with.

A third of those questioned said they planned to start saving now to help their child in the future, while half said they would make sacrifices in their own lives in order for their child to go to university.. Some 13 per cent said they would consider sending their child to university abroad rather than in the UK.

In total, just 11.2 per cent said they still expected to be able to fund a university education.

And many parents were concerned that the latest fee rise would not be the last. Almost nine in 10 said they were worried that fees would have increased again by the time their child was ready to go to university.

The poll also raised questions among parents about the value of higher education.

Just over four in 10 said a university degree was worth it, simply for its educational value, while only 14.6 per cent of parents believed you need a degree to get a good job.

A quarter of parents said it was possible to work your way up in a career without a degree, while 16.7 per cent said that unless a graduate was going into a specific profession, such as medicine or teaching, then a degree was 'a waste of money'.

Netmums co-founder Siobhan Freegard said: 'The proposed rise in tuition fees will have a huge impact on parents, ultimately leaving some unable to send their children to university.

'It's clear that many are beginning to question the value of a degree if it leaves children with crippling debts, and it's likely we will see a rise in school-leavers seeking work or apprenticeships straight after their A-levels.

'It's a shame that the cost will put many people off going to university, which a majority of mums believe can be a seminal part in someone's life in terms of experiences, not just education.'

The survey findings also show that nearly two-thirds (63.3 per cent) of parents questioned believed that university was a right, not a privilege, and despite the cost, the vast majority (93.3 per cent) still wanted their child to go to university.

SOURCE





Australia: Conservatives tip more problems for national syllabus, warning it may be delayed beyond 2013

THE national school curriculum may not be ready for implementation even by 2013 because of fundamental problems and glaring omissions, the Coalition has warned.

Schools Education Minister Peter Garrett has also copped more criticism over his delivery of government initiatives, with opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne pointing to his management of the bungled home insulation scheme, green loans and solar panel programs.

The Australian reported today that Victoria was joining NSW and Western Australia in opting to delay implementation of the curriculum until 2013, despite the government's preferred timetable for the courses to be introduced next year.

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority said in a memo that it would spend the next two tears trialling and training teachers and refining the curriculum before starting to implement it.

Mr Pyne seized on the development, telling The Australian Online the curriculum still had key flaws and was not ready for implementation. “We have been warning for 18 months that the national curriculum would not be ready in January 2011,” he said.

It is cumbersome, overly prescriptive and lacks the resources necessary for the training of teachers and as a consequence it could never begin in January 2011,” he told The Australian Online.

Mr Pyne poured scorn on Mr Garrett who, following a meeting of the nation's education ministers earlier this month, claimed an historic victory after they endorsed the content of the first four subjects - English, mathematics, science and history - to be taught in classrooms. “I can only assume that Peter Garrett, in wanting to cover the back of his Prime Minister, pretended something had been achieved at the ministerial council that hadn't. “Because the real villain in the piece of the national curriculum is Julia Gillard, who of course was the minister responsible for its implementation.”

To ensure a smooth implementation of the curriculum, Mr Pyne said the government needed to listen to the “teaching profession and to the experts about what the curriculum should contain”. He warned its “fundamental basics” had not been bedded down and pointed out the history section didn't “acknowledge that the Vietnam War needs to be taught”. Mr Pyne said he wouldn't be surprised if the 2013 timeline “gets pushed out even further”.

Changes to the curriculum can be made until the deadline of October next year and this has the potential to affect teachers introducing courses in their classrooms next year.

Only the Australian Capital Territory will start teaching the new courses next year, with Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory spending the year familiarising teachers with the new courses and running trials.

SOURCE



30 December, 2010

British Universities staging admissions tests to identify the brightest students

Dumbed down school exams not much use. So we have a backdoor revival of IQ testing

Students are facing a battery of admissions tests to get into university next year amid record demand for degree courses. The Daily Telegraph has learnt that as many as one-in-five universities and higher education colleges are staging their own entrance exams to pick out the best candidates. In many cases, students are being asked to sit aptitude tests to get into the most sought-after institutions.

The disclosure will fuel fears that universities are struggling to identify the most able applicants from a huge rise in school-leavers with straight As at A-level. But other institutions are also staging more basic literacy and numeracy exams just to make sure teenagers have a decent grasp of the three-Rs before starting a degree.

It comes as record numbers of students chase higher education places next year. According to the latest figures, an unprecedented 181,814 candidates completed applications by the end of November – a rise of almost 12 per cent compared with the same point last year. If the trend continues into 2011, almost 240,000 applicants could be left without places. The scramble comes as students attempt to get into university before a sharp rise in tuition fees in 2012.

Prof Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said growing numbers of admissions tutors no longer trusted A-level results. “It’s a great pity that universities are having to introduce their own entrance exams,” he said. “On the one hand it is comment on the ability of A-levels to distinguish between students at the top end. “On the other, it shows that universities don’t believe that students are literate or numerate enough to take some courses, even if they’ve passed their GCSEs and A-levels.”

In a report, researchers surveyed some 306 universities and higher education colleges. The study, by the organisation Supporting Professionalism in Admissions (SPA), which advises universities on admissions policies, found that 21 per cent used tests to dictate entry to some subjects. It was up on around 16 per cent two years ago and the same as the number in 2009/10.

Researchers insisted it still only accounted for a small proportion - around one per cent - of the 43,360 courses on offer next year. But the disclosure will add to growing concerns that GCSE or A-level results alone are not enough to gauge a candidate’s suitability for courses.

Students taking medicine and law are normally required to sit entrance exams to get into the most selective universities. The National Admissions Test for Law must be passed to study the subject at Birmingham, Bristol, Durham, Glasgow, Kings College London, Nottingham, Oxford and University College London. Other universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, set their own exams for some courses.

Cambridge’s thinking skills assessment – a 90 minute multiple choice aptitude test – is needed to study computer science, economics, engineering, land economy, natural sciences and politics, psychology and sociology (PPS). Students need to sit an admissions test or submit written work to get on to 29 courses at Oxford, the SPA survey said.

But candidates also have to pass entrance tests to get into less selective universities. According to the SPA, students attempting to take undergraduate teacher training degrees at Gloucestershire need to sit English and maths tests and some courses at Bournemouth University require a “maths and logic” exam.

Students must take a written English test to study journalism at Kent and those attempting to study occupational therapy at London South Bank have to complete a writing, grammar and problem-solving assessment.

Kingston University requires students applying to aircraft engineering to take a one-hour maths and physics paper, while those attempting to read social work must sit a literacy and “case study comprehension” test.

The rise of university entry tests coincides with an increase in A-level results. According to figures, a record 27 per cent of exams were awarded an A grade this year. Some one-in-12 papers scored an elite A* grade introduced for the first time this year to pick out the brightest candidates.

On its website, SPA said: “Some higher education institutions use admissions tests to aid differentiation between the most able applicants. “A test score in this context has become more significant because of concerns about the high numbers of candidates who achieve high grades in qualifications, eg. the increasing number of A grades at A level. “Tests may also focus upon skills and aptitudes that are not assessed through academic attainment.”

SOURCE






Sanity coming to the British university admissions system?

A dramatic shake-up of university admissions could see students waiting for their A-level results before applying for degrees. Teenagers currently apply for courses on the basis of the grades their teachers predict they will achieve – even though up to half of estimated grades turn out to be wrong. The new plan would mean prospective students could apply only after they have been awarded the marks necessary to secure a place at their university of choice.

The reform would require an overhaul of the current system, with speedier marking and A-level exams taken earlier in the academic year. It is designed to help state pupils who are often predicted lower grades than they go on to achieve.

It is one of a number of proposed changes – for inclusion in next spring’s education white paper – aimed at minimising the damage that the hike in tuition fees could have on social mobility. Universities minister David Willetts has given his provisional backing to the plan.

The changes have been prompted by Oxford University research commissioned by Mr Willetts’ department which shows that the most able candidates from comprehensive schools are disadvantaged by the current system. This is because their teachers underestimate the grades they go on to receive – often because they have less experience than those in independent and grammar schools of dealing with such high achievers.

As a result, many highly capable candidates do not apply for the country’s top universities.

Mary Curnock Cook, of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, the most senior figure in the admissions system, has strongly backed the plans and believes they could be implemented within five years. She believes the chief hurdle is the time taken by exam boards to mark students’ papers.

For the reform to work, A-level results would need to be available by early summer to allow time for students to apply for courses starting in late September or early October. At present students receive their results in August, nine months after receiving their predicted grades.

Mrs Curnock Cook said: ‘I have come to the conclusion that probably the biggest single reform that we can do in the qualifications arena and higher education is to move to a post-qualifications admissions system. ‘This is something that’s been put in the “too difficult to handle box” for a very long time.’

Mrs Curnock Cook said she was ‘shocked’ by the time taken by exam boards to mark papers, asking: ‘What’s happened to technology?’ She added: ‘I cannot believe that in the next five years we cannot speed up the marking of exams.’

The proposal will be studied by exam watchdog Ofqual. Its chief executive, Isabel Nisbet, said: ‘We will actively consider the proposals with Ucas and with the awarding organisation we regulate.’

Mr Willetts stressed the need for the reform. He said: ‘The big argument in favour is that in terms of social mobility, there is some underestimation in the forecast of A-level grades of teenagers at mainstream, non-academic schools.

‘There are some people from tough backgrounds who do better at their A-level grades than predicted and might have got to a more competitive university if it had been possible to judge them on their actual performance, not their predicted performance.’

However, Simon Lebus, of exam board Cambridge Assessment, questioned the feasibility of the proposals. ‘If you wanted to have results at a certain time, I am sure awarding bodies could bring it forward a week or two weeks,’ he said. ‘The issue is about schools having the ability to receive the results earlier in the summer holidays and how set-up the universities would be to handle many thousands of applications over a shorter period.’

SOURCE





Australia: Federal government plan to liberate schools

Any decentralization of power should be good. A bit surprising from a Leftist government, though

SCHOOLS will become self-governing under a Labor plan that hands responsibility for budgets and hiring teachers to principals and school councils. The plan would also hold them accountable for student performance.

In a move that would comprehensively reshape the nation's education system, the federal government is proposing a model of school governance based on the way independent schools operate, turning government and Catholic schools into "autonomous" institutions.

In a briefing paper submitted to a meeting of state education ministers at the beginning of the month, the federal government outlined a plan for autonomous schools to become the standard by 2018 in the government and non-government sectors. "The aim of the initiative is to facilitate systemic national reform to establish autonomous school operation as the norm across all Australian education sectors, with schools predominantly being self-governing," it says.

The paper says increasing school autonomy will "improve student performance by providing principals, parents and school communities a greater input into the management of their local school".

The plan goes further than the model outlined by Julia Gillard in the election campaign that proposed "empowering local schools" by giving principals and parents a greater say over selecting and employing teachers, and identifying funding priorities.

The idea of self-governing schools resembles the charter school movement in the US of publicly funded, but privately run, schools open to all students.

The plan is yet to be considered by education ministers. A spokeswoman for School Education Minister Peter Garrett, who is on leave, said the briefing paper was noted at the ministerial council meeting and a working group would be established in the new year, with members from states and territories, which would consult widely. "The government remains committed to delivering greater autonomy to school communities and won't pre-empt the work to be completed by the working party," she said.

But the Australian Education Union, representing public schools, yesterday accused the government of privatising the public education system.

AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said school autonomy was just a slogan and there was no evidence that increasing the control of principals and school boards improved student achievement. "Why is the government hell bent on taking the word public out of education?" he said.

"Make no mistake, this is a privatisation agenda. "When I hear the words 'local autonomy' uttered by governments, I can't help but think that what they are granting principals and teachers is nothing more than the freedom to obey. "They want to give us the autonomy to do the plumbing and fix faulty powerpoints while dictating that when reporting on student achievement, we can only use five letters of the alphabet, A to E."

The brief provided to the ministers outlines a two-phase implementation process, with 1000 schools to participate in an initial rollout in 2012 and 2013, with the selected schools to come from every state and territory and a third from regional areas.

In the second phase of the proposal, the rest of the nation's schools will be "offered the opportunity to increase their level of local independence" as part of a national rollout by 2018.

The proposal envisages a nationally agreed statement of criteria defining the "essential elements of autonomous school operation" and an assessment process by which schools are selected to participate.

A similar approach has been adopted by the West Australian government, which introduced independent public schools, with 34 starting this year and a further 64 to start next year. Boards are established to govern the schools, with principals having control over the hiring of staff and a one-line budget, allowing them to decide how to spend their money. The ACT is moving to a similar system and Victoria has operated a system of self-managed schools since the late 1990s.

Victoria's reforms, introduced by the Kennett Liberal government, were intended to go further and allow self-governing schools, which would have made them the employer - not just the selector - of teachers and responsible for industrial negotiations. But only 50 of about 1600 schools agreed to the proposal and it was dropped by the Bracks Labor government. Former premier Jeff Kennett said yesterday "the unions got to Bracks" and stopped the rollout of his original scheme.

Mr Kennett said he still believed it was the best way to run schools in the public system, by giving principals and school councils full control.

SOURCE



29 December, 2010

Time for Big Cuts in Education Spending?

America spends far more on education than countries like Germany, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and Italy, both as a percentage of its economy, and in absolute terms. Yet despite this lavish government support for education, college tuition in the U.S. is skyrocketing, reaching levels of $50,000 or more a year at some colleges, and colleges are effectively rewarded for increasing tuition by mushrooming federal financial-aid spending. Americans can’t read or do math as well as the Japanese, even though America spends way more (half again more) on education than Japan does, as a percentage of income, according to the CIA World Fact Book.

In light of this, it is easy to see why some education experts like Neal McCluskey are floating the idea of “draconian education cuts“ to shake up a rotten educational establishment.

Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds at Instapundit notes that “some spending on educational institutions” may actually have a “negative” effect on education. People endure useless college courses to get paper credentials, but they get their actual education elsewhere, through internships and work. One of Professor Reynolds’ readers suggests that competition from “independent scholars” via the “internet” and elsewhere may improve education by providing competition with established universities that offer “little real education.”

Unfortunately, the colleges are well aware of this threat, and rather than improve themselves in response to competition, they are urging the government to crack down on one form of competition, for-profit colleges. The Obama administration is now doing just that, waging a war on for-profit colleges, by subjecting them, but not traditional “non-profit” colleges, to so-called “gainful employment” rules that many non-profit liberal-arts colleges would flunk. To try to rationalize this discrimination, the administration trumpeted a GAO report that has now been thoroughly discredited.

College tuition is often a rip-off, since most people who went to college because of rising college-attendance in recent years wound up in unskilled jobs (including janitors with Ph.D’s), and tuition is skyrocketing faster than housing costs did during the real estate bubble. (100 colleges charge at least $50,000 a year, compared to five in 2008-09.)

In recent years, spending on college administrators has risen massively. One study found an average increase of 61 percent, in inflation-adjusted terms, between 1993 and 2007; one leading university increased spending on administrators by 600 percent. Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation, while Obama seeks to double it. Spending has exploded at the K-12 level: per-pupil spending in the U.S. is among the highest in the world, and “inflation-adjusted K-12 spending tripled over the last 40 years.”

SOURCE





British High school courses 'failing to prepare students for university'

British students face missing out on university places because A-levels fail to prepare them for degree courses, Michael Gove warns today. The Education Secretary says even the brightest students often lack the levels of knowledge boasted by undergraduates from abroad – putting them at a disadvantage in the race for the most sought-after institutions.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he pledges to allow universities to help script A-level questions and exam syllabuses to make sure they act as a better preparation for higher education.

His comments come after it emerged that one-in-five universities are being forced to set their own entrance tests because they can no longer rely on the results of school and college exams to pick out exceptional candidates. It is likely to make it even harder for students to get on to degree courses in 2011 following a dramatic 12 per cent surge in university applications for next year.

In an article today, Mr Gove says: “Colleges can no longer rely on the existing A level to identify the best candidates, so they have to set their own tests. And academics report that even the brightest of our students don’t have the level of knowledge which undergraduates from abroad can boast, so when they arrive at college they need remedial work, especially on subjects like maths, to compete. “We can’t afford to waste time while our students fall further behind in the race for the best university places and jobs, which is why we’re accelerating the pace of reform.”

The Education Secretary says a proposed overhaul of A-levels should restore faith in the so-called “gold standard" qualification, leading to a cut in the number of universities setting their own entrance tests.

An education Bill being published in the New Year will require exam boards to consult universities before setting A-levels and benchmark exams against tests set by some of the world’s best education systems.

A reform of school league tables will also be made to stop teachers pushing pupils on to “soft” courses used to inflate their position in official rankings.

SOURCE





Australia: Children can't get enough science lessons

ALMOST half of 12-year-olds have a science lesson less than once a week, even though most think the subject is interesting and would like to learn more.

A survey of Year 6 students conducted for the first time last year as part of the National Science Tests reveals 21 per cent of students reported having a science lesson "hardly ever" while 19 per cent said they were taught the subject less than once a week. Yet three-quarters said they would like to learn more science.

The survey of students' interests and experiences revealed generally positive attitudes towards science.

More than 80 per cent of students agreed science was "important for lots of jobs" and that learning science would be more important in high school.

About 67 per cent agreed it would be interesting to be a scientist and only 40 per cent agreed that "science is too difficult for most people to understand".

But when asked how often they had science lessons at school, only 6 per cent said every day and 54 per cent said once a week, while 48 per cent said lessons were mostly held in the afternoon, when students are typically less alert.

At the same time, the national test results show students' scientific understanding is falling, with the average score dropping during the past decade, primarily among the top students.

The tests, comprising a written exam and a practical task, have been conducted every three years since 2003 among a representative sample of Year 6 students, with about 5 per cent - or more than 13,000 - sitting the most recent tests last year. The results show the average score has dropped eight points since 2006 and while not statistically significant, it continues a trend of declining marks. Changes in the tests between 2003 and 2006 make the results not strictly comparable, but the trend is a drop in the national average of 17 points between 2003 and last year.

The average score of Year 6 students in Tasmania did fall significantly over the past three years, by 20 points.

Lower scores were recorded around the nation, except in Western Australia, where the average score rose 12 points, which is not statistically significant, and in the Northern Territory, where the average rose one point.

ACT students achieved the highest scores, followed by Victoria, which overtook NSW, and Western Australia, which rose from seventh to fourth over the past three years.

Students are also marked against five levels of proficiency, with almost 52 per cent deemed to have met the standard last year compared with 54.3 per cent in 2006. But while about 10 per cent of students scored in the top two levels in 2006, this proportion had dropped to 7.3 per cent last year. The proportion of students in the bottom level had increased from 8.6 per cent to 9.1 per cent.

The difference between the scores achieved by girls and boys was negligible, but indigenous students scored about 100 points lower on average, and about two-thirds of students in remote and very remote areas did not meet the proficiency standard. The difference between metropolitan and provincial areas was small.

SOURCE



28 December, 2010

An Angry Anti-Christmas at School

The metaphor "the War on Christmas" can be mocked -- as if Santa and his reindeer are dodging anti-aircraft fire. But many of our public schools have church-and-state sensitivity police with an alarming degree of Santaphobia. Anyone who's attended a school's "winter concert" in December with no traditional Christmas music -- not even "Frosty the Snowman" -- knows the drill. The vast Christian majority (that funds the public schools) is told that school is no place to celebrate one's religion, even in its most watered-down and secularized forms.

There are real-life stories of Scrooge-like school administrators, like the one at the appropriately named Battlefield High School in Haymarket, Va. A group of 10 boys calling themselves the Christmas Sweater Club were given detention and at least two hours of cleaning for tossing free 2-inch candy canes at students as they entered before classes started. They were "creating a disturbance." One of their mothers, Kathleen Flannery, told WUSA-TV that an administrator called her and explained, "(N)ot everyone wants Christmas cheer, that suicide rates are up over Christmas, and that they should keep their cheer to themselves, perhaps."

Of course, that level of sensitivity is not applied when it comes to slamming Christianity during the Christmas season. On Dec. 16, The Washington Post paid tribute to another suburban school in northern Virginia, McLean High School, for warming hearts during the season with "The Laramie Project." This play is a political assault, using transcripts of real-life interviews by gay activists out to blame America's religious people for the beating death of homosexual college student Matthew Shepard in 1998.

The Post championed how in the play, "there is a Baptist minister who says he hopes Shepard was thinking of his lifestyle as he was tied to the fence ... There is a young woman who grew up in the Muslim faith in Laramie and thinks the town and nation need to accept what the case has laid bare. 'We are like this,' she says."

This account actually underplayed what the character "lays bare" -- a guilt trip. In the script, she says "there are people trying to distance themselves from this crime. And we need to own this crime. Everyone needs to own it. We are like this. We ARE like this. WE are LIKE this." (Emphasis by the playwright, Moises Kaufman.)

That attack keeps coming. A Catholic priest insists the killers "must be our teachers. What did we as a society do to teach you that?" A character also reads an e-mail from a college student: "You and the straight people of Laramie and Wyoming are guilty of the beating of Matthew Shepard just as the Germans who looked the other way are guilty of the deaths of the Jews, the gypsies, and the homosexuals. You have taught your straight children to hate their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters -- until and unless you acknowledge that Matt Shepard's beating is not just a random occurrence, not just the work of a couple of random crazies, you have Matthew's blood on your hands."

This is vicious anti-Christian propaganda, plain and simple. Any teaching that homosexuality is a sin is an invitation to murder? These mudslinging culture warriors are celebrated as compassionate by administrators, while just down the road, the Christmas Sweater Club is given detention for spreading Christmas cheer.

The McLean High students putting on this play are candid. They are trying to walk people away from the Bible. "I hope that this changes some people's perspectives on gay rights and maybe opens their minds a little bit," proclaimed Lauren Stewart, 17, the student-director. "I think the way to progress on issues is to talk about them."

Another student added, "If one person comes into the theater and is on the fence about ... any discrimination and leaves questioning their beliefs, I think we've done this play justice."

Making people "have conversations" is presented as glorious. But it wouldn't be a constructive conversation if students were trying to convert people to Christianity -- only when you try to convert people away from it.

A little research shows plenty of "socially conscious" public high schools have staged this propaganda bombing, aiming to crush biblical "discrimination." But it takes a really special school administrator to let it be scheduled in the last two weeks before Christmas. It's amazing that at Battlefield High School, the accusation was that Christmas cheer invited suicides, but plays about murderous "hate crimes" that America has collectively committed by our "fear and ignorance of the Other" somehow should make our spirits bright.

SOURCE





Scrapping School Religious Holidays Solves Nothing

In a recent column for USA Today, Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero argues that public schools should do away with giving students’ days off for religious holidays because honoring Christian holidays in this manner is unfair to other religions.

“As I read the First Amendment,” writes Prothero, “using taxpayer dollars to prop up Christianity and Judaism at the expense of Hinduism is unconstitutional, whether the number of parents who won’t send their children to school on [the Hindu festival of] Diwali totals 80 or 800.”

Prothero suggests that those who agree with him should clamor to have every religious holiday under the sun celebrated in our public schools, in which schools would thereby be overwhelmed and forced to honor none of them as a matter of “fairness.”

One would hope that USA Today, which presented this article as a half-page, quasi editorial would let someone write a similarly placed piece reminding us of the need for renewing our moral values at Christmas, and to add their shock when Christmas parades, holidays and greetings come under fire from militant secularists.

Nevertheless, it is always amusing when folks, typically college professors, drape themselves in the Constitution when they want to do away with something they don’t like, and in the process, ignore the rest of the Constitution that, were it adhered to, would have prevented the very “problem” they’d like to solve.

Nowhere in our Constitution is there a mandate for a centralized public education system to begin with – a system where the Federal Government spends $70 billion per year dictating which attitudes, values and beliefs ought to be drilled into every American students’ mind. Perhaps our Founders realized that a one-size-fits-all approach to education, whereby the ruling class was the final arbiter, was dangerous to all of our liberties and not just those laid out in the First Amendment.

Nor did our Founders establish a school system whereby American families are taxed into oblivion and essentially forced to enroll their children in government schools – schools they must pay for regardless of whether they use them or not, and regardless of whether they even have children or not. Schools, incidentally, where students are told to check their religion at the door under some bizarre interpretation of the First Amendment.

Constitution aside, Prothero’s suggestion that we should do away with school-sanctioned religious holidays is hardly a solution. It’s a false notion that we can respect everyone by respecting no one, as he suggests. Telling the 76 percent of Americans who are Christian that observance of their holy days must be scrapped in deference to the 0.4 percent of Americans who are Hindu might seem fair within the confines of the Boston University Religious Department. However, in the real world, this doesn’t hold up to anyone’s idea of fairness.

Those who wish to make a point by invoking the Constitution need to understand that they can’t pick and choose from the document like it’s a cafeteria line. The Constitution is only as strong, and as rational, as the sum of its parts. So while it’s true that our Founders never intended a government mandated religion, it’s equally true that they never intended a coerced government education system in which all children are prohibited from practicing or exhibiting any religious beliefs.

SOURCE






Christian assemblies in British schools face axe over claims they infringe children's human rights

Christian assemblies in schools could be scrapped if campaigning atheists and teachers get their way. According to the National Secular Society, a legal requirement for pupils to take part in a daily act of collective worship ‘of a broadly Christian character’ discriminates against young atheists and non-Christians, and infringes human rights.

And the campaign has support from headmasters who claim that many schools already ignore the requirement, despite it being set in stone since the passing of the 1944 Education Act. The Association of School and College Leaders has also suggested assemblies should end, and the British Humanist Association is campaigning on the subject.

But the most direct attack on religious assemblies, which represents yet another assault on Britain’s historic Christian culture, has come in a letter to Education Secretary Michael Gove from Keith Porteous, executive director of the National Secular Society.

Mr Porteous wrote: ‘We believe that the mandatory daily acts of mainly Christian worship and, in particular, the imposition on children to take part in such acts, represent an infringement of rights. ‘We recognise that assemblies with an ethical framework have a vital contribution to make to school life. ‘We do, however, object to collective worship in principle, as not being a legitimate activity of a state-funded institution. ‘We are confident that you would not wish to perpetuate a law that is routinely disregarded. We hope that, under your leadership, the law will be changed so that it is brought out of disrepute.’

The letter goes on to urge the Education Secretary to scrap the requirement to stage Christian assemblies in an education bill due to be produced next year.

Although parents can withdraw their children from such assemblies simply by writing a letter to the headmaster or headmistress, the atheist campaigners claim many fear such letters could make their children targets for bullying.

The National Secular Society had already prompted outrage this year by launching legal action using the much-derided Human Rights Act to stop councils beginning meetings with prayers. If such action was taken through the appropriate courts, religious assemblies could ultimately be ruled illegal.

The campaigning atheists have willing supporters inside the school system, with many of them saying schools do not have big enough halls to accommodate all their pupils every morning.

Paul Kelley, the headmaster of Monkseaton High School, Tyne and Wear, has claimed that most schools ignore the requirement to stage a daily collective act of worship anyway. Five years ago he lobbied the Labour government to scrap the requirement, but was told the House of Lords would never approve such a move.

The Association of School and College Leaders has also backed calls for an end to the law on daily religious assemblies, saying that in reality they often simply did not happen. ASCL general secretary Brian Lightman said: ‘Many schools aren’t doing the daily act of worship and theoretically they are breaking the law.’

The Church of England, however, is strongly opposed to changing the law. A spokesman said: ‘To deny children the entitlement to take part in worship at school is to deny them a learning experience that is increasingly important in the modern world.’

And the Department for Education said the Government was not planning to bring an end to compulsory Christian assemblies. A spokesman said: ‘The Government believes that the requirement for collective worship in schools encourages pupils to reflect on the concept of belief and the role it plays in the traditions and values of this country.

‘Schools have the flexibility to design provision that is appropriate to the age and background of their pupils. ‘If a headteacher feels it is inappropriate to have Christian collective worship, the school can apply to have this changed.’

SOURCE



25 December, 2010

Short Hiatus

This blog is suspended for a couple of days over the Christmas period. But as Macarthur said for the cameras: "I shall return"



24 December, 2010

Report: One in four flunk Army entrance exam

Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the Army fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can't answer basic math, science and reading questions, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The report by the Education Trust bolsters a growing worry among military and education leaders that the pool of young people qualified for military service will become too small.

"Too many of our high-school students are not graduating ready to begin college or a career, and many are not eligible to serve in our armed forces," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Associated Press. "I am deeply troubled by the national-security burden created by America's underperforming education system."

The effect of the low eligibility rate might not be noticeable now - the Department of Defense says it is meeting its recruitment goals - but that could change as the economy improves, said retired Navy Rear Adm. Jamie Barnett. "If you can't get the people that you need, there's a potential for a decline in your readiness," said Barnett, who is part of Mission: Readiness, a coalition of retired military leaders working to raise awareness of the high ineligibility rates.

The report found that 23 percent of recent high-school graduates don't get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. Questions are often basic, such as: "If 2 plus x equals 4, what is the value of x?" (The answer is 2.)

The military-exam results are also worrisome because the test is given to a limited pool of people: Pentagon data show that 75 percent of those ages 17 to 24 don't even qualify to take the test because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn't graduate from high school.

Educators expressed dismay that so many high-school graduates are unable to pass a test of basic skills. "It's surprising and shocking that we are still having students who are walking across the stage who really don't deserve to be and haven't earned that right," said Tim Callahan of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, a group that represents more than 80,000 educators.

This is the first time the Army has released this test data publicly, said Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based children's advocacy group.

The study examined the scores of nearly 350,000 high-school graduates, ages 17 to 20, who took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam between 2004 and 2009. About half of the applicants went on to join the Army. Recruits must score at least 31 out of 99 on the first stage of the three-hour test to get into the Army. Marines, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard recruits need higher scores.

Further tests determine what kind of job the recruit can do.

SOURCE






The Obama administration’s misguided war on for-profit colleges

In Forbes, economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University documents the blunders behind the Obama administration’s war on for-profit colleges that wiped out $8 billion in value for shareholders.

Earlier, former Congressman Bob Barr wrote about the topic. Forbes also has articles on how America is saturated with unnecessary college graduates, and how government-subsidized higher education is increasingly becoming a bad bargain for state taxpayers.

As Vedder notes, the government is foolishly attacking for-profit colleges even though non-profit colleges have even worse outcomes in terms of leading to gainful employment for their students. Moreover, some public colleges have drop-out rates that exceed 90 percent.

At Reason magazine, Nick Gillespie explains how claims that elite colleges use to justify their inflated tuition are based on a statistical fallacy.

We wrote earlier about how college tuition is increasingly a rip-off, since most of the people who have ended up in college due to increasing college-attendance rates in recent years have ended up in unskilled jobs (such as 5,057 janitors with Ph.D’s or advanced degrees), and since the current college debt bubble dwarfs the housing bubble. (100 colleges now charge $50,000 or more a year, compared to just 5 in 2008-09.)

SOURCE




Shrinking British universities

There will be a freeze in university places next year and 10,000 fewer places the following year as the higher rate of tuition fees comes into force, the government has announced, meaning that hundreds of thousands will fail to get onto degree courses. David Willetts, the Universities and Science minister, said that teaching budgets would be slashed by almost £400 million, equivalent to 6% of the overall budget, next April, more than a year before fees rise to a maximum of £9,000.

The University and College Union (UCU) said the announcement was a “Christmas kick in the teeth for the sector” and warned that British universities face falling behind on the world stage. The union said the cuts, outlined in a grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), will force academic institutions to freeze staff pay and cut courses.

Mr Willetts said that “extremely challenging” public spending constraints meant that public expenditure costs had to be controlled by controlling student numbers. The fine on over-recruitment comes despite Mr Willetts' criticism of a similar policy implemented by Labour last year, which he said at the time would add "real pressure" to the sector and was "very bad news" for Britain's universities.

There has been a substantial rise in applications for places in 2011 as students battle to enter higher education before the new fee cap is introduced. At the end of November, applications were up by around 12% on the same period last year, meaning that some 235,000 people could be without places next autumn.

The grant letter, from Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and Mr Willetts, said that total funding from loans and HEFCE grants would fall by around £600 million in 2011, from £9.8 billion to £9.2 billion. That figure will rise to £9.412 billion in 2012, when a larger proportion of the cash will be made up of Government loans to cover students' tuition fees, to be repaid when they reach an income of £21,000 after graduation.

Teaching grants will be cut from £4.9 billion to £4.6 billion in 2011. This will drop to £3.8 billion in 2012, which will be offset by raised tuition fees. The figures are based on assumed average fees of £7,500 per year.

Ministers insisted that universities continue to receive "significant public funding", with the total budget from Government grants and tuition fees rising from £9 billion to £10 billion by 2014. They suggested that in order to save money, universities collaborate “through greater sharing of research equipment and infrastructure”.

Mr Willetts said that despite the tough fiscal scene, institutions would be able to cope with the cuts and that in cash terms, there would be a “modest recovery” of funding going into universities in 2012, providing that they could attract the necessary number of students.

“We believe there is scope for efficiency savings within English universities and that they can handle cuts on this scale,” he said. “With the increase in revenues we expect universities to get from fees and loans, the aggregate effect could represent a rise in cash terms.” He said the rise in fees should create incentives to improve the quality of teaching.

Gareth Thomas MP, Labour’s Higher Education Spokesman criticised the government's "triple whammy" imposed on universities - cuts in teaching funding, in research funding and in capital investment. He said: "Even within the terms of their own reckless approach to cutting the deficit such big cuts were not needed. Every other country in the G8 is increasing their higher education, science and research budgets despite their economic challenges.”

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said the coalition’s Christmas message to the sector was “funding cuts, higher fees, fewer university places, a pay freeze and attacks on staff pensions”. She said: “After weeks of attacks on students and universities through budget cuts and increased tuition fees the coalition has delivered a real Christmas kick in the teeth to the sector by announcing these cuts to funding and student places and attacks on pay and conditions.

“The government seems to think that the sector will be able to deliver more for less and students will be happy to pay three times the price. “That is absolute madness, especially when we consider the increased spending on higher education in the vast majority of developed and developing countries around the world. “Put bluntly, by cutting funding and access to university, attacking staff pay and conditions and charging students record fees we are going to be left behind.”

Aaron Porter, NUS President, said that fines for over-recruiting would see hundreds of thousands of highly qualified students “missing out on places and being left between a hostile jobs market and tripled tuition fees if they dare to reapply".

SOURCE



23 December, 2010

The Black Education Disaster in America

Black kids learnt a lot more in the high discipline schools of the past, so improvement is possible if the right learning environment is provided

Walter E. Williams

Harvard University Professor Stephan Thernstrom's recent essay, "Minorities in College---Good News, But...," in Minding the Campus (11/4/10), a website sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute, commented on the results of the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress test: The scores "mean that black students aged 17 do not read with any greater facility than whites who are four years younger and still in junior high. ... Exactly the same glaring gaps appear in NAEP's tests of basic mathematics skills."

Thernstrom asks, "If we put a randomly-selected group of 100 eighth-graders and another of 100 twelfth-graders in a typical college, would we expect the first group to perform as well as the second?" In other words, is it reasonable to expect a college freshman of any race with the equivalent of an eighth-grade education to compete successfully with those having a twelfth-grade education?

SAT scores confirm the poor education received by blacks. In 2009, average SAT reading test scores were: whites (528), Asians (516) and blacks (429). In math it was whites (536), Asians (587) and blacks (426). Twelve years of fraudulent primary and secondary education received by most blacks are not erased by four or five years of college.

This is evidenced by examination scores taken for admission to graduate schools. In 2007, Graduate Record Examination verbal scores were: whites (493), Asians (485) and blacks (395). The math portion scores were: whites (562), Asians (617) and blacks (419). Scores on the LSAT in 2006, for admission to law school, were: whites (152), Asians (152) and blacks (142). In 2010, MCAT scores for admission to medical schools were: whites (26), Asians (26) and blacks (21).

What's some of the response of the black community to efforts to do something about fraudulent primary and secondary education? Voters in Washington, D.C., might provide a partial answer. Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed and backed Michelle Rhee as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.

She fired large numbers of ineffective teachers, most of whom were black, and fought the teachers' union. During her tenure, there were small gains made in student test scores.

How did all of this go over with Washington voters? Washington's teachers' union, as well as D.C.'s public-employee unions, spent massive amounts of money campaigning against Fenty. Voters unseated him in the November elections and with him went Chancellor Rhee. Fenty had other "faults"; he didn't play the racial patronage game that has become a part of D.C.'s political landscape. The clear message given by D.C. voters and teachers' union is that any politician who's willing to play hardball in an effort to improve black education will be run out of town.

The education establishment's solution is always more money; however, according to a Washington Post article (4/6/2008), "The Real Cost Of Public Schools," written by Andrew J. Coulson, if we include its total operating budget, teacher retirement, capital budget and federal funding, the D.C. public schools spend $24,600 per student.

Washington's fraudulent black education is by no means unique; it's duplicated in one degree or another in most of our major cities. However, there is a glimmer of hope in the increasing demand for charter schools and educational vouchers. This movement is being fought tooth and nail by an education establishment that fears the competition and subsequent threats to their employment. The charter school and the educational vouchers movement will help prevent parents and children who care about education from being held hostage in an environment hostile to the learning process. And there's plenty of evidence that children do better and parents are more pleased when they have a measure of school choice.

The fact that black youngsters trail their white counterparts by three or four years becomes even more grim when we recognize that the education white youngsters receive is nothing to write home about.

According to the recently released Program for International Student Assessment exam, our 15-year-olds rank 25th among 34 industrialized nations in math and 14th in reading.

SOURCE






Distance Learning Students Make Performance Gains

Probably because they are more motivated

Post-secondary students who take online “distance learning” classes outperform their peers who work face-to-face with teachers in a physical classroom, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching.

The study by Mickey Shachar and Yoram Neumann could aid efforts to extend learning opportunities to students in rural communities and others—for example, whose parents want them to be able to work at their own schedule and pace—via remote technology instead of building and equipping expensive new schools for small or remote populations.

“For many years distance learning was treated as the stepchild of higher education,” said Neumann, now president and CEO of United States University in National City, California. “Now we have verifiable proof and results that distance learners outperform their traditional counterparts.”

The duo’s “meta-study” examined studies comparing the academic achievement of postsecondary students over two decades, between 1990 and 2009. “We found that in 70 percent of the cases, distance learning students outperformed their traditional counterparts,” Neumann said, “and in the past seven years, when distance learning was mainly using the online modality, the online learning students outperformed their counterparts in 84 percent of the cases.”

Shachar and Neumann’s conclusions come as no surprise to Michael Ritter, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who teaches geography and meteorology courses online. He featured Shachar and Neumann’s study on his blog “The Digital Professor.” “Distance education is simply education that occurs when the instructor and student are physically separated from one another.” Ritter said. “Hence there may be no pedagogically significant difference.”

However, Ritter added, virtual classrooms come without many of the distractions of a bricks-and-mortar school building, even with a teacher right there to focus on a student. “I’m less distracted when teaching in a synchronous online environment than in a classroom of 80 students,” Ritter said. “I, and other students, don’t have the distraction of those who are not paying attention to the class activity and possibly disrupting the learning process.”

“I’m finding it’s easier to provide one-on-one help in an online environment,” Ritter said. “Though I have to set boundaries on my time, students are able to get help much quicker in an online environment than having to physically show up at my office.”

Neumann says distance teaching doesn’t just allow for more focus—it demands it. “I found from my own experience that online learning requires much more discipline, in terms of focused leadership, design, and planning,” he said. The result is that distance learning tends to feature “a major emphasis on learning outcomes, accountability, timely feedback, and continuous student engagement in the learning process itself.”

The study didn’t look at the performance of distance learners in elementary and secondary schools, and Neumann declined to speculate whether the postsecondary results have implications for younger grades. “I am not in a position to offer any prediction,” he said.

Ritter, however, says he thinks the results could be similar in K-12. “For the most part I do, so long as there is on-site guidance by a parent,” he said. “The most difficult aspect of distance education is keeping students on task.”

In their study, Schachar and Neumann suggest policymakers should consider distance learning as an option in dealing with tight education budgets and growing market demand.

“The improvements of technology, the widespread Internet access, the increased legitimacy of online learning within established universities and employers, and the increased participation of adult learners in higher education with clear preferences toward learning anytime and anywhere will further drive future improvements in the quality of distance learning programs,” they wrote.

That money, though, will come with oversight and regulations. It will also attract the attention of educators and others who stand to be affected by changes in their job requirements.

Paul E. Peterson, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University and author of Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning, says it would “be a shame” for policymakers “to use this difficult economic environment to suppress the growth of online learning.”

Although Peterson says he doesn’t oppose regulation, he worries overregulation would undermine the cost savings and other benefits of distance learning programs. “There’s going to have to be some regulation,” Peterson said. “The question is whether it will be attentive to genuine pedagogical objectives or whether it’s going to get captured by unions, and they’re going to say, ‘OK, you’ve got to have X number of people teaching the course, or involved in the instruction part so we can save jobs.’ That would be the bad thing that could happen.”

Peterson warns that opponents of online learning may go too far, too fast. “They can’t win when people begin to see the cost savings and the possibilities of distance learning,” he said.

Ritter says he’s hopeful for change. “Though changing at some public institutions, I’ve found reticence on the part of some administrators, and everything from ambivalence to outright hostility by faculty to the idea of teaching online,” he said. “It is clear from recent data that there is a demand for online learning. If the same outcomes can be achieved with a delivery system that students want, policymakers must take notice.”

SOURCE





Bible study opens door to mastering literature

David Hastie, commenting from Australia

In this yuletide Tony Abbott went on record again as regarding the Bible as essential for all Australian schools. "It is important for people to leave school with some understanding of the Bible," he responded to a question from the floor at his Penrith community forum on November 29. "It is impossible to imagine our society without the influence of Christendom."

Abbott stated a similar position in December 2009, drawing the ire of ACT Labor Senator Kate Lundy, prominent Muslim academic Ameer Ali and Australian Education Union federal president, Angelo Gavrielatos, who stated: " ultimately we consider it a private matter for parents and their children". Is it?

In my role as an English and history teacher, rather than as a person of faith, I am convinced we disadvantage our public school students by not acquainting them with the meta-structures, motifs and moral queries of the Abrahamic scriptures. And I am not alone.

Cantankerous atheist Christopher Hitchens declared in 2006: "You are not educated if you don't know the Bible. You can't read Shakespeare or Milton without it . . . And with the schools now, that's what I hate about secular relativism. They're afraid of insurance liability. They don't even teach it as a document. They stay out of the whole thing to avoid controversy."

Indeed, when studying literature, children now in Australian faith-based schools (about 32 per cent of total enrolments, and much higher in senior secondary) enjoy a significant advantage over their state-school peers. Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Dickens, Bronte (both), George Eliot, Hopkins, Hardy, T.S.Eliot, Steinbeck, Beckett, Yeats, Plath, Golding, Attwood and many, many others, require more than a passing knowledge of the Abrahamic Old and New Testaments.

The necessary time taken to induct students unfamiliar with them when studying literature is time saved in faith-based schools.

And it's not just Western texts: post-colonial writers such as Rushdie, Allende, Marquez, Neruda and lots more are infused with biblical material. Emerging Australian "canons" - Hart, Murray, Winton, Harwood, Dawe, Keneally and so forth - are also littered with biblical plot lines and motifs. With the shift of the New Australian English Curriculum back to a more "canonical" approach to teaching literature, this inequity is only set to intensify.

Similarly in teaching history, ancient religion is extra weird for students who can't access the language and categories of our own Western (even secular) religiosity.

So too medieval and renaissance history, the Elizabethan era, the English republic, the Reformation, the post-Christian Enlightenment, the American and French revolutions, anti-slavery movements, Darwin, American civil rights, Australian stolen generations, and political language of the Cold War. These are all intrinsically informed by explanations, motivations and the language of the Bible. The same could be equally said for the study of film, visual art and music.

British educationalist John Hull describes the phenomena of "bafflement" in adolescents: suddenly realising their lived experience contradicts their education. If an institution continues to dogmatically hold the line in such matters, students develop what he terms "learning sickness" or "ideological enclosure", ultimately rejecting what they have learned, along with its institutional context.

Ironically, he was describing fundamentalist religious schools, yet his critique applies to much of Australian state education where religion is concerned, effectively excised from curriculum as a "non-topic". Hence, the master-originating Urtext of the Bible is treated as the "untext".

Yet students continually stumble across it in their novels and history lessons, in their homes, in public debate, in geopolitics, in the playground, and become baffled by the contradiction.

Certainly, religious proselytising is inappropriate through the state curriculum: parents thus inclined can send their child to a faith-based school. But vital cultural knowledge is vital to the universal "public guarantee".

Narratives and motifs of Abrahamic scriptures form a vitally significant mythic text for Western civilisation, and are also important for Jewish and Islamic civilisations.

After all, curriculum is always about what is deemed as important. Existing Australian English curricula, and the New Australian English Curriculum, for example, rightly regard Aboriginal spirituality as nationally important. Indigenous dreaming stories are thus mandated and studied as "canonical" texts.

Yet, even though these are obviously religious in character, they are clearly not to be treated as "religious tracts", but rather as significant cultural texts.

Why should we not also endow our children with understanding of Western literary and historical heritage in the Abrahamic Old and New Testaments?

Abbott may be regarded as the mad monk, but in the case of the Bible in schools, there's certainly method in him, particularly considering the vast amount of Australians vaguely sentimental about Christianity, or Christmas, or voting.

SOURCE



22 December, 2010

School punishes Virginia kids for sharing candy canes that could be used as weapons

What utter nonsense!

TEN high school students attempting to spread holiday cheer have been disciplined for distributing candy canes that school administrators said could be used to maim other students.

The boys were punished with detention for giving out 5cm candy canes to fellow students as they entered Battlefield High School in Haymarket, located in northeast Virginia, WUSA-TV said.

School administrators accused them of trying to "maliciously maim students with the intent to injure," according to high school junior Zakk Rhine. "They said the candy canes are weapons because you can sharpen them with your mouth and stab people with them," said Skylar Torbett, also a junior.

While the boys' disciplinary notices do not mention maiming, they do say the boys littered and created a disturbance. The boys said their candy giveaway may have caused litter because some students dropped the treats on the floor. Their punishment also included at least two hours of cleaning, WUSA-TV reported.

Battlefield High School Principal Amy Etheridge-Conti said she would not comment specifically on the discipline but said it was warranted.

But the boys' parents believe their sons were punished for trying to spread Christmas cheer. Mother Kathleen Flannery alleged that one administrator told her that "not everyone wants Christmas cheer. That suicide rates are up over Christmas, and that they should keep their cheer to themselves, perhaps."

SOURCE





British private pupils 55 times more likely to go to Oxford or Cambridge universities than some others

Entirely to be predicted from the well-known correlates of IQ. But what a nutty comparison: Comparing the richest with the poorest. It is the large middle that counts and because of the large middle, around half of the students at Oxbridge did NOT go to private schools

Children at independent schools are 55 times more likely to go to Oxford or Cambridge than the poorest state school students, a report has found. The gap extends to Britain’s other top-­ranking universities, where private pupils are 22 times more likely to get in than those entitled to free school meals – the Government’s ­measure of poverty.

The research on social mobility by education charity The Sutton Trust suggests that success at getting into elite universities is largely based on wealth. [Rubbish! It's IQ. Being smart helps you to get rich]

Only one in 100 students admitted to Oxbridge between 2005 and 2007 had been entitled to free school meals. At the 25 most academically selective universities, free schools meals pupils made up just 2 per cent of the student intake.

The report found that the ‘stark’ income gap begins early, with students at independent schools three-and-a-half times more likely than free school meals pupils to get five GCSEs at grades A to C, including English and maths.

It said: ‘This newly available data provides an insight into the extent of the widening education gap between the latest cohorts of the poorest and most privileged students both at school and university.’

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman and founder of the Sutton Trust, said the situation would get worse as a result of Government cuts and allowing universities almost to treble tuition fees.’

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents lecturers, said the Coalition was sending ‘a clear message that university is only for those able to afford it’ and that ‘social mobility remains a pipe dream for far too many people’.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said closing the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils was a ‘key priority’ for the Coalition.

SOURCE






South Australia: Fired Principal in line to return to school

A difficult school got a capable principal for once -- so the bureaucrats fired her. They should have stood up for her but were too gutless. Amusing that the bureaucrat who fired here has now himself been fired, though. Background here

FORMER Coober Pedy Area School principal Sue Burtenshaw could return to the school she was ousted from if she wins an appeal. But the school will start 2011 with another principal appointed for Term 1 while the matter is resolved. The Education Department cannot appoint a permanent replacement until the appeal is settled.

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled Ms Burtenshaw could continue with her appeal through the Teachers Appeal Board, after the department sought clarification on whether her challenge could be heard by the board.

Ms Burtenshaw has appealed against the disciplinary decision of former chief executive Chris Robinson, and also the separate decision to transfer her, which was handed down in July.

She was put on "special leave" in January so the department could investigate concerns raised by parents and the community about the principal's alleged unreasonable disciplinary action and abrasive behaviour.

The Education Department will now face the Teachers Appeal Board. "A principal has been appointed (to the area school) for Term 1, and term-by-term appointments of that principal will be made until the outcome of the appeal is known," a department spokeswoman said.

At the time of Ms Burtenshaw's transfer, Mr Robinson - who has since been sacked by Education Minister Jay Weatherill - said it was not disciplinary action but in the best interest of the school community that the principal did not return.

SOURCE



21 December, 2010

American Education, Curbing Excellence

America's primary and secondary schools have many problems, but an excess of excellence is not one of them. Not only do our weak students fare poorly in international comparisons, so do our strong ones. Mediocrity is the national norm.

The very best students are the ones most likely to do things of great benefit to the rest of us -- cure malaria, devise revolutionary inventions, start the next Apple or plumb the secrets of the universe. But we don't always put much importance on helping them realize their full potential.

A case in point is Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Ill., a racially and economically mixed suburb of Chicago that is home to Northwestern University. It recently decided to eliminate a high honors freshman English course aimed at challenging the top students.

Henceforth, these youngsters will be grouped with everyone else in a regular "honors" class in humanities. Next year, the same may be done with biology. Your kid is an honor student at ETHS? Heck, everyone is an honors student at ETHS.

It's hardly the only school in America where grouping students according to their ability is in disrepute. There is a widespread impulse to treat all kids as equally able and willing to learn. But the results often fall dismally short of the hopes.

When the Chicago public schools scrapped remedial classes for ninth graders and put everyone in college-prep courses, "failure rates increased, grades declined slightly, test scores did not improve and students were no more likely to enter college," according to a study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. Among average and above-average students, absenteeism rose.

The danger in putting the brightest kids in general classes is that they will be bored by instruction geared to the middle. But their troubles don't elicit much sympathy. Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless told The Atlantic magazine, "The United States does not do a good job of educating kids at the top. There's a long-standing attitude that, 'Well, smart kids can make it on their own.'"

But can they? Only 6 percent of American kids achieve advanced proficiency in math -- lower than in 30 other countries. In Taiwan, the figure is 28 percent.

School administrators in Evanston insist the change is aimed at making the curriculum more demanding, even as they make it less demanding for some students. Thanks to the abolition of this elite course, we are told, "high-achieving students" will profit from "experiencing multiple perspectives and diversity in their classes to gain cultural capital."

In other words, racial balance will take priority over academic rigor. Blacks and Hispanics make up nearly half of all students but only 19 percent of those in advanced placement courses and 29 percent of those in honors courses.

This is because minority students at Evanston, which has an enrollment of nearly 3,000, generally score lower on achievement tests. Putting all students together is supposed to give everyone an equal opportunity.

But if you have a fever, you don't bring it down by breaking the thermometer. The low numbers of black and Hispanic students are a symptom of a deeper problem, namely the failure of elementary and middle schools to prepare them for the most challenging course work. Evanston has had a big racial gap in academic performance for decades, and there is nothing to gain from pretending it doesn't exist.

Schools that group (or "track") kids by ability generally get better overall results. Chester Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, notes in a recent report, "Middle schools with more tracks have significantly more math pupils performing at the advanced and proficient levels and fewer students at the needs improvement and failing levels."

Why would that be? Teaching is not easy, and teaching kids with a wide range of aptitude and interest is even harder. Grouping students by ability allows the tailoring of lessons to match the needs of each group. Putting them all together is bound to fail one group or another.

Shortchanging gifted teens creates the risk of another unwanted effect: inducing their parents to leave. Families in Evanston can always move to neighboring suburbs with good schools, or they can opt for several fine private and parochial alternatives. Average students don't gain from being in the same classes as exceptional ones if the exceptional ones are not there.

We as a society have not been very successful at turning average students into high achievers. Maybe we'll have better luck doing the opposite.

SOURCE






School sports U-turn: British government forced into embarrassing back-track after public outcry at cuts

The Education Secretary has performed a U-turn over his controversial decision to cut funding for school sports. Michael Gove, who announced plans to scrap the School Sports Partnerships scheme earlier this year, has now agreed to invest £112 million in a network of 3,600 sports teachers until the London Olympics in 2012.

His climbdown came after his plans to scrap the £162 million-a-year scheme was met with criticism by headteachers and prominent athletes including heptathlon gold medallist Denise Lewis and diver Tom Daley.

Announcing his compromise yesterday, Mr Gove said he has found £47million to fund the scheme until the start of the academic year in September. At that point 100 nationwide competition managers and 300 further education sports coordinators will be axed.

But £65 million will be spent to the end of the 2012-13 academic year for 3,600 PE teachers to spend one day a week on school sport. They are currently funded for two days a week.

David Cameron told Mr Gove to change tack when it emerged that the number of young people doing two hours or more of sport per week increased from 25 per cent in 2002 to more than 90 per cent now, demonstrating the success of the sports initiatives.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had also demanded a partial reprieve, saying scrapping partnerships could harm the pledge to use the Olympics to increase participation in school sport.

The funds will also pay for encouraging take-up of competitive sport in primary schools and securing a fixture network between schools. Mr Gove said: ‘I want competitive sport to be at the centre of a truly rounded education.’

Labour education spokesman Andy Burnham Mr Gove’s ‘overruling’ was ‘a warning to this Tory-led Government that it cannot simply do what it likes’.

SOURCE





Australia: School bully victims paid $1m in NSW

A poor substitute for discipline

SCHOOL bullying victims have received almost $1 million in compensation from the Department of Education since January last year. One student who was harassed over 10 years won $500,000 in a court settlement, while two children were paid more than $15,000 each after their arms were broken by bullies. Another boy was paid more than $4200 because he claimed harassment by teachers caused him to fail his HSC.

The claims, which include both physical and severe psychological injuries up to September 30, were obtained under freedom of information laws by the Opposition.

The figures show students whose claims were settled by the department received less than those who went to court. A student who claimed to have been assaulted and that bullying caused a psychiatric illness was given $11,636.

The claims coincide with the Child Death Review Team this year that revealed several students committed suicide in 2009 after being bullied. One boy who claimed to suffer from gender identity disorder was "teased and threatened" at school.

Another boy was driven out of school by "taunts" in the lead-up to his suicide, while a third boy was also the subject of "taunts and bullying" while at his school.

The compensation claims show staff won payouts of more than $5000 between them over bullying cases, including ongoing sexual harassment in the school workplace and bullying and victimisation by a superior.

"These documents confirm that bullying is rife in our public schools, with both students and teachers feeling the brunt of it," Opposition education spokesman Adrian Piccoli said yesterday. "What is worse is the state is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims from students and teachers that have been victims of bullying. "Bullying can leave its victims with severe and lasting physical and psychological damage, and it must be stamped out immediately."

A spokesman for Education Minister Verity Firth said there were 26 claims which were "a tiny proportion" of staff and students. "We have given principals the power to impose strong sanctions to counter bullying, including suspensions of up to 20 days," he said. "NSW public schools are among the safest places in the community for young people, and serious incidents of violence are rare."

The department has introduced a web guide for parents on cyber bullying, including tips on how to prevent it.

SOURCE



20 December, 2010

Plan bans illegals from public universities

Virginia could join list of states creating off-limits locations for aliens

The "DREAM Act" plan, defeated in Congress today, would have given benefits and rights to illegal aliens who want to go to school in the U.S., but the state of Virginia isn't prepared to depend on what Washington decides - it has its own plan to address the situation: a ban on those students in public colleges and universities.

A leading GOP legislator in the Virginia House of Delegates is poised to introduce a bill which would prohibit illegal aliens from attending public colleges and universities in the commonwealth, and a constitutional scholar tells WND that U.S. Supreme Court case law may well ensure that the proposed law can be enforced.

Delegate Chris Peace, a Republican from the state's 97th House district in suburban Richmond, in an interview with WND said he was "amazed" to learn when researching the bill that some of Virginia's public universities, like Virginia Tech, did not have any policy regarding the admission of illegal aliens.

Others, like the prestigious University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, told Peace they did not "knowingly" admit or enroll individuals who were illegally present in the U.S.

The result was Peace's bill, House Bill 1465, which he says provides not just cost savings for the state, but also creates a uniform policy for state-supported institutions of higher education. Further, it ensures that bright youngsters from Virginia who have received perfect grades are not shut out of the admissions process because of issues of "space" at the public colleges, he said.

"Should this legislation pass, it is difficult to determine how much savings would accrue to the Commonwealth, since there is no current policy screening applicants," Peace told WND. "But the public policy goal does not center on savings, per se; rather, it is one of principle. If all colleges and universities created policies sua sponte [Law Latin – for on their own initiative] then there would be no need for this legislation. To date, several have been unwilling to do so." Peace noted that higher education is a "privilege," not a "right," and that illegal aliens would still be able to attend private colleges in Virginia.

Straight 'A's' required

Schools like the College of William & Mary, University of Virginia – like University of Maryland and UCLA, considered "public Ivies" – report that the average grade point average of incoming freshman is 4.0 on 4.0 scale – straight A's.

"The bottom line is that there's wide-spread sentiment that public benefit should not be going to those who are here illegally," said Peace. "The opponents of this legislation say it is targeting one group of people, or establishing preferences. But we're not trying to be mean-spirited here. Instead, those who support this legislation are simply trying to open the doors to Virginians."

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina already ban illegal immigrants from some or all public colleges. But the report said 10 other states, including Florida, New York and Texas, give them permission to pay only in-state tuition under many circumstances.

The Chronicle report documented the decision from the California Supreme Court just a few weeks ago that affirmed a law allowing some illegals to pay in-state tuition. Justice Ming Chin concluded that providing that special benefit does not violate federal immigration law. The case might be advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Peace noted that his plan is timely "in light of the proposed amnesty-lite, DREAM Act."

A leading constitutional law expert, Professor Ronald D. Rotunda, at Chapman University School of Law, Orange, Calif., told WND that the U.S. Supreme Court said it was illegal for states to discriminate against legal aliens in "Toll v. Moreno" (1982). The court, what is more, has not allowed states to discriminate against minor illegal aliens attending grades K-12 in "Plyler v. Doe" (1982).

"But Plyler emphasized that these children are minors, not 18 or over, and have little control over what their parents do," Rotunda tells WND. "The court has suggested that states can deny free public education to illegal aliens who want to attend state universities because these aliens are not children and university education is not like K-12."

Immigration attorney Michael Wildes said he does not think the legislation will pass because "a blanket policy of verifying every student's immigration status would be onerous and time-consuming." Further, he said, it would be "wildly discriminatory" to verify the immigration status of individuals based on "presumptions about students' ethnic identities, or the sound of someone's last name."

But Peace waved off those concerns. "Many will try to use emotional arguments for those children brought here without consent by their parents, who access the K-12 system, but then would be ineligible for the public college experience," Peace said.

Peace noted that there is widespread support for the legislation in the House of Delegates, where a different, earlier version of the measure passed overwhelmingly with bi-partisan support, 73-26, in 2008, but failed to get out of committee in the Democrat-dominated Senate. Now the GOP has increased its strength in the Virginia Senate, and elected a Republican governor in 2009.

Peace pre-filed the bill on December 6, and it will be formally offered to the legislature on Jan. 12, 2011. The bill allows the board of visitors or board of governors of every public college in Virginia to establish rules and regulations, and prohibit "an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S." from being admitted to "any public institution of higher education in Virginia."

Wilde says he'd rather have Washington making rules for the states. "It's important to keep in mind that immigration law is within federal jurisdiction and it is not the state's place to enforce federal law," Wildes says. "The proper forum is Washington, D.C."

SOURCE






Union Leaders want Tenure to be Automatic, Even For Unsatisfactory Teachers

Teacher union leaders have been known to bark back when their strongest job protection – tenure – is referred to as a job for life. Typical rebuttals include: “It’s a necessary protection from overzealous administrators,” or, “It’s critical to maintain academic freedom.”

But in a recent blog post ,United Federation of Teachers honcho Jeff Kaufman sticks his foot in his mouth when he attempts to clear up misconceptions about how tenure is granted in New York City. The blog, titled “Is tenure a strike issue?” is in response to the city Department of Education’s call to overhaul the process, and reveals that some union leaders may be willing to fight for the currently ineffective system at any cost.

“Despite current misconceptions tenure is not ‘given’ by the DOE. The only legal requirement for tenure is actually time; three years for teachers. After a three year period, within license, of being on payroll and the DOE has done nothing to stop the clock, you are automatically granted tenure,” Kaufman writes. “In fact you can be theoretically rated unsatisfactory for each of the three years and still get tenure if the DOE doesn't fire you or cause you to extend your probation.”

I believe that Kaufman’s musings are clear evidence that the UFT and its affiliated locals are keenly aware that the current tenure process in NYC is flawed. The fact that Kaufman and his UFT brethren continue to defend that process, regardless of the problems it creates for improving student instruction, only further exposes the union’s already obvious selfish interests.

Kaufman leaves his readers with a little nugget to ponder, possibly foreshadowing serious resistance to the city’s promised tenure reform. He reflects on the good old days with former UFT President Randi Weingarten, who now heads the union’s national affiliate - the American Federation of Teachers.

“So, is tenure a strike issue? I am reminded of one of my first arguments with Randi Weingarten in the early days of the Bloomberg administration at a Chapter Leaders' retreat. After making it clear how a strike or job action was almost never justified I asked her whether there was ‘any’ strike issue,” Kaufman writes. “She thought for a moment and said, ‘Yeah, tenure.’”

Kaufman’s lesson on how easy it actually is for teachers to be granted tenure in New York City only solidifies our support for DOE officials working to protect the interests of students by injecting some sanity into the process. We continue to be amazed by union insiders like Kaufman, who knowingly fight to maintain a tenure system that costs taxpayers millions each year at the expense of student learning.

His conclusion is clear - if you can fog up a mirror, you can have a job seemingly for life. It says a lot about the mentality of labor leaders, and quickly erodes any credibility they might have left with the public.

SOURCE





Israel on Campus, Where Are We?

The situation on campus continues to change for Israel’s supporters: abuse is now almost everyplace. There have been important successes, like upholding the recent veto of a “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) proposal at the University of California at Berkeley’s student council, and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s recent definition of anti-Semitism on campus as a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But there have also been notable failures, such as the continuing unwillingness of the administration of the University of California at Irvine to take harassment of Jewish and Israeli students and speakers seriously. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was heckled and silenced there by a group of students from the Muslim Student Association before university security stepped in and removed them. These students later accused the university administration of denying them their First Amendment rights.

At Evergreen State University Jewish students have felt compelled to transfer to other schools after overt harassment. Sukkahs have been vandalized in recent years at Stanford, the University of Colorado, the University of Southern California, and other campuses. “Israel Apartheid Week” is now an established part of the calendar at colleges across the country, bringing verbal harassment and even physical assaults against Jewish students. At these events, “Jews” are assumed to be “Zionists” and are subject to abuse on this basis, as well as because they are Jews. Worse, universities and the community at large are getting accustomed to it all.

Seeing the anti-Israel movement in isolation has always been part of the problem. There is a well-organized network of international anti-Israel activists and organizations. In the U.S. it operates at all levels, from giant state universities, to local churches, to suburban living rooms. The group that makes up “International Apartheid Week” sponsors a coordinated week-long protest in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Israel, Italy, South Africa, Holland and elsewhere. Groups like “Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition” sponsor speaking tours by noted anti-Israel figures such as Norman Finkelstein, George Galloway and countless others throughout the U.S.. Local branches of Al-Awda and the “International Solidarity Movement” are found throughout the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. Coordinated internationally, these groups share speakers and also train and bring “activists” to Israel. Muslim student groups facilitate and support these. and bring their own speakers, such as the radical Muhammad al-Asi, to their gatherings.

These groups have made common cause on and off campus with extremist groups, seemingly united by their hatred of Israel, the U.S., and its policies worldwide. Anti-Israel events have also been co-sponsored — or organized as a part of “anti-war,” “anti-globalization’” and “anti-imperialism’” protests — by groups such as “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER),” “United For Peace and Justice,” and the “Stop the War Coalition.” The U.S. and Israel appear to be regarded as part of a larger “capitalist-imperialist conspiracy” that must be “exposed” and “smashed.”

Anti-Israel groups have also been allied with those defending Iran, such as the Socialist Workers Party; although the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan” are both forthright about defending themselves and the freedoms of others. The related “boycott, divestment and sanction” (BDS) movements against Israel are also active everywhere, from the Cambridge City Council to the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia Washington, to pension funds in Canada and England. This too is an international movement. The group “International BDS” is directed by the “Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign National Committee,” made up of Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions and Islamist groups While they have so far failed to get any American university or significant group to actually boycott or divest from Israel, they lie and say they have succeeded, as occurred recently at Hampshire College and Harvard University.

In Europe, BDS has mostly succeeded in provoking weekly protests outside Israeli shops, such as the Dead Sea cosmetics firm Ahava, and rampaging through French supermarkets.

While extreme right-wing groups have always hated Israel, usually on traditional anti-Semitic terms, anti-Israel organizations are now primarily on the far left. But Neo-Nazis, radical Muslims and anarchists are all happy to put aside their differences to join in hatred of Israel. Far right groups such as the John Birch Society or the Lyndon LaRouche movement and neo-Nazis are still not welcome on campus. But left-wing groups have been accepted or even invited on American university campuses by faculties that either embrace them or who are merely “tolerant” of their presence, and who indignantly pull out free speech and academic freedom defenses when challenged. University administrations and trustees have been equally tolerant. They simply want the problem to stay manageably quiet, and for the money to keep flowing in from the government and from donors.

The language and tools of human and civil rights have also been hijacked. The respect for NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International is especially high on campuses, along with the United Nations, since these represent secular and “global” alternatives to the U.S. government and groups like church-based charities. NGOs and international organizations are wrapped in a “halo effect” provided by the secular religious term “human rights.” To question them and their ideas is to appear to be “against human rights.” Mainstream NGOs tend to focus on Israel to a disproportionate degree, as opposed to countries that violate human rights extravagantly; these NGOs bitterly criticize every Israeli action to defend itself against terrorist attacks and overt threats of annihilation. Other NGOs, such as Adalah, Badil and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, often backed by the European Union, attack Israel as virtually their sole focus, and are deeply connected with the BDS movement. Even Israel’s defense of its identity as the sole Jewish state has been cast as a violation of “international law” and “human rights,” and regularly send speakers to appear regularly on U.S. campuses.

The Goldstone investigation, ordered by the United Nations Human Rights Council, was apparently intended provided legal cover for the intensification of such abuses of law and language. By ignoring evidence presented to them by Israelis, and ignoring the words and deeds of Hamas, the report reached a completely predictable outcome that has rippled around the world. Shooting back at those who shoot at you was declared de facto a “war crime;” Israeli politicians and military leaders have now been subjected to investigations and arrest warrants in Europe, on charges brought by NGOs, Muslim groups and other fellow travelers. Pro-Palestinian groups have long claimed that Israel is practicing “genocide,” albeit a strange kind that actually increases the life span and numbers of its alleged “victims,” as just this year alone, over 180,000 Palestinians, as well as people of all races and creeds are treated daily in Israeli hospitals.

This vitriol, however, has has spilled over onto college campuses in the U.S., where Israel is branded as a criminal state by a growing number of activists and professors, both inside and outside the classroom. Convincing idealistic college students not to be blinded by the “halo effect” around NGOs is a challenge. Helping them to recognizing that faith in NGOs and other forms of “global governance,” which may be distorted and politicized, and is part of a Western secular religion of internationalism, albeit where there is no further recourse, is vital to understanding and combating their abuses.

More here



19 December, 2010

Scientist alleges religious discrimination in Ky.

An astronomer argues that his Christian faith and his peers' belief that he is an evolution skeptic kept him from getting a prestigious job as the director of a new student observatory at the University of Kentucky.

Martin Gaskell quickly rose to the top of a list of applicants being considered by the university's search committee. One member said he was "breathtakingly above the other applicants."
Others openly worried his Christian faith could conflict with his duties as a scientist, calling him "something close to a creationist" and "potentially evangelical."

Even though Gaskell says he is not a creationist, he claims he was passed over for the job at UK's MacAdam Student Observatory three years ago because of his religion and statements that were perceived to be critical of the theory of evolution.

Gaskell has sued the university, claiming lost income and emotional distress. Last month a judge rejected a motion from the university and allowed it to go to trial Feb. 8.

"There is no dispute that based on his application, Gaskell was a leading candidate for the position," U.S. District Judge Karl S. Forester wrote in the ruling.

Gaskell later learned that professors had discussed his purported religious views during the search process. Gaskell told the AP in an e-mail that he didn't grow frustrated, but felt "one should not allow universities to get away with religious discrimination." University scientists wondered to each other in internal e-mails if Gaskell's faith would interfere with the job, which included public outreach, according to court records.

The topic became so heated behind the scenes that even university biologists, who believed Gaskell was a critic of evolution, weighed in by citing a controversial Bible-based museum in Kentucky that had just opened.

"We might as well have the Creation Museum set up an outreach office in biology," biology professor James Krupa wrote to a colleague in an October 2007 e-mail. The museum was making national headlines at the time for exhibits that assert the literal truth of the Bible's creation story.

Science professors cited a lecture Gaskell has given called "Modern Astronomy, the Bible and Creation," which he developed for "Christians and others interested in Bible and science questions...," according to an outline of the lecture. Gaskell told the AP he was invited to give the lecture at UK in 1997, and organizers had read his notes.

The wide-ranging lecture outlines historical scientific figures who discuss God and interpretations of the creation story in the biblical chapter Genesis. Also in the notes, Gaskell mentions evolution, saying the theory has "significant scientific problems" and includes "unwarranted atheistic assumptions and extrapolations," according to court records.

Gaskell was briefly asked about the lecture during his job interview in 2007 with the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michael Cavagnero, according to Gaskell's deposition. Gaskell said he felt that questions related to religion during the job interview were "inappropriate." "I think that if I had a document like this and I was advocating atheism ... I don't think it would be an issue," he said of his lecture.

Science professors also expressed concern that hiring Gaskell would damage the university's image. An astrophysics professor, Moshe Elitzur, told Cavagnero that the hire would be a "huge public relations mistake," according to an e-mail from Cavagnero in court records. "Moshe predicts that he would not be here one month before the (Lexington) Herald-Leader headline would read: 'UK hires creationist to direct new student observatory.'"

University spokesman Jay Blanton declined to comment Monday because the litigation is pending.

Gaskell said he is not a "creationist" and his views on evolution are in line with other biological scientists. In his lecture notes, Gaskell also distances himself from Christians who believe the earth is a few thousand years old, saying their assertions are based on "mostly very poor science."

Gaskell's lawsuit is indicative of an increasingly tense debate between religion and science on college campuses and elsewhere, said Steven K. Green, a law professor and director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. "I think it reflects a phenomenon that the sides in this debate are becoming more encamped, they're hunkering down," Green said. "Because certainly within the biology community and within the science community generally, they see the increasing attacks creationists are making as very threatening to their existence — and vice versa, to a certain extent."

Gaskell was uniquely qualified for the new position at the University of Kentucky, according to court records, because he oversaw the design and construction of an observatory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He also advised UK during the building of the MacAdam facility. He currently teaches at the University of Texas.

His attorney, Frank Manion, said scientists at UK were too quick to place Gaskell on one side of the creation-evolution debate.
"Unfortunately too many people get hung up on the idea that you have to be one extreme or the other," said Manion, who works for American Center for Law & Justice, which focuses on religious freedom cases. They say "you can't be a religious believer and somebody who accepts evolution, which is clearly not true. And Gaskell's a perfect example of that."

SOURCE






A vivid example of the collapse of behavior standards under Leftist permissiveness

What a shame it is that Dunbar Senior High School, noted for its academic rigor during the era of segregated schools, is now the duty station of several police officers backed by security cameras overseeing a student body enrolled in mandatory sessions designed to prevent sexual assault and other inappropriate behavior.

When I was coming along, Dunbar was the school you wanted to attend if you hoped to enter college and pursue a professional career. Dunbar's reputation was such that some black parents in other parts of the country sent their children to Washington just to attend the school.

My mother, a 1935 Dunbar graduate, was so set on attending the school that, lacking streetcar fare, she would walk there and back from her Foggy Bottom home at 716 23rd St. NW - a six-mile trek roundtrip. She and the house on 23rd Street are gone. But her rich stories about life at Dunbar in the 1930s live on.

My sister and I shared in the wealth of Dunbar experiences when we went there in the 1950s. Excellence, preparedness, hard work and high standards were Dunbar's watchwords.

Contrary to what some believe, the Dunbar of our day was not a school for the city's black elite. If that had been true, the King family, and hundreds of children of the city's working class, would never have entered that citadel of learning.

The disparaging descriptions of today's Dunbar may be accurate, but they are hard to take. My Post colleague, education columnist Jay Mathews recently described Dunbar as a "long-troubled" school with "a stubborn culture of absenteeism, tardiness and wandering the halls during class." Post education reporter Bill Turque wrote that Dunbar "has been a failing school for years."

But it's not the reporting about Dunbar that is distressing; it's what has occurred within the school.

In May 2009, the school system asked Dunbar students their opinions on their school. Forty-seven percent of the 331 students who responded disagreed with the statement "I feel safe at my school." More than 70 percent disagreed with "My school is orderly and in control." Almost 80 percent disagreed that "My school is clean and well maintained."

Our ancient Dunbar building at First and N Streets NW, demolished years ago, was always clean, and it was a source of school pride. It was a safe place to be, too. Of course the Dunbar of old is gone. Ironically, it went the way of segregation, taking with it a cadre of outstanding veteran teachers and administrators, and students drawn citywide to Dunbar by choice.

More HERE





Why my child wanted to go to a British public school

Expat Anna Nicholas's son found Spanish education no match for a British "public" school. This article is from the Telegraph, where the old British convention of referring to private schools as public schools is still usually observed

Some time ago my mother, a teacher for many years, told me that the three most valuable gifts a parent could give a child were love, education and travel. Having relocated from London to rural Majorca with my husband, Alan, and son, Ollie, at the beginning of the new millennium, I found myself, a decade later, pondering her words.

Our son had undoubtedly received love in spades, and from an early age had learnt to regard airports as his second home. We hunted with the Vedda warriors of Sri Lanka, worked at an orphanage in Colombo and communed with the Emberá tribe in Panama. We scored points for love and travel, but what about Ollie’s education? Aye, there was the rub.

Before setting foot in Majorca, we had rigorously researched the international schools, enrolling Ollie in what was considered to be the best, in Palma. In the junior school he fared well, mixing with children of different nationalities and benefiting from a cosmopolitan education. But within years, more than 70 per cent of the pupils were local, and this inevitably posed a problem for teachers forced to juggle classes of native English speakers with the linguistically challenged.

ISC Research, which analyses the international sector, claims that only 20 per cent of students now at international schools are from expat families, and that the biggest, most rapidly expanding group is wealthy local children seeking to learn English. We also observed a high turnover of mostly young British teachers, who returned to more lucrative teaching posts in the UK after a few years abroad, which created uncertainty and a lack of cohesion.

A Spanish friend, whose son attended Ollie’s school, persuaded us to consider a new private Spanish boys school in the north-west of the island. Both boys relocated and were placed in the same class.

As the only English pupil, with limited Spanish and Catalan, Ollie found the first year daunting. But he graduated, aged 11, to the upper school with flying colours.

There, however, the regime was tougher and the curriculum reminiscent of a Fifties English school. The pupils learnt by rote, and there was little class discussion or creativity, with emphasis placed on maths, Spanish grammar and linguistics.

At 13, Ollie mooted the idea of returning to England for his schooling. He began to tire of learning in two foreign languages (Catalan and Castilian Spanish) and found the lack of creative subjects, most notably English language and literature, irksome. He romanticised about rugby and cricket, and - God forbid - the British weather.

We decided to look for schools in Dorset because both its airports offered direct flights to Majorca. By chance, I came across the Canford School website. The school’s architecture, landscape and elegant library filled me with awe. I also liked its work ethic, philosophy and lack of pretension.

Although all expat applicants must take the Common Entrance exam or equivalent, much is based on how the prospective pupil performs at interview, and their schooling background. Ollie had never stepped foot in a laboratory or studied chemistry so his level in the subject was pretty woeful. Canford’s head, John Lever, took this on board. His view was that “knowledge per se was less important than enthusiasm, curiosity, a good work ethic and good mental machinery”.

Of all the schools we visited, Canford was the only one to show us lessons in action, and the head never once clock-watched.



Having applied late, we were lucky to be offered just a day place at Canford. This wasn’t such a hardship, because we decided to relocate temporarily to settle Ollie into school, commuting between Dorset and Majorca.

Ollie has so far embraced life at Canford with gusto, made many friends, and greatly enjoyed the wide range of sports and activities. He is keen to board, and when he does, Alan and I will feel happy that we had time to meet teachers, and to attend sports matches and events. Now we have witnessed the fantastic pastoral care, being abroad while Ollie boards will not feel so daunting.

SOURCE



18 December, 2010

Real Academic Accountability Requires Real Choices

With fresh data showing that students in the United States are falling further behind their international peers, a commitment to universal parental choice at all levels of government is needed now more than ever. Without putting too fine a point on it, our nation’s sustained competitiveness and long-term economic survival hang in the balance.

According to the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) — released to considerable hand-wringing in Washington, D.C. last week — America’s reading scores have slipped by four points over the last nine years. Our fifteen-year-old students now trail their counterparts in Shanghai by 56 points — with even larger gaps existing in science (73 points) and mathematics (113 points).

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called these disappointing results a “wake-up call,” adding that “I think we have to invest in reform, not in the status quo.”

He’s right. But Duncan’s boss — President Barack Obama — has made it clear that he categorically rejects the one reform that America has yet to try. And not only does Obama oppose expanding parental choice, last year he shut down Washington D.C.’s limited, means-tested program — a decision that prompted USA Today to rethink its previous position on this important issue.

“By federal measures, students at 12,978 U.S. schools are failing to improve adequately — 13% of the total,” USA Today wrote last May. “Giving them another option, by vouchers or by other means, provides an escape route and pressures public schools to improve.”

American politicians have tried to fix our nation’s chronic academic woes with more taxpayer money — but those efforts have failed.

“Adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending increased 42 percent between 1989 and 2007, from $7,911 to $11,233 per pupil,” a recent Rockefeller Institute study noted. And thanks to Obama’s bureaucratic bailouts, the recent recession hasn’t slowed this explosive growth. According to the U.S. Department of Education, a record $1.1 trillion was spent on education funding during the 2009-10 school year.

Politicians have also tried adding new layers of bureaucracy — including funding federally-administered education grants beginning in 1965 and creating the 5,000-employee U.S. Department of Education in 1980 to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness.”

While these efforts have similarly failed to accomplish their objectives, they have succeeded in extending the reach of the federal government far beyond its intended scope — forcing taxpayers to pick up a whopping $1.4 trillion (and counting) tab.

In 1990-91, the federal share of total K-12 spending in the United States was just 5.7 percent. That total has nearly doubled over the intervening two decades to 10.5 percent.

Part of this ever-expanding taxpayer obligation includes new “accountability” measures like President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. Yet instead of erasing the “soft bigotry of low expectations” — and improving test scores — these costly exams have merely created another set of numbers to be manipulated and another layer of bureaucracy to be subsidized.

In their latest attempt at satisfying increasingly impatient parents, politicians have turned to “Choice in Name Only,” or choice within the government-run system. A handful of municipalities – but no states – have also passed limited, means-tested choice programs.

Unfortunately, these efforts have been halfhearted at best — and the limited availability of options has also limited the constituencies needed to protect them from bureaucratic poaching. During the last school year only 62,000 students nationwide were given academic scholarships. Meanwhile, 1.4 million students attended charter schools. To put those numbers in perspective, 57 million students are currently enrolled in public schools.

Why should we try universal choice? Because to be perfectly blunt we’ve tried everything else — and nothing has worked. Also, aside from the perpetual demonization of choice by those who have a vested financial interest in preserving our nation’s failed status quo — why shouldn’t we try it?

Needless to say the stakes are high. For example, a recent study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Stanford University researchers found that if America could boost its average PISA scores by 25 points over the next 20 years, it would result in $41 trillion worth of economic benefits for the generation of Americans born in 2010.

That’s the sort of rising tide that lifts all ships — and could lift this nation to its former glory assuming our leaders summon the courage to try something new. Let’s hope they hurry, because the world clearly isn’t waiting.

SOURCE




Democrats diverging from teachers' unions

Government employee unions have long been one of the Democratic Party's most loyal and dedicated constituencies. For years, Democratic politicians have supported public employee unions' agenda of increased government spending, leading to more government jobs and thus, more potential union members.

For teachers unions - among the most politically powerful government unions - such support has paid off as Democrats have helped them resist popular school reform efforts that could threaten the government school monopoly, including school choice and charter schools.

That was a great deal for the unions and their political allies but a dead weight on everybody else, as taxpayers funded a continually expanding government sector while a growing number parents saw their children stuck in underperforming schools. Cracks finally are starting to show in that alliance - and they may get wider in the near future.

It is perhaps no coincidence that some of the nation's boldest education reformers have been Democrats. From outgoing D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (who was a Democrat before he reregistered Republican and is now an Independent) mayors in Democrat-controlled cities are the ones who have faced the most dire conditions in the schools they were elected to oversee.

Both Mr. Fenty and Mr. Bloomberg saw the need for drastic action - thus their appointment and strong support for their respective school chancellors, Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, both of whom pursued an aggressive reform agenda.

Now Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, also a Democrat (and with a teachers union background, to boot) has joined the pro-reform chorus. In a speech last week, he denounced his city's teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), as "one unwavering roadblock to reform." He said, "At every step of the way, when Los Angeles was coming together to effect real change in our public schools, UTLA was there to fight against the change and slow the pace of reform."

UTLA boss A.J. Duffy angrily dismissed Mr. Villaraigosa's remarks. "Pointing fingers and laying blame does not help improve our schools," he said. Yet pointing fingers at those responsible for the dire state of public schools is what is needed.

Mr. Duffy's reaction, while unfortunate, is not surprising. For he and other government union bosses to change course, the incentive structure under which the UTLA - and government employee unions in general - operate needs to change.

As the late president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, so honestly put it, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren." Until they do, Mr. Villaraigosa's call on UTLA leaders to drop their opposition to his administration's reform efforts and join him in making Los Angeles' public schools better is likely to continue falling on deaf ears.

SOURCE





Subsidizing education makes it more expensive

A very unscientific Google search for ‘government education grants’ yields over 4,000,000 hits. There are all manner of scholarships, grants, and loans available for every conceivable category of person, with the possible exception of politically conservative religious white heterosexual males. There is no room on college campuses for hate-filled superstitious racist homophobes.

Not unless they are hate-filled Islamofascist racist homophobes, that is. They apparently go to the front of the Financial Aid line at University. But I digress.

Federal, state, and local governments subsidize higher education with billions of our taxpayer dollars every year. And every year, costs go up. Tuition, textbooks, housing, parking fees . . . you name it. The rate of increase far exceeds the rate of inflation.

(Source: InflationData.com)

But it does not exceed what the market will bear.

When Uncle Sam opened the floodgates to government-backed student loans without parent income restrictions in 1992, colleges welcomed the news with open arms. The sudden injection of millions of additional aid dollars only furthered tuition increases.

When the government made it exceptionally easy for students to borrow massive amounts of money, the colleges followed the lead by increasing their tuition rates. This combination led to record-level borrowing. (Source: InflationData.com)

The price is what the market will bear. That is the reason why textbooks that cost perhaps $25 each to publish will fetch upwards of $300 at checkout. And the main reason why higher education costs have skyrocketed over the past 50 years is because – you guessed it – the government subsidizes much of it. There are other contributing factors, but by far the biggest reason why tuition costs have skyrocketed is because everyone (well, everyone outside government) knows that no matter how ridiculously high costs soar, there will be some government subsidy to pay for most or all of it. Favored populations who qualify for these subsidies take for granted that the subsidies will be available semester after semester, year after year. Expectation leads to entitlement, and when a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement is combined with radical leftist pedagogy, you have a timebomb on your hands. This is what is happening in Great Britain, right now.

The once-great British university system has been slowly degenerating thanks to the progressive socialist agenda since the 1960s.

State interference affects the daily attitudes of students and professors. After the Education Act of 1962, University education was subsidized entirely by the taxpayer (or “free,” as the left like to call it) until 1997, when minimal tuition fees were introduced for students — fees that were eventually expanded to allow institutions to charge up to £3,290 in 2006.

So-called “free,” or at least cheap, university education has led to an attitude of apathy and confusion as to what the institution of a university is for. The traditional understanding of a university as an institution of learning has been replaced by the view that university is a place where one has an “experience” or discovers oneself.

With little or no cost to the student, the university attracts many people who would not normally go, but who choose it because it offers a fun way to spend a few years and come away with a qualification at the end. Although there are a number of students who wish to learn, train, and come away with a good degree, the spirit of apathy toward education at even some of the best universities is overwhelming.

Over time, student life has focused more on drink, drugs, and casual sex (assisted by state funded “safe-sex” schemes) than on lectures. Less time in the library and more time in the Student Union bar means more opportunities to be roped into left-wing-controlled “activism,” whether it is fair-trade, animal rights, eco-extremism, or plain old Marxism and anti-Americanism. As I write, news is filtering through that this week’s Stockholm bomber graduated from a British University, just like the “Christmas Day bomber,” Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab. One does not have to look far to see where their anti-Western attitudes may have been formed.

The current university system also allows for lazy lecturing. (Source: Britain’s Left Are Panicking, by Adam Shaw in American Thinker)

The solution to the soaring costs associated with higher education is less government subsidization, thus reducing the amount the market will bear. Other added benefits include more studious students, better teachers, and degrees that actually mean something.

SOURCE



17 December, 2010

In Defense of the Liberal Arts

Hmmmm.... Although I am an avid consumer of high culture myself -- from Thucydides to Chaucer, from Bach to Stravinsky -- I have always found it hard to defend such pursuits as anything more than personal amusements.

And I ended up practising what I preached. In my freshman year at university, I got the highest mark awarded in the poetry paper that formed part of the final examination for Introductory English literature. And there were around 1,000 students in that course.

So my emotional home is undoubtedly in the Humanities. Yet I did not persevere with that line of study. My major field of study became psychology -- which I saw (rather wrongly) as having some utility rather than being mere amusement.

But maybe my personal love of Humanities pursuits blinds me to its having utility too. So I think maybe there is something in what Victor Davis Hanson says below

One point Hanson might have made is that novels from past centuries can widen one's perspective. The world revealed to one when reading (say) Jane Austen is a very different one to the world today and an awareness of that could well help us to see present arrangements in a broader perspective. It might help us to take less for granted.

And there is one Humanities pursuit that I have never been apologetic about: The study of Latin. Learning Latin grammar is perhaps the best pathway to an understanding of how sentences work and is therefore a major help in learning how to write clear English. -- JR

The liberal arts face a perfect storm. The economy is struggling with obscenely high unemployment and is mired in massive federal and state deficits. Budget-cutting won't spare education.

The public is already angry over fraud, waste and incompetence in our schools and universities. And in these tough times, taxpayers rightly question everything about traditional education -- from teacher unions and faculty tenure to the secrecy of university admissions policies and which courses really need to be taught.

Opportunistic private trade schools have sprouted in every community, offering online certification in practical skills without the frills and costs of so-called liberal arts "electives."

In response to these challenges, the therapeutic academic Left proved often incapable of defending the traditional liberal arts. After three decades of defining the study of literature and history as too often a melodrama of race, class and gender oppression, it managed to turn off much of the college audience and the general reading public. And cheek by jowl, the utilitarian Right succeeded in reclassifying business and finance not just as undergraduate university majors, but also core elements in general education requirements.

In such a climate, it is natural that once again we are hearing talk of cutting the "non-essentials" in our colleges such as Latin, Renaissance history, Shakespeare, Plato, Rembrandt and Chopin. Why do we cling to the arts and humanities in a high-tech world in which we have instant recall at our fingertips through a Google search and such studies do not guarantee sure 21st-century careers?

But the liberal arts train students to write, think and argue inductively, while drawing upon evidence from a shared body of knowledge. Without that foundation, it is harder to make -- or demand from others -- logical, informed decisions about managing our supercharged society as it speeds on by.

Citizens -- shocked and awed by technological change -- become overwhelmed by the Internet, cable news, talk radio, video games and popular culture of the moment. Without links to our past heritage, we in ignorance begin to think our own modern challenges -- the war in Afghanistan, gay marriage, cloning or massive deficits -- are unique and don't raise issues comparable to those dealt with and solved in the past.

And without citizens broadly informed by humanities, we descend into a pyramidal society. A tiny technocratic elite on top crafts everything from cell phones and search engines to foreign policy and economic strategy. A growing mass below lacks understanding of the present complexity and the basic skills to question what they are told.

During the 1960s and 1970s, committed liberals thought we could short-circuit the process of liberal education by creating advocacy classes with the suffix "studies." Black studies, Chicano studies, community studies, environmental studies, leisure studies, peace studies, woman's studies and hundreds more were designed to turn out more socially responsible youths. Instead, universities too often graduated zealous advocates who lacked the broadly educated means to achieve their predetermined politicized ends.

On the other hand, pragmatists argued that our future CEOs needed to learn spread sheets at 20 rather than why Homer's Achilles does not receive the honors he deserved, or how civilization was lost in fifth-century Rome and 1930s Germany. Yet Latin or a course in rhetoric might better teach a would-be captain of industry how to dazzle his audience than a class in Microsoft PowerPoint.

The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate with it. Twitter and text-messaging result in an economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. Millions are becoming premodern -- communicating in electronic grunts that substitute for the ability to express themselves effectively and with dignity. Indeed, by inventing new abbreviations and linguistic shortcuts, we are losing a shared written language altogether, much like the fragmentation of Latin as the Roman Empire imploded into tribal provinces. No wonder the public is drawn to stories like "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" in which characters speak beautifully and believe in age-old values that transcend themselves.

Life is not just acquisition and consumption. Engaging English prose uplifts the spirit in a way Twittering cannot. The latest anti-Christ video shown at the National Portrait Gallery by the Smithsonian will fade when the Delphic Charioteer or Michelangelo's David does not. Appreciation of the history of great art and music fortifies the soul, and recognizes beauty that does not fade with the passing fad.

America has lots of problems. A population immersed in and informed by literature, history, art and music is not one of them.

SOURCE





Many students don't feel safe in school

As bullying, violence and other assaults have crept out of the District and into the suburbs, many students feel much less safe at school than their parents think.-Greg Whitesell/Examiner file
Barely half of students said they felt safe when they walked into Col. Zadok Magruder High School last year.

Magruder is not a chronically underperforming D.C. public school, but a Montgomery County high school where more than 97 percent of its senior class graduated last year, students showed up with a 94.6 percent attendance rate, and every student met state graduation requirements.

Just 55 percent of last year's Magruder students agreed with the statement "I feel safe in school" in a survey administered by the county's public school system SEmD a much lower number than the 71.2 percent of Magruder parents who agreed that "My child feels safe at school." Only 20 percent of students believe their belongings are safe at school and more than 60 percent agreed that "bullying is a problem."

Bullying, violence and other assaults have crept out of the District and now persist in the suburbs. Last week, a social studies teacher at Centreville High School in Fairfax was arrested for taking "indecent liberties" with a 16-year-old female student in 2007 and 2008. In Prince George's County, a student stabbed another at Northwestern High School during a fight Tuesday.

And in Montgomery, students feel much less safe than their parents think. At least one in four students at 31 public middle and high schools in Montgomery did not agree with the statement "I feel safe in school" on the survey, up from 24 schools in 2009. About 77 percent of high school students said they felt safe at school, while 92 percent of parents believed their children felt safe. Almost half of students deemed bullying a problem, while less than 30 percent of parents said the same.

"I spent a day in the lunch period talking to students about getting an adult on board if there was any safety issue going on. But most of the kids ... didn't know me well enough to open up to this old lady," says Patty Winters, chairwoman of the safety committee for Magruder's Parent-Teacher-Student Association.

Winters said she has focused on a campaign against drunken driving in which a grim reaper dresses up and deems students "dead." But little is done regarding the 34 fights, three weapons incidents and 20 "attacks" that Magruder reported last year -- and those aren't the highest numbers in the district. Northwood topped with 45 attacks; Kennedy with 50 fights; and Gaithersburg with seven weapons incidents.

In Fairfax, there were 133 weapons incidents and 429 offenses against students in the public middle and high schools last year.

Jim McLain, security coordinator for the Fairfax school system, pointed to the roughly 170,000 students in the district: "You're talking about a pretty large town, and in spite of best efforts, things are just going to happen."

In a survey by Fairfax's government and school board, 50.8 percent of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students said they had been bullied in the past year. Nearly 20 percent said someone had attacked them with the intention of seriously hurting them, and 88 percent said they had been threatened with a weapon.

Prince George's County declined to provide data, but its security issues, along with those of the District, are well-known. When Prince George's stepped up its attention to bullying, reports shot up from 77 in 2008-2009 to 347 incidents of bullying last year.

In D.C., interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson had to oust the private operator of Dunbar Senior High School after observing lax security. At most D.C. public high schools, security issues have declined in the past two years, but remain high. This school year, 51 students have been suspended for bringing weapons like knives, BB guns and box cutters to school.

SOURCE





Rioting UK students are misguided

Peter Saunders

Thousands of student radicals and hangers-on smashed up London last week, desecrating the Cenotaph (Britain’s national memorial to the war dead) and besieging the heir to the throne in his car. Like toddlers throwing a tantrum, they were complaining about a decision to make them pay for their own degrees.

Cameron’s Coalition is freeing universities to set their own fees for home students up to an annual maximum of £9,000 ($14,350 – considerably higher than the $8,859 maximum charged in Australia).

As in Australia, British students will pay nothing up front, but will repay their debt after they graduate. Repayments will be phased according to income, starting when earnings reach £21,000 pa ($33,500, roughly comparable to the $36,185 income threshold here). Students from poor backgrounds will get the first two years of their studies free.

Parliament last week confirmed these changes. Labour voted against, despite having instigated the inquiry that came up with the proposals, and the junior partners in the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats, split down the middle (their candidates had all pledged before the election to oppose any fee increases). Student leaders vowed to continue their campaign, but Cameron says the increases (from a current maximum of £3,000 [$4,780]) are necessary if universities are to be funded adequately.

With some justification, students point out that their parents’ generation got their university education for nothing. But they forget that higher education has mushroomed in the last 30 years. The United Kingdom now has 115 universities, and 44% of under-30s attend one. You can have a ‘free’ system, or a mass system, but no country can afford both.

Despite their red flags and Socialist Worker banners, the student radicals want their studies funded by other people whose lifetime earnings will be lower than their own. They favour the continuation of a system that redistributes income from people who haven’t gone to university, to people like themselves, who have.

Students say higher fees will deter people from going to university. Nobody knows if this is true (the introduction of fees by the Blair government had no impact on university applications). But even if it turns out to be true, it would be no bad thing if people started to think more carefully about whether university is right for them, and what courses they should do when they get there.

Currently, many graduates end up in jobs that do not require a degree, and there is no evidence that employers are crying out for more art historians, sociologists, or media studies experts (despite politicians claiming the country needs more graduates so it can compete in the global economy). As Andrew Norton of the CIS has been explaining for some years, the absence of a market in higher education has meant that many youngsters have made ill-informed decisions from which they have not benefited.

Hopefully, the introduction of full-cost fees will also shake up the universities. With the exception of Britain’s only private university (Buckingham), the other 114 teach for only about half the year. The other half is reserved for lengthy vacations so staff can carry out ‘research.’ This contributes to high tuition costs. The students who trashed London should reflect on the fact that fees are going up so their lecturers can continue to enjoy pampered careers.

Of course we need our best universities to do research. But this does not require every lecturer in every university to be given half the year off to produce skip-loads of third-rate publications. Most of what passes for ‘research’ in our ‘universities’ nowadays is of little value, and most lecturers would be better employed teaching for longer.

As the weaker institutions look for ways to reduce their costs and lower their tuition fees to attract customers away from their more prestigious competitors, they will have to use their labour more efficiently. This means their staff should have to teach more and write less. If that happens, it’s a win-win outcome.

The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated December 17. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.



16 December, 2010

Education: Investment Versus Spending

Thousands protested in London last week against a proposal to reduce subsidies to education. The plan, part of the austerity measures by David Cameron’s Conservative government, would raise the cap on university tuition from roughly £3,000 to £9,000, or from about $4,700 to $14,000. The measure passed by a small margin.

Under the new law the maximum tuition a British student attending Cambridge or Oxford would have to pay beginning in 2012 would be about $14,000. By comparison an American student attending Harvard today pays over $35,000 in tuition. (Having recently put a son in college, I can tell you that figure is fairly representative of selective liberal-arts colleges in the United States.)

Human Capital

This is my 25th year as a college professor, but I’m still idealistic about what a college education represents. I’m disappointed when a student, particularly a good one, is motivated to study because she wants to get a good-paying job after graduation. Of course, having a regular income is important for happiness, but as one of my respected colleagues once said to me, “A liberal-arts education gives you something to think about when you’re not working.” Indeed, I try to tell my students, especially the freshmen and sophomores, that they should try as much as possible to study and do things in college that are highly impractical because most of them will have to spend the rest of their lives being very practical. (A friend of mine recently told me of a Stanford MBA who said the most valuable course he took in college was art history.)

At the same time, I recognize that the market for skilled labor, like the market for anything else, is a matter of supply and demand. The choice of whether to major in chemical engineering or Renaissance literature or economics has to take into account not only what you love to do and are good at (these typically overlap), but also what you are willing or not willing to give up to do those things.

As the great Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, often pointed out: “There is only one efficacious way toward a rise in real wage rates and an improvement of the standard of living of the wage earners: to increase the per-head quota of capital invested.”

So investing in capital, in this case human capital, is essential to promote one’s material well-being. But, as Mises well knew, the capital invested has to be appropriate to the particular circumstances of time and place.

Appropriate Investment

There are many horror stories of where it wasn’t. Jane Jacobs relates how, for example, in the early 1960s the Rockefeller family tried to build a factory in India to produce “intrauterine loops” for birth control. There were at least two things wrong with the project, however.

First, as Julian Simon tirelessly argued, human intelligence is the “ultimate resource” and the fountainhead material progress. Thus instead of investing in birth control, it might have been better if the Rockefellers had bolstered their investments in things that boost the production of food, housing, and medicine.

Second, and Jacobs’s main point, the Rockefellers tried to build this factory in a rural area. Their intent was to create jobs and alleviate poverty outside the large cities. However, in the countryside such things as the proper tools, electrical and other infrastructure, and the knowhow to repair equipment were hard to find. Many small things went wrong because they lacked the local knowledge of the communities they were trying to help. Eventually, after trying for a year and spending a lot of money, they moved the factory to a large city, where it was up and running in six weeks.

As a largely a private humanitarian venture (although it had the blessing of the Nehru government), it had something that a government program usually doesn’t: a relatively hard budget constraint. Even though the benefactors were Rockefellers, competition for scarce investment capital meant there was a bottom line. Without it, there is no telling how long the factory would have languished in the Indian countryside.

Inappropriate Human Capital

So, returning to our subject, when is investment in education “inappropriate”? Well, one might say when it moves some to acts of violence against the innocent. (I understand, however, most of those protesters in London were less violent.)

But State subsidies, even those that use taxes to cover the difference between tuition and the expense of running a university, are not really investments at all. They are expenditures. And what guides political spending on education or housing or just about anything else is usually expediency. Politicians consider rate of return on investment when making spending decisions about as often as they consider moral principles: rarely.

Some could argue that from an economic point of view, subsidizing education is not as disruptive to the market process as, say, monetary manipulation or price controls. But on this point a recent story from the New York Times caught my eye – “China’s Army of Graduates Struggles for Jobs”:

In 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then the president, announced plans to bolster higher education, Chinese universities and colleges produced 830,000 graduates a year. Last May, that number was more than six million and rising.

Many Chinese parents did make financial sacrifices for their children’s education, so universities are not entirely state subsidized. But was the education appropriate to market demand? There have been unintended consequences:

It is a remarkable achievement, yet for a government fixated on stability such figures are also a cause for concern. The economy, despite its robust growth, does not generate enough good professional jobs to absorb the influx of highly educated young adults.

Graduates migrate to Beijing looking for opportunities that match their aspirations but are increasingly disappointed. Ironically, workers with traditional skills have been doing better:

Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant laborers grew by nearly 80 percent; during the same period, starting pay for college graduates stayed the same, although their wages actually decreased if inflation is taken into account.

Like all other goods, the demand curve for education slopes downward. Artificially lowering the price – in China, the United Kingdom, or the United States – is bound to create an excess demand for a university education now and surpluses of increasingly disappointed graduates in the years ahead. If the violence in London (as well as in some parts of California where students were also protesting tuition hikes) is an indicator, the future is not bright.

SOURCE





Results down to strong discipline and school trips, says head of top British primary school

The head teacher of the top primary school in England today warned against “hot-housing” pupils to pass exams. Pauline Gordon, acting head of Manuden primary in Bishop's Stortford, Essex, said repeatedly drilling children to inflate test results was counterproductive. She suggested pupils learned better with a varied curriculum, a large number of school trips and strong discipline.

The school, which has fewer than 100 children, was the only primary in the country to ensure all pupils exceeded the standard expected for their age group. All 11-year-olds reached the level pupils are supposed to meet in the first few years of secondary education in both English and maths, it was disclosed.

Mrs Gordon, who has led Manuden primary since September, insisted the school’s high results were down to a varied curriculum rather than “teaching to the test”. "I don't believe in hot-housing children for the tests," she said. "Teachers have very high expectations of the children, and we offer a very wide and varied curriculum, we spend lots of time on school visits."

Only 13 pupils sat exams at the small primary this summer and figures showed no children had high levels of special educational needs. All pupils reached Level 5 - one above the standard expected for their age - in English and maths.

This year's 10 and 11-year-olds were "particularly able", Mrs Gordon said, "which does make a difference". "The majority of children are fairly confident, and take it (the tests) in their stride," she said. "We have very strong expectations of how they should behave, and if we feel a child can do more we will tell them."

Starks Field primary in Enfield, north London, was officially the worst performing school as no pupils reached Level 4 in English and maths. A third of children at the school have special needs and more than seven per cent of lesson time was lost in the last academic year due to pupil absence.

Achilleas Georgiou, deputy leader of Enfield council, said the results did not reflect the quality of the school. "As the only children in the school taking Sats were 13 children that had joined the school just five months earlier, their league table position is a false one and does not reflect the quality of teaching in the school, which has been praised by Ofsted," he said.

SOURCE






The British version of Head Start hasn't worked either

More than £25 billion spent on early education under Labour has failed to improve children’s language and numeracy, according to a landmark study published today.

A raft of reforms introduced by the last Government – including a new curriculum for pre-school children and a generation of Sure Start centres – have had no impact on five-year-olds’ understanding of the basics.

An analysis of more than 117,000 children over an eight year period showed pupils’ early reading and picture recognition ability had actually declined slightly in the last decade.

The report by Durham University suggested that failure to develop key skills at a young age could hold children back throughout compulsory education and in later life. It suggests that the primary focus of Labour’s education policy since 1997 – boosting standards in the early years – has failed to deliver tangible improvements.

The findings will raise serious question marks over the last Government's flagship reforms designed to give the youngest children a better start. It includes the opening of some 3,500 Sure Start centres set up to deliver early education, childcare, health advice and family support in deprived communities.

Researchers said it suggested that the poorest families were still not getting enough help. It follows claims from David Cameron that the “sharp-elbowed middle-classes” often made better use of Sure Start than people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Dr Christine Merrell, primary director of Durham’s Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, which led the research, said: “Given the resources put into early years’ initiatives, we expected to see a rise in literacy and numeracy scores in schools, so it’s disappointing that there’s been no improvement.

“Our findings reinforce the concern that the poorest families in our society are not accessing the full range of educational opportunities and resources designed to help them. “Sure Start and other early years’ initiatives have valuable aims but we must evaluate what works and doesn’t work in a rigorous and scientific way.”

A Government source said: “Another study highlights Labour’s record of failing the poor. We will ensure that Sure Start is targeted at those who need it most."

The findings represent the latest in a series of bitter blows to the last Government’s education record. Primary school league tables being published later today are expected to show as many as one-in-10 English schools are failing to hit official benchmarks in the three-Rs. And a major international study last week found standards in secondary schools had plummeted below nations such as Poland and Estonia in recent years.

In the latest report, academics analysed the results of independent tests sat by children in 472 state primaries between 2001 and 2008. The simple 20-minute assessment – taken six weeks into the first full year of school – covered early reading, including identifying upper and lower case letters, multiple choice word recognition and reading simple sentences.

Numeracy exercises tested children’s understanding of the difference between “biggest” and “smallest”, counting four objects and simple addition and subtraction. The test, which was sat by around 15,000 children each year, also covered picture and shape identification.

An analysis of results showed a “statistically significant decrease” in children’s reading and shape recognition over eight years and a corresponding rise in maths results. However, in both cases academics insisted differences were small and not “educationally significant”.

The report, published in the Oxford Review of Education, said a range of “major initiatives… had been implemented on a wide scale during the years preceding and during the time investigated in this study”.

Academics admitted the analysis failed to cover children's personal, social or emotional development but concluded that "one might expect that these initiatives would have resulted in measurable changes”.

According to Government data, Labour spent £25bn in early years and childcare services between 1997 and 2009. Annual spending on Sure Start alone topped £1bn last year, providing access to services for more than 2.4m children and their families.

In 2003, Labour also introduced the Early Years Foundation Stage – a “nappy curriculum” for children to follow up to the age of five – and all three and four-year-olds have been given access to 15 hours a week of free childcare.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "We recognise that while Sure Start has had a positive impact on many families, there is much more work to be done to better reach those most in need.

"Sure Start is at the heart of our vision for early intervention - that’s why we are reforming it so that children’s centres focus more on reaching the most vulnerable, and use approaches that are backed by evidence."

SOURCE



15 December, 2010

Some Alaskan Parents Fined if Kids Skip School

I'm guessing that this mostly concerns Eskimos. The pressure to "modernize" native populations is always considerable. I think they should be left alone

School districts in western Alaska have found a new way to crack down on truancy -- or rather, an old way: They're getting police to enforce a years-old state law that lets them fine parents whose children skip school. Court records show some parents are being fined hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, if their children miss too many school days.

State law says children between the ages of 7 and 16 have to be in school or their parents can be fined up to $500 for every five unexcused absences. But not all school districts are making sure the law is enforced. Anchorage Superintendent Carol Comeau, for instance, can't recall her district pursuing a truancy violation in court in at least a decade.

In rural Alaska -- in regions such as Unalakleet, Kotzebue and Bethel -- districts are turning to the truancy law as a way to get kids back in classrooms. "It's not to get people into court. It's to get kids in school," said Sgt. Duane Stone, a supervisor for the trooper post in Kotzebue.

In all three regions, a series of warnings and meetings with parents generally come first, and courts allow the families to reduce or avoid the fees simply by improving attendance. Villages stretching from Kotzebue Sound east to Kobuk, the Northwest Arctic Borough School District may be the latest where parents are being fined.

Attendance counselor Michelle Woods, a former police detective, said she's been trying to ticket parents in communities outside Kotzebue since she was hired four years ago. At first, some schools officials worried they wouldn't have support from local school boards. The feeling was that troopers and courts are too busy fielding felonies, she said.

This year things are beginning to change, with troopers issuing truancy citations under the blessing of the district attorney's office, she said. "No attorney needs to be assigned. It's just like a speeding ticket," she said.

The first parent fined among the village schools in her region was the former village public safety officer, who was charged $100 last month, Woods said. "In my tenure here, at least in four years, we've never before had this kind of support from entities and law enforcement," Woods said.

Court also have fined parents in the Unalakleet-based Bering Strait School District more than $24,000 in truancy cases involving 49 children last year, said Carl White, a special assistant to the superintendent.

SOURCE





Religious schools are still leading the way as they dominate British league tables

Faith schools have increased their dominance in the ­primary league tables. Two thirds of the 50 best ­performing institutions were Church of England, Roman Catholic or Jewish. This comes despite the fact that faith schools account for only one in every three schools. Nearly every 11-year-old pupil in a faith school was a whole academic year ahead of the ­Government’s target level.

The head teacher of the country’s top-performing faith school, St Wilfrid’s Catholic primary, Sheffield, attributed its success to ‘religious conviction’.

The results will reignite the debate on admissions policies. Schools minister Nick Gibb said yesterday that more work had to be done to ensure all schools ‘fulfill their potential’.

Yesterday faith school leaders called on him to learn from their good example. Barbara Jarrett, head teacher of St Wilfrid’s, which ranked third overall in the tables, said: ‘It’s all about shared values. We expect our children to be respectful, care for each other, be committed and hard working. Our values reflect the values of our church.

‘And we encourage children to have a love of learning and a belief in their own ability to do well. Too many people in this country are not prepared to put in the effort to achieve. We don’t want our children to be among them. ‘There is a real crisis in our education system today, we call on the Government to learn ­lessons from faith schools.’

But critics of faith schools said their growing stranglehold is the result of a selective admissions process which secures more middle-class pupils. Paul Pettinger of campaign group the Accord Coalition, said the schools tended to attract aspirational parents who tend to have high-achieving children. He said: ‘It is because they have control over admissions. They attract more middle-class and aspirational pupils. ‘As a result performance is improved. And it is an upwards spiral because good results attract more aspirational ­parents and better teachers. ‘Nearby local community schools are undermined.’

Critics also say the schools register high performance because they allow middle class parents to ‘pew jump’ – discovering religion to enhance applications.

Last year the number of faith schools in the top 50 was just under two thirds. Of yesterday’s top 50, the proportion had risen to almost exactly two-thirds – with 33 schools making the grade.

SOURCE





The 1,000 primary schools failing Britain's children: 11-year-olds leave unable to read or write

One in four 11-year-olds leaves primary school without a proper grasp of the 3Rs, according to detailed Government data released yesterday. The league tables show that 112,600 pupils failed to reach the minimum standard in English and maths.

These children will start their secondary education unable to understand a simple piece of prose, write extended sentences using commas, recite the ten times table or add, subtract, multiply and divide in their heads.

And the shocking results mean more than 1,000 schools face being turned into academies or even closed because, under tough guidelines introduced by the Coalition, they would be judged to have failed their pupils.

The bleak picture was exposed by school-by-school data from 11,500 ­primaries published by the Department of Education yesterday.

The bad news was compounded by a teacher boycott of the SATs tests used to compile the tables, which left the parents of more than 100,000 pupils unable to assess the standard of their children’s education.

This year’s figures show that 73.5 per cent of 11-year-olds showed they had a grasp of the basics in maths and ­English at level four, the Government’s target for a typical child of their age. It is a marginal improvement on the 72 per cent of a year earlier, but remains a damning reflection of Labour’s education legacy, which failed to make an impact despite a ­doubling of spending during their years in power.

Education Secretary Michael Gove, in his recent White Paper, set new rules for failing schools. Under the guidelines, head teachers must ensure at least 60 per cent of 11-year-olds reach the target level in English and maths. Sub-standard schools will be closed and reopened as academies or merged with successful primaries. Those that do not meet the 60 per cent target will get a reprieve only if they can satisfy ‘pupil progression’ measures charting improvement between the ages of seven and 11.

Although the rules will not be effective until next year, the Government is already in discussion with the worst offenders.

The 2010 tables show that at almost 350 schools, more than half of pupils fell short of the expected standards. And just 280 schools ensured that all their pupils finished primary education with a decent grasp of English and maths.

The best-performing primary is Manuden, in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. The most improved was the Pilgrim School, in Rochester, Kent, which has produced the fastest improvement in results in the past three years.

At the bottom of the table is Starks Field Primary in Enfield, North London, where no pupils received an acceptable standard of English or maths.

The tables also showed that half of all children who qualify for free school meals do not leave primary with a grasp of the 3Rs.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the poorly performing schools had been ‘failed’. He said: ‘It is unacceptable that after seven years of primary school these children are not at the standard in English and maths that they need to flourish at secondary school. ‘It’s why we are putting such an emphasis on improving pupils’ reading ability in the first years of primary school, with a focus on phonics.’

But Russell Hobby, of head teachers’ union the NAHT, said: ‘League tables confuse, conceal and disparage school performance. They say nothing about the quality of teaching and downplay the fantastic work of many schools in the most challenging circumstances. League tables paint a hugely misleading picture.’

SOURCE



14 December, 2010

What if the tests are wrong?

A very sad story below. Even sadder is the fact that the teacher writing it has a Master's degree and yet still does not know the difference between an adjective and an adverb (as in "wrong" versus "wrongly"). And "me included" is also a bit rough. The reflexive "myself included" would be the formal usage

In today’s climate of high stakes testing, I haven’t heard too many people talking about the tests themselves. For example, who is making these tests, and what are some problems we’re having with them here at the ground level?

I’ll tell you some concerns I have. As dire as some of them may seem, there is a silver lining.

Last year, an essay question on the STAR test asked something like this, “What is the biggest thing you would change if you were given the key to your city?” The problem a lot of students had with this question, aside from being really bad at writing, was they didn’t have any idea what having a key to a city meant? They didn’t have the cultural capital, language proficiency, or life experience to know what that expression meant. So this prompt immediately relegated a large group of students to failure because they didn’t understand what the question was asking of them.

Detractors might say something like, “Well, that’s ridiculous. Those kids obviously aren’t even attempting to learn. How can they not know what a key to a city is? They have never had an interest in their own education.” Once again, it seems that society’s perceptions at large, and even those of the test makers, assumes these kids are a lot smarter than they are.

Let me put it this way. When the Chilean miners were being rescued, I showed my students some of CNN’s footage from my computer. Guess what? Over half of the students had no idea who the Chilean miners were. We sometimes forget how young and inexperienced these students are. We assume everyone has 900 channels, but you have to remember, many of these kids can’t afford cable. Hardly any of them have computers at home, and even less that have one hooked up to a printer that has ink. Internet? Forget about it.

We forget that while corporations and the rich are becoming more technologically advanced, the poor are lagging very far behind.

Now, I’m not arguing for dumbing-down test questions to their level, so to speak. Just because some of them spell their names wrong doesn’t mean our assessments should assess nothing more than getting the date right. I like the idea of thinking about what you would change in your city; I think that is a good writing prompt, I just think you need to make sure low-income students, ELL students, and students who can’t afford computers, the internet, or own a television that is simply plugged into a wall, understand the idioms and expressions you’re using.

Last month, at my school, we gave the same assessments in every high school. So every 9th grader in my English classes took the same assessment for House on Mango Street as every other 9th grader in the other two high schools in my city. Now I’m not even going to go into the fact that some teachers didn’t even teach that book, or that some classes don’t even have teachers yet (yes, still going on today on December 8th at my school). I’m just going to talk about the fact that after we assessed them, and uploaded their scores into the District database, a group of English teachers in my department got together to assess how they did on certain questions. What we found was a bit depressing. In our opinion, 8 of the questions were wrong. Either they were worded wrong, there was more than one answer, the answer given was wrong, there was a better answer- you get the picture. Now, on a test with less than 30 questions, how can we possibly assess anything if 8 of them are wrong?

So who is making these tests? Well, in our case, the tests were thought up by actual teachers at multiple sites, along with some district officials. Teachers (me included) took the tests beforehand and gave feedback as to which ones were wrong or needed work. The problem there was many of us differ about what is wrong with the tests and what needs to be reworded. Yet still, the finished product was still a test with many flaws.

What that tells me is that we need a greater focus in this profession about writing test questions, prompts, and we need to examine whether questions are really assessing what we want them to.

Here’s the kicker. They also need to be age appropriate and culturally sensitive.

So with all the things it takes to write a good prompt, or design a decent test, I just don’t think we have enough experts out there who are good at this.

Here’s a quick, but pathetic anecdote. A friend of mine got a job working for the education company in charge of monitoring my high school when we were taken over by NCLB. He was hired because of his business background, and his background in sales. He told me that at one point HE was helping write assessments- a man with absolutely no background in education. We both laughed about it. Then I went to work and put my head in my hands.

I am skeptical about every single assessment I give out, whether it’s a STAR test for NCLB or a District Assessment. I have serious reservations about what exactly we are assessing, and I am worried about how this will reflect on students and teachers.

I am all for increased teacher evaluation and accountability. But it is things like this that hurt our fight to show evaluations can work. How can you evaluate a teacher on a 28-question test when 8 of them are wrong? Instead of the class average being a 70%, it is now a 60%. If you compare that with how your students did last year in 8th grade, all that’s going to show is that in 9th grade (when they had YOU as a teacher), their scores dropped from Proficient to Basic. And five years from now, when we have REAL evaluations, those kinds of mistakes in the assessment itself will be forgotten, they’ll just see how large chunks of kids lost headway under your watch.

Okay, here’s the good news.

As far as I can see, even though a lot of these assessments are horrendous, they are pretty consistent. That is, they are consistently horrible, they always have many, many mistakes, so we can just hope all of the tests we are giving have a quarter of the questions wrong. In the end, the smartest kids still score the highest, and the struggling learners still struggle. These irregularities are not completely destroying our assessments of these kids. The danger is when the little problems result in bigger classifications- going from Proficient to Basic. That is a huge jump, even if it might only be a few points.

So our next big assessment is coming up. I just took the proposed exam and scored around a 78%, or a C+. I have a Master’s Degree. But that’s okay, because all the tests the students have been taking every year are this messed up, so hopefully it won’t reflect on what I’m teaching them.

SOURCE






Academic achievement ignored in Boston

But jocks highly praised. Why? One guess: The overwhelming whiteness of academic high achievers

Today, The Boston Globe published the latest in a long series of special “All-Scholastics” 14-page (12x22-inch) supplements on good local high school athletes from a variety of sports. These celebrations are produced three times a year (42 pages) with lots of pictures and little bios and lists of all-stars from the Boston area.

Again this Fall, there was no room for any mention by The Boston Globe of any noteworthy academic achievement by local students at the high school level. Christiane Henrich of Marblehead HS, in Marblehead, Massachusetts, wrote a 7,360-word Emerson-prize-winning history research paper on the quality (good for the day) of U.S. Civil War medicine. It was published in the only journal in the world for the academic papers of secondary students...No room in The Boston Globe for that to be mentioned. She is now at Stanford and doesn’t mind, but I mind about all the Boston-area students who are fed a constant diet of praise for athletic achievement by their peers and at the same time are starved of any and all news of the academic achievements of their peers.

In fact, over the years I have published a good number of exemplary history papers by high school students from the Boston area and they did not and do not get mentioned in The Boston Globe, nor do the academic achievements of our high school students in foreign languages (e.g. National Latin Exam, etc.), AP subject tests in Calculus, Chemistry, European history or in any other field, receive any notice from the Globe.

International competitions reveal that we are below average in Reading, Math and Science. Perhaps we should just explain that we don’t care about that stuff as much as we do about swimming, soccer, cross-country, football, golf, field hockey, and volleyball, because achievement by our high school students in those efforts are what we really like to pay attention to, (not that academic stuff), at least when it comes to The Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe (and its subscribers) are, in this way, sending a constant stream of clear messages (42 pages at a time in supplements, not to mention regular daily columns on HS sports) that in Boston (The Athens of America) what we care about is kids doing well in sports. If they do well in academics we don’t think that is worth mentioning. Sick, sad, and self-destructive, but there we are.

SOURCE





Don't touch pupils' fingers, British music teachers are told

Music teachers are being told not to touch the fingers of pupils learning to play instruments. The Musicians' Union has produced a video telling teachers: "It isn't necessary to touch children in order to demonstrate: there's always a better way."

But the video has provoked a storm of protest from teachers and campaigners who attacked the guidance as "madness" and said the video – which features a man teaching a child the violin – as a "grossly caricatured version of teacher-pupil contact".

The video, called "Inappropriate Demonstration", shows a lesson in which a pupil fails to play the right notes. The teacher first explains the technique by placing a hand on the pupil's shoulder and holding his fingers in the right position on the violin. He then explains it a second time by demonstrating on his own violin the correct position. The pupil then immediately plays the correct notes.

A voice-over on the video says: "When you're teaching instruments, there are times when you need to demonstrate particular techniques. "In the past, this has often been done by touching students, but this can make students feel uncomfortable and leave teachers open to accusations of inappropriate behaviour." The narrator adds: "You should never need to touch a student for demonstration. Use your creativity to find other equally effective ways to demonstrate."

The union said the video, produced with the NSPCC, MusicLeader (a charity-funded organisation to help music leaders) and the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, was aimed at helping music teachers "gain a better understanding of their child protection responsibilities and avoid situations that could lead to accusations of misconduct".

But teachers criticised the video and the "no-touching" policy. One music teacher, writing on the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music's online forum under the name "Banjogirl", said: "It's all madness. I can't help touching children occasionally. "It's bringing children up to think that there is something dirty about touch and to be suspicious of other people."

Seer Green, another music teacher, said the union and the NSPCC had "missed the point". "What is most important in all this is common sense. Building a good working relationship between teacher, pupil and parent is essential. "A sense of trust needs to be built up and then when any issues around 'touch' arise, they can be handled sensibly and with the minimum of fuss."

Henry Fagg, from The Tutor Pages, an independent educational services company based in North West London, said the video depicted "a grossly caricatured version of teacher-pupil contact.

He said the "no-touching" policy was "hysterical" and interfered with day-to-day music teaching. "It also fails to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate touch, and hence the real issue of child abuse is completely ignored."

Josie Middleton, of the Manifesto Club which campaigns against excessive regulation, said: "The video is absurd. Teachers need to be able to straighten backs, reposition fingers, or shake out stiff hands. "The assumption of this video is that all touch is potentially suspicious. This turns normal behaviour into something very seedy, and encourages decent people to be anxious all the time. "It also blurs the boundary between abusive touch, and caring or instructive touch – and makes it harder to distinguish genuine abuse."

Diane Widdison, spokesman for the union, said: "It's a difficult area but we are here to protect children and to protect our members' careers. "When allegations are made against music teachers they are suspended immediately while an investigation is carried out and their careers are damaged or ruined even if they are declared innocent."

In one recent case the parents of a child learning the guitar complained that the teacher had touched their child's finger to pluck a guitar string.

"A lot of children don't like to be touched by adults," she added. "You don't need to touch children to teach them how to play an instrument. We live in a culture where children know their rights and touching can be misinterpreted."

SOURCE



13 December, 2010

Teachers unions often resist school reforms

The Obama administration could not have set the stage for a better demonstration of the power and priorities of Wisconsin's teachers unions. With its Race to the Top competition, the federal government dangled the prospect of a share of $4.35 billion for those states ready to enact reforms, especially related to improving teacher and principal performance.

Eyes on that prize, states launched plans tying teacher pay and promotions to student achievement, giving state officials more control over local schools and overhauling data tracking and assessment systems. Then the game got tricky: Teachers unions had to be on board.

In the end, only 11 states and the District of Columbia ended up with money from the program this year. Wisconsin got nothing.

The Wisconsin Education Association Council had helped kill or watered down critical parts of the state's proposal, with the president of the teachers union attaching a letter to the application that one participant described as "grudging." In the end, only 12% of the union's local leaders endorsed a plan that might have brought in more than $250 million in school funding to Wisconsin.

Perhaps the state is better off, as some educators contend in criticizing the priorities and the strings attached to the federal dollars. But the episode shows that when it comes to assessing and improving teacher quality, the most powerful voice in Wisconsin - and perhaps the biggest obstacle - could be the teachers union.

"The teachers union, they can be very effective in these reforms if they're willing to sit at the table and be fair about it," said state Rep. Brett Davis (R-Oregon), former chair of the Assembly's education committee. "But, up to now, they've controlled all the cards and there's no reason for them not to do anything they want."

On top of being one of the state's most dominant political forces, with an ability to influence legislation and elections, Wisconsin's teachers unions have a direct effect on teacher quality through the role they play in local contract negotiations and representation of teachers targeted for improvement or dismissal.

By adhering to pay schedules that fail to distinguish between low- and high-performing teachers, protecting ineffective teachers from dismissal and fighting for work rules that provide more benefits for their members than for children, teachers unions stand in the way of improving the profession, critics argue.

For example, then-Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent William Andrekopoulos complained only last year that the district's teachers union leaders had not allowed their members to vote on a proposal that would have used federal stimulus dollars to extend the school day and provide extra professional development for teachers. Research suggests that, if done well, adding instructional time can benefit low-income and other students who have fewer learning opportunities outside school.

Some reform progress

Across the country, teachers unions have taken leadership roles on such reform projects as tying teacher bonuses to student test score results and revamping teacher evaluations.

On Thursday, the National Education Association announced it would form a 21-member commission to study the teaching profession and make recommendations on the union's role in promoting teacher effectiveness and advancing the profession. WEAC is an affiliate to that national union.

"I think reform is most likely to be embraced when teachers have trust in their union leaders and when union leaders have faith in district officials," said Richard Kahlenberg, an education policy expert at the liberal Century Foundation.

Wisconsin's unions largely have not been open to change, however. Dal Lawrence, the former longtime president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers and current member of the Teachers Union Reform Network, called the state's teachers union one of the most "retrograde" in the country, along with New York's. "In Wisconsin, they think they invented labor-management relations in the 1920s and they don't want to hear about anything new since then," he said.

WEAC President Mary Bell challenged the notion that her organization hasn't been willing to innovate, pointing to efforts in districts such as Green Bay, where the union has worked with the superintendent on reforming professional development, and to a statewide licensure overhaul that more closely targets teachers' professional development to their needs.

WEAC - which represents teachers in all but 18 of the state's 425 school districts and counts about 98,000 members - also has advocated for higher pay for teachers in hard-to-staff schools or subject areas and providing bonuses for teachers who earn certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, she said. Such efforts would have been considered anathema in the past to teachers unions, originally formed in the image of factory-floor labor organizations to protect a largely female membership against arbitrary pay and dismissal practices.

More HERE





British student fee 'savings' will fund windmills in Africa

The cause of the major political story of last week – the row over tuition fees, students rioting and all – was, as we all know, “public spending cuts”. But how much money does the Government actually hope to save on tuition fees? If the immediate problem is our massive state deficit, it seems odd that the Government should risk such unpopularity, not for any immediate saving, but in the hope that it will get the money back over the next 30 years, as students can afford to repay it.

In the short term, the Government’s own projection as to how much it will save is that the funding of university tuition will be cut by £2.9 billion by 2014. As it happens, £2.9 billion is the sum ring-fenced, by the same public spending review, to be given to developing countries to help them fight global warming with windmills and solar panels. It is also slightly less than the £3 billion by which our public debt is rising every week. These much-vaunted “cuts” are not all we are led to believe.

SOURCE





Australia: Appalling medical school teaching

Even something as basic as anatomy stumps medical students -- but you can be sure that they are well up on "cultural sensitivity" and the like

Anatomy teaching has been cut back so much that medical students have been unable to identify important body parts. In some cases, students who volunteered for a catch-up crash course in anatomy could not answer when asked to identify specific anatomical structures, such as major blood vessels, in partially dissected human specimens. In a few cases, students responded with fictitious names of body parts that did not exist.

The seven-week course in full-body dissection, run earlier this year at the University of Sydney, proved wildly popular with the students who completed it -- and had a dramatic effect on their anatomical knowledge. The students were tested again halfway through and at the conclusion of the course, and both times the 29 students achieved almost perfect scores.

The findings, by a team led by George Ramsey-Stewart, professor of surgical anatomy at the University of Sydney, promise to rekindle controversy over the scaling back of anatomy tuition nationwide.

Detailing the results in today's edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, Professor Ramsey-Stewart called for a standard national curriculum for anatomy -- something resisted by most medical school deans -- that included dissection. He also called for "barrier" assessments, requiring students to gain a pass mark before being able to progress in their degree course.

Structures some students failed to identify correctly included the abdominal aorta -- the biggest artery in the abdomen -- and the sciatic nerve, the longest and widest nerve in humans that runs from the lower back into the leg.

Professor Ramsey-Stewart said while it would be wrong to make too much of the students' poor results in the first tests, it was nevertheless "of concern" that one-quarter of all the answers given by the students betrayed worrying gaps in their knowledge. "It's a problem for most universities . . . I hear from my anatomical and surgical colleagues that it's across the board," he said.

However, he said the students involved were too advanced in their course to have benefited from curriculum changes introduced by the University of Sydney in 2007, when anatomy teaching hours were trebled.

Doctor and researcher Steven Craig, who in March published a study that found teaching hours for anatomy varied from as few as 56 hours in one medical school to 560 hours -- said improvements in anatomy teaching to date were mostly "a patch-up job". "These sorts of (voluntary dissection) courses are fantastic -- for the students who get to do them," Dr Craig said. "But if they can only accept 30 of the 250 students (it needs expanding)."

Australian Medical Students Association president Robert Marshall rejected the call for a national curriculum, and said such studies ignored the fact that much anatomy tuition was incorporated into other activities.

SOURCE



12 December, 2010

Unlearning the Lessons Being Taught

Islamists aren't the only threat to speech critical of Islam. Many European states, for example, have criminalized speech acts through legally enforced "political correctness" embodied in "hate speech" laws. In America, where it still remains (more or less) legal to think and speak, the assault on free expression is being waged on a different front, our universities. The target? The minds of America's youth.

Far from being bastions of free thought and critical inquiry, our universities, through speech codes, security fees, and other tactics, begin the "political correctness" indoctrination process early, teaching young Americans what they may and may not say (READ: think). Naturally, included in the realm of the verboten is expression deemed critical of Islam.

One Philadelphia organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (FIRE), an organization dedicated to protecting individual rights on America's campuses, is fighting back and has handled a few cases that will be of particular interest to our readers:

Student group slapped with "security fee" for Wilders event:

In October of 2009, the student organization, Temple University Purpose (TUP), sponsored an event with Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, who currently faces prosecution for "hate speech" in the Netherlands. Several weeks later, the group received charges for an additional "security fee" for the event. Charging extra security fees for a controversial event because of a potential hostile reaction from the audience has been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because it financially burdens speech. Citing this precedent and through dogged persistence, the FIRE succeeded in having the fee withdrawn.

College Republicans investigated for fake flag "desecration" at anti-terrorism event:

In 2007, San Francisco State University's College Republicans were subjected to disciplinary action for stepping on mock Hezbollah and Hamas flags as part of an anti-terrorism event. With help from the FIRE, the witch-hunt was ended and students escaped punishment. Later, with the assistance of the FIRE's Speech Codes Litigation Project and the Alliance Defense Fund, the College Republicans delivered a little disciplinary action of their own, raising and winning a constitutional challenge to the university's speech code.

"Portraits of Terror" art exhibit censored:

In 2006, then Penn State student, Joshua Stulman's exhibit "Portraits of Terror" was pulled by the university just three days before its opening. According to FIRE President, Greg Lukianoff, the exhibit was censored "twice: first because administrators didn't like what it had to say, and later out of fear that violence would ensue if his artwork were shown on campus." The FIRE has helped raise awareness of the incident through writing and a short documentary. Is there anyone out there with the courage to show this exhibit?

Through cases like those enumerated above related to expression concerning Islam, and through countless others directed more generally at protecting individual liberty on our campuses, the FIRE is helping students to unlearn some dangerous lessons they are being taught at our colleges and universities about the scope of individual liberty. To paraphrase Judge Learned Hand, liberty lies in the hearts and minds of men and women; if it dies there, no laws can save it. Those at the FIRE understand this proposition and are fighting to keep liberty alive in one of the places it counts the most.

SOURCE





How can it be right that an 11-year-old boy can call me a f****** cow - and there's not a thing I can do?

Letter to Britain's education boss from a British teacher

Dear Mr Gove,

When I heard the proposals for your latest White Paper, even a cynical, hard-bitten old teacher like me gave a feeble cheer because I thought finally here was one educational reform I could really applaud. I am referring to your plan to revive languages in the English Baccalaureate.

I am biased of course; as a languages teacher, my enthusiasm for my subject allowed me to hope that it might go some way to redressing the past decade's shocking decline in language teaching. That was the inevitable consequence of the batty decision to make languages non-compulsory. Any fool could have predicted the result.

The decline is by no means restricted to languages. Last week, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that one in five British 15-year-olds failed to meet its minimum requirements in maths and reading.

Britain fell from 17th to 25th for reading and from 24th to 28th for maths in the study of 65 developed nations - our pupils are now behind those from Estonia, Lichtenstein and Slovenia. Education here is described as 'stagnant at best'.

But then, as I pondered your language reforms, the awful truth hit home: I would have to carry on teaching pupils who don't want to learn a language. You might say that I can't have it both ways; that I can't think it right that all pupils should have the opportunity to learn a language, but then also dread having to teach the difficult or less than able ones. But I am dreading it.

At present my GCSE classes are a haven of calm. I teach lovely pupils who are bright and who choose to do a language and actually see the point of it. This is a stark contrast to the situation further down the school.

Let me give you an example of what it's like to teach children in the bottom set at Key Stage 3 level (those aged between 11 and 14) at a bog-standard comprehensive school, not in some inner-city hellhole, but in one of the leafier suburbs of a town in the Midlands.

Last month, an 11-year-old boy walked late into my class and proceeded to disrupt it so badly that I could not teach. He threw pencils at his classmates, called out when I asked him not to, refused to work and disrupted all the other pupils until finally I had to have him removed from the classroom because he called me a 'f****** cow'. His actions were totally unprovoked by anything I had said or done - he said it because he knew he could get away with it.

His punishment? He had two days off school - a so-called ' exclusion' - because that's the only sanction we have. And now he's back in my classroom, doing the same all over again. Did I get an apology? No chance. Did his parents telephone me to say sorry? Of course not. Why?

Because I'm a teacher. And it's OK to treat us like that. After all, they pay their taxes don't they? They practically employ me.

Do you know the worst thing, Mr Gove? I was not shocked to be sworn at by an 11-year-old boy. It's not shocking because it happens frequently in my school.

And there is absolutely nothing I, nor my headteacher, nor even you, Mr Gove, can do about it. Because you and those who came before you have taken away any sanctions we once had. Because those children and their parents have all the rights and none of the responsibilities. Because an 11-year-old can swear at me, but if I tried to physically remove him from my room against his will, I would be accused of assault and suspended. How can you think that is right?

A colleague in the English department has also had problems with a girl in his class. She refuses point-blank to do any work and her father refuses to allow her to do detentions. Well, you might reasonably say, he signed an agreement to abide by the school rules when his daughter came to us as an 11-yearold in Year 7, so why not just tell him to take her somewhere else? The truth is we can't.

We're not allowed to kick out pupils, even if their parents won't support us. We will have to put up with her behaviour and her smug, you-can't-touch-me attitude until she leaves.

The girl has now been withdrawn from my colleague's class, not because he finally managed to get rid of her but because she accused him of assault. He didn't touch her, of course, and he is a fantastic, caring teacher with 20 years' experience. It's because the girl's father has kicked up such a fuss that it's the easiest option. A tacit admission that we can do nothing about her and her behaviour. Can you imagine the frustration and anger that arouses in us?

As a mother myself, that father's attitude appals me. If, when they were younger, my own children had been rude to any adult, let alone a teacher, I would have been mortified. I would have telephoned the school or gone there in person to apologise and my child would have been punished. I would not have cared about excuses such as not 'getting on' with the teacher or 'not liking' a particular subject. I wouldn't have cared because life and learning are not always easy or fun.

And that is the problem. Over the years teachers have been bombarded with new initiatives and brilliant ideas from people who, in all likelihood, have not faced a classroom full of children for years.

Today we must all produce 'outstanding lessons', as the jargon has it. Teachers must be entertaining and the pupils must be constantly challenged and stimulated. Forgive me for thinking, Mr Gove, that as a teacher with years of experience, I should be allowed to have the occasional lesson which is not brilliant or fantastic or fun, but just an hour when the pupils listen to me and accept that I might have something of worth to impart to them.

Instead, all my lessons have to be 'child-centred' and I must remember at all times that 'every child matters'. At the beginning of each year I am given lists of information about my pupils. These indicate whether they are Children in Care, Gifted and Talented, have Special Educational Needs, are entitled to Free School Meals or, worst of all, have Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD).

We get plenty of those and we know exactly what to expect from them. The children with EBD will be the ones who disrupt lessons, who refuse to do their homework, who talk while the teacher is talking, who will not turn up for detentions, who will swear at teachers, who will basically make life as difficult as they can. And you can bet your bottom dollar their parents are a pain, too.

And what do I do with these lists? I am supposed to put them in my register and plan my lessons accordingly. I am supposed to be aware that every child learns in a different way and at a different pace. I am supposed to produce different resources or objectives for each child so that I can prove that I am a good teacher.

Can you imagine the work and stress that that causes? Because some other Secretary of State thought that 'inclusion' - the notion that all pupils should be taught together - is a good idea.

Never mind the poor teacher who has to cope single-handedly with a class that might contain a boy who has a reading age below six alongside a gifted pupil. You wonder why pupils become disruptive?

And don't be deceived by those teachers who insist that they have no problems with children. Rubbish. They are frightened to admit that they have problems because that would mean not that they need more sanctions to control these difficult kids but that they are bad teachers, producing 'boring' lessons. And God forbid a teacher should be 'boring'.

The trendy propaganda is that engaging lessons will make your pupils want to learn, even if it's bottom set French last thing on a Friday afternoon. I would love to see you teach such a class just once, Mr Gove, let alone face the little darlings week in week out. And with no sanctions to help you. And a senior leadership team whose hands are tied too.

Oh, and remember that if you phone the parents to say that their child is behaving badly, they will deny it or prefer to believe that you are to blame.

Don't get me wrong, Mr Gove, the vast majority of pupils I teach are great. They have supportive parents who are keen for them to do well and expect them to behave with respect. But it only takes a couple of children whose parents are not supportive and who think it is OK to abuse teachers to ruin a class.

Don't think, either, that I don't work hard. Even though I've been teaching a long time, I listen patiently to all the new initiatives and I do my best to keep up with them. I really do. I work two or three hours on Saturdays and a couple of hours each evening, planning lessons that I hope will be stimulating and interesting. But I am getting so tired of it because it doesn't matter how hard I work.

I can't deal with a class containing pupils with such a wide ability range, and who have all the other problems that I'm supposed to know about.

I can't deal with a class of nine EBD children who hate French and therefore me. And whose parents probably say they don't need to learn a language because they're never going to use it anyway.

Am I old-fashioned in thinking that in the classroom I deserve some respect just because I am an adult? That I deserve to be listened to just because I'm a teacher?

Because of that brilliant idea a decade ago to make the subject noncompulsory, languages inevitably became less and less popular because, the truth is, they are difficult. You actually have to learn stuff and remember it. Why go to all that trouble when you can do food technology, drama, dance, PE or travel and tourism NVQ and get a higher grade with far less effort?

Education is supposed to produce rounded students who have an open, healthily enquiring view of the world. Instead we are producing pupils who have no thirst for knowledge, no interest in other cultures and no inclination to study just for the sheer pleasure of it.

They are learning that they do not need to work hard - they just need to sit back and be entertained. They will be fed information in bite-size chunks that don't require too much uncomfortable chewing or swallowing. The refrain I hear more often than any other is: 'I don't get it.' Too many pupils won't even try to get it. They would far rather give up and blame the teacher for making it too hard or too boring.

I doubt I will be able to continue working until I'm 60, Mr Gove, if you get your way because I don't have the energy it requires even now to control a class of 11-yearolds who can't concentrate, can't spell and can't see the point of anything which doesn't entertain them. What a sad state of affairs that is.

SOURCE






Banish Mickey Mouse from the republic of learning

Social inclusion is a worthy goal but it must not come at the cost of academic standards, says Christopher Pearson, commenting from Australia

In the 1930s, about 5 per cent of Australians went to university. By the late 80s, the figure had risen to about 25 per cent. If the Gillard government's targets are met, 40 per cent of today's primary school students will attend a university.

Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne and this year's Boyer lecturer, says this is a good thing. "All Australians, whatever their means, should feel encouraged to participate. Only when citizenship is available to all who seek [membership of the global republic of learning] will we realise the potential of this republic of learning."

You don't get to be vice-chancellor of a great seat of learning without a combination of intellectual ability and guile. It cannot have escaped Davis's notice that the expansionary policies he is so fulsomely endorsing will compromise what remain of the academic standards in the sandstone universities, let alone their besser-brick competitors. The most charitable gloss that can be put on the version of his fourth Boyer Lecture published in Inquirer last Saturday is that he's being diplomatic about something he must privately deplore and is powerless to stop. (As an aside, no doubt he hopes that Melbourne's new generalist first degrees will sandbag it, to some extent, against a rising tide).

But it can be argued that Davis and Julia Gillard are setting the bar too high. If a degree is good enough for 40 per cent of the population, why not extend the privilege to all as a citizen's birthright? Surely Labor's commitment to equity and social justice demands no less.

Inadvertently, Davis makes the case. "For younger adults, the lack of university or a higher-level vocational qualification doubles their chance of unemployment. Less education is statistically linked to lower income, a higher chance of poor physical or mental health, less involvement in community or civic life and, for men, a lesser chance of getting and staying married. Missing out on education flows through to every part of life."

When it's put like that, the question arises: what is so special about the lucky 40 per cent? Why should their incomes and life chances be boosted at the expense of everyone else? We can be confident that the proportion of people with high IQs hasn't magically increased to keep pace with the percentage of people admitted to tertiary education since the 30s. Rather, statistics tell us that most of the 40 per cent heading off to university will be of no more than average ability, just like most of the excluded 60 per cent. The inescapable conclusion is that the process of choosing winners and losers will be outrageously arbitrary.

In stressing the desirability of social inclusiveness in the undergraduate population, Davis gets into a rhetorical bind. "People expect university entry to be based strictly on merit. Elitism - at least elitism based on something other than intellectual ability - is untenable. If Australia is to be a meritocracy, drawing in students from all walks of life is essential."

As readers who are growing long in the tooth will recall, referring to people "from all walks of life" was a post-war social workers' cant term for alluding to the poor, which strikes an odd note in our brave new world. So does appearing to sanction intellectual elitism, especially when the policy you're advocating has precisely the reverse intention and guaranteed outcome.

If Davis were being frank with us, he'd have to admit that the 40 per cent inclusion principle was so arbitrary that a university entry scheme decided on the basis of students' hair colour, the month in which they were born or indeed their parents' income or postcode would make just as much sense.

In Australia we've already reached the stage where all you need to get into arts courses at Deakin's Warrnambool campus or La Trobe's Albury is a tertiary entrance rank score of 50. Such courses are not even attracting the top 40 per cent of school-leavers, so we can expect a further systematic dumbing-down of tertiary standards in the future to which Davis beckons us.

In his first Boyer Lecture, introducing the theme of "the republic of learning", Davis spoke of the way in which "a handful of humanists in the time of Erasmus has grown to more than 150 million higher education students and staff worldwide". This is as callow and shameless a conjuring exercise as I've seen in a long time. It calls to mind Julian Barnes's line about expecting the past to suck up to a triumphalist view of the present. No one apprised of the achievements of Renaissance scholarship could expect to be taken seriously when suggesting they could be conflated with what these days passes for tertiary education. I think that over the holidays Davis should read Erasmus's In Praise of Folly.

As a longstanding advocate of meritocracy, I'm all in favour of policies that open up tertiary education to able people from backgrounds of disadvantage. If, in the process, some middle-class dullards with a misplaced sense of entitlement are excluded, that's fine by me. The professional classes have no automatic right to entrench themselves to the third and fourth generation.

What I object to is lowering academic standards and debasing the currency in the name of social inclusion. Davis's reassurance that "the republic of learning, once the preserve of an elite, is on the road to democracy" just won't do. It should go without saying that it's demeaning to working-class people to assume that the only way most of them can get a tertiary education is by offering them Mickey Mouse courses.

Then again, considering that education services for foreign students now amount to such a large source of national income, the debauch of academic standards is a very short-sighted approach. Apart from the weather and proximity to home, in 10 years why would the most talented Chinese or Indian students pay good money to study here? Perhaps, in the future, leadership in the tertiary sector in Australia will come from private universities that see the competitive advantage in setting the highest standards and refusing to compromise on them.

SOURCE



11 December, 2010

TX: HISD board OKs creation of a school just for boys

Goal for students is a college degree

No sagging pants and grungy T-shirts will be allowed at this new Houston school. Neither will bad attitudes. And neither will girls.

This school, approved by the Houston board of trustees Thursday, will open next fall with only male students. The campus will start with sixth- and ninth-graders, who will have to apply to attend, and will grow annually to become a full middle and high school.

The boys at this new school in Houston's Fifth Ward will have to wear blazers and ties. They will take advanced courses, learn a foreign language and- the biggest expectation — go on to earn a college degree.

This will be the first all-boys school started directly by the Houston Independent School District, which last month announced plans to open an all-girls campus next year. The district has two other all-boys schools, but they are run by contractors and one is leaving HISD's umbrella to become a state charter school.

"We have to do something to save our young men of today," HISD Trustee Carol Mims Galloway said, noting that too many already have been in jail or are on track to land there.

The HISD board, at Galloway's request, postponed a vote on the all-boys school last month to allow more community meetings. Some in the historically black Fifth Ward were upset that the school would be housed at the E.O. Smith campus and would require students to apply - meaning the Smith students would be rezoned to other campuses.

Pastor Leonard Barksdale, of the Fifth Ward Missionary Baptist Church, told the school board Thursday that some community members still were upset that students would be displaced. "They want me to let you know that they really love their community and they love their schools," Barksdale said. "And some have the perception that maybe this board does not know that."

Galloway said in an interview that the entrance requirements for the all-boys school have not been set, but she plans to advocate for reserving more than 50 percent of the seats for students from northeast Houston. The school will be modeled off the nationally touted Chicago Urban Prep Academy.

Christopher Whisler, an eighth-grader at E.O. Smith, told the board he's ready to sign up. "I think the boys school is a great idea because, well, we will be able to concentrate more," he said, drawing laughter.

The number of public schools serving a single gender has exploded since 2002 thanks in part to a loosening of federal rules. Today, the United States has 95 single-gender schools and another 445 campuses that separate boys and girls for some courses, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.

In addition to the all-boys schools in HISD, the charter network KIPP has an all-boys school and an all-girls campus in North Forest. The first two all-boys contract schools in HISD are Pro-Vision and the William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

WALIPP, which opened 2002 and now is on the Texas Southern University campus, recently won approval to become a state charter school and to open an all-girls campus next year. Unlike HISD's new single-sex campuses, the WALIPP schools don't have entrance requirements for students, according to Cheryl Lawson, the WALIPP executive director. Her father, the Rev. William Lawson of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, founded the school.

"The boys always tell me, 'I just didn't want to come because there were no girls. But now that I'm here, I'm glad because I'm learning more,' " Cheryl Lawson said, adding that she expects the same reaction from the girls next year.

SOURCE







Rioting protesters in London mask the real problem facing today's British students

Universities are shoddy, state-directed and underfunded – with too little inclination for teaching

Channel 4 News on Thursday night spoke of "tens of thousands of students" protesting in Parliament Square. The only word not open to question in that phrase is "of". Demonstrators are usually wildly inaccurate about their numbers, and the media report their estimates almost uncritically.

There weren't tens of thousands – it was more like a few hundred – and we can have little idea whether those who urinated on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill, swung from the Union Flag on the Cenotaph, stove in the doors of HM Revenue and Customs or attacked the car carrying the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were enjoying what they call the "right" to higher education. Most troublemakers were wearing masks. Some of those interviewed could barely speak English.

On the same evening, BBC News cut to a reporter, Ben Brown, who was sharing his camera space with protesters who yelled, on cue, round the illegal fire they had lit. The BBC was almost literally fanning the flames. The next morning, the Today programme's attitude to the attack on the royal car was to joke about whether the vehicle was a Rolls Royce.

On Channel 4, the reporter Alex Thomson spoke of rioters "regaining Parliament Square as a place of protest for the people of this country". The mob had scored the word "No" in huge letters on the grass of the square. The protest, he opined, was "all rather British". Perhaps it was, but not in the happy way that he meant. It displayed our peculiar contemporary gift for treating nasty behaviour with collective complacency.

The constant protests in Parliament Square in recent years – sometimes violent, and always ugly and inconvenient – are not the proud property of "the people of this country". They are, in effect, an alliance between small groups of extreme, politically motivated people and the state-protected television media who always report them indulgently.

From inside the House of Commons, the Labour MP Tristram Hunt spoke of the place as being a "bubble", guarded from the anger outside. But at least MPs are elected. Really it is the square itself which has become the bubble. It is a public space, one of the most important in this country. But the authorities allow it to become a stage-set for gangs who deprive us, the public, of what is ours. On Thursday, the police did their best, but they are up against a political and media culture which thinks that letting extremists control the streets is a mark of "tolerance".

I read in another newspaper yesterday that "such stupid, graceless acts of violence do nothing to help the cause of student protest". This is correct only if such acts are punished and, where possible, prevented. They are not stupid at all, if, by performing them, their perpetrators gain a handle on the levers of power. As after the last riot, the Coalition is not serious enough about dealing with the problem.

And I do not solely mean dealing with its public-order aspects. I mean also arguing robustly for the policy. The increase in tuition fees, carried by only 21 votes, is inevitably unpopular. Its economic necessity, its educational advantages, and the fairness of its accompanying loan system have to be explained over and over again. To avoid alienating Lib Dem activists even further, the Conservatives have tended to treat the subject as if it were their junior partner's private grief, and have said little about it. The political tactic is understandable, but it has left a vacuum in the public debate, a vacuum filled by the cries of "Tory scum".

For the Coalition, despite appearances to the contrary, Thursday's events will have done good. It was moving to watch poor old Vince Cable, his nostrils uncomfortably "kettled" by his half-moon spectacles, argue his case to Parliament. He did so without relish, but honestly, as a good minister must. It was the first time in living memory that a Liberal has had to take an unpleasant measure through the Commons. It was the party's coming of age. Commentators expressed surprise yesterday morning that Liberal MPs were not at one another's throats. Of course they weren't! They had proved that they are a party of government which can – just – handle a revolt. The dissenters paraded their consciences and the ministers got their way: honour was satisfied.

But what happens next could be even harder than the struggle just ended. In the endlessly misleading debate about fairness which accompanies a period of cuts, it is not only a question of fairness between rich and poor. It is also a matter of fairness between the generations.

No one has thought more about this than the Universities Minister, David Willetts. His book The Pinch, published this year, is subtitled "How the baby boomers took their children's future – and why they should give it back." His "classic boomer", born in 1955, enjoyed much higher peak earnings, pension rights and asset values than his parents, whereas his children, now aged, say, 25, "may well have had to pay for their university education, so they started work with a large amount of student debt." "They could well have no assets," Mr Willetts goes on, "once their debts have been deducted, for another decade at least". So is Mr Willetts's current policy exactly the sort of boomer bad behaviour he attacks?

In fact, it is dire necessity. The boomer generation willed the end – the over-rapid expansion of university education. John Major disastrously decided to abolish polytechnics and pretend they were all universities instead. Successive governments failed, as was inevitable, to will the means.

It is logic, therefore, that students must pay more. But when you pay more for something, you become more aware of its deficiencies. Those borrowing between £20,000-£40,000 for their period of study will notice that many of their universities teach them little. This is not true only of the high-drop-out-rate duds – working title: The University of the South Circular – but also of some well-known ones. I have met the parents of arts students at Bristol who tell me their children have endured three years of education without a single academic knowing their name.

Next week, hundreds of thousands of students will come home for Christmas. Many of their parents, asking them about their term, will feel dissatisfied. They will hear of the lack of engagement from the dons and the shortage of well-directed, intellectually demanding education. The reason for this is that we have developed a shoddy, state-directed, underfunded system.

The answer lies not in higher state funding – which is both impossible and undesirable – but in universities that can set their own standards and students who can choose. A loans system is a necessary means to this, but if, by the next election, it isn't working, then the Coalition will be seen to have damaged the rising generation. When people believe that about a government, it cannot survive.

SOURCE






One in four British trainee teachers is a dunce: Thousands struggle to pass simple literacy and numeracy tests

You almost have to be dumb to want to work in a British "Comprehensive"

Almost one in four trainee teachers cannot do simple sums and a fifth have problems with spelling, grammar and punctuation, worrying figures revealed yesterday. Thousands repeatedly flunk basic numeracy and literacy tests and seek unlimited resits to pass. Critics fear the poor quality of the next generation of teachers will have a devastating impact on their pupils.

Trainees have to pass basic skills tests in literacy, numeracy and ICT (information and communication technology) before they can qualify as teachers. The pass marks are just 60 per cent.

The latest figures from the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) reveal that in 2008/9 33,517 trainees passed their numeracy and literacy tests.

Some 77.7 per cent passed their numeracy test first time; 9.5 per cent (3,190) made two attempts and 12.8 per cent (4,298) – or one in eight – had at least three attempts. In literacy, 80 per cent (26,814) passed first time; 11.6 per cent (3,892) had two attempts and 8.4 per cent had at least three.

The figures do not detail how many times trainees resit the tests beyond three. However one is reported to have taken the tests 27 times before achieving the pass rate.

Standards were far higher five years ago when would-be teachers sailed through their tests without relying on retakes. For example, of the 32,717 trainees who passed their numeracy test in the academic year 2003/4, a respectable 83.6 per cent did so first time.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said the tests are not ‘rocket science’. He said: ‘It’s a very basic assessment so it’s very worrying that so many would-be teachers are not competent in basic literacy and numeracy. ‘The fact they seem to be getting worse is especially concerning. If a teacher cannot tell what is appropriate or what is a mistake in maths, then how are young people going to learn?

‘The Government is right to crack down here as we are just perpetuating the poor use of language and lack of skills in maths if we allow people who cannot handle words and numbers into the classroom.’

The skills tests were introduced by Labour amid concerns that teacher training did not guarantee a thorough enough grounding in literacy, numeracy and comprehension. Passing the numeracy test has been a requirement of Qualified Teacher Status since 2000. Passing tests in literacy and ICT were made compulsory the following year.

Students currently sit the online tests in the final year of their teacher training. They were originally allowed only four or five attempts to pass the tests. But Labour scrapped the rule in 2001 and gave trainees unlimited resits.

The numeracy test lasts 48 minutes and contains 12 mental arithmetic questions to be completed without the aid of a calculator. Candidates are allowed to use pen and paper.

There are also longer questions involving interpreting statistical information and working out basic percentages and ratios.

The 45-minute literacy test is in four parts – spelling, grammar, punctuation and comprehension.

SOURCE



10 December, 2010

Dropout rate for Calif. black students hits 37%

Thus greatly limiting their options for legal economic activity

More than a third of California's African American public high school students dropped out before graduation day, a startling number and one that's on the rise, according to 2009 data released Tuesday.

The 37 percent African American dropout rate, up three percentage points from the prior year, was far above that of any other ethnic subgroup. Hispanic students had the second highest rate at 27 percent.

Locally, San Francisco cautiously celebrated a 9 percent overall dropout rate, a stark contrast to Oakland's 40 percent, numbers still under review for accuracy.

The statewide statistics highlight a pervasive achievement gap in test scores and graduation rates that persists despite focused efforts to boost the academic performance of black, Hispanic and low-income students, state education officials said.

Overall, 22 percent of state students dropped out of high school, according to the new data, up from 19 percent the year before.

The numbers are more than a year old. They were released several months later than usual because of problems ramping up a new system that can follow individual students' progress in California public schools, even if they move, said state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell.

"We now have a data system that allows us to track students more accurately and have honest conversations about how to improve graduation rates and reduce dropouts among all subgroups of students," O'Connell said.

O'Connell blamed the increase on state budget cuts, which have resulted in larger class sizes, fewer art and music classes, cuts to sports, fewer counselors and less access to career/technical courses - all programs that can help keep struggling or at-risk students in school.

In addition, drastic cuts to summer school have prevented students from catching up on credits during the break, meaning they can't graduate on time and too often give up. "Clearly the dropout rates in California are too high, unacceptable and absolutely must be addressed," O'Connell said.

Some good news

The higher dropout rate was the bad news Tuesday, but there was also good news - the state's graduation rate is also up, O'Connell said.

While that might sound contradictory, the two statistics aren't completely interconnected, given a fluctuating third group of students, which includes those who move out of state, die, go to jail or take the GED test before graduating.

In 2009, 70.1 percent of those who started high school in the state graduated, up from 68.5 percent the year before. Hispanic students saw the biggest gain in diplomas, with 60 percent graduating, a nearly five-percentage-point increase.

While O'Connell said the state dropout and graduation numbers are reliable, localized data are still under review for accuracy at the district level, given the new system.

High Oakland rate

In Oakland, for example, the dropout rate hit a whopping 40 percent in 2009, a number that has fluctuated wildly the past few years, up from 28 percent in 2008 and 36 percent in 2007.

While there is concern about the fluctuations, "these numbers are a little bit closer to what we've been hearing anecdotally," said Troy Flint, a district spokesman. "The percentage is not as important as realizing this is probably the most critical problem facing the district."

The district is focusing on internship programs and coursework that meets student interests, as well as offering the core curriculum, Flint said. "We're trying to be more creative about making it more interesting for kids," he said.

San Francisco's trend

In San Francisco, district officials were pleased with a 9 percent dropout rate, down from 18 percent the year before, and 20 percent in 2007.

Even if the exact numbers are off a bit, the trend seems clear, said Gentle Blythe, district spokeswoman. "It shows that the work we've been doing over the last few years to decrease truancy and increase (daily) attendance has had an effect on these numbers," she said.

The district has a partnership with the district attorney's office to compel attendance, as well as online courses and limited summer school specifically for students behind in credits.

"We know that being in school on a regular basis is a precursor to school success," Blythe said. "The more school students miss, the more likely they are to drop out and become discouraged."

SOURCE





Poor British white boys 'more likely to struggle at primary school

White kids could be more traumatized by the violent atmosphere that characterizes British "sink" schools

Half of poor white boys leave primary school without a decent grasp of English and mathematics, damning figures show. White British boys from the most deprived families perform worse at the age of 11 than any other group, it was disclosed. They are around 50 per cent less likely to start secondary education with an acceptable standard of the three-Rs than other pupils.

Poor children from black African, black Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani families all performed better than their white British classmates, figures show. This means thousands of children struggle to write complex sentences, spell accurately or use basic percentages and fractions after seven years of education.

The disclosure – in figures published by the Department for Education – prompted claims that Labour had “let down” young people from the most deprived backgrounds. It comes just days after a major report showed Britain had plummeted in international league tables charting standards of reading, maths and science in secondary schools over the last decade.

Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, said: "These figures reveal that our education system is letting down half of all 10 and 11-year-old boys who qualify for free school meals. “It is not acceptable that at the end of primary school these children are still not reaching the standard in English and maths they need to flourish at secondary school.

“After seven years of primary school children need to be fluent in these basic skills which is why the Government is putting such an emphasis on improving pupils’ reading ability in the first years of primary school.

"We want to raise academic standards for all young people and to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds, so starkly demonstrated by today’s figures.”

According to figures, 73.5 per cent of all 11-year-olds reached the standard expected for their age group in Sats tests taken this summer, compared with 72 per cent a year earlier.

Data shows white British boys eligible for free meals – the Government’s standard measure of deprivation – were the worst performing group, other than those from gipsy and traveller backgrounds. Only 50.1 per cent of these children – 11,375 – hit targets in both English and maths.

This compared with 68 per cent of poor Indian boys and 66 per cent of those from Chinese families. Some 53.5 per cent of poor boys from black Caribbean backgrounds – traditionally among the worst performing pupils – hit national targets in the three-Rs, it was disclosed.

Among girls, poor white British pupils were also the worst performing group. Some 56.7 per cent achieved good results in England and maths – 6.6 percentage points higher than boys.

Around a quarter of primary schools – 4,000 in total – did not take part in the tests this year following boycotts by two teaching unions, the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers.

SOURCE





Australia: New national curriculum will raise the bar in Queensland schools (?)

Good if it's true, but colour me skeptical

STUDENTS are facing a "more demanding" curriculum that not only goes back to the basics but also raises the bar in literacy and mathematics, Australia's curriculum head says.

But experts warn standards under the new Australian curriculum may be too high for some of the state's youngest and more marginalised students.

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority chair Professor Barry McGaw said the national curriculum, released this week, placed a heavier emphasis on grammar in the early years, which would now be taught more systematically in Queensland.

He said the Australian curriculum would stretch top-performing students "by being more demanding, by raising the requirements in maths, by putting more literature into the primary school" and "by being more explicit about literacy".

Prof McGaw also warned that Queensland's Year 7 teachers would need more professional development to implement the new curriculum than some of their peers interstate, where Year 7 was in secondary school and taught by specialist teachers with access to specialist facilities.

In Prep, a higher level of knowledge will also be required in some areas by Queensland students.

The four to six-year-olds will be expected "to read short, predictable texts aloud with some fluency and accuracy" and count to and from 20 from any starting point.

QUT School of Early Childhood Professor Donna Berthelsen said reading could be a problem for those marginalised children who did not have particularly advanced literacy skills.

Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart said it had always been understood the developmental range in four to six-year-olds was quite extensive, with some able to read and others not.

The national curriculum achievement standards are still to be finalised, with ministers and the authority agreeing to continue to work on them before signing off on a final version next year.

A Queensland Studies Authority spokesman said the Australian and Queensland curriculums for the Prep year were fairly closely aligned, with expectations of what children should know and be able to do being very similar.

More HERE



9 December, 2010

Dubious education at UNC

Mike Adams

The Associated Press recently ran an article that should firmly establish the UNC system as the most ridiculous system of hire (pun intended) education in the United States of America. The article begins, in typical liberal fashion, by lauding a confused individual as a heroine when clearly he is not even a she.

According to the AP, “Nicole” actually spent over $100,000 on an attempted transition from male to female, including flying to, of all places, Thailand, for sexual reassignment surgery. (Please, no dirty Bangkok jokes.) After spending at whopping $20,000 on facial hair removal Nicole still had a problem: His voice still gave him away as a male (because he was and still is a male).

This alleged victim had to endure callers referring to him as "sir" when he answered the phone. It offended him badly because he wants to be referred to as ma’am – at least until he moves to California and is elected to the United States Senate. By then, he’ll be offended by ma’am, too – especially if it comes from one of those annoying military types.

So what was Nicole to do in order to find a “solution” to the “problem” of people correctly identifying his actual God-given gender? Well, even though he’s not an obese black woman (see my last column for details), he found a “solution” to the “problem” at UNCG, which ought to stand for the University of North Carolina at Gomorrah.

Despite the deep budget crisis, North Carolina taxpayers pay UNCG speech pathologists to teach transgender people how to speak like the people of the sex they are trying unsuccessfully to become. Does that make sense? Of course it doesn’t. We’re talking about UNC-Gomorrah.

The AP quoted the 57 year old man named Nicole as saying "To me, there's nothing worse than seeing someone dressed as a woman, a beautiful woman … then she opens her mouth and she sounds like a sailor. It's very off-putting for people." I agree. In fact, I feel the same way every time I watch The Vagina Monologues.

Nicole took eight private classes at UNCG where he learned to redirect his voice through the front of his mouth instead of his throat or chest so that he sounds more like a woman – although, clearly, he is not. Each semester, speech pathologists at the UNCG School of Health and Human Performance take time off from addressing legitimate problems in order to teach about eight or so transgender people.

The classes for transgender people - those who want to live as the gender they weren't assigned by God - teach a number of valuable lessons. For example, they teach that women use more adjectives, and gesture more with their hands and use their face more to express feelings. This is all so profound, isn’t it? I suppose that women who want to become men are taught the importance of breaking wind in public and coming home late for dinner.

Dean Hopper explained to the AP the importance of teaching men who want to be women to say girlie things when looking at art: "And women will say, 'that's a beautiful picture, I see a bubbling stream ...' they’ll really elaborate. Men will just say, 'I see a house and a car.' And then women add, 'it's just a fabulous-looking house.'"

At UNC-Gomorrah, transgender voice training students get handouts that compare male directions to those given by females. These intellectual giants inform the transgender students that women use landmarks, while men use a compass when they give directions. A landmark intellectual breakthrough, isn’t it?

Dean Hopper shares more of her intellectual genius by showing how women might give directions: “When you get to the red house with the blue shutters, take a right, go three miles. You'll go past the store, you'll see a cornfield. You'll see a beautiful fire station. It's new, you know, they just built it last week. Then you turn left."

Dean Hopper adds that men might give directions like this: "Go west three miles, take a left at this road, go four miles, take a right." Hopper fails to provide directions to the office of a UNCG Dean who doesn’t sound like a complete jackass.

But Dean Hopper does give some great advice if you are not exactly an old, rugged cross-dresser: "One thing we recommend, if you've never worn heels, probably your 40s and 50s are not a good time to start. You can get cute shoes that are flat. So why be awkward and start doing that? Especially if you're large and have big bones, heels aren't for you."

"I never really thought of myself as a strong person," Nicole told AP reporter Martha Waggoner. He added, "But now that I look back on what I've gone through, I think I'm a very strong person and a very courageous person for just standing up for myself and saying this is who I am and I have a right to be happy."

The present state of higher education is the future state of our culture. Its promise is that every man has a right to be happy by becoming whatever he wants to become regardless of what he is. If we just put our faith in the gods of diversity they will deliver us from ourselves. And we won’t be mistaken for men any longer.

SOURCE







Victory for common sense: British parents should be free to take pictures of their children's nativity play

Schools that ban parents from taking pictures of their children ­acting in Nativity plays do not have the law on their side, the Government’s privacy watchdog declared yesterday.

Parents should stand up to headmasters hiding behind the 'myth' that there are privacy laws against relatives taking photos or film footage of school events, the Information Commissioner said.

A string of schools have prevented parents from taking pictures of their children in plays, on sports day or at other events, often citing the Data Protection Act as justification. But the Commissioner, Christopher Graham, who is responsible for implementing the Act, said parents should 'stand ready to challenge any schools or councils that say "Bah, Humbug" to a bit of festive fun'.

'Armed with our guidance, parents should feel free to snap away this Christmas,' he said. 'Having a child perform at a school play or a festive concert is a very proud moment for parents and is understandably a memory that many want to capture on camera.

'It is disappointing to hear that the myth that such photos are forbidden by the Data Protection Act still prevails in some schools. 'A common sense approach is needed – clearly, photographs simply taken for a family album are exempt from data protection laws.'

Last month the Daily Mail revealed one headmistress who banned parents from taking pictures in school and even blacks out pupils' faces in the school yearbook.

Vicky Parsey, headmistress of Applecroft primary school in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, has imposed the rules for fear that children’s faces will be superimposed on obscene internet images.

Critics said the 'absurd' rules branded all parents potential paedophiles, creating a 'climate of fear'. But the commissioner's guidance – sent to education authorities nationwide – says: 'The Data Protection Act is unlikely to apply in most situations where photographs are taken by parents in schools.

'The Act does apply when photographs of children are taken for official use by a school or college such as for issuing identification passes.

'In the other small number of instances where the Data Protection Act does apply, if the photographer obtains permission from the parent or individual to take a photograph, then this will usually be enough to ensure compliance.'

SOURCE





Smart kids being ignored in Australia -- with the inevitable result

And given the now demonstrated truth of smart fraction theory, that's pretty bad for Australia. The national well-being would be better served by treating them exceptionally attentively.

Most very bright students will do well regardless of the system, however. My educational development was retarded rather than assisted by the environment into which I grew up but I still sailed through the system without a care. I even taught myself (successfully) the last two years of the High School curriculum!

THE number of high achievers is shrinking because all the attention goes to the weak.

THE results of the Program for International Student Assessment every three years are highly anticipated in education circles and are dissected for years afterwards.

Unfortunately, the 2009 report released this week has been cause for dismay. Australia was one of very few countries to have a significant decline in its average reading and mathematical literacy scores. This decline is attributed largely to a reduction in the proportion of students performing at the highest proficiency levels.

It is important to bear in mind that country comparisons need be considered with some caution. Comparing city-states such as Hong Kong and Singapore with a country that has a widely dispersed population like Australia has obvious problems. It might be more defensible to compare these cities with Sydney or the ACT. However, even putting aside the international rankings, the fact remains that Australia has failed to meet its own previous standards.

The bad news about our PISA performance should not come as a shock. Australia's relatively low representation at the top of the academic spectrum was evident in PISA 2006. Shamefully, it was not taken seriously at the time.

The PISA report does not offer any explanation for Australia's shrinking pool of bright sparks. It rejects the argument that there has been a focus on students at the low end of the academic range at the expense of students at the top, apparently on the basis that there has been no change in the proportion of low achievers. Logic suggests this does not mean that there has not been increased attention paid to these students, just that it hasn't worked. In my view, education policy over the past decade has leaned heavily towards alleviating the effect of social disadvantage and lifting the performance of low achievers. These are important aims. Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that not only have low achievers not benefited, high achievers have suffered.

In all countries participating in PISA there is a positive relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy performance, to varying degrees. The strength of this relationship in Australia has reduced from PISA 2000 to PISA 2009. In 2000, Australia was described as a high-quality, low-equity country. By 2006, Australia was no longer judged to be a low-equity country and in the 2009 results released yesterday, Australia is now slightly better than the international average in terms of the impact of socioeconomic background on literacy.

Nonetheless, a socioeconomic literacy gap was still evident in PISA 2009, particularly among students with the lowest literacy performance. Only 5 per cent of children in the highest socioeconomic quartile scored in the Level 1 literacy bands, compared with 24 per cent of children in the lowest socioeconomic quartile.

But there is more to the relationship between social background and school performance than meets the eye, and our understanding of this relationship has profound implications for policy.

Over the last decade, a number of studies, including PISA, have shown that socioeconomic variables are stronger at the school-level than the individual level. That is, the mean socioeconomic status of a student's school has a larger impact on their achievement than their own socioeconomic status.

These findings have been accompanied by research looking at the ways ways in which school-level socioeconomic status might affect the academic achievement of students. Gary Marks's research in this area has led him to argue that the academic context or "climate" of the school is more important than the socioeconomic status of the students themselves.

The association between socioeconomic variables and literacy is not inevitable -- there are high-performing students from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as low-performing students from advantaged backgrounds -- and it is mediated by other factors, such as quality of instruction and school climate. Marks says: "there is no deterministic relationship between socioeconomic background and low achievement". There is good reason to believe that the entrenched literacy gap can be substantially reduced.

The problem remains in finding a way to target resources without creating a new form of disadvantage. Geoff Masters, chief of the Australian Council for Education Research, once said that any student whose needs are not being met is disadvantaged. It seems that at the moment, our high-ability students fall into this category.

SOURCE



8 December, 2010

University: Dump Christian beliefs on homosexuality, or else;
Demands student get re-educated, attend 'pride' event

Augusta State University graduate student Jen Keeton alleges school officials demand she be re-educated in morality, giving her the choice of giving up her Christian beliefs on homosexuality or being expelled from the school's counseling program. But now, after months of battling the university in court, a pair of free-speech organizations have joined her in the fight.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Association of Scholars have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, asserting it a violation of the First Amendment for the Georgia university's officials to require Keeton's beliefs be "influenced" by remedial sensitivity training or face expulsion.

According to a complaint filed against the school earlier this year, school officials demanded Keeton, 24, go through a "remediation" program after she asserted homosexuality is a behavioral choice, not a "state of being" as a professor said.

Specifically, the remediation program was to include "sensitivity training" on homosexual issues, additional outside study on literature promoting homosexuality and the plan that she attend a "gay pride parade" and report on it.

"Besides violating Keeton's own First Amendment rights," writes University of California Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh in the brief, "the university's retaliation also sent a powerful message to other students: If you express views like Keeton's, prepare to suffer the same consequences – prepare to incur many hours of extra obligations, and to put yourself at risk of expulsion."

Keeton's original lawsuit, filed by attorneys working with the Alliance Defense Fund, asserted the school cannot violate the Constitution by demanding that a person's beliefs be changed.

University "faculty have promised to expel Miss Keeton from the graduate Counselor Education program, not because of poor academic showing or demonstrated deficiencies in clinical performance, but simply because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity," the law firm explained.

Keeton's own e-mail response to the faculty members who allegedly were pressuring her to adopt a pro-homosexual belief system defines the dispute.

"At times you said that I must alter my beliefs because they are unethical. ... Other times you said that I can keep my beliefs so long as they are only personal and I don't believe that anyone else should believe like me. But that is just another way of saying that I must alter my beliefs, because my beliefs are about absolute truth. ... In order to finish the counseling program you are requiring me to alter my objective beliefs and also to commit now that if I ever may have a client who wants me to affirm their decision to have an abortion or engage in gay, lesbian or transgender behavior, I will do that. I can't alter my biblical beliefs, and I will not affirm the morality of those behaviors in a counseling situation," she wrote.

According to court documents, Keeton faces the "remediation" requirement because she supposedly (1) "voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian 'lifestyle,'" (2) "stated in one paper that she believes GLBTQ 'lifestyles' to be identity confusion," (3) "relayed [to another student] her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations" and (4) "tried to convince other students to support and believe her views."

School authorities cited the American Counseling Association's code of ethics and said students would be required to adopt its provisions to obtain a degree in counseling.

Faculty members, therefore, had demanded Keeton "attend at least three workshops … which emphasize … diversity training sensitive toward working with GLBTQ populations." They also wanted her to "develop" her knowledge of homosexuality by reading 10 articles and increasing her exposure to homosexuals and lesbians by attending "the Gay Pride Parade."

"Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform," said ADF Senior Counsel David French. "Abandoning one's own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree. This type of leftist zero-tolerance policy is in place at far too many universities, and it must stop. Jennifer's only crime was to have the beliefs that she does."

He added that a public university student "shouldn't be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that's exactly what's happening here."

Keeton's original request for an injunction preventing Augusta State from expelling her over refusal to comply with the remediation program was denied in August by U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall. "[T]his is not a case pitting Christianity against homosexuality," Hall wrote in his opinion. "Matters of educational policy should be left to educators, and it is not the proper role of federal judges to second guess an educator's professional judgment."

He added, "Whether I would have imposed the remediation plan, or what I would have included in the plan itself, is not the question, for the Supreme Court instructs that educators, not federal judges, are the ones that choose among pedagogical approaches."

The FIRE and NAS friend-of-the-court brief explains, however, "A university does have great latitude in deciding what all of its students in a particular program or course must learn. But it does not have such latitude in imposing special curricular burdens on students who express certain views, whether anti-homosexuality, anti-war, pro-gun rights, anti-religious, or whatever else."

The brief concludes, "Unless the district court's decision is reversed, it threatens to become a road map for other public universities that want to restrict a wide range of speech (not at all limited to anti-homosexuality speech) by a wide range of students (not at all limited to counseling students)."

SOURCE





Travesty of Britain's 'stagnating' schools: In a damning indictment of Labour, OECD condemns British education which is now inferior to Estonia's

Britain has plummeted down worldwide education rankings in the last decade, according to definitive figures which shame Labour’s record on schools. Despite doubled spending since 2000, the education of teenagers has ‘stagnated at best’.

The verdict is a damning indictment of Tony Blair’s mantra that his three top priorities in government were ‘education, education, education’. Britain has now fallen behind such relatively poor nations as Estonia, Poland and the Slovak Republic in reading, maths and science.

Although spending has risen from £35.8billion to £71billion, the education of teenagers has failed to register any improvement and in some areas has deteriorated rapidly.

In stunning proof that taxpayers did not get value for money, the UK slipped from eighth to 28th in maths, from seventh to 25th in reading and from fourth to 16th in science over the same period. Poland now ranks ten places ahead of the UK in reading and is three ahead in maths.

Even more disturbingly, the study found that a fifth of 15-year-old Britons are ‘functionally illiterate’, which ‘significantly reduces their chances of success in later life’.

The figures were released yesterday by the highly respected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which compared the standards of 15-year-olds in 65 developed countries.

British children’s poor reading skills are said to be partly because they spend too much time on computers rather than reading books, but are also a tragic reflection of the education they have received.

Nor has it helped that the UK has a relatively low proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. And having some of the world’s ‘best-educated’ parents has not improved the standards of Britain’s children – raising serious questions about the effective role of parents in UK schools.

The study was based on two-hour tests of 500,000 15-year-old schoolchildren by the OECD. Some 65 countries were listed in this year’s rankings compared with 54 three years ago.

Andreas Schleicher of the OECD said overall scores achieved by UK pupils were ‘stagnant at best, or marginally lower, whereas many other countries have seen quite significant improvements’.

The UK, despite being the eighth-biggest spender per pupil on education, with an average of £8,892 a year at secondary level, performed below the international average in maths, only just above in reading and slightly better in science.

The Far East had strong performers with the region of Shanghai-China coming top in all three subjects and Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan all ranking high.

Finland, which places strong emphasis on teacher quality, was ranked highest European nation.

The study comes a week after Education Secretary Michael Gove detailed his plans for schools reform in a White Paper. He seeks to overhaul the curriculum, make exams tougher, give schools more autonomy and improve teaching standards.

The Coalition seized on the OECD’s results as proof that Labour had failed in education. Mr Gove said an increase in spending under the last government was ‘tied up in bureaucracy and didn’t go to the front line’. He added: ‘Today’s report underlines the urgent need to reform our school system. We need to learn from the best performing countries. Other regions and nations have succeeded in closing the gap and in raising attainment for all students at the same time.’

The minister stressed the importance of using nations such as Poland, Singapore and Finland as ‘our inspiration’. But he admitted that the size of the task was ‘daunting’ and, like Gordon Brown before him, refused to set a target for UK performance in the next international survey, in 2012.

Sir Terry Leahy, head of Tesco, has frequently attacked the education system saying school leavers do not have the basic skills needed for jobs.

And yesterday business leaders expressed horror at the figures showing a fifth of 15-year-olds failed to gain even the minimum standard expected for their age in literacy and maths. Susan Anderson, of the CBI, said: ‘It is increasingly clear that the UK is a long way behind its key competitors in education.’

The UK’s dire record on reading was blamed, in part, on the overuse of computers. In the UK 54 per cent of pupils never go to the library. This compares with the OECD average of 34 per cent.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said teenagers spend too much time communicating through email or online chat. ‘We cannot allow our youngsters to neglect the basic hobby of picking up a book and reading it simply for the enjoyment of it.’

The OECD said immigration played a factor in the UK’s low ranking. Some 10.6 per cent of students are from an immigrant background – the 14th-highest proportion in the list.

The findings showed that the UK’s score for reading was 494, just above the OECD average of 493. For maths skills, the score was 492 – slightly beneath the international average of 496 – as pupils were outperformed by those in Slovakia and Slovenia. In science the UK achieved a result of 514 – higher than the 501 average score but still a disappointment.

According to the OECD, scores gained by Scotland were marginally above those in the rest of the UK, while Wales performed worst in the three disciplines.

Eastern Bloc countries have put Britain to shame by overtaking them since the end of Communist rule

SOURCE





Australia: School building program rip-offs revealed by auditor

Peter Achterstraat tells it like it is

The NSW government accepted building contracts for school programs under the Building the Education Revolution that were inflated and did not meet the preferences of local communities, an audit has found.

The federal government's major program for schools has come under renewed criticism for its high costs in a report released today by the NSW Auditor-General, Peter Achterstraat.

A detailed study of spending at 1270 primary schools found the government accepted building contracts that were $188 million higher than their own costings, according to the report.
Advertisement: Story continues below

"Irrespective of time constraints, the Department [of Education] should not approve estimated construction costs that are substantially higher than the department's own assessments," Mr Achterstraat said.

"They should investigate significant variances, negotiate with the managing contractors and set the estimated costs based on their own assessment, not the managing contractor's assessment."

Mr Achterstraat said he examined nine schools closely, and found eight had costs between 2 and 40 per cent higher than an independent surveyor's estimate.

Of a further 68 schools surveyed, just 40 per cent thought the project was value for money, he said.

"The department strictly adhered to the Australian government's guidelines and their own standards, which meant some schools got a library when they wanted a hall," Mr Achterstraat said.

SOURCE



7 December, 2010

Do international test comparisons make sense?

The article below is typical of Leftist focus on groups rather than on those pesky individuals. It endeavours to downplay poor average performances by American students in international comparisons by pointing out that America has a large and strong elite class. And, as we know from smart fraction theory, that is what matters most to a nation's prosperity.

That is a cop-out however, that ignores the individual. Why are so many individual students doing badly? It is they for whom concern may be warranted, not the USA as a whole. Individuals matter

Tomorrow we will learn the latest results from the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA and promoted as the most comprehensive study to test and compare student performance internationally.

Each time PISA, or other international test results are released, there is angst in the United States because American students aren’t ranked as high as Japan and Finland and Singapore and South Korea and a bunch of other countries.

Experts are quoted about how the United States is going to slip into oblivion if we can’t get these scores up, and other experts are quoted as saying that we have to speed up specific school reforms (the current ones in vogue involved high-stakes standardized testing, expanding charter schools, etc.) so that we can reclaim our rightful place at the top of these test result lists.

Expect to hear all of that this week and more.

So before all the hullabalo starts, it is a good time to look back at what the late, great social scientist Gerald Bracey wrote about international comparisons. Bracey was director of research, evaluation and testing for the Virginia Department of Education from 1977 to 1986, as well as a trained psychogist who was the leading critic of how today’s tests measure success. He authored numerous articles and books, including "Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered."

Below are two separate writings, one a blogpost he wrote for The Washington Post blog x = why? and the other from his last Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. The report was jointly published in 2009, shortly after Bracey passed away, by the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University and by the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado. The whole report is worth rereading, but here’s part of what Bracey wrote on international comparisons of student test scores:

....Many critics cite the performance of American students on international comparisons of mathematics and science. The most often used comparison comes from rankings on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most recently (2006), American students ranked 24th of 30 OECD nations in mathematics and 17th of 30 in science. Errors in the test booklets prevented the reporting scores for American students in reading.

It should be noted that these rankings are determined by nations’ average scores. Some researchers have suggested, however, that average score comparisons are not useful: even presuming that the tests have some meaning for future accomplishment, average students are not likely to be the leaders in fields of mathematics and science.

Those roles are more likely to fall to those scoring well. A publication from OECD itself observes that if one examines the number of highest-scoring students in science, the United States has 25% of all high-scoring students in the world (at least in “the world” as defined by the 58 nations taking part in the assessment—the 30 OECD nations and 28 “partner” countries). Among nations with high average scores, Japan accounted for 13% of the highest scorers, Korea 5%, Taipei 3%, Finland 1%, and Hong Kong 1%. Singapore did not participate.

The picture emerging from this highest-scorer comparison is far different than that suggested by the frequently cited national average comparisons; it is a picture that suggests many American schools are actually doing very well indeed.

Of course, the U.S. is much larger than these other countries and should be expected to produce larger numbers of successful students. But it is only when we look beyond the mean and consider the distribution of students and schools that we see the true picture. Students attending American schools run the gamut from excellent to poor. Well-resourced schools serving wealthy neighborhoods are showing excellent results. Poorly resourced schools serving low-income communities of color do far worse. --

The second Bracey writing is from a blog that Post reporter Michael Chandler wrote while she was spending a year retaking high school math. In December 2008 she asked Bracey to write about the results of the just relased 2007 TIMMS test. Here’s what he wrote:

So the U. S. is not #1 in mathematics or science testing. So what?

So, very little.

First, comparing nations on average scores is a pretty silly idea. It’s like ranking runners based on average shoe size or evaluating the high school football team on the basis of how fast the average senior can run the 40-yard dash. Not much link to reality. What is likely much more important is how many high performers you have. On both TIMSS math and science, the U. S. has a much higher proportion of "advanced" scorers than the international median although the proportion is much smaller than in Asian nations.

This was not true on PISA, another international comparison that tests 15-year-olds. Only 1.5% of American students scored at the highest level compared to top performing New Zealand at 4% and second place Finland at 3.9%.

Yet the proportion of Americans at the highest level meant that 70,000 kids scored there compared to about 2,000 for New Zealand and Sweden. No one else even came close--Japan was second with about 33,000 top performers. These are the people who might end up creating leading edge technology in the future. Who cares if Singapore, with about the same population as the Washington Metro Area, and Hong Kong, with about twice that number, score high?

There aren’t many people there. (And, as journalist Fareed Zakariya found out, the Singapore kids fade as they become adults. More about that in a moment). The bad news is that the U. S., on PISA anyway, had many more students scoring at the lowest levels; these kids likely can’t compete for the good jobs in the country.

Second, test scores, at least average test scores, don’t seem to be related to anything important to a national economy. Japan’s kids have always done well, but the economy sank into the Pacific in 1990 and has never recovered.

The two Swiss-based organizations that rank nations on global competitiveness, the Institute for Management Development and the World Economic Forum, both rank the U. S. #1 and have for a number of years. The WEF examines 12 "pillars of competitiveness," only one of which is education. We do OK there, but we shine on innovation. Innovation is the only quality of competitiveness that does not show at some point diminishing returns. Building bigger and faster airplanes can only improve productivity so much.

Innovation has no such limits. When Zakariya asked the Singapore Minister of Education why his high-flying students faded in after-school years, the Minister cited creativity, ambition, and a willingness to challenge existing knowledge, all of which he thought American excelled in. But, as Bob Sternberg of Tufts University [he is now provost of Oklahoma State University] has pointed out, our obsession with standardized testing has produced one of the best instruments in the nation’s history for stifling creativity.

But really, does the fate of the nation rest on how well 9- and 13-year-olds bubble in answer sheets? I don’t think so. Neither does British economist, S. J. Prais. We look at the test scores and worry about the nation’s economic performance. Prais looks at the economic performance and worries about the validity of the test scores: "That the United States, the world’s top economic performing country, was found to have school attainments that are only middling casts fundamental doubts about the value and approach of these [international assessments]."

Third, even if comparisons of average test scores were a meaningful exercise, it only looks at one dimension--the supply side. Predictably, the results gave rise to calls for more spending on science instruction. This ignores the fact that we have more scientists and engineers than we can absorb. In one study, Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University and Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute found that we mint three new engineers for every new job (this is from permanent residents and citizens, not foreigners).

More disturbing was the attrition rate. While educators fret over losing 50% of teachers in 5 years (and well they should), Lowell and Salzman found that engineering loses 65% in two years. Why? Low pay, lousy working conditions, little chance for advancement. American schools of engineering are dominated by foreigners because only people from third world nations can view our jobs as attractive. In fact, long-time science writer, Dan Greenberg, invented a new position for those emerging with Ph.D.’s: post-doc emeritus.

Schools are doing a great job on the supply side. Business and industry are doing a lousy job on the demand side. The oil industry, responding to increased demand for oil exploration raised the entry-level salaries for petroleum engineers by 30-60%. The number of students lining up to be petroleum engineers has doubled and enrollment at Texas Tech has increased sixfold.

As usual in these comparisons, Americans in low-poverty schools look very good, even in mathematics. They would be ranked third in the 4th grade (among 36 nations) 6th in the 8th grade (among 47 nations). This is important because while other developed nations have poor children, the U. S. has a much higher proportion and a much weaker safety net. When UNICEF studied poverty in 22 wealthy nations, the U. S. ranked 21st.

SOURCE





Poor British children 'fall behind classmates after two years of school'

The elephant in the room -- IQ -- is being ignored, of course. Rich kids come from brighter families and IQ is both hereditary and the best single predictor of educational success. And differences in IQ do tend to widen with age. Dumb kids peak earlier. See "The chimpanzee effect"

Children from poor families are falling up to eight months behind richer classmates after just two years of school, according to research. Despite billions spent attempting to boost social mobility under Labour, academics found the gap between rich and poor pupils widened throughout early education.

The study – based on a major analysis of children born in the first two years of the millennium – suggested that social class remained the biggest barrier to success at school.

Academics said the number of books in the home, parental qualifications, regular mealtimes and bedtimes, the state of housing and the quality of early childcare all had an impact on children’s education.

But Dr Alice Sullivan, senior lecturer at the University of London’s Institute of Education, who led the research, said Government policies designed to improve parenting skills were not enough to address chronic under-performance among deprived pupils.

She suggested that welfare reforms – including access to housing and jobs – would have a bigger impact on school standards. “Our research shows that while parenting is important, a policy focus on parenting alone is insufficient to tackle the impacts of social inequalities on children,” she said. “Redistributive economic policies may be more effective than policies directly addressing parenting practices.”

As part of the latest study, academics tracked the performance of more than 11,000 seven-year-olds in reading and maths. They also analysed teachers’ assessments of children’s abilities in other subjects such as speaking and listening, writing, science, maths, PE and creative arts.

The report – part of the Millennium Cohort Study, an on-going analysis of children across the UK born between 2000 and 2002 – compared education standards with pupils’ family backgrounds.

It found the children of parents in professional and managerial jobs were around eight months ahead of those with parents who were long-term unemployed.

The study found this gap had widened over the last two years. A similar test carried out when pupils started school aged five found that the gap was just four months – half as wide.

The conclusions come despite a sharp rise in funding under the last Government to address chronic underperformance among children born into the poorest households. In recent years, children have been given more access to free childcare and billions has been spent on a generation of Sure Start children’s centres in deprived communities.

The study found that a stable home environment and good parenting had an impact on children’s early education, but this was not enough to explain the differences.

SOURCE





Australia: Still problems with national schools curriculum says NSW State Government

THE New South Wales Government says it will refuse to roll out a substandard national schools curriculum. Federal, state and territory education ministers will meet tomorrow to discuss the content of the curriculum, which was meant to be rolled out around the country in 2011.

NSW Education Minister Verity Firth today said that she was not going to compromise on quality. "The advice that I have from the NSW Board of Studies ... is that the draft curriculum in its current form is not ready," she told ABC Radio. "I'm not going to rush it. I'm going to take the advice of my board about quality and I think that's the responsible thing to do."

Ms Firth said the states had until 2013 to implement the national curriculum anyway. "Tomorrow's meeting was never going to be the be-all-and-end-all, the absolute sign off of a finished and perfect curriculum," she said.

There were still three main problems with the document, she said.

Ms Firth said more consultation with teachers on the syllabus was needed, while the structure of the curriculum needed to balance the amount of content with the time available to study it.

A new syllabus must also cater for all students, from those with learning difficulties to gifted and talented, she said. "There needs to be a broad spectrum in the curriculum, especially from special needs teachers there is a sense that there really isn't."

SOURCE



6 December, 2010

Arne Duncan sees the light

For about two years now, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have been co-opting much of the GOP playbook on education. They support charter schools. They endorse merit pay. They decry teacher tenure and seniority. On alternate Thursdays, they bracingly challenge the teacher unions.

But on one key issue—spending—they have acted like traditional borrow-and-spend Democrats, only more so. The 2009 stimulus bill included over $100 billion for schools, most of it designed to simply save teachers’ positions. A 2010 “edujobs” bill showered another $10 billion in bailout bucks on K-12 systems to forestall hard choices. And Duncan’s insistence last summer that school districts had already cut “through, you know, fat, through flesh, and into bone,” only served to pull the rug out from under those state and local leaders inclined to swing the budget ax, by making their tough medicine seem mean-spirited—and unnecessary.

Well. We’re not sure if the Secretary of Education had a conversion experience, had a secret plan to woo the ed establishment and then hit it with tough love, or is simply reading the Tea Party leaves, but what a difference a couple months can make! The week before Thanksgiving, Secretary Duncan sang the praises of productivity in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute titled “The New Normal: Doing More With Less.”

It was a humdinger. Duncan opened: “For the next several years, preschool, K-12, and postsecondary educators are likely to face the challenge of doing more with less… [This] can, and should be, embraced as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements… It’s time to stop treating the problem of educational productivity as a grinding, eat-your-broccoli exercise. It’s time to start treating it as an opportunity for innovation and accelerating progress.”

We couldn’t agree more. Throughout the federal spending spree of the past two years, we’ve worried about the pernicious effects of dumping so much cash on our already-bloated schools. All this did, we argued, was prop up an unsustainable system whose revenues grew by one-third since 1995, thanks to the dot-com bubble and then the housing bubble. After three generations of steady growth in per pupil spending, education is going to have to face its day of reckoning and schools are going to have to start spending dollars smarter.

Duncan’s was a speech unlike any we have heard from a U.S. Secretary of Education-Republican or Democrat. He said resources are limited, embraced the need to make tough choices, urged states and districts to contemplate boosting some class sizes and consolidating schools, and didn’t spend much time trying to throw bones to the status quo.

Duncan called for wide-ranging reforms in the name of cost-effectiveness. He said, “The legacy of the factory model of schooling is that tens of billions of dollars are tied up in unproductive use of time and technology, in underused school buildings, in antiquated compensation systems, and in inefficient school finance systems.”

He rightly argued that schooling had to abandon the notion that reform is always bought and paid for with new dollars and argued that it’s essential to think of technology as a “force multiplier” rather than a pleasing add-on.

His to-do list was comprehensive and spot on. He said, “Rethinking policies around seat-time requirements, class size, compensating teachers based on their educational credentials, the use of technology in the classroom, inequitable school financing, the over placement of students in special education—almost all of these potentially transformative productivity gains are primarily state and local issues that have to be grappled with.”

In one speech, this (Democratic) Secretary of Education came out swinging against last hired, first fired, seniority-based pay raises, smaller class sizes, seat time, pay bonuses for master’s degrees, and over-bloated special education budgets. Which means he declared war on the teachers unions, parents groups, education schools, and special education lobby. Not a bad day’s work!

To be sure, Duncan has control over almost none of this. Still, this is classic bully-pulpit stuff, and we expect it will resonate big-time in state capitols all over the country. When the unions start busing in kids, parents, and teachers to rally against increases in class size or pay freezes, expect a lot of Republican governors to start quoting their good friend Arne Duncan.

SOURCE





The climate of fear that has poisoned British schools

Ousted teacher exposes the tyranny of liberalism that has betrayed a generation of children:

By Katharine Birbalsingh

I am the teacher who spoke at the Conservative Party Conference and then found herself out of a job. Some might argue that had I criticised the education system at a National Union of ­Teachers conference, I would have been cheered on by the delegates.

Had I blamed our broken education system on lack of funds, institutional racism or the challenge of private education, I would have been the darling of the Left and all would have been well. It was the fact that I sided with the Right that has turned me into a mortal enemy.

But we are all in pursuit of the same utopia, aren’t we? We want every child to have the best possible education, to feel safe and happy, to reach for the top, and for schools to provide environments where this is possible.

Or do we? It is interesting that teachers come up to me in the street, voicing their support, agreeing with everything I’ve said, yet refuse to tell me their names because they are scared to speak out ‘given the current climate’. By ‘the current climate’ they are pointing to Leftist ideology that insists private-style education for a comprehensive intake of students is simply a contradiction in terms.

The Left has a stranglehold over teachers and gives them little ­freedom to think outside their ideological box. For a long time, I have been a victim of that ideology.

The other day, I had tea with a friend to bring her up to date with the details of my personal drama. She is originally from Calcutta, married to a very liberal Scot and has two children. I begin, as I always do these days, defending my actions. I try to explain my reasons for voting Conservative, why it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person, why I believe Right-wing thinking is what we need in schools. My friend leans forward. 'Well, you know, Katharine, I never told you, but I voted Conservative, too.’

Such is the state of political freedom in this country. We may believe we all have freedom of speech, but when we diverge from the pack, we don’t tell even our closest friends.

Peer pressure is not only the main force that keeps children in gangs, walking as if they’re constipated, speaking as if they’ve never read a book and permanently playing on their portable video-game machines; it is also the principal reason most adults vote the same way from the day we were born until the day we die. Political persuasion is tribal and no one is ever meant to change their minds.

I grew up in a very Left-leaning family and went to a state school. Fresh out of Oxford, where I read the magazine Marxism Today, I began teaching, firm in the belief that racist, white teachers were responsible for black under­achievement. I thought that state schools had no money and that the poor (both black and white) were left to languish.

I wanted what was best for the underprivileged. So I decided to teach only in the inner city. Not much has changed, except that I no longer read Marxist magazines and I have stopped dabbling with the Socialist Workers Party.

Why? Because my experiences in teaching have taught me that it is not lack of money or prejudice that keep my children poor, although clearly money is useful and prejudice is to be found everywhere.

Over time, I came to realise how mistaken I had been in my understanding of the education system. I remember taking a white colleague to Diane Abbott’s Black Child ­conference, aimed at tackling ‘educational underachievement in black communities’. It was Saturday ­morning and so dedicated was he, even after 20 superb years in the classroom, that he followed me there, always ­willing to learn from new experiences.

As the speakers expounded on the inner racism in the teaching profession, on the fear white teachers have of their black pupils, I will never ­forget the sense of shame that consumed me. Why? Because not only were the speakers talking utter nonsense, but I knew how much this teacher had done for black boys over the years, and here was I, dragging him out of his bed on a Saturday morning so that he could be called a racist just for being white and for being a teacher.

For years, I soldiered on in the classroom, working hard to change the minds of children who were paralysed by a sense of victimhood.

They found it impossible to believe that I had chosen to be their teacher, that I wanted to be there, that I loved being around them. Eventually, like any good teacher, I won them over by using all the tricks of the trade, from gold stars to phone calls at home with positive comments, to holding breakfast clubs in the early morning when I would spend my own money on croissants. My students felt grateful. Like me, other teachers give their life to the job, and we ‘succeed’ despite the shackles of the system.

The regular dumbing-down of our examination system is obvious to any teacher who is paying attention and who has been in the game for some time.

The refusal to allow children to fail at anything is endemic in a school culture that always looks after self-esteem and misses the crucial point, which is that children’s self-esteem depends on achieving real success. If we never encourage them to ­challenge themselves by risking ­failure, self-esteem will never come.

I started to climb the professional teaching ladder, rising to positions of middle and senior management. There, too, I succeeded, but often only by fighting against people’s innate liberalism. Indeed, I would sometimes find myself arguing with my own deeply embedded liberalism: ‘Take pity on the boy. Don’t punish him. It isn’t his fault he didn’t do his homework; just look at his home situation.’ Or: ‘Why ask them to do their ties to the top or tuck in their shirts? What does any of that have to do with learning?’

I had become indoctrinated by all the trendy nonsense dictating that if children are not behaving in your classroom, it is because you have been standing in front of them for more than five minutes trying to teach them. If only you had sat them in groups with you as facilitator, rather than teacher at the front, then you’d have the safe environment conducive to learning that we all seek.

The basic ideology is that if there is chaos in the classroom, it is the ­teacher’s fault. Children are not held responsible for their actions. Senior management fails to establish systems that support teachers and punish pupils for not doing their homework, whatever their home situation.

I argued constantly with my ­colleagues and bosses. Often I won and, almost as if they were inextricably linked, as the innate liberalism within people waned, the department or the school would improve.

In every instance, I could see for myself that a move away from liberalism was a step in the right direction, a step that brought calm out of chaos, learning in place of trendiness, and success instead of failure. At first, I had no idea that my natural inclinations were ‘Right-wing’. I just argued for what I knew would work to improve schools.

But, in 2007, I began to blog anonymously about my experiences and people unknown to me from around the country, and indeed the world, would comment on my thoughts. The Left-wingers insisted I was bitter and twisted, that I hated children and was clearly disillusioned, while the Right-wingers tended to support my natural inclinations.

Writing my blog was a kind of ­therapy and I never sought to publicise it. I loved writing it because it allowed me to vent my frustrations. What I didn’t know at the time was that it did far more than that: my blog and its respondents taught me that my thinking was Right-wing.

Eventually, the 2010 election came. While Labour’s education manifesto had a tone which reminded me of the ‘all must have prizes’ culture I had come to despise, the Conservatives were promising to abolish the 24-hour rule for detention (one ­cannot give a lengthy detention without 24 hours’ notice to parents). So I did the unthinkable: I voted Conservative and never told a soul.

Why did I choose to stand at the Conservative Party Conference and announce to the world that I voted Conservative? Because October 5, 2010, was the day I threw off the weight of the Leftist ideology that had weighed me down for so long and shouted: ‘Free at last! Free at last!’

The law says we have the freedom to think as we please; social ­conformity says we do not. For more than a decade I have been fighting for my freedom and I have finally taken it back.

Back at the cafe, my Calcutta friend and I laugh at the absurdity of ­neither of us feeling comfortable enough to tell the other that we voted Conservative. She turns to me and says: ‘But just because I voted Conservative this time does not mean I will do so in the next election. These politicians need to earn my vote.’

And she’s absolutely right. That’s why the recent reforms announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove were so exciting. Finally, here is a politician who genuinely cares about education, who has listened to what critics of the existing system have had to say and who has reacted with a set of ­common-sense proposals that I naively thought no one could take issue with.

But almost before he’d sat down in the House of Commons, Labour MPs were accusing him of promoting a ‘two-tier education system’. But that, in fact, is exactly what we have now and what these reforms are trying to address.

Mr Gove’s proposals represent several steps in the right direction. I particularly warm to the changes that will increase the power of teachers - abolishing the need to give 24 hours’ notice of a detention, giving them the right to search bags and restrain violent pupils.

But it’s the way they offer the prospect of bringing state schools - or certain parts of the state school sector - more into line with fee-paying private schools that is most exciting.

Middle-class parents, perhaps ­university-educated themselves, know how the university system works and - whether their children are state or privately educated - can help ensure their children choose appropriately rigorous academic subjects when it comes to GCSEs.

But those children at state schools, with working-class parents who have little or no knowledge of further education, don’t get that sort of help. They need to be guided towards the right subjects, something which the current system definitely does not do.

After all, what carefree 14-year-old, considering their GCSE options, isn’t going to choose something soft like media studies or PE over a tough subject such as ­physics, or plump for the four GCSE passes that information and communications technology offers over the one that German does?

We have a system that offers too much choice without enough ­direction. Universities and employers are crying out for young people with a good command of the basics, which is why Mr Gove’s proposal to concentrate on five core subjects - English, maths, a science, history or geography and a foreign language - is such a sensible one. These are precisely the subjects you need to get a decent start in life.

I’m keeping an open mind about Mr Gove’s headline-grabbing Troops to Teachers programme; let’s see how it goes. And I certainly applaud his ­initiatives to improve the standard of teachers - better aptitude tests, more stringent degree requirements - although I think he may need to go further if the new powers that heads now have to get rid of the small minority of under-performing teachers are actually going to be used.

Lazy or incompetent teachers are not only a waste of taxpayers’ money, they can have a devastating impact on young lives, too. They must be moved on, not just for the sake of the children, but for their own sakes, too. Just because they haven’t excelled at teaching doesn’t mean they won’t excel at something else.

What schools are crying out for are teachers who can inspire but also control an unruly class, teachers who can effectively impart the basics to everyone but who can also help the more able achieve their highest potential. They’ve certainly been a long time coming, but Mr Gove’s reforms are certainly a very good start.

SOURCE






Birthday cake row led to British headteacher's firing

Incredibly trivial minds in a British school system. Thin skins and nastiness to one-another is very British. It's why the expression "jobsworth" is unknown outside Britain. It refers to a person who uses any excuse to refuse a service to others -- even though the "jobsworth" is paid to provide that service. And when it comes to social-class-based contempt for others ....... ! Britain is a very miserable and unhappy country

A row over an uneaten slice of birthday cake triggered a disciplinary case which cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.

When Diane Hill took over as head teacher of Devonport High School for Girls it was near bottom of the grammar school league table. Within months she had begun a massive programme to turn around an institution that many parents believed had become "lazy". But little did she know that the biggest challenge for her would be the delicate nature of the staff.

When a slice of birthday cake was left for the head teacher in her in-tray by an office worker, she failed to eat the gift. The member of staff took offence and lodged a complaint with school governors. The head teacher was also said to have failed to commiserate after the death of a staff member's dog.

She was further accused, wrongly, of confiscating a kettle from the staff room during a row over unwashed crockery. Another complaint to governors centred on Miss Hill's failure to ask a colleague about her mother's health.

In yet another incident, cleaners and dinner ladies at the Plymouth school complained they had been excluded from a "secret Santa" present-buying list – and when Miss Hill investigated the matter, she was accused of intimidating the person who had compiled the list.

Friends of Miss Hill say that the flurry of trivial accusations stemmed, in fact, from resentment among a small group of staff that the new head teacher was changing the established way of doing things – or in some cases by personal dislike of her.

Yet after hearing the litany of complaints, the school's governors decided to suspend the head on full pay, leading to a full-on war of allegations and counter-allegations. The local authority, Plymouth city council, then launched a full investigation which ultimately led to Miss Hill's dismissal.

Now she has been awarded undisclosed damages after the city council agreed an out-of-court settlement just before an employment tribunal was due to take place.

The total cost to taxpayers of the payout, the investigation, and other costs arising from the case is understood to exceed £300,000.

A parent at the school, Fiona Kerr, said: "We have lost the most fantastic head teacher, and for what? A few people's hurt feelings. It's disgraceful. "The school had become lazy. Other schools had improved immensely and Devonport had stood still. Diane was a great loss."

Miss Hill's friends say that the case raises important questions about the powers of school governors and about reforms proposed by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, which would hand them even more control.

The former head teacher is bound by a confidentiality clause which prevents her from talking about what happened at the school. But a friend speaking on her behalf said Miss Hill was concerned that other heads could suffer similar treatment – and may be left even more isolated by the Government's plans.

The friend said: "The outcome of this whole sorry incident is that they have potentially destroyed Diane's career. "She had a 25-year unblemished record and that has been taken away from her. "The education authority found no misconduct and no incompetence after the investigation. It begs the question – why did they dismiss her?

"Her case should act as a warning to others, particularly since governing bodies are now being given more power and independence by the Government."

The final report by city council education officials made numerous comments about the head teacher's frosty relationship with staff, but nowhere did it claim there had been serious incompetence or misconduct on her part.

The birthday cake incident stands out as the most extraordinary complaint in Miss Hill's case – particularly because the 48-year-old has dietary requirements which mean she cannot eat cake. "She is allergic to milk. This was a sponge cake with cream in the middle," said her friend, who declined to be named. "It would be funny if it were not so serious. I don't think there was a single allegation that amounted to anything substantial." .....

Despite the decision to pay damages to Miss Hill, which her friends regards a vindication of her case, the head teacher's opponents remain unrepentant.

More HERE



5 December, 2010

Is America's college debt bubble ready to explode?

It should

Hans Bader

College tuition has skyrocketed much more than housing did during the housing bubble, in percentage terms. 100 colleges charge $50,000 or more a year, compared to just 5 in 2008-09. College tuition has surged along with federal financial-aid spending, which indirectly rewards colleges for increasing tuition. College financial-aid policies punish thrifty families, so that “parents who scrimp and save to come up with the tuition are in effect subsidizing the others."

“University administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers,” notes Facebook investor Peter Thiel, “selling you a story that you should go into debt massively, that it’s not a consumption decision, it’s an investment decision. Actually, no, it’s a bad consumption decision. Most colleges are four-year parties,” he says, an assessment shared by prominent law professor Glenn Reynolds.

My wife is French. She spent twice as much time in class at her second-tier French university as I did in my flagship American university (the University of Virginia), and more time studying, too (even though I was studious by American standards, and as a result, later went on to attend Harvard Law School). France spends less per student on higher education than we do, to produce a more literate and knowledgeable citizenry.

Vast amounts of money are spent by American colleges on useless administrators and politically-correct indoctrination. For many people, college no longer pays off as an investment.

Much of college “education” is a waste of time. I learned more practical law in six weeks of studying for the bar exam and a couple summers of working for law firms than I did in three years of law school. I spent much of my time at Harvard Law School watching “Married With Children” or arguing with classmates about politics, rather than studying (much of what I did study was useless). Even students who were high on drugs had no difficulty graduating.

(Higher education is no guarantee of even basic literacy. When I worked at the Department of Education handling administrative appeals, I was dismayed by the poor writing skills of the graduate students who lodged complaints against their universities).

I used to work for a polling firm, and found that people with a couple years of college were frequently factually dumber about the world around them, and more politically-correct, than people who had not attended college at all, in their responses to public-opinion surveys. An electrician with no college degree is far more likely to know who his Congressman is and to understand the economy than some liberal-arts college dropout.

When law schools claim almost all of their graduates find jobs, what they don’t tell you is that they include low-paying, part-time and temporary jobs in non-legal fields in making that claim. Sending excessive numbers of people to college results in even unskilled jobs being performed by people with college degrees.

SOURCE





Anger as British schools drop Christian assemblies in favour of multi-faith sessions or 'moments of reflection'

Such assemblies once offered moral guidance

Christians have criticised the growing number of schools which have dropped their traditional assemblies in favour of multi-faith sessions or ‘moments of reflection’ which include children staring at rocks, meditating or discussing the news.

More than 140 primary and secondary schools across Britain have won the right to opt out of the legal requirement to provide a daily act of worship which is ‘broadly Christian’ in character.

Several hold Islamic assemblies with readings from the Koran, while others hold sessions giving weeksequal prominence to all faiths and sometimes incorporate events such as Black History Month and Chinese New Year.

The disclosure that so many schools have ditched the Christian service has upset traditionalists. Mike Judge, of The Christian Institute, said: ‘It is part of an attempt to airbrush Christianity from public life. Of course it is important to be sensitive to other faiths but I think all children should be made aware of our Christian heritage. It is as much part of our island story as 1066 and the Battle of Hastings.

‘A lot of Muslim parents don’t mind their children learning about the nature of Christianity. I think it’s a question of other people being offended on their behalf.’

Schools which no longer feel a Christian assembly is relevant to their pupils can seek permission to opt out from their local authority Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE), which is made up of council representatives and local faith representatives.

Schools must provide an alternative form of worship. The highest number of opt-outs, which are also known as determinations, are in areas where there are a large number of ethnic minority residents.

Bradford, West Yorkshire, which has a large Muslim community, has the highest number of opt-outs at 47. In 40 of these schools pupils attend one assembly a week which is devoted to Islam and four other sessions which have a multi-faith approach. In the other seven schools there are five multi-faith sessions.

An increasing number of schools in London are also changing the nature of their assemblies. In the past five years 37 schools in the London borough of Brent have made successful applications to their local SACRE committees.

In Ealing, where 12 schools have opt-outs, one school head proposed introducing a ‘thought spot’ with children reflecting on a single object on a table such as
a candle, a rock or an artefact.

SOURCE





British Labour party's failure on schools exposed: Billions spent, but standards plunge to a new low

If you base your policies on wrong theories, you will not get the results you expect

Britain plummeted down the world education league under Labour, despite the millions poured into schools. A major international study will reveal next week that in less than a decade our schools have nosedived in rankings of teenagers’ performance in reading, maths and science.

Previous studies have shown how the UK slid 16 places in maths between 2000 and 2006 and ten places in science and reading, leaving our schools trailing smaller nations such as Estonia and Liechtenstein.

Education experts are predicting that the latest snapshot of school standards, which is being published on Tuesday, will fail to show an improvement. There are claims our place in the tables – based on tests taken by 15-year-olds in 64 nations – could be worse than in 2006.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development created its Programme for International Student Assessment in 2000. In that year, Britain came seventh in reading, eighth in maths and fourth in science. Three years later our schools were ranked 11th, 18th and 12th respectively.

By 2006, Britain had fallen further, to 17th, 24th and 14th. Education Secretary Michael Gove has used previous international studies to attack Labour’s record. He is likely to renew his assault when the latest findings are published next week.

The findings will cause renewed concern that extra resources ploughed into schools since 2000 have been swallowed up in red tape and ill-conceived initiatives. Tony Blair’s mantra when he came to power in 1997 was education, education, education. But a recent analysis suggested that schools’ productivity – taxpayers’ value for money – slumped by 6.7 per cent between 2000 and 2009. Over the same period, education spending nearly doubled from £35.8billion to £71billion.

One of the architects of Labour’s numeracy strategy – designed to raise maths standards in primary schools – said he believes next week’s international study ‘won’t be good for England’, although it would continue to be ahead of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Professor David Reynolds told the Times Educational Supplement: ‘Little has happened that would have changed what was a downward trajectory in England’s performance.’

The professor, now an education academic at Plymouth University, said 15-year-olds who took the latest OECD tests would have benefited from Labour’s multi-billion pound initiatives aimed at boosting performance in the three Rs. But he added: ‘I don’t believe the strategies necessarily had the kind of legs that one might have expected.’

Professor Reynolds admitted efforts to improve patchy maths knowledge among teachers had come ‘a wee bit late’.

Other critics say next week’s rankings will also cast fresh doubt on year-on-year increases in GCSE and A-level grades.

Ministers want to introduce a set of school league tables to help parents judge standards for five-year-olds in school reception and nursery classes. At present they are assessed on 13 subjects, but these are only published at national and local authority level.

SOURCE



4 December, 2010

For the Boys' Sake, Don't Kill the SAT

Three years ago, before any of my kids had reached the age to take the SATs, I noticed an interesting piece by Charles Murray on the tests. Murray is always interesting, of course, but I was curious about his take on the SAT because his views on IQ are well known.

Murray argued that the SAT should be scrapped. His case was not (no surprise) the usual indictment of the tests as culturally biased. Instead, he argued that the SAT is unnecessary and, in some ways, counterproductive.

The SAT began as a way for colleges to identify bright students from less than stellar high schools and give them an opportunity. Admission committees might discount excellent grades from inferior schools, but scores on an "aptitude" test (they later changed the word to "assessment" to avoid the accusation that the SAT was measuring IQ) could be revealing. Murray suggests that he used to think his own performance on the test was what got him into Harvard.

But a study by Saul Geiser and Roger Studley from the University of California seemed to show that the SATs contributed little to predicting a student's success in college, whereas achievement tests and high school grades were more reliable. "Those of us who thought that the SAT was our salvation were probably wrong ... our scores on achievement tests would have conveyed about the same picture to college admissions committees as our scores on the SAT conveyed."

The reality, Murray wrote, is that smart kids tend to do well on tests, whether a pop quiz or the AP exams. But whereas the SAT was originally designed to flag kids who might otherwise have been missed by college admissions committees, it has today become a "corrosive symbol of privilege." Everybody now believes, according to Murray, that wealthier parents can purchase higher scores for their kids through expensive coaching. And while Murray points out that this is not so (coaching adds, at most, a couple of dozen points, according to three studies), it is the case that children of college-educated (and graduate degreed) parents walk away with the best scores. Everyone else is found wanting. "All who enter an SAT testing hall feel judged by their scores," Murray writes.

While the idea of junking those stressful, laborious three-hour tests has its appeal, there are reasons to resist.

If achievement tests were substituted for the SAT, all of the cultural and psychological baggage of the high-stakes test would simply switch over. All would continue to "feel judged by their scores" -- just on a different test. (And Murray may overestimate the importance people attach to scores.)

Additionally, Murray doesn't account for the important male/female difference in test performance, particularly on aptitude tests. (Cards on the table: I write as a parent of three boys.) For whatever reason, during the past 30 years, our society has seen girls outperforming boys at every level of education. The average high school GPA for girls is 3.09. For boys, the average is 2.86. About one quarter more boys than girls drop out of high school, and boys are three times as likely to be expelled. Girls do significantly better at reading proficiency in all grades. And in math, traditionally a male preserve, the two sexes are tied. Women now earn 58 percent of bachelor's degrees and 60 percent of master's degrees in the U.S.

Something is going on. It may be the significant attention the educational establishment has lavished on girls, the lure of video games, the lack of fathers in so many homes, the fact that boys mature more slowly than girls, or maybe none of those. But we do know that whatever may be inhibiting them from excelling in high school as much as girls, boys do score proportionately better on the SATs.

In 2010, a total of 382 students scored a perfect 2400. Of these, 206 were boys, and 176 were girls. (If the writing test is omitted, 1,305 students got a 1600 -- 820 boys and 485 girls.) Among those who scored a 2350, 341 were boys, and 266 were girls. The same rough ratios hold (with one exception) for all of the scores in the top 10 percentiles. At the 90th percentile and below, some of the girls' scores are higher than the boys'. And in the middle range, it's a mixed bag.

So long as college requires mental ability, the SATs will remain a signal that boys with less than perfect high school records may be late bloomers or perhaps were ill served by their schools. But scrapping one of the few remaining avenues for talented boys to show, yes, their aptitude, seems unwise.

SOURCE





Students should be judged on 'potential', says Oxford admissions chief

If he really did want to do that, he would be using IQ tests. They are the best predictor of educational success -- and they are almost totally unaffected by home background

Universities should consider giving priority to pupils with good grades from poor performing schools, according to Oxford’s head of admissions. Students gaining a string of good grades at sink schools “may have more potential” than those with similar scores from elite schools and colleges, it was claimed.

Mike Nicholson, director of undergraduate admissions at Oxford, said universities should have “no hesitation” about taking students’ backgrounds into consideration during the applications process.

The comments are likely to fuel controversy over “social engineering” in university admissions. Headmasters have warned that the use of “contextual data” – including students’ school, family background and social class – risks penalising pupils with good results from top-performing independent schools.

It comes amid rising competition for university places. Demand for degree courses is expected to reach record levels next year as students scramble to get in to higher education before a sharp rise in tuition fees in 2012.

But the Sutton Trust – a charity campaigning to improve levels of social mobility – insisted universities still had a duty to “take into account the educational context of students when deciding whom to admit”.

It came as a report from the charity suggested that teenagers admitted on to degree courses with relatively low GCSE and A-level performed just as well as those with better grades. The study said a comprehensive school pupil with three Bs at A-level was just as likely to get a good degree as those admitted from private school with two As and a B.

Comprehensive students with average A-levels and GCSEs actually did better at university compared with privately-educated pupils with the same grades, the report added.

The Sutton Trust said this proved that universities were justified in making lower offers to pupils from poor-performing comprehensives. “The use of data about the educational context in which students have obtained their qualifications, particularly the type of school attended, should be encouraged when comparing the attainment of [higher education] candidates,” the study said.

Many top universities currently use contextual data during the applications process.

Addressing a conference in central London on Thursday, Mr Nicholson told how Oxford’s medical school looked into the number of A* grades applicants scored at GCSE – then compared scores with the overall performance of their school. “A student who gets five A*s from a school where nobody gets A*s may have more potential than a student who gets five A*s where the average student gets seven or eight A*s,” he said.

Speaking at the Westminster Education Forum, he said contextual data gave admissions tutors “an indication, if used rightly, of [students’] potential” to do well in a degree course. He said he had "no hestitation" in employing "evidence-based use of contextual information" during applications.

Meanwhile, the Sutton Trust study was condemned by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents 250 top independent schools.

“This is just one of a number of studies of university outcomes which come to contradictory conclusions about the influence of different types of school education,” said a spokesman.

“Independent schools share universities’ enthusiasm to identify academic promise as well as prior attainment but this latest study does beg the question of why some comprehensive school students are evidently so less well prepared for A levels than those in independent schools.”

SOURCE






Australia: A private education has its awards

Non-disruptive classrooms give teachers time to teach

ONE of Melbourne's bastions of male privilege - Scotch College - has educated more of Australia's most honoured and influential citizens than any other school in the nation.

An analysis of the 435 people who have received the nation's top Order of Australia honours since they were first awarded in 1975, shows they disproportionately attended a handful of elite Victorian secondary schools.

Scotch College alumni blitzed the field, with 19 former students receiving Australia's highest honour, including former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowen, historian Hugh Stretton, High Court judge Kenneth Hayne, indigenous eye health pioneer Professor Hugh Taylor and former Tasmanian premier Jim Bacon.

The only school that comes close is Geelong Grammar, with former students, including Prince Charles and Rupert Murdoch, receiving 17 honours.

Alumni from the two schools have received more than 8 per cent of all the knight, dame or Companion of the Order of Australia honours - more than all the schools in each of Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, ACT and Northern Territory.

The analysis provides a fascinating insight into the transfer of social advantage through the school system, with independent schools dominating rankings in Victoria.

The only government school in Victoria to be ranked in the top 30 was the selective-entry Melbourne High School, whose alumni - including Nobel prizewinning neurophysiologist John Eccles and former Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane - received six honours. However, study author Rohan Reid said outside of Victoria the dominant schools were not always private, with former students from the selective state schools Sydney Boys' High and Fort Street High receiving the third and equal fourth highest number of awards.

Professor Jack Keating from the University of Melbourne said that unlike Melbourne, Sydney had about 20 selective-entry high schools. "Sydney Boys and Fort Street are long-established, so the economic and social elite will be more inclined to send their kids there," Professor Keating said.

"The selective-entry high schools have been favoured by a certain middle class on the Labor side of politics. A lot of the lawyers' class and the professional class comes through these schools, whereas in Melbourne, the law and medical classes tend to come through the private schools."

He said the study mirrored the findings of Melbourne University researchers Mark Peel and Janet McCalman, who analysed the educational backgrounds of the people listed in the 1988 Who's Who. Again, Scotch College outranked all other schools.

Professor David Penington, an Old Scotch Collegian who was made a companion of the Order of Australia in 1988 for his service to medicine and the community, believes the school's Scottish Presbyterian background meant it has always placed a strong emphasis on community contribution.

It's a sentiment shared by former premier and old Scotch boy Jeff Kennett, AC, who still recalls the words of former headmaster Richard Selby Smith. "He used to say to us that we had an obligation to the college when we left school - it wasn't all about money, it was actually about service. It was something that stuck in my mind as a young boy."

Mr Kennett believes Order of Australia honours should reward what people do outside their jobs.

"I think there are so many people who consistently give to the community, who don't get the recognition they deserve," he said. Author Shane Maloney infamously described Scotch College as a "machine for the transmission of inherited privilege" during a creative writing seminar at the school nine years ago.

Asked whether the analysis of Order of Australia honours reinforced his view that Scotch was a factory of privilege, Mr Maloney said: "You could draw that conclusion. Alternatively, the argument could be put that it simply reinforces the value parents get for their money."

SOURCE



3 December, 2010

DC trailblazer comes to Florida

Gov.-elect Rick Scott [GOP] announced Thursday that he has formed a transition team of education and community leaders to help him create "a new education system for a new economy."

Topping the list is Michelle Rhee, the controversial former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools who has become something of a rock star in the world of education reform. Sharply critical of teacher tenure, she butted heads with the teachers union and fired or forced out hundreds of educators and other employees before she resigned recently. She also closed dozens of failing schools.

The vast majority of the people named to Scott's education transition team — there are 18 of them — are from Florida, and some have been called upon by previous governors for guidance.

For example, Jonathan K. Hage, the president of Charter Schools USA, one of state's largest providers of charter schools, has helped both governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, a spokesman for Hage said.

Before Thursday's announcement, there had been widespread speculation in the blogosphere and other media that Scott might ask Rhee to become Florida's next commissioner of education. Her selection to the transition team heightened that speculation.

Neither Scott nor Rhee could be reached for comment. And a spokesman for Florida's teachers union had little to say except, "We hope that the governor and the Legislature will seek the viewpoints of public-school teachers when discussing changes in our public schools."

It isn't yet clear precisely what Scott's transition team will do or how often it will meet. But his announcement said the group will help him find creative ways to cut costs and set legislative priorities that will "help reduce the size of government, improve the education system in Florida and meet the workforce needs necessary to create 700,000 jobs over the next seven years."

Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, who was asked to serve on the team, said she expects Scott to use the panel to vet ideas. She said she was impressed by the breadth of views included in the group, including community members, business owners and supporters of charter schools, private-school vouchers and virtual schools.

Hillsborough is breaking ground in Florida in its own way by using a $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to overhaul teacher evaluation and pay. "It's a really important approach the governor is taking — to put together a group of people to give him insights as he takes over the governorship," Elia said.

Other members of the team, dubbed by Scott as his "Champions for Achievement," include Patricia Levesque, executive director of Bush's Foundation For Florida's Future; as well as Judy Genshaft, president of the University of South Florida; and Julio Fuentes, president of Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

SOURCE





Britain should end the madness of "predicted" High School exam results

The current nonsensical system is a prize example of British eccentricity. I won't even try to explain it

Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, said exam boards should be required to mark tests quicker to give teenagers time to apply for degrees over the summer. Currently, applications are made on the basis of predicted results but as many as half of estimated grades turn out to be wrong.

There are also fears that the quality of predictions differs wildly between schools – often pushing students onto courses ill-suited for their needs.

Students usually sit final exams in May and courses are only confirmed when grades are published in mid-to-late August. It gives candidates just a few weeks to appeal against results and find places through the clearing system if they have fallen short of predicted grades.

Speaking on Thursday, Mrs Curnock Cook said Britain should move to a post-qualifications admissions system. She said examiners should “speed up the marking” of tests to allow pupils to apply for degree courses in early summer before starting university in September or October.

Ucas has already launched a review into the points-based tariff used to award places on degree courses following concerns that it fails to differentiate between students’ qualifications.

The move could give institutions greater freedom to prioritise candidates taking the toughest courses at school and sixth-form college.

Mrs Curnock Cook said: “I have come to the conclusion that probably the biggest single reform that we can do in the qualifications arena and higher education is to move to a post-qualifications admissions system. “This is something that’s been put in the ‘too difficult to handle box’ for a very long time.

“I have to say that I was quite shocked to have a circular from [exam boards] setting out the A-level results day dates for the next five years. And it is still that same Thursday in August. “You know, guys, what’s happened to technology? I cannot believe that in the next five years we cannot speed up the marking of exams.”

The comments were made in a speech to the Westminster Education Forum in central London.

Similar proposals were made by a leading official from the former Department for Education and Skills five years ago. But they were rejected amid claims that they would not leave enough time for rigorous academic selection. It could also have a serious impact on university interviews and aptitude tests staged by the most selective universities.

SOURCE





Australia: Bureaucracy that it as obstructive as it is stupid holds back university research

A year ago I was introduced at a blue chip institute, owned by Sydney University, to an eminent professor leading an exciting research project. His team had (almost) isolated the scent molecule in cat fur that is recognised by and affects the behaviour of rodents. He can demonstrate that exposing rats to the critical molecule, in tiny concentrations, causes them to flee from the source, with great reluctance to return, and brief exposure appears to interrupt their prolific breeding cycle. Almost one-third of the Indonesian rice crop is lost to rats and mice each year. For a country trying to feed 240 million people, most of whom eat rice every day, this is a seriously interesting idea.

The professor needed $300,000 to fund three senior scientists and their equipment and materials for a year to take the final step in isolating the active molecule from a dozen alternatives. I offered to raise the money privately but he explained this was not possible, as any private investment had to be sanctioned and brokered by the university's commercialisation arm, Sydnovate. I was informed that his funding rounds take place at fixed intervals – miss one and you have to wait for the next – and that grants of $50,000 are hard to get. It was possible for a private investor to help but there were very strict rules. The last time his team had gone down this path, it took two years to consider the request and a competing university in Europe published the innovation in the interim.

The Commonwealth gave Sydney University $750 million in grants in 2009 – before you get to HECS payments and student fees. About $200 million a year goes to the faculty of medicine for research. Those funds employ a small army of very clever men and women in trying to solve human health-related problems. Sydnovate's sole purpose is to commercialise the good ideas that this army of researchers (and their colleagues in the faculties of engineering, chemistry, etc) create. So what is the royalty return that we taxpayers get for $750 million a year? It's $2.5 million in 2009 out of total university revenue of $1.4 billion – or one-third of 1 per cent. After 160 years of operation, Sydney University makes more money selling beer and hamburgers to students than it does licensing intellectual property.

Advertisement: Story continues below
Sydnovate employs 26 full-time staff including six lawyers and five PhDs. Like one hand clapping, they are expert at registering patents, hopeless at making money – all protection, no profit. They remind me of the Soviet shoe factory that suffered a failure of the left sole cutter and continued producing thousands of right shoes, knowing their quota in a command economy was measured by the number of shoes produced, rather than the number of pairs. There are partnerships, where industry has come to the university asking for help in a research task, but as far as I can tell, negligible revenue from faculty-created knowledge. Performance reporting is opaque; Sydnovate doesn't produce an annual report. If public company directors practised these levels of transparency with other people's money, they would be struck off.

It's unfair to pick on one institution when the story is repeated so consistently. The University of Queensland gets points for effort in its Uniseed collaboration with Melbourne University and UNSW, which has attracted $15 million in third-party superannuation investment.

That ray of hope is overshadowed by the most recent DEEWR data (2008) suggesting "royalties, trademarks and licences" generate 0.46 per cent of total university operating revenue. By contrast, one US listed therapeutics company, AmGen, has amassed $50 billion in 30 years, improving the prospects of 18 million patients, by commercialising three good ideas.

The cost of running a research-intensive university is rising twice as fast as government willingness to fund it. The most creative idea to fill the hole seems to be more full-fee-paying foreign students. We go through the motions of running commercialisation units but there is little conviction and fewer results – partly because the culture of the education unions is so anti-profit and anti-business. How can our universities credibly teach "entrepreneurship" when their own record on the subject is so bad?

There will always be a place for "pure" research but we must move beyond the infantilism of institutions addicted to the easy money of government grants and foreign students.

The relevant leading body of public institutions – Knowledge Commercialisation Australia (KCA) – appears to see its role as rationalising the failure of its members and organising further and deeper raids on commonwealth and state treasuries.

KCA's message is that Australian universities ought to expect to make much less than 1 per cent of revenue from commercialising ideas because "discoveries that produce financial bonanzas are so rare that policies designed to pursue them would almost always lead to failure".

How inspiring. Recurrent funding to public research institutes should include incentives and penalties. If they prove incapable of giving cartilage to ideas, we should contract the role to others. Researchers must be able to bypass the politburos masquerading as deal-brokers. We could create an annual "Australian Innovation Market", bringing together venture capitalists and the research community, allowing scientists to produce a simple prospectus and pitch deals to recruit capital in a global online IP auction.

Failure to act also involves risk. The rats will keep eating the rice and our best minds will emigrate, fondly recalling Australia as a nice place to retire.

SOURCE



2 December, 2010

Feds should flunk out of education

If there's one thing the 2010 elections made clear, it's that voters want a smaller, cheaper, more effective federal government. A terrific place to start giving them that is education. Washington meddles in our schools without constitutional authority to do so, and, as newly released test scores illustrate, without making things any better.

The scores in question are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called "Nation's Report Card." More specifically, they are reading and mathematics scores for 12th-graders — our schools' "final products" — and they reveal federal failure on at least two levels.

First, there are the scores themselves. In reading, they were slightly lower than in 1998 or 1992, and they are part of an overall trend of almost pure stagnation. In mathematics, there was a tiny uptick from 2005-09 and ... that was it. The NAEP framework for math was changed so drastically from 2002-05 that no pre-2005 scores were comparable, making no meaningful trend discernable. Nonetheless, the NAEP press release touted gains for math and reading.

So our latest federal test results show stagnation in reading, and for all practical purposes nothing in math. The federal government has neither improved outcomes on its own metric, nor kept its metric very useful.

To be fair, there are lots of NAEP tests, including a long-term mathematics assessment that tracks achievement consistently since the early 1970s. Only the so-called "main" math NAEP is hobbled right now. The long-term test, though, confirms the big point: There's been essentially no change in high school math achievement for the last nearly four decades.

It hasn't been for a lack of spending or legislating.

According to the federal Digest of Education Statistics, in 1970 Washington spent an inflation-adjusted $32 billion on elementary and secondary education. In 2009, the feds blew an estimated $83 billion — about a 160 percent increase. On a per-pupil basis, the Digest reports an inflation-adjusted rise from $435 in 1970 to $1,015 in 2006 (the latest year with per-pupil data).

Of course, Washington hasn't just spent money. It's increasingly demanded more standards, testing, and "accountability." The No Child Left Behind Act is the apogee of that, as well as a terrific example of federal failure. While it's impossible to ascribe results completely to NCLB, we know for sure that scores haven't improved under the law. High school reading results were slightly higher before NCLB than after according to the most recent NAEP scores, and the long-term trend shows math achievement a wee bit higher before the law.

Why does Washington fail? In part because actual educational success hasn't mattered that much. On the assumption that it would translate into better results, well-intentioned voters have generally supported politicians who have promised to spend more money and make schools "accountable."

The problem is that politicians say lots of things, and, unlike when you pay more for a car to get better safety or mileage, when politicians spend money it's often not to get better education. No, it's to curry favor with teacher unions, administrator associations or other special interests whose members get paid with increased federal funding and will raise hell for politicians who don't push it. So spending goes up, up, up, but achievement stays down, down, down.

Perhaps, though, the public has finally wised up. It certainly has when it comes to the overall size of government: According to Nov. 2 exit polls, 56 percent of voters think "government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals." Only 38 percent feel "government should do more to solve problems."

There isn't such exit polling data for education, but other bits of information suggest that the sentiment applies there, too. For instance, several victorious Tea Party-type candidates such as Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have spoken explicitly about eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. And the most recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on attitudes about public schooling revealed that a sizable majority of Americans think education should remain primarily a state and local function.

In light of all this, it seems that the time has come to start pulling Washington out of education. Not only might the political stars have aligned, but we have fresh new evidence that the federal government is an educational failure.

SOURCE





Latin lessons for British state school pupils aged five in language revival bid

The study of Latin is one of the best ways of learning to use English well so I heartily approve -- but I would like to know where they are going to get the teachers for it

Children as young as five will be given Latin lessons as ministers attempt to revive the language in primary and secondary schools. Condemning the long-term ‘decimation’ of Latin in state schools, Education Minister Nick Gibb swept away Labour guidance which effectively restricted primaries to teaching modern languages.

He also revealed teenagers taking a GCSE in Latin or Greek will be able to count the qualification towards the new English Baccalaureate, the proposed benchmark for secondary school achievement. It will be awarded to youngsters gaining at least a C at GCSE in English, maths, a science, a humanities subject and a language.

The emphasis on languages comes as ministers prepare to overhaul the National Curriculum. Mr Gibb told the Politeia think-tank in London that learning Latin helps general language skills, but it had been squeezed out by a curriculum ‘straitjacket’.

Those who argued it should not be taught to state pupils as it was ‘elitist’ were widening the gap between the rich and poor, he said. A ‘pitifully small’ number of primaries teach Latin and only 9,246 teenagers took a GCSE in it last year – 70 per cent of them at private schools, he added.

SOURCE





Weak excuse to ban conservative student group at USF

Mike Adams

The University of South Florida (USF) has reversed its denial of recognition to the USF Young Pakistani Student Cultural group. USF had argued that the Young Pakistanis were too "similar" to the Young Indian Student Cultural group on campus. After USF denied the Young Pakistani application for recognition, they came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

This case is disturbing because USF currently recognizes over 60 multicultural groups and no fewer than 20 engineering clubs. But, according to USF, the Pakistanis are considered too similar to Indians to be allowed on campus. The Pakistanis were initially told to simply join the Indian group because USF administrators were unable to discern a difference between the two groups.

The ordeal of the USF Young Pakistanis began in April 2010 when they submitted a constitution in order to gain official recognition. USF rejected the application in a September e-mail from the USF Student Programs Coordinator. She told the Young Pakistani Founding Chairman the following: "the purpose of your proposed organization may be fairly similar, if not the same, as another existing organization that is established at the USF Tampa campus." She added "no other student organization can exist with the same or similar mission/purpose."

By now, the reader of this column may be sensing some familiarity with the general argument employed by USF. A few years ago, the University of Miami refused to recognize Advocates for Conservative Thought (ACT), a student organization that was created for "the exposition and promotion of conservative principles and ideas." The University of Miami argued that this decision was justified because it had previously recognized the College Republicans. FIRE also intervened in that case and ACT finally received official recognition. This was after four failed attempts without the help of FIRE.

By now, the reader of this column may also be sensing that it is a parody. USF did not ban the Pakistanis because they were similar to the Indians. USF banned a conservative group, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), because it was similar to a libertarian group, Young Americans for Liberty. The analogy is a good one given the extent to which conservatives and libertarians often fight over important issues.

Fortunately, FIRE wrote USF President Judy Genshaft in October in order to explain (slowly) that YAF and Young Americans for Liberty are indeed different in terms of their ideology and stated goals. FIRE also explained that USF's policy is unconstitutional. Specifically, the policy gives administrators too much discretion to reject new student organizations. Such discretion fails the Supreme Court's 40-year old requirement that government representatives use "narrow, objective, and definite standards" when subjecting First Amendment rights to a permit system. See Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham (1969).

The good news is that USF Dean of Students Kevin Banks has responded to FIRE. And he has provisionally recognized YAF pending approval of the group's constitution. The bad news is that USF has yet to revise its unconstitutional policy of preventing groups "with the same purpose/goals" from obtaining recognition.

FIRE Vice President of Programs Adam Kissel observed that, after the College Republicans, YAF is the largest and oldest conservative student organization in the United States. Given that fact, it seems a stretch to imagine that USF administrators really are ignorant and/or confused about how YAF differs from Young Americans for Liberty, which is only a couple of years old. After all, the folks who approve different student organizations should know something about how student organizations differ.

Maybe the great minds roaming the administrative halls of USF really failed to grasp the difference between these two groups. Maybe they still fail to grasp the larger differences between conservatives and libertarians. It is more likely, however, that USF administrators knew the groups were different from each other – and, more importantly, different from the administration. And because neither is liberal their collective campus influence had to be minimized.

The sad thing about all of this is that these administrators usually call themselves liberals. There used to be a difference between liberals and totalitarians. To be honest, I can’t tell the difference anymore.

SOURCE



1 December, 2010

Antisemitism at Princeton

Under the usual cloak of misrepresentations about Israel. The name "sabra" would of course be a red rag to an antisemite. It is a descriptive nickname for native-born Israeli Jews

Beginning today, students will be able to register support, opposition or complete apathy toward the Sabra hummus referendum, which has been hotly debated on campus over the past two weeks. The referendum will appear on the USG runoff election ballot this week. If passed, it will ask Dining Services to supply an alternative brand of hummus in addition to Sabra.

The petition for the referendum, which was submitted Tuesday night with the signatures of 269 undergraduates, is one piece of a campaign by the Princeton Committee on Palestine to register moral opposition to the activities of The Strauss Group, which owns 50 percent of Sabra Dipping Company. PepsiCo owns the other half.

The Strauss Group has made public statements in support of the Israeli Defense Forces and also sends care packages to soldiers. The Golani Brigade, members of which have been accused of human rights abuses, has been financially and publicly supported by The Strauss Group.

The referendum has garnered coverage in numerous publications around the world, from Fox News to The Huffington Post to The Jerusalem Post. It is part of a larger movement calling for the boycott of and divestment from companies supporting alleged human rights abusers within the Israeli military.

While alternative brands are available at the U-Store and off campus, Sabra is the only brand sold at University-run retail locations and the only hummus that can be purchased at late meal in Frist Campus Center. The U-Store, which sells other brands, is not run by the University.

According to Campion, the lack of options in University retail locations causes a problem. “Students can only use their meal plan, which they’ve have already invested a lot of money in, to purchase one kind of hummus,” she said. She did acknowledge, however, that Dining Services also makes its own hummus which is served in residential college dining halls.

PCP’s Sabra hummus campaign was inspired by Philly BDS, an organization that calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against companies that support the Israeli military. The organization, which similarly emphasizes the human rights abuses of the Golani Brigade, has also targeted companies it sees as “partners” of the military.

The campaign against Sabra hummus has spread to other campuses. DePaul University in Chicago has discontinued sale of Sabra products, and students at the University of Pennsylvania have taken both sides in a boycott campaign in Philadelphia.

More HERE






Hatred of Christianity in an American school again

It was a state semi-final game and there was a lot riding on 23-yard touchdown run by Tumwater High School’s running back Ronnie Hastie. After he crossed into the end zone for his second quarter score, Hastie took a knee and briefly pointed to heaven above, thanking God.

It was this action which drew the attention of one referee and, subsequently, the referee’s yellow flag. Hastie was surprised to learn that his momentary pause for prayer would earn him a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Hastie said he‘s pointed up as a gesture to God after every touchdown he’s scored in every game and never had a problem before. “It’s usually one or two seconds long,” he said.

Hastie said he asked the ref why he was penalized, and the ref responded that Hastie wasn’t supposed to draw attention to himself. “That wasn’t the point (of the gesture), so I guess I was a little confused,” Hastie said.

Asked if he planned to point to the sky after future touchdowns, Hastie said he would not. “I’ll just have to change it up and not make as big of a statement, I guess. The refs are in charge,” he said. “I‘ll just point to the sky once I’m off the field.”

SOURCE





Junk teachers for junk British schools

It reads as though it was written by a schoolchild – and a below-average student at that. But this brief note, riddled with 16 grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, was actually the work of a teacher.

The report was sent by email to the parents of a pupil in the state school teacher's class, summarising the girl’s performance over the previous year.

But yesterday her mother said that all it really did was raise questions about the teacher's own ability. Alongside simple spelling mistakes such as 'requriements' and 'occaisions', were misplaced apostrophes, missing letters and embarrassing typos such as 'ativities’ and ‘everning'.

The unnamed teacher at 800-pupil Gleed Girls’ Technology College, in Spalding, Lincolnshire, committed her first two errors in the email’s subject heading, before the note even began.

The pupil's mother said: 'What concerns me most is that this teacher is supposed to be responsible for raising my daughter’s educational standards. 'If her standards are that low, how can she expect my daughter’s to be high? 'By the time I got to the third paragraph I’d noted five mistakes. 'I would always check an email before I clicked send.

'I am very happy with the school in all other aspects of their dealings with my daughter. But I just received this email and was shocked at how poorly written it was.'

The all-girls school’s website says it is a ‘trailblazing’ institution which has an 'excellent reputation locally and nationally’, although the school is rated only as 'satisfactory' by Ofsted.

The watchdog concluded its most recent inspection report in October 2007 by ordering the school to improve the 'quality of teaching and learning’.

Only days ago Education Secretary Michael Gove called for teachers to clamp down on poor spelling and grammar.

Yesterday, the school’s head, Liz Shawhulme, said she was ‘shocked by the number of mistakes, many of which appear to be typos'. 'It was obviously written in haste and not checked but this is no excuse and I will be contacting the parent to apologise.’

Marie Clair, of the Plain English Campaign, said: ‘Teachers who do this should wear their own dunces' hats.'

SOURCE






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.


The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray