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28 February, 2011

Christie wants vouchers for NJ

Gov. Chris Christie signed a proclamation today recognizing Trenton civil rights crusader Edith Savage Jennings as part of a Black History Month event.

Christie used the occasion honoring Savage Jennings to speak about his education reform platform, which calls for creating a voucher program for students in the poorest districts and eliminating teacher tenure.

Christie told the crowd of mostly African-American activists, lawmakers and students, that just like fighting for voting rights was politically unpopular, pushing for his education overhaul is also unpopular. Christie said both efforts are the right thing for society and political fallout shouldn't be a factor.

"The hard stuff is standing up to the interests who don't want this progress because they like the way things are right now," Christie said. "The one thing I do know about Dr. King is he did not care about that, he cared about putting forward a vision that he believed was based in the rights that God gave each human being he put on this Earth."

SOURCE






Britain's schools lottery

The appalling disparity between the best and worst state schools has never been worse

Tomorrow is "admissions day" in the English school system, when the parents of nearly 540,000 children will find out whether their son or daughter has been given a place at their preferred secondary school. For around 60,000 children, the answer will be no. But the disappointment will not be evenly distributed: in some areas, 40 per cent of children will be turned away. There are many parts of England where the local comprehensive is so bad that parents will move house to avoid it. To get round this tactic, low-ability pupils are shoehorned into good schools or the local council resorts to lotteries.

It is impossible to design a state system in which all pupils go to the school of their parents' choice. But the appalling disparity between the best and worst state schools has never been worse – and it is especially difficult to tackle because bad teachers and bad schools are protected by their allies in the teaching unions and local government.

As we report today, Philip Cottam, chairman of the Society of Headmasters and Headmistresses of Independent Schools, believes that privately educated children are the victims of university admissions systems skewed in favour of badly performing state pupils.

He is right – but, as he points out, children in run-of-the-mill comprehensives are also victims, as are their frustrated parents. The truth is that people who want their children to have a rigorous education have never enjoyed the liberation from statist mediocrity that they have experienced in other walks of life.

The Thatcher government left millions of children at the mercy of educationalists who despise competition. That situation persists, as many parents will discover tomorrow. Put simply, there are not enough good schools; the obstacles to creating them must be cleared away as soon as possible.

SOURCE





Teaching assistant driven to 'hell and back' after racist abuse and violence at hands of teenage PUPILS in Britain

A teaching assistant claims he 'felt like jumping in front of a bus' after being punched, racially abused, attacked with a compass and forced to call police when a student threatened to rape his wife and children. Khalid Akram says he even received a death threat from a teenage pupil at the school where he worked in Burnley, Lancashire, but nothing was done despite him filing dozens of complaints to bosses.

He claims he was left with post-traumatic stress disorder following the Rose School's failure to deal with the abuse, and is now set to go to tribunal alleging unfair dismissal.

He told The People: 'I've been to hell and back over this. 'I've been degraded and treated worse than an animal but no one was there to help me. 'From Day One I was kicked punched, spat at and called things like P*** b****** and Bin Laden.'

As part of his case, CCTV images will be used, including scenes in which:

* a 13-year-old boy is held back by other staff after he headbutts a teacher who is trying to stop him attack Khalid. The teenager then lets fly a high kick and spits at the shocked teaching assistant. A fortnight later, Khalid claims he said he was going to 'get you and your family'.

He says he was also injured when a pupil struck him with a pair of compasses; the headteacher, Nicola Jennings, refused to allow him time off to go to hospital for a tetanus jab after his arm was left bleeding.

In another incident, in April 2009, a pupil said he was 'going to rape your P*** wife and kids' and kicked him on the wrist. The head refused to call police, but he felt he should 'for my own safety', according to the paper.

The following month, he says he was headbutted, while in June he 'felt like jumping in front of a bus' after yet more abuse. Later that month, he filled in several racist incident forms, including for being spat at and after one pupil said he was 'going to die'. And he claims even a colleague - who he says subsequently apologised - talked of going to the 'P*** shop'.

The 34-year-old kept a diary of the abuse he claims to have suffered at the Burnley school, which has 40 places for students aged 11-16 with Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties.

He started there in January 2009, as it was closer to his home than his previous job, but was sacked in the July for alleged dishonesty and falsifying his CV, according to the newspaper.

The tribunal is set for September.

Lancashire county Council declined to comment because 'the matter is subject to the legal process'. A school source told The People that many staff received abuse at the school, which is a special school for those with behavioural difficulties.

SOURCE



27 February, 2011

Live free or die … but you can’t vote

The Dartmouth College Republicans and the Dartmouth College Democrats have teamed up to fight a New Hampshire bill that seeks to disenfranchise students who attend college outside of their hometown. The bill, sponsored by Gregory Sorg (R-Grafton) specifically prohibits students attending "institutions of higher learning" from acquiring domicile for voting purposes in their college community unless they lived there prior to matriculating.

The new speaker of the House, William O'Brien (R-Mont Vernon) made public comments supporting the bill. He explained that he does not think the constitution allows for anyone to have "instantaneous" residence in the state or a particular community. He continued, "That's what kids do. They don't have life experience and they just vote their feelings. And they've taken away the town's ability to govern themselves. It's not fair."

Thus, for example, a student who moves from Manchester (or another state) to Durham to attend the University of New Hampshire will not have the option of voting as a resident of Durham, regardless of the student's intentions about where he or she might live in the future. The student's only option would be to return to Manchester (or the home state) to vote, or to vote there by absentee ballot.

The student could live (and work) in the community, pay local taxes, support local businesses, and become involved in any number of ways, but never be allowed a voice in community concerns. To ban college students (who usually live in their college communities for four years or more) from voting is simply ridiculous.

This is not the first time student voters have come under attack. The issue, however, was resolved by the federal courts more than 30 years ago. In 1979, the Supreme Court upheld without comment a Texas district court holding that students must receive the same presumption of residency as other citizens. In other words, it is unconstitutional to deny someone the right to vote based solely on his or her status as a student.

What's more, as early as 1972, the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire ruled that a student (or anyone) can claim residency for voting purposes even if he or she intends to leave in the future. In that case, after a student at Dartmouth College told elections officials he intended to leave Hanover when he finished school, they denied his voter registration because New Hampshire's traditional test for residency required an intention to stay in the community permanently or indefinitely.

Recognizing that, "[i]n this day of widespread planning for change of scene and occupation," the state could not justify a permanent residency requirement, the U.S. District Court held New Hampshire's test unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

So why, in 2011, would New Hampshire legislators find it pressing to restrict the voting rights of students, ignoring established constitutional principles in the process? Well, for one, it's a partisan thing. House Speaker William O'Brien recently remarked to residents that college students are "basically doing what I did when I was a kid and foolish, and voting as a liberal."

Fortunately, it doesn't take an ideological rival to see the injustice in this approach; as Dartmouth College Republicans President recently noted, "Whether every college student is liberal or every college student is conservative, every vote gets to count, and you can't change that."

College students can be as much a part of the community in which they live as any other resident. In addition, they bring business to the community, pay taxes, and are subject to its rules and regulations. Students may or may not have ideas about where they would like to live after graduating from college, but if they currently consider their college town their home, students have a right to have their voice heard along with every other resident.

SOURCE






Goggles banned at school swimming lessons in Britain

Children have been banned from wearing goggles during school swimming lessons for fears they could hurt themselves. Pen-pushers have slapped the ban on the swimming aids amid "fears" a pair could "snap" onto a child's face too hard, injuring them.

Parents branded the ruling by Oxfordshire County Council's healthy and safety brigade as "nutty" and "extreme."

However, bureaucrats defended its no-goggle policy claiming that it reflected national guidance provided by sports bodies. Children will now need a medical reason for them to be allowed to wear the protective eye wear in the pool during school lessons.

Teenage swimmer Danni McFadden, aged 13 years, said: "It hurts my eyes if we swim without them and I go in the water." Her mother Carmel Ryan added: "I remember being a child and I thought it was great swimming underwater. "It makes swimming more fun. "The professional swimmers wear goggles. "It's a bit nutty. "If they think someone is messing around with them, they should correct it. They do protect the eyes."

Zilah Grant, aged 24 years, of Wantage, Oxon., takes her son Khian, three, swimming regularly as it helps him with his disabilities. "I do not think it is very wise of them to do it. "Goggles bring the fun into swimming as you can see each other under water."

Last year Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to tear up health and safety regulations which "have become a music hall joke."

Oxfordshire is not alone in banning goggles. Last year, Leicestershire County Council advised schools of the "dangerous" eyewear which it said could snap back in childrenā s faces, or make them bump into one another due to reduced peripheral vision. Hertfordshire County Council has done the same.

A spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council refused to divulge the specific reason why goggles had been banned from its swimming pools. "This local authority, like others throughout the UK, reflects to schools the national guidance provided by various governing sport bodies on this issue," he said.

"These organisations include The Amateur Swimming Association (ASA), the Swimming Teachers Association (STA), the Association for Physical Education and the Institute of Sport and Recreation Management."

The ASA said it did not have a strict policy on goggle use, but offered guidance to pool operators and parents.

The STA said children should be encouraged to not wear goggles in swimming lessons, but recognised they may be necessary for medical or other reasons. It added that goggles should meet British standards and fit correctly.

SOURCE





Australia: "The skull" is still a bonehead -- repeating the failed Latham hostility to private schools


The genius himself

Mark Latham's attack on private schools is generally regarded as a major factor in his 2004 election wipeout. Around 40% of schoolkids in the swing State of Queensland go to private High Schools so that's a big demographic to piss off. The Green/Left Peter Garrett was a huge liability as an environment minister. Looks like he is still as thick as a brick and doomed for more follies in education

THE Federal Government is set to launch a new war with private schools this week as pressure intensifies on the country's richest education establishments to reveal their assets. Education Minister Peter Garrett told The Sunday Mail that he wanted to force public and private schools to reveal their true wealth, including assets, reserves and profits.

The launch of the revamped My School website on Friday will reveal financial information including income through private fees for the first time, but not assets.

The website will also show that wealthy private schools are spending 50 per cent more to educate each student than the average spend on a child at a public school. But some high-performing, low-fee Catholic and independent schools are spending a similar amount per student to comparable public schools, when private and taxpayer-funding is combined.

The launch of the site was delayed after private schools complained some of the complex data used to arrive at a per student spend was misleading. The average government school recurrent cost for a high school student is about $12,000.

"This is all about fair dinkum transparency," Mr Garrett said. "This is all about giving people information that they deserve to have. "And it's about providing that information in a way that allows them to make valid and reasonable comparisons."

Mr Garrett will take his proposal to extend the financial disclosure requirements of My School to include assets to the next meeting of state education ministers in April this year. Some private schools securing millions of dollars in taxpayer funding have retained earnings or assets of $100 million or more. But there is no current requirement for many schools to disclose their assets, profits or financial information.

For the first time, the new version of the My School website will provide information on funding from fees and donations to public and private schools. But Mr Garrett stressed it was "not about ranking".

My School 2 will also reveal for the first time which schools are showing improvements in literacy results for children in their care and which schools are falling behind.

SOURCE



26 February, 2011

British school "lotteries" hitting the middle class

Typical Leftist stupidity. They overlook what makes a school "good". The main factor is that the pupils are well-behaved and diligent children from middle-class homes. Break that up and the school will no longer be desirable -- to anybody

Schools in more than a third of council areas are selecting low-ability students or using lotteries in an attempt to break the middle-class hold on the most sought-after places.

The number of authorities where such admission policies are used has increased sharply as competition for the best schools has intensified, a survey by The Daily Telegraph has found.

The rise of lotteries and so-called "fair banding" – where test results are used to select a proportion of pupils with lower ability – could thwart affluent families who have bought homes within the catchment areas of successful schools. They have often paid a premium of tens of thousands of pounds to do so.

This is the fifth year since councils were given the power to use such admissions techniques. Fair banding has since been encouraged by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, who has said that it could help make schools "truly comprehensive".

But opponents say the policies amount to social engineering and can result in children travelling miles every day after being turned down by a first choice local school.

Families also face a potential fall in house prices if an oversubscribed school decides to employ a random admissions policy.

The disclosure comes ahead of "admissions day" on Tuesday when the parents of almost 540,000 children in England will find out which secondary school their son or daughter will go to in September.

At least 60,000 children are expected to miss their preferred school, one in nine. In some areas, 40 per cent of children are being turned down by their preferred school.

The Telegraph surveyed 150 councils in England with responsibility for education. Of 110 that responded, 27 said that some schools in their area were using lotteries to assign places, while 21 said some were using "fair banding".

A number of councils included schools using both methods, with the result that 38 in total – more than one in three – had schools using at least one. A similar survey in 2009 suggested the figure was around one in four. The results suggest that, across all 150 councils, up to 180,000 pupils are applying in areas where their admission could effectively be decided "by a roll of the dice" or fair banding.

The measures are most common in urban areas, where competition for the best schools is particularly fierce, and at academy schools.

Local authorities and schools were given the power to use lotteries and fair banding in 2007. Local authorities decide whether ordinary comprehensives can employ the policies while academies, voluntary aided and foundation schools decide for themselves.

Brighton became the first council to allow random selection in 2008. Since then such procedures have become widespread. Mr Gove has previously explained his support, saying: "You can make sure that if your school is located in an area which may well be relatively privileged, by dint of house prices and background and so on, that you are spreading the load academically."

However, he is facing mounting opposition to their growing use. Jennie Varley, the vice-chairman of the National Grammar Schools Association, said: "This is a form of social engineering. "It seems wrong to decide the fate of children on the roll of a dice. It means that children might end up with the wrong education which can have a damaging impact on their lives. "An academic high-flier would be bored to tears in a school which catered for special needs. “The Government should be focusing instead on improving the standards of all schools.”

Margaret Morrissey, of the campaign group Parents Outloud, said: “Middle-class families are being penalised because of political correctness. “There was nothing wrong with the previous system – local children should be allowed to go to local schools. Catchment areas have been hugely successful.”

In Westminster, London, 40 per cent of children have been turned down by their preferred school while in Sandwell, West Midlands, 27 per cent have missed out. Schools in both areas use fair banding to cope with demand. One of the most oversubscribed schools in the country is the William Hulme Grammar Academy in Manchester, which had 433 applicants for 120 places.

The school has adopted both fair banding and random selection. Peter Mulholland, its head teacher, said: “Fair banding ensures we have a completely comprehensive intake with children of all abilities and from all ethnic backgrounds. We reflect the full range of society. “We have an excellent and completely multicultural school. It is genuinely comprehensive.”

Mr Gove last night expressed his sympathy for parents whose children are being turned away from their preferred school. He declined to comment, however, on the use of lotteries and fair banding in deciding admissions. He said: “It’s heartbreaking for parents when they don’t get their children into the school they want.

“The fact is that after 13 years of Labour there simply aren’t enough good schools. That’s why we’re turning around failing schools and letting teachers set up new schools to give all parents, not just the rich, access to schools with strong discipline, great teaching and small class sizes.”

SOURCE





Education Revolution... Without the People?

Over the past few years, a mix of political, corporate and foundation interests has launched American education on a profound and largely unnoted revolution. Its victims are the democratic process, educational freedom, local control and parental authority.

The story dates back decades, but its current phase began in 2007. That year, the Gates and the Eli Broad foundations pledged $60 million to inject their education vision, including uniform “American standards,” into the 2008 campaigns. Then, in May 2008, the Gates Foundation awarded the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy a $2.2 million grant “to work with governors and other key stakeholders” to promote the adoption of standards. The following month, Hunt and the National Governors Association hosted a symposium to explore education strategies.

In December 2008, during the transition to the Obama administration, the NGA, the Council of Chief State School Officers and Achieve, Inc. (an entity founded by NGA, governed by six state governors and six corporate leaders, and funded by several mega-corporations and foundations) set out their education vision in “Benchmarking for Success,” funded by the Gates Foundation. It outlines five “reform” steps, including nationwide standards.

NGA wanted to implement its plan quickly -- and avoid the tedium of the democratic process. If given the chance, the people -- through their elected representatives -- might muck around with, or reject, NGA’s eventual product. (That’s what happened with the Constitution; the people demanded the addition of the Bill of Rights.) The 2009 stimulus bill provided NGA’s breakthrough. It increased the Education Department’s discretionary spending by 25,500 percent, giving it a fresh pot of money and a means to shape state and local curricula without congressional interference.

In March 2009, one month after passage of the stimulus bill, the Education Department announced a two-part “Race to the Top” “national competition” to distribute the money. It tied 14 percent of the proposal evaluation in the first round to commitment to ratifying (with an August 2010 target date) and implementing the standards. A state could not get money unless it signed onto the standards.

Meanwhile, NGA and CCSSO had formally launched their Common Core Standards Initiative to develop and implement national K-12 academic standards. They planned to “leverage states’ collective influence to ensure that textbooks, digital media, curricula and assessments are aligned” with the standards. CCSSO President-elect Sue Gendron aptly described it as “transforming education for every child.”

The cash-starved states jumped for a share of the $4.35 billion. By June 2009, only Republican Govs. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Rick Perry of Texas had refused to join the effort. Perry argued that it would be “foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education.” He said it “smacks of a federal takeover of our public schools.”

In March 2010, NGA released the “first official public draft” of the standards, followed by a June release of the final product. The two first “winners” of R2T funds were announced that month. At that point, to meet the deadline for the second and larger round, states had only two months to commit to adopting the standards. Regarding New Jersey’s June 16 adoption, Rutgers professor Joseph Rosenstein remarked in Education Week, “Deciding so quickly … is irresponsible.”

In May 2010, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell sided with Texas and Alaska and withdrew from R2T and the standards. He argued that Virginia’s “standards are much superior” and are “validated” (the federal standards have not been field-tested). Nonetheless, by the end of June 2010, 16 states had formally adopted the standards. By the Aug. 2, 2010, R2T application deadline, 31 states had adopted them. That number now stands at 42.

NGA is becoming even more involved through the development of “a State Policymaker Guide to Implementation … planning the future governance structure of the standards and convening the publishing community to ensure that high-quality materials aligned with the standards are created.” The Gates Foundation is developing new courses “with content aligned to the common-core standards and [is] reinventing and realigning traditional courses like Algebra 1 and Geometry to the common core.” And it seems that the administration will request additional R2T funding. It seemingly also intends to tie Title I education funds -- a dramatically larger sum that few states can do without -- to agreement to national standards and tests.

This entire process was problematic.

First, there are the standards themselves. They cover fewer topics than what children are learning now. The Gates Foundation explains that “fewer” means “giving students enough academic preparation, without exceeding the math and literacy requirements that evidence demonstrates are necessary to enter two-year colleges.” And to keep the people in line, the NGA ruled that states “may choose to include additional standards beyond the common core as long as the common core represents at least 85 percent of the state’s standards in English language arts and mathematics.”

There are legal issues. The federal role in the standards initiative contravenes laws prohibiting the Department of Education from directing a state’s curriculum.

Furthermore, the underlying process showed great disrespect for the American people. The discretionary nature of R2T excluded the people’s representatives in Congress from a meaningful decision-making role. Likewise, the short time frame and huge R2T cash incentives were intended to exclude the states from meaningful decision making. The Founders considered a great defect of the Articles of Confederation to be, as stated by Alexander Hamilton, “that it never had a ratification by the People.” They did not make that mistake with the Constitution, and they would be disappointed that we have not learned the lesson.

And then there’s the NGA. It is not an official body of the states. Yet, it is acting like a legislative body and, on a transformative initiative, helped cut the American people out of the democratic process. Each governor is responsible for safeguarding that process. A good start on that would be to reform the NGA.

SOURCE





Abolish all federal education spending

Quote of the Day: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." -- Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

The Federal State has no constitutional authority for involvement in education. This alone should be sufficient reason to abolish the Department of Education and all federal education spending. But there are also two other powerful reasons . . .

* Federal education programs don't work. Instead, they actually cause harm.

* The Federal State is headed toward bankruptcy and needs to cut spending.

Statist schools don't work because they have no incentive to perform adequately. Unlike businesses in the Voluntary Sector of the economy, Statist schools can't be fired or replaced by the people they supposedly serve.

This is the nature of Statism. It constantly compels the masters (citizens) to serve the servants (politicians and bureaucrats). As a result . . . You're now spending more than twice as much for the Feds to meddle with education as taxpayers did in the 1970's, but student performance hasn't improved. Instead, costs have soared. For instance . . .

College tuition has increased at twice the rate of inflation. Federal grants and guaranteed loans that were supposed to make education more affordable, have actually increased costs by enabling colleges to raise their prices. The result is that students are now tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they graduate.

This is par for the course for Statist programs. Consider just two other examples of this phenomenon . . .

* Federal politicians create lots of schemes. Take Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. These boondoggles were intended to make housing more affordable. The result was housing prices that skyrocketed, then burst, leaving millions of people poorer, and even bankrupt.

* Other federal schemes like Medicare and Medicaid were supposed to make sick-care more affordable too, but here again the costs have risen far faster than the rate of inflation.

The same thing has happened with education.

We can derive a principle from this . . . Every time the politicians promise they can make something cheaper by spending more, that "something" becomes more expensive, not less, and we have to carry more debt and pay more taxes on top of it.

This makes the comparison between the Coercive State and the Voluntary Sector very stark. The Voluntary Sector constantly does more with less, while the Coercive State constantly does less with more. The incentives dictate that it must be this way . . .

* The Coercive State rewards itself for failure -- the worse schools perform the more money the politicians spend on them. This gives Statist institutions an incentive for INcompetence.

* But businesses and institutions in the Voluntary Sector have to perform well, or consumers reject them. This gives the Voluntary Sector a powerful bias towards competence.

The conclusion we should draw from this is equally stark . . . The education of children is too important to be trusted to politicians and bureaucrats. We should abolish all federal involvement in schooling.

The Constitution got it right when it failed to authorize a federal role for education. Schools should be managed at the local level, NOT from the top down. Better yet, schools should work for parents, NOT for teachers unions and the local Statist school board. We need consumer centered education, just like we need consumer centered sick-care.

Abolishing all federal education spending would cost us nothing and gain us much. It would bring us in compliance with the Constitution, restore a certain amount of local control to education, and save us about $120 billion a year.

SOURCE



25 February, 2011

CO: 11-year-old arrested over “inappropriate” stick figure drawing

An 11-year-old Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs for drawing stick figures in school - something his therapist told him to do.

The boy’s parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents do not want their real names used.

“Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.

Last October, he drew stick figures of himself with a gun, pointed at four other stick figures with the words “teacher must die.” He felt calmer and was throwing the picture away when the teacher saw it and sent him to the principal’s office. The school was aware that the boy was in treatment, determined the drawing was not an actual threat, notified his parents and sent him back to class.

His mother, “Jane,” however, was shocked when Arvada Police showed up at their home later that night. She says she told her son to cooperate and tell the truth, but was horrified when they told her they were arresting him and then handcuffed him and hauled him away in a patrol car.

Tim’s mother says she begged police to let her drive her son to the police department and to let her stay with him through the booking process but they refused. Instead, they put him in a cell, took his mug shot and fingerprinted him. He thought he was going to jail and would never be able to go home again.

According to the police report, “Tim” explained he made the drawing to release anger and would never hurt teachers or anyone. At first, the school did not want to press charges, but changed their mind when police called them later that night.

A juvenile assessment report shows Tim has never been in legal trouble before and is at low risk to reoffend. Regardless, he is charged with a third degree misdemeanor, interfering with staff and students at an educational facility.

The system says it’s doing what’s in the best interest of the child. But Tim’s therapist says handcuffing an 11-year-old and putting him in a cell over something like this is “quite an overreaction” and does much more harm than good.

Tim is on probation and, if he completes that successfully, the criminal charges will be dropped. But his parents say its cost them thousands of dollars so far. And if they had known that their son’s cooperation would be used as evidence against him, they would have hired a lawyer at the beginning and exercised their right to remain silent.

SOURCE




Chaotic British State school

A draconian ‘super head’ has been sacked just two days into his new job after suspending seven pupils for minor offences. Craig Tunstall, who earns more than the Prime Minister and is one of Britain’s highest-paid head teachers, lasted less than 48 hours in his role as executive head of a failing primary school.

Within hours of joining, Mr Tunstall, who was thought to have been receiving a pay package of close to £200,000, had excluded seven pupils as young as five. Their offences included wearing the wrong coat in the playground, refusing to finish their school lunch and failing to stand in line. One of the suspended pupils was a five-year-old boy with special needs.

His manner was so authoritarian that staff and children alike said he created a ‘climate of fear’. And he provoked outrage by demanding that all the pupils walked with their hands behind their backs. Council bosses, who had parachuted Mr Tunstall into Oval Primary in Croydon after ousting the previous head, were forced to take immediate action to remove him following a barrage of complaints.

The school was put into special measures last month after a disastrous Ofsted report. Its local council, Croydon, on the recommendation of the Department for Education, arranged for it to be taken over by a body that runs two well performing schools in South London. Mr Tunstall, as executive head of the federation, was brought in to turn Oval Primary around. It is believed the appointment would have boosted his annual pay package to close to £200,000.

In a manoeuvre that shocked the school, he arrived on Thursday, February 17, the morning after the former head teacher, Ruth Johnston, quit. But his tenure was shortlived. The council sacked him before the end of the day on Friday.

One of the children suspended by Mr Tunstall was Callum Simms. The five-year-old, who has special needs, was reprimanded for not lining up quickly enough when asked to by one of his teachers.

His outraged mother, Nikki Simms, said: ‘When I heard from other parents that a number of other kids had been excluded, I did worry for Callum because he has behavioural problems. ‘But he didn’t have a fight or cause a lot of trouble. ‘He’s just a little boy with learning difficulties who didn’t line up in the playground. ‘That he was excluded for something so stupid is unbelievable.’

Another distraught mother, Sarah Ellacott, said her daughter Rachael, seven, came home from school saying pupils had been told to walk with their hands behind their backs as if ‘in prison’. Mrs Ellacott, 27, said: ‘Children were going to school afraid to do anything in case they got suspended. That’s not the way to make children behave.’

Mr Tunstall, who has no children of his own, recently split from his wife Carol, 37, who works for an animal sanctuary.

Until recently he lived in a £500,000 semi-detached red-brick three bedroom house in a residential area in Bromley, Kent – a far cry from the deprived area of Croydon where Oval Primary is located. Mr Tunstall remains the executive head of the Gypsy Hill Federation, which runs two successful primary schools in Lambeth, South London – Kingswood Primary and Elmwood Primary. They have both received outstanding Ofsted reports.

It is Government policy to link failing schools with successful schools in the area. Croydon council leader Mike Fisher yesterday admitted the appointment was a mistake. He said: ‘We apologise for any sort of upset we have caused the parents and that the organisation brought in turned out to be the wrong one – we made a mistake.’

A council spokesman said: ‘We have a strong record of setting up partnerships with schools and have done so successfully in the past. ‘On this occasion it became clear the arrangement would not work and the authority took swift action to resolve it.’

Mr Tunstall, speaking through a friend, refused to comment.

The council is set to announce the appointment of a new head teacher on Monday who is believed to be from a local academy.

Mr Tunstall was revealed to be the eighth highest-paid head in London, earning a salary of £137,991, and a total package of £151,835, last year. The Prime Minister is paid £142,500. Primary school head teachers typically earn around £55,000.

Education Secretary Michael Gove plans to cap head teachers’ pay. It is currently being reviewed by the School Teachers Review Body, which will report in March.

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Now FOOTBALLS are "unsafe" in British school playgrounds!

For decades, the nation's playgrounds have echoed with the thud of a firmly-struck football. But children living in the streets where England football star Steven Gerrard grew up are being denied that innocent, wholesome pleasure - and it's all in the name of health and safety.

Pupils at a primary school in Huyton, near Liverpool, have been banned from bringing modern synthetic or leather footballs into the playground and told to use balls made of sponge instead.

Teachers say the heavy balls are unsuitable for an enclosed space where young children may be playing, saying it risks injury.

However amid fears over Britain's childhood obesity epidemic, as well as worries over where our next generation of sporting champions is going to come from, critics last night slammed the edict as an absurd over-reaction.

The rule was spelt out in this month's newsletter sent out by Malvern Primary School in Huyton, a deprived area with Britain's second worst obesity record.

The district has nevertheless long been regarded as a hotbed of footballing talent, having produced the likes of Liverpool captain Gerrard in addition to former Everton hero Peter Reid - now manager of Plymouth Argyle - and notorious Newcastle United player Joey Barton.

It informed parents: 'Please can we request that only sponge balls are brought into school. This is to ensure the safety of all our pupils when on the playground.'

But Tam Fry, chairman of obesity prevention charity the Child Growth Foundation, said: 'Children must be exposed to risk, otherwise how can they be expected to learn? 'It may think it is protecting the children, but they could just as easily fall over playing with a sponge ball. 'Policies like this mean our children are in danger of becoming cocooned cotton buds.'

Critics say it is just the latest obstacle created by political correctness to stand in the way of the exercise and life skills children can gain from taking part in sport.

Last summer a primary school in Devon banned playground football altogether, saying pupils were copying the cheating and fouling displayed at the World Cup.

Shortly afterwards, brothers Henry and Alex Worthington, 12 and 11, were threatened with antisocial behaviour orders by three police officers while having a kickabout in the cul-de-sac where they live in Timperley, Greater Manchester.

Mr Fry added: 'We do have a litigation culture, but you can't tell me Steven Gerrard did not play football in the playground - I bet he even fell over a few times.'

And Adrian Voce, director of Play England, which advises schools on safe, fun pastimes, pointed out that last year's review on health and safety by Lord Young recommended a common sense approach to managing risk in children's play-times. 'Research tells us that children need to play adventurously and test themselves, yet many children don't get the opportunity to do so in our risk-adverse society,' he said. 'Children must be allowed to encounter some risks for themselves as a natural part of their play and growing up.'

Knowsley, Huyton's local district, has among the country's worst GCSE results, and in 2004 was ranked behind only Hull in a league table of Britain's fattest towns.

Malvern Primary School yesterday insisted the football crackdown was not new, saying the reminder had been issued after a parent complained that a child was nearly hurt.

It pointed out that its cramped playground was shared by pupils of all ages but stressed it was supportive of sport and backed the importance of physical exercise.

In a statement it added: 'Malvern Primary School treats the health and safety of its pupils as a top priority and has for a long time had a policy of protecting children by recommending sponge balls in the playground before school starts and during breaks, especially as the playground accommodates children from the age of four to 11.'

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24 February, 2011

Only 39 Percent of Wisconsin Public-School Eighth Graders Proficient in Math, Says Department of Education

Only 39 percent of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools are proficient or better in mathematics, according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 31 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 8 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 61 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 40 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 21 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”

The test also showed that the mathematics test scores of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders have remained almost flat since 1996 while inflation adjusted per-pupil spending has significantly increased.

In 1996, according to the U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin public-school eighth graders scored an average of 283 out of 500 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics test. In 2009, they scored an average of 288 out of 500. In other words, the average mathematics test score for Wisconsin eighth graders increased by 5 points out of 500—or one percentage point—from 1996 to 2009.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s per pupil spending on public school students increased from $6,517 in 1996 to $10,791 in 2008. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator the $6,517 that Wisconsin spent per pupil in 1996 dollars equaled $8,942 in 2008 dollars. That means that from 1996 to 2008, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil spending by $1,849—or 20.7 percent--in real terms while adding only one percentage point to their average eighth grader’s math score.
The $10,791 that Wisconsin spent per pupil in its public elementary and secondary schools in fiscal year 2008 was more than any other state in the Midwest.

Nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education, public schools are not doing a good job teaching children to be proficient in math. The average American eighth-grade public school student scored 282 out of 500 on the NAEP mathematics test in 2009, with only 25 percent earning a “proficient” rating and only 7 percent earning an “advanced rating.” The other 68 percent of American eighth grader were rated less than proficient in math.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress explains its student rating system as follows: “Basic denotes partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade. Proficient represents solid academic performance. Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter. Advanced represents superior performance.”

In fiscal 2008, the federal government provided $669.6 million in subsidies to the public schools in Wisconsin.

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Antidote to Government-Run Education

Charter schools are facing increasing fierce attacks by organized labor – because they work. Most of them are publicly funded and are not bound by inch-thick union contracts that stipulate what teachers don’t have to do and which hoops administrators have to jump through in order to hold their employees accountable.

Some charter schools don’t produce the desired results. But because of the agreement between the school and their state, if they aren’t up to snuff, they can be shut down. If only the same could be said of traditional public systems in Detroit, Chicago or Los Angeles.

Indianapolis Public Schools is a dismal mess. Leaders there do whatever they can to keep the ship afloat, regardless of the harm it brings to the children of the city. Parents are desperate for choices – and they found one in the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School.

Tindley Accelerated School was started by education visionaries who bought an old grocery store, put up some walls, hired quality teachers and began educating kids. Today, those kids are out-performing their peers in the very same neighborhood, dispelling many myths.

The success of Tindley Accelerated School is showing that anyone can learn when the culture is right. Fancy buildings and heavy spending are not requirements for impressive academic results.

In the pitched battle over education reform that is going on in Indiana right now, the state is expanding reforms that are working, much to the dismay of the Indiana State Teachers Association. But union leaders have vowed to do whatever they can to hamper reform, even if it means sentencing kids to failing schools.

Who will win? It’s a deadly serious question, because nothing less than the future of Indiana (and of the entire United States) is at stake.

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The Detroit meltdown continues

A black city generates little revenue and a lot of welfare claims -- so not much money for schools

State education officials have ordered Robert Bobb to immediately implement a financial restructuring plan that balances the district's books by closing half of its schools, swelling high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidating operations.

This week, Bobb, the district's emergency financial manager, said he is meeting with Detroit city officials and will set up a meeting with Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency to discuss consolidation opportunities in areas such as finance, public safety, transportation and other areas.

Bobb also is preparing a list of recommended school closures and Friday said layoff discussions are under way and would be announced closer to April, when notices would be issued. "We are moving forward with the plan," he said "Right now my focus is on my transition plan and the DEP (deficit elimination plan)."

Bobb's last day with DPS is June 30. After that, the state plans to install another financial manager who must continue to implement Bobb's plan, according to a Feb. 8 letter from Mike Flanagan, the state superintendent of public instruction.

In the letter, Flanagan said the Michigan Department of Education gave preliminary approval to Bobb's plan to bring the 74,000-student district out of its financial emergency. As a condition of approval, Flanagan said Bobb cannot declare the district in bankruptcy during the remainder of his contract.

Bobb, appointed emergency financial manager in March 2009, filed his deficit elimination plan with the state in January, saying it would wipe out the district's $327 million deficit by 2014. On Feb. 9, he told state lawmakers the plan is the only way DPS "can cut its way out" of its legacy deficit.

At the same time, Bobb said he doesn't believe the proposal is viable because it would drive more students away, exacerbating the district's financial emergency. But on Friday, Bobb confirmed he is working to implement the plan that will shrink the district to 72 schools for a projected 58,570 students in 2014.

"I believe the district can work its way out of these challenges," Bobb said. "It will take some time. I am firm believer we have to continue to make the deep cuts, and they are going to be painful. In the long run, the district will be stronger. There can be no retreat."

Bobb said he continues to work on an alternative plan — one similar to a General Motors-style restructuring — but has yet to release details or announce a sponsor for such a bill. "Whatever comes out of the transition plan and whatever my new thinking is will be a part of that," he said.

Earlier this month, Bobb told members of a joint House and Senate education committee he needed legislation to assure the district's continued access to loans to stave off insolvency. The district needs $219 million by March, and its bond insurer, Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., wants the state to guarantee DPS won't file for bankruptcy. Bobb told lawmakers the district has no such intentions.

Bobb has said school closures, bigger classes and other measures would be needed if he cannot get help from lawmakers to restructure finances in the state's largest school district. DPS considered but declined to file for bankruptcy in 2009 Experts say DPS has an uphill battle for financial stability. Revenue is down dramatically, enrollment losses average 8,000 students a year and pension and health care costs weigh on the district.

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23 February, 2011

Feds and Unions: Foes to Educational Reform

"The fate of our country won't be decided on a battlefield. It will be determined in a classroom." Do you believe that?

Last week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called on 14 state Senate Democrats, who had fled the state instead of voting on a deficit-cutting anti-teachers-union bill, to return and do their jobs. Senate Republicans hold a 19-14 majority there but can't vote on the bill unless at least one Democrat is present.

Does that sound like democracy at work to you? Do you think it?s just a coincidence that the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, are the largest campaign contributors in the nation -- $55 million in just the past two years, more than the Teamsters, the National Rifle Association or any other organization -- and that 90 percent of those contributions fund only Democratic candidates?

As I began to point out last week, the U.S. public education system is flailing now more than ever, and teachers unions are aiding and abetting its demise. Some teachers unions may indeed be fighting for some of our teachers, but they are failing our students by protecting adults at the expense of the reformation of a crippled and dying system.

I became even further aware of that in a big way when I recently watched the movie "Waiting for ?Superman,?" a deeply personal look into the state of U.S. public education and how it is effecting our children. It is a movie my wife, Gena, and I encourage every American to watch. (It just came out on DVD and Blu-ray.)

"Waiting for ?Superman?" demonstrates how:

--Teachers unions are crippling the education of our children.

--Tenure and its guaranteed jobs are perpetuating educational dysfunction.

--Existing bureaucracies in education, from the U.S. Department of Education to state school boards, are doing more harm than good.

--Many public schools have become "dropout factories" (schools with high dropout rates).

--Many public school districts are engaged in "lemon dances" (sending their worst teachers to other schools and then in turn accepting failing teachers themselves).

--Many public school districts have "rubber rooms," places where teachers placed on disciplinary leave are waiting for hearings that could take three to four years to be heard. These teachers waste their time playing cards and other games while getting paid full salaries and benefits -- to the wasted sum of $100 million a year of taxpayer money.

Think about this: If a teacher knows he can?t be fired, why should he work or care? What other profession, besides college professor, has that kind of contractual agreement? None.

Don't misunderstand me; I fully know and believe that the majority of public-school teachers and principals are dedicated and highly qualified. I know some. But I also know that more often than not, even their hands are being tied by bureaucratic red tape, federal and state regulations, and teachers unions? special interests, agendas and contracts. By and large, teachers are good, but government regulation and teachers unions are a menace and impediment to real public education reform.

The fact is, as "Waiting for ?Superman?" also documents, the federal government has gone from spending $4,300 per student in 1971 to more than $9,000 today (and that?s adjusted for inflation and costs of living). In our spending double, one would think we?re getting double the results, but most of our public schools are worse off now than they were in 1971.

From coast to coast, reading and math scores have flat-lined since then. In Connecticut, only 35 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in math. In Alabama, that number is only 18 percent, and in California, it?s only 24 percent.

And when the nation?s eighth-graders were tested in reading proficiency, most states scored between 20 and 35 percent of grade level, with the absolute lowest scores in reading being in the nation?s capital, Washington, D.C., where only 12 percent of eighth-graders are proficient.

I discussed last week how we all can fight to improve U.S. public education. But if our local schools aren?t imparting a quality education or reforming fast enough to do so for our children, then we must seek educational alternatives. The minds, hearts and future of our children and nation are on the line.

But choice is something the feds and teachers unions are not exactly thrilled about offering. In fact, President Barack Obama's appointed secretary of education, Arne Duncan, explained in an NPR interview, "I'm a big believer in choice and competition, but I think we can do that within the public-school framework."

Our children deserve the best education we can give them. We can?t be satisfied by failed government-run schools that don?t provide the level of education we want. But there are alternatives, and I would encourage you to look into them. Charter, parochial and private schools and home-school co-ops are a few. Gena and I are very committed to home-schooling our 9-year-old twins.

'Superman' is not going to rise up in the ranks of the federal government or teachers unions. He or she is going to rise up from within our homes.

In this respect, "Superman" Christopher Reeve had it right: "A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."

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What Madison Revealed: Teachers as Rent Seekers

"Rent" is a technical term in economics but it is explained below

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." -- John Maynard Keynes

The particular defunct economist who most dominates the minds of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party is Keynes himself. But events in Wisconsin and a few other states are bringing other economists -- some still very much alive -- to the fore.

In Wisconsin and other states facing severe budget crises, we are witnessing the clash of special interests versus the public interest. Though the term "special interests" is usually deployed as an epithet by Democrats and is meant to refer to oil companies, "the rich," or other undesirables, in fact, as economist James M. Buchanan and other "public choice" theorists explain, a special interest is any community that attempts to gain a particular advantage from government.

Buchanan taught that government officials -- office holders and bureaucrats alike -- respond to incentives and pursue their self-interest just as other economic actors do. So do "rent seekers." The classic example offered is that of protectionism. An industry -- say, the sugar growers -- lobbies the government to impose tariffs on imported sugar in order to keep prices high (they are the rent seekers). A tariff will benefit each and every sugar grower substantially. So it is in the sugar growers' interest to form a trade association, to make campaign contributions, and to pay close attention to the way office holders vote on the question.

The broad public, by contrast, is potentially disadvantaged by a tariff on imported sugar because prices for candy, soda, and other products that contain sugar will rise. But the incremental added cost, per consumer, is very small. It is therefore extremely difficult to organize the public to oppose sugar quotas, or a host of other measures. Thus does government spending ratchet ever upward.

Public employees in many states are classic rent seekers, but they do sugar growers and the like one better. Through collective bargaining, unions negotiate with elected officials for wages and benefits. (SET ITAL) They then get the state to collect union dues for them by withholding the dues from public employees' checks. (END ITAL) With the accumulated cash, the union then makes campaign contributions to the favored public officials. Neat.

As labor historian Fred Siegel told John Fund of the Wall Street Journal: "Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits."

This system has worked well for public employees across the nation. Until 2010, New Jersey teachers contributed nothing to their lavish health care packages. Permitted to retire after 25 years of service, teachers receive pensions of 70 percent or more of their top salary (among the highest in the country) as well as health care for life. Yet the NJ Education Association howled when Gov. Chris Christie asked them, in light of the state's dire financial straits, to accept a one-year wage freeze and to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries to the cost of their health plans.

Wisconsin teachers, too, have negotiated cushy deals for themselves. As Gov. Scott Walker has pointed out, private employees contribute an average of 29 percent of the cost of health benefits. Wisconsin union members contribute only about 6 percent. With the state budget in the red, something had to be done.

The bargains between governments and unions (or other special interests) require one thing above all to be successful -- an inattentive electorate. Just as the sugar growers would be eager to keep people in the dark about quotas or subsidies, so unions want the public to be kept ignorant of the overly generous compensation packages that are negotiated at the taxpayers' expense.

That's why the massive, tub-thumping, sign-waving, hippie sit-in staged by teachers and their allies in Madison over the last week makes no sense. (By the way, did you notice the demise of "civility" in politics? Where are the denunciations of the pictures of Walker as Hitler and Mubarak? The signs calling him a "Midwest Mussolini"?) The protests, with their attendant disdain for the school kids (so many teachers fraudulently called in sick that schools in Milwaukee, Madison, and Janesville had to close), serve as a huge neon sign alerting the sleeping electorate to what has been happening to their tax dollars.

The rent seekers stand exposed. Nothing that Walker and the Republican legislature had in mind is as damaging to the teachers union as that spotlight.

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British pupils from poorest backgrounds stand one in 100 chance of top university

This wail will go on to the end of time. Smart people tend to get rich and also tend to pass on their brains to their kids. So, on average, the children of the rich will always be smarter and have higher educational achievement

Pupils from the poorest backgrounds stand just a one in a hundred chance of going to one of the country’s top universities. Their peers are seven times more likely to attend a university such as Oxford or Cambridge, figures released to MPs show.

The trend will be seized on by Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, who wants institutions to make it easier for students from poorer backgrounds to gain entry. Last week he accused elite colleges of "social segregation" and told them to do more to bring in students from low-income families.

From next year, all universities will be allowed to charge annual fees of up to £6,000. Those who want to charge more, up to £9,000, will have to sign agreements with the Government promising to admit more children from poorer homes.

Universities will submit their own proposals on how to widen access, but will be monitored by the Director of Fair Access, an independent regulator. And the Government can specify how much of a university's additional tuition income should be invested in access projects. Those who fail to comply could be fined up to £500,000 or have their right to charge more than £6,000 a year revoked.

In 2007/08 just one per cent of pupils who had been on free school meals were at one of the Russell Group universities, which include Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, Manchester and the London School of Economics. Only 15 per cent of them went to any university at all. In contrast, some seven per cent of pupils not on free meals were at a top university and a third were at any.

The figures were obtained by Charlotte Leslie, the Tory MP for Bristol North West and a member of the Education Select Committee. She said: “These statistics show the shocking reality beneath the last government's complacency about the welfare of our poorest pupils.

“In far too many cases, our schools system is failing our most disadvantaged children. “No child should be denied the chance to go to a top university purely because of their background, but tragically this is what is happening to our children today.”

However, other Tories are concerned about the access proposals.

A Commons motion published last week and signed by 25 Tory MPs said they "would view with concern any attempt to put political pressure on universities to discriminate between applicants on the basis of their school, family income, background or any other factor unrelated to their academic merit". "Any such policy would be to the detriment of standards in universities and highly unlikely to lead to any improvement in standards in schools," they said.

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22 February, 2011

Columbia University students heckle disabled war hero

They are so indoctrinated that even basic courtesy and common decency fails them

This man fought for his country, got wounded in war, and how do Columbia University students treat him? Like he's the scum of the earth. Remember when the president of Iran spoke on campus? Ahmadinejab was treated with respect, even after saying that there are no homosexuals in Iraq the heckling he got was tame in comparison with what these Columbia bastards did the war hero in the picture above.

I think it's time for Americans to boycott Columbia university, no more federal funding for that evil institution. If they want to hate America, let them do it on their own dime, these so-called "non-profit" universities get millions of dollars in federal aid and for what? Tuition is extremely pricey, the teachers are for the most part Marxists, and their so-called "Journalism" school is nothing more than progressive indoctrination 24/7.

The Blaze reports:

"Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

“Racist!” some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

“It doesn’t matter how you feel about the war. It doesn’t matter how you feel about fighting,” said Maschek. “There are bad men out there plotting to kill you.”

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.

Maschek, who is studying economics, miraculously survived the insurgent attack in Kirkuk. In the hail of gunfire, he broke both legs and suffered wounds to his abdomen, arm and chest."

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Your Unsolicited Letter of Recommendation

Mike Adams

You may be wondering why I'm writing you a short e-mail with a letter of recommendation attached to the bottom. After all, you have not requested such a letter. Nonetheless, I occasionally like to send letters of recommendation to students who have not requested them. The reason I do this is to let them know how they are doing and what kind of impression they are making on at least one of their professors. You are one of my advisees, and it is likely that in the future a prospective employer will specifically ask for a recommendation letter from me. If such a request were to be made of me today, this is what the letter would look like.

To Whom It May Concern:

Stanley Galbraith is one of my advisees. He has informed me that you are considering hiring him for a full-time position. He has also informed me that you require a letter from his academic adviser. I am pleased to provide such a letter.

Stanley is the rare student who takes a substantial portion of what he learns in the classroom and applies it to his everyday life. His professors are overwhelmingly liberal, and he seems to listen to them and apply their ideas on a regular basis. Let me provide a few examples.

* In addition to advising Stanley, I taught him once in an upper-level night class. The class was full when he tried to sign up, but I made extra room for him because he had missed his advising appointments and therefore needed to get into several classes lest his financial aid be canceled. I also agreed to serve as his new adviser after he upset his previous adviser by failing to keep advising appointments. She berated him, and that upset him.

I took him on because I thought he could learn from the experience of being advised by the only Republican in the department. Dealing with his liberal victim mindset has been a challenge, to say the least. To date, he has never kept one of his advising appointments. That is why he never gets the classes he desires. In short, Stanley seems to believe that rules are mandatory in reference to others and discretionary in reference to Stanley.

* Stanley had a tendency to come to class listening to an iPod, which he did not turn off once the lecture began. He just kept his earplugs in and swayed to the music while I lectured on light topics such as first-degree murder and aggravated rape (I teach criminology, by the way). The syllabus clearly stated that he was not to do this (and allowed me to deduct a point from his final average for every transgression). I also reminded him of this by sending numerous e-mails. But since he did not read the syllabus and did not check his e-mail, he never figured out that he was risking failing the class until it was too late.

In short, Stanley’s disregard for rules is exacerbated by his lack of common sense and his propensity to live in the moment without regard for the long-term consequences of his conduct.

* Stanley seemed to get confused in many of my lectures. I know this because once he took off his earplugs and started to listen to the lecture, he often made strange faces. When I saw these pained expressions, I always stopped and politely asked Stanley what was wrong. He then announced that he was “lost.” I just suggested that he should bring a pen and notebook to class, rather than his iPod. That usually made him even angrier.

In short, Stanley seems to be more interested in broadcasting his problems to others than he is in pursuing common-sense solutions. He clings to his status as a victim because he has Attention Deficit Disorder – a pathological need to draw attention to himself, which, seemingly, can never be satisfied.

Stanley will probably be graduating this semester. But it has been a close call. He began his final semester on five waiting lists (to get into the last five classes he needs to graduate). This happened because he missed his final advising appointment and all the required courses were filled up by the time he came by my office. He had to personally track down all of these professors and beg to get into their classes.

For two weeks, he called my office constantly (and consumed more of my time than all of my other advisees combined). I advised him patiently throughout the ordeal but, to date, I have received no thanks for doing so. In short, Stanley sees government officials as servants obligated to insulate him from the consequences of his own actions. At no point does he consider the possibility that the system would break down if everyone behaved the way that he does.

There is a chance that someday Stanley will grow up and stop living in accordance with the worldview espoused by his sociology professors. But I pity his first employer. If you hire Stanley, you can expect him to be late, inattentive, confused, angry, and in constant need of supervision.

Aside from these concerns, I have no other reservations.

Stan, I know you might never read this e-mail because you rarely check your university e-mail account. So my words will probably never benefit you personally. That is why I have published your letter of recommendation on the internet. When others read it, they can benefit from your ill-considered decision to incorporate liberal ideas into a liberal lifestyle. Some day you might grow out of this and become a responsible and productive citizen. If that ever happens, and if you do eventually read this e-mail, I ask only one thing: Please share the attached letter with someone who needs it.

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'Surprising' number of British students studying overseas

Fees at Australian universities are complex and hard to work out but seem to average out at around 5,000 British pounds per annum for Australian students. Overseas students are charged a lot more, however

Britain sends a higher percentage of students to foreign universities than many other countries which could be considered its peers, it has been claimed.

At the Westminster Education Forum on higher education in London last week, Vincenzo Raimo, director of Nottingham University's international office, said that research suggested there were currently around 22,000 British students on degree courses abroad; approximately 1.7 per cent of Britain's entire student population.

By comparison, he said, in China and India - well-known for having a large number of their students educated abroad - these figures were only 1.4 per cent and one per cent respectively.

British students abroad are spread fairly evenly around the world, but he said there were particularly high numbers in the US (around 8,500), France (around 2,600) and in Germany (around 2,200).

“In discussing international education, we often focus too highly on students coming into the UK, and ignore the fact that there’s a lot of outward mobility,” Mr Raimo told Telegraph Expat. “Of course, in terms of sheer numbers there are far more Indian or Chinese students studying abroad. But in terms of percentages, we have a surprising number of students looking to experience higher education in a different country."

The figures discussed by Mr Raimo applied only to students enrolled in full degree courses abroad, not students spending a term or year abroad as part of their degree.

Like many education specialists, Mr Raimo believes that the controversial lifting of the cap on tuition fees in Britain from £3,225 to £9,000 is likely to encourage more students to study abroad. “I think the number would have risen anyway as students became more aware of the advantages of studying in a different country, but without a doubt, financial considerations will increasingly influence students' decisions," he said.

Lee Miller, general manager of Study Overseas UK, which helps British students find placements in Australian, American and Canadian universities, said that he had already seen a significant rise in the number of enquiries about studying abroad since the announcement of the fees increase in December.

He added however that many students were looking at universities which were not necessarily cheaper, but which offered what students saw as an improved lifestyle and better quality education than that available in Britain for a similar cost.

“Students seem to think that if you're going to spend £9,000 a year to study in an average British city, you might as well spend the same amount and go somewhere like Perth, where there's a great beachside lifestye and really good facilities, especially for sport, " he said. "Students also say they are attracted to the different content of foreign degrees, where they get more of a chance to take modules in a range of subjects."

Mr Raimo added in the current economic climate, studying abroad was also likely to improve students' chances in the job market. “Britain's mass education system makes it difficult for students with degrees to differentiate themselves in a marketplace. If they've studied abroad, however, they look much more independent, and have learnt important new skills, like languages."

There is however one significant disadvantage of studying overseas: whatever it might cost in the long run, British students abroad are unlikely to get a loan from the Student Loans Company. It offers loans only to students based in Britain, or those doing up to a year's placement in a university abroad.

None the less, many schools have already started to encourage their pupils to look beyond the traditional destinations for British students. Last month, one of Britain's best-performing state schools, Hockerill Anglo-European College in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, said it had appointed a student counsellor tasked solely with helping students apply for better-value universities overseas.

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21 February, 2011

IL: Home school bill tabled; fight continues

An Illinois bill that would have required home schooling families to register with the state Board of Education has been tabled -- but activists tell FoxNews.com the fight is far from over. Curt Mercadante, chairman of the Illinois Homeschool PAC, said he remains extremely concerned that the idea will reappear in some form. The bill was tabled by Illinois state Sen. Edward Maloney, a Democrat, on Thursday following intense opposition.

"Nothing is ever dead in Springfield," Mercadante told FoxNews.com. "The goal is not to stop Senate Bill 136. The goal is to stop mandatory home schooling registration from ever being considered -- and to protect home schooling rights overall."

Mercadante said roughly 4,000 people flooded the Illinois capital building in Springfield on Tuesday for an initial hearing for the bill. Among other proposals, Mercadante said the possibility of mandatory home visits by state officials to home schooling families was considered.

"The effort of home schooling registration by the state is a government 'solution' for a problem that doesn't exist," he said. "Study after study shows that home-schoolers consistently outperform the rest of the country in basic skill sets."

Maloney, the bill's sponsor, said he will hold meetings during the first week of March to discuss his next move. If any new legislation pertaining to home schooling registration were to be introduced at a later date, it would be "under a different vehicle," he said. "It depends on the outcome of these discussions," he told FoxNews.com on Friday.

Maloney and other registration advocates have said they're concerned some home-schooled children are not getting proper education.

Meanwhile, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HLDA), a Virginian legal advocacy group, applauded the tabling of the bill, declaring the development a victory. "This victory is for sharing among all of you who braved the cold and the long lines and came to Springfield, and the many others who made phone calls but could not attend personally," read a statement by Scott Woodruff, the group's senior counsel. "What you sacrificed in time, trouble and finance, has, I hope, been abundantly recompensed. Your prayers have been answered!"

According to state laws and HLDA officials, states vary widely in their requirements pertaining to home-schooled children. In states like Illinois, Texas, Michigan and Oklahoma, there are no current requirements for parents to initiate contact with state officials.
Other states such as Pennsylvania, New York and North Dakota have relatively high regulations, including requiring parents to submit test scores or allow home visits by state officials. No states, however, have a specific penalty for not registering home-schooled students with state officials.

Despite Thursday's apparent victory for home schooling advocates, Mercandante, who educates his two young children from his home in Morris, Ill., said he will continue the fight. "We are going to keep it up," he said. "They have opened a can of worms on this. We're continuing to work to get assurances from Maloney and the rest of the legislators that not only is SB 136 dead, but the entire issue of home schooling registration is also dead."

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Christian Group Claims University Levied ‘Unconstitutional’ Fines on Pro-Life Students

This past week, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian legal group, sent a letter to administration officials at the University of Michigan contesting what it called “unconstitutional fees” assessed to a pro-life student group on campus.

An event held by U of M’s Students for Life chapter last fall hosted Dr. Alveda King, the pro-life niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The event drew moderate protests from some students on campus and campus officials insisted the pro-life group have campus safety officers on-hand even though Students for Life believed such security was unnecessary.

Dr. King spoke to a crowd of about 250 students about why she’s changed her opinion on abortion over the years and about her role as a civil rights activist. Following the event, the university billed Students for Life more than $800 for the security personnel despite the group’s objections.

The Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter Monday to university officials claiming such a charge is unconstitutional. “The Supreme Court has made clear that the government may not charge speakers for the security costs driven by listeners’ response to that speech,” the letter states.

Quoting the U.S. Supreme Court, the letter continues, “‘Speech cannot be financially burdened, anymore than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob.’ This mandate is based on the principle that ‘the government may not regulate speech based on its substantive content or the message it conveys.’ Thus, when the University charges a speaker for the security presence necessary to control a potentially hostile audience, it runs afoul of this constitutional command, because ‘listeners’ reaction to speech is not a content-neutral basis for regulation.’”

“Pro-life student groups should not be singled out to pay fees that others do not have to pay. The type of fee assessed to Students for Life has been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional,” ADF Senior Counsel David French said. “A very basic and clear constitutional principle is that the government cannot place this sort of price tag on free speech simply because that speech might offend somebody.”

The Alliance Defense Fund is requesting that the university relieve the student group of the security costs immediately and clarify university policies to better reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, commented on the disputed charges. “The University of Michigan has placed a massive financial burden on the University of Michigan Students for Life group just because the decided to bring a national pro-life Leader to campus,” Hawkins told LifeNews.com. “school has no right to charge the students for security they mandated they have.”

“No other group on campus has had the administration step in and force them to have security at an event. If the school felt it was that important to have security for Dr. King, against the opinion of the SFL campus group, then they should pay for it, not the students,” she concluded. “It is unfair to place these sorts of undo burdens on SFL groups simply because they express an opinion unpopular with their administration.”

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British schools told to go easy on disruptive gypsy children or face action under the Equality Act

Too bad about the other children who have their education ruined

Schools have been told they have to make special allowances for misbehaving pupils from gypsy and traveller families. Teachers have been warned they could be taken to task under the Equality Act if they discipline or exclude such children from schools.

Cash-strapped schools are even told they should launch an ‘outreach’ programme with a dedicated member of staff to ‘build trust’ with traveller families.

Under Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance, teachers are told to be sympathetic to traveller parents because they struggle with ‘confidence’ issues and are put off attending school meetings to discuss their children’s behaviour.

A guidance note said: ‘In cases where parents co-operate with the headteacher and are shown to be committed to assisting the pupil to manage their behaviour, it is less likely that the pupil will face exclusion. ‘This procedure may indirectly discriminate against the gypsy and traveller pupil whose parents may be less likely to come to the school to speak with the headteacher.’

Tory MP Priti Patel criticised the special treatment. She said: ‘I have concerns with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission dictating to headteachers how to run their schools and burdening them with more bureaucracy. ‘There are times when schools do need to exclude pupils to protect the rights of others to learn and headteachers should not be put off making these decisions by the patronising diktats of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.’

She added: ‘The Commission’s recommendation on travellers only serves to reinforce stereotypes as well as showing that political correctness and the human rights agenda are being skewered further against common sense.’

Katharine Birbalsingh – who was fired as a deputy head after laying bare problems in the state school system – said: ‘The idea that certain groups should be protected from exclusion is nonsense. ‘How insulting is this guidance for gypsy and traveller children? It basically suggests that they will go on to be problem pupils.’

A spokesman for the Commission said the advice protected all children from discrimination. She added: ‘The requirements in Equality Act 2010 for schools to treat all pupils fairly are consistent with other legal obligations relating to exclusions.’

SOURCE



20 February, 2011

U.S. House Votes to Slash Current-Year Education Funding

The U.S. Department of Education's current-year budget would be slashed by more than $5 billion under a bill approved early this morning by the U.S. House of Representatives on an almost strictly party line vote of 235-189.

That sets up a showdown as the legislation heads to the Democratically controlled Senate, where lawmakers are expected to reject the cuts. President Barack Obama has also threatened to veto the bill should it reach his desk with such deep cuts. The Education Department and other agencies are operating under a temporary funding resolution that expires March 4, and advocates already are bracing for the prospect of a government shutdown.

The House approved an amendment that would restore a cut to special education funding of $557.7 million, while instead slashing School Improvement Grants by $336.6 million and Teacher Quality State Grants by $500 million.

The lawmakers also approved language prohibiting the Education Department from enforcing new regulations that would affect for-profit colleges, a controversial issue in the higher education world. And they passed an amendment that would bar the department from enforcing special restrictions on how Texas can use funds under the education-jobs bill passed last year.

"We held no program harmless from our spending cuts, and virtually no area of government escaped this process unscathed, " said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. "While these choices were difficult to make, we strived to spread the sacrifice fairly, weeding out waste and excess, with a razor-sharp focus on making the most out of every tax dollar."

But Democrats have blasted the bill.

"From crib to college, students will be at a disadvantage if the House proposal is enacted," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who oversee the Senate panel responsible for education funding, said earlier this week as the House debated the bill. "There is no question that the time has come for tough budget decisions, but the smart way to bring down the deficit is for Congress to pursue a balanced approach of major spending cuts and necessary revenue increases, while continuing to make investments in education."

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, also criticized the bill, saying today that, "with cuts to Head Start, our most vulnerable students and to job training, the Republicans are showing their true colors."

SOURCE






Koob and Zort: the non-words in the new British reading test for six year olds

This sounds like an attempt to discredit phonics -- at the expense of struggling children

A new reading test for six year olds has been criticised after it emerged it is to include a number of made up words such as "koob" and "zort". The ten minute test, in which children will read out up to 40 words to a teacher, will include a series of real and made-up words. Nonsense words including zort, koob, dar, grint, pronk, gax and ploob are expected to feature in the test, which will be piloted in June before being rolled out in June 2012.

The idea has drawn criticism from literary and phonetics experts, however, who say the approach will confuse those beginning to read.

The UK Literacy Association described the plan was "bonkers" as the purpose of reading was to understand meaning.

The government said non-words were being included to check pupils' ability to decode words using phonics – the reading system by where words are sounded out using letter sounds. Non-words were being included to check that children were not just regurgitating memorised words, a spokesman for the Department for Education said.

But critics claim the test may mean that children who cannot read may still do well, while those who can read may be stumped.

President of the UK Literacy Association David Reedy said the inclusion of non-words would be counter productive since most six year olds expect to make sense of what they read. "The test is trying to control all the different variables so that things like meaning don't get in the way. "We think that seems a bit bonkers when the whole purpose of reading is to understand words," he said.

He added that the test itself was sending out the message that all words are decodable using phonics when they are not because the English language is not phonically regular like German or Finnish, he said. "There are many words with which you have to use a 'look and say' approach. This is the case with many common words such as 'the' and 'once'," he said.

"Children should be using a number of sources of information to be able to work out what a word is. There is the context, the sentence itself and whether they have that word in their spoken lexicon."

The Government announced plans for the reading tests in November last year stating that failure to master reading within the first few years of school can seriously undermine children's long term development. The tests will also asked children to identify simple words such as "cat", "dog", "mum" and "dad".

The plans have also drawn criticism from family literacy expert Professor Greg Brooks from Sheffield University and a member of an EU expert group on literacy.

Speaking to the Times Educational Supplement, he said: "It is a vast waste of money. Even though I'm an advocate for synthetic phonics, I completely disagree with this test. It will inevitably cause teaching to the test, deflecting attention away from more valuable areas of the curriculum.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said: "We are clear that synthetic phonics will not be compulsory in schools but we do believe more schools should teach synthetic phonics because it is shown to have a major and long-lasting effect on children's reading and spelling.

"We are supported in that view by high-quality academic evidence from across the world – from Scotland and Australia to the National Reading Panel in the US – which points to synthetic phonics being the most effective method for teaching literacy for all children, especially those aged five to seven.

"Too many children leave primary school unable to read and write properly – we are determined to raise standards and the new phonics-based reading check for six-year-olds will ensure that children who need extra help are given it before it is too late, and then can enjoy a lifetime's love of reading."

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Australian teachers reveal why they walked

PROBLEM students should face harsher penalties, including Saturday-morning detention and fines for their parents, say WA teachers who have walked away from the classroom.

A disproportionate number of public school teachers are also blaming increased workloads and stress for their decision to quit, new reports show.

The exit surveys of 260 teachers and other staff who resigned from the Education Department in the past year are outlined in two reports, which were released to The Sunday Times under Freedom of Information laws this week.

It is the first time such exit surveys have been publicly released and they give a rare insight into the challenges facing our state's 35,000 public school teachers and staff.

One teacher recommended "harsher penalties for disruptive students", including more frequent suspensions and exclusions for "lesser disruptive behaviour" to stem violent behaviour. The teacher also called for after-school and Saturday morning detentions.

Another said: "Start making parents accountable for the actions of their children. Financial penalties for disruptive students."

A third teacher said: "I feel this may be a sign of the times, but the students seem to have more control than the teachers. "I have been assaulted by a student in the past and due to inexperience I did not pursue it. The school at the time seemed to brush it under the carpet and the student went unpunished.

"It seems suspension or expulsion would look bad on their school record. Behaviour like that is a major concern for all teachers. Crowd control is used instead of teaching in some schools."The surveys, conducted by the Education Department between October 2009 and July 2010, reveal:

* About a third (87 people) of those who completed the survey said they would not consider returning to work for the Education Department in the future.

* More than one in 10 teachers and staff (30 people) identified family reasons as the main reason for leaving.

* Almost 8 per cent (20 people) of teachers and staff were retiring, while a further 8 per cent (20 people) quit to "pursue other interests".

* Eighteen people (7 per cent) said they walked away from teaching for a work-life balance.

* Ten people (almost 4 per cent) blamed their decision to quit on harassment, discrimination or workplace bullying.

* The number of teachers and staff who blamed workload and workplace pressure for their decision to quit was more than three times the benchmark average.

* The number of teachers and staff who cited work-life balance as their reason for leaving was up to seven times the benchmark average.

SOURCE



19 February, 2011

Education waste: We have only ourselves to blame

There's a curious line in the summary of President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal 2012 Department of Education budget. "Now more than ever," it reads, "we cannot waste taxpayer dollars on programs that do not work." It's curious because no federal education programs appear to work, yet the Obama administration is proposing to increase Education Department spending from $64 billion to $77 billion. It's a bankrupting contradiction, but don't get angry at Obama: We only have ourselves to blame.

Educational outcomes prove that federal education involvement has practically been the definition of profligate spending.

First, elementary and secondary schooling. While real, federal per-pupil expenditures have more than doubled since the early 1970s, the scores of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the so-called "Nation's Report Card" — have been pancake flat. We've spent tons with no educational returns to show. We have, though, got bloat such as a near doubling of school employees per-student, and opulent buildings like the half-billion-dollar Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex that opened in Los Angeles last year.

In higher education, the federal government has focused on providing financial aid to make college more affordable. The problem is, policymakers have ignored basic economics. The more Washington gives to students, the higher schools can raise their prices, wiping out the value of the aid.

In addition to being a major cause of the disease it wants to cure, Washington has fostered higher-ed failure by encouraging an increasing number of people often unready for college to pursue degrees. That's a likely reason the most recent federal assessment of adult literacy recorded big literacy drops from 1992-2003 among Americans with at least a bachelor's degree. It's also no doubt a significant factor behind only about 56 percent of students in four-year programs completing their studies in six years.

Wasting federal dollars on schools is not, importantly, exclusively a Democratic problem. Both parties have used education spending to try to signal that they "care" about Americans, especially cute little child-Americans. And while the House GOP has identified about $4.9 billion in cuts for the Education Department, that's less than 8 percent off the Department's $64 billion budget.

So how is all this the fault of the American people? Isn't the real problem that politicians lack integrity and will try to buy votes using things that sound wonderful even if they're toxic?

While it would be nice if politicians would start looking at results and stop throwing money into black holes, the fact is they're human, and, like all of us, they ultimately want what is best for themselves. For politicians that's votes, and when it comes to education Americans don't like cuts.

When presented with several federal undertakings that could be targets for deficit-reducing cuts in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, education finished second only to Social Security for protection. A full 63 percent of respondents wanted no education reductions, versus 13 percent calling for "major" cuts. In contrast, the top candidate for gutting — foreign aid — saw 11 percent of people call for no reductions and 52 percent demand major slashing.

As with most things you buy, people generally expect that spending more on education will get a better product. Moreover, the public constantly hears, especially from huge special interests like teachers' unions, that our schools have been surviving on table scraps for decades. It's no surprise, then, that average Americans — people with jobs, families, and lots of other pressing concerns that make analyzing education policy hugely cost prohibitive — recoil at the idea of taking money from schools.

But take we must, because federal money does no discernable educational good, and our nation can simply no longer afford pointless spending.

Unfortunately, there is only one way to get sustained sanity in federal policy, and it will require slow, hard work. People who know the reality of federal education spending must tell others about it as forcefully and clearly as possible. They must change the public's attitude so that what's in politicians' self-interest will also change. Ultimately, federal politicians must be rewarded not for giving away dollars in the name of education, but for leaving them in the hands of hardworking taxpayers.

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US House votes to block Education Dept. rule attacking private colleges

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to block the Department of Education from pursuing the implementation of the proposed gainful employment rule that could cut-off for-profit colleges' access to federal student aid.

The Republican-controlled House voted 289-136 to a bipartisan amendment introduced by John Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "By blocking the administration's regulation, we prevented an unnecessary hurdle to important skills and training at a time when workers need every advantage to succeed in the workplace," Kline said in a statement following the House vote.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Jeff Silber said the passing of the amendment showed the broad support the industry and others have gained against the rule. However, the colleges face a tougher battle getting the amendment passed in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

Tom Harkin, head of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, has been leading the push in Congress to tighten regulation on for-profit schools. "I don't think one could declare victory yet for the industry," Sterne Agee & Leach analyst Arvind Bhatia said. "It is going to be a tough road to get this through the Senate." The Senate is expected to vote on the amendment in the week of Feb. 28, according to analyst Silber.

The proposed rule ties federal aid to colleges proving they are doing a better job of preparing students for work. Programs that fail to offer good job opportunities stand to lose federal funding -- the primary source of revenue for many colleges.

The gainful employment rule is part of a larger package of rules introduced by the Obama government aimed at making for-profit colleges more accountable for the $145 billion in federal funds they get for student aid.

The rule would restrict access to federal aid for over 2 million students at private-sector colleges and universities in the next 10 years, according to The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.

For-profit colleges have been lobbying heavily over the last few months to either get the rule scrapped or at least weaken it before a final version comes out. The gainful employment proposal was delayed last year after it received a large number of comments -- about 90,000 -- calling for delaying the rule. It is expected to be finalised in early part of this year.

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British school chaos

"A lack of discipline is at the root of our educational malaise"

David Starkey

I may have quite considerable experience as a history teacher – over 15 years lecturing in the subject at the London School of Economics – but I had never imagined that the next time I stepped into the classroom, I’d be doing so under circumstances quite like these.

Let me explain. Recently, Jamie Oliver approached me and asked if I’d be interested in teaching at his Dream School – a “school” staffed by celebrities and well-known experts in their field. They would try to turn around the education of a group of 16 to 18-year-olds who had resisted every attempt to be educated in the past, all in front a the cameras. Rolf Harris would teach art, Daley Thompson would tackle sports, drama lessons were to be led by Simon Callow, and I was to take the history class. Guest assistants would include Cherie Blair and the photographer Rankin.

The first thought that came to mind was that this sounded rather like “Strictly Come Teaching”. The second was that the task in hand was going to be very hard going.

All the young people had failed, for various reasons, to obtain five GCSEs at A* to C grade – some had experienced personal or health difficulties during their schooling, while others had spent time excluded from school for short periods.

You have to remember that these children – and they are children, despite what they themselves might believe – find it difficult to control their emotions. As I was to find, they are easily distracted and the smallest thing can make them fly off the handle. The violence that can be witnessed on our streets is also to be found bubbling under the surface in the classroom. An aggressive emotional incontinence pervades inside the school gate.

No wonder, then, that I felt this particular mission of Jamie’s would probably fail. But I was also aware that the fundamentals behind his Dream School were inspiring.

I am passionately committed to state education. I went to a progressive primary school in Kendal, followed by a boys’ grammar school and then Cambridge. Back then, two thirds of the students were from state schools. It is more or less the opposite case now, which is testimony to the crisis inflicted on state education, which this TV programme aimed to address.

I decided to let my heart rule. I’ve long had a high opinion of Jamie. I first met him back in 2001 at an awards ceremony where we had both won book prizes. I have to confess I did not behave well towards him. I was snobby and I couldn’t understand why a cook was getting a book prize. But Jamie went out of his way to be nice – and that impressed me. He still does. His heart is most certainly in the right place.

And so I prepared my lessons carefully. I wanted to show the class how the historical concept of honour and dying for one’s country had changed. But my first lesson was, if I am honest, a catastrophe. I decided to use props in the form of the Anglo-Saxon Hoard, which was found in the Midlands last year, to teach the class about the old aristocratic society and how the upper classes decked themselves in jewels to illustrate their status. The only problem was that we had to transport it from Birmingham to London. Sure enough, it got stuck on the M6. The students were forced to wait for two-and-a-half hours. By the time the lesson started, they were bored, irritated and edgy.

This is perhaps understandable. But what surprised me was the utter lack of discipline in the school. The Dream School’s head teacher was the award-winning John D’Abbro, whose New Rush Hall educational organisation specialises in working with children with behavioural and emotional difficulties. D’Abbro treated the institution rather like a caring machine, rather than an educational one.

My students felt they could do what they wanted. They shouted, gossiped and sent texts to friends. The noise was quite extraordinary. It was bedlam – like the Lord of the Flies. I am not normally scared by anything, but even I was sweating. It was an appalling experience and it gives you a sense of why things have gone so wrong in state education.

During the lesson, I had a mild altercation with one boy, Conor. It was silly and trivial, with mild insults on both sides – he commenting unfavourably on my height and I commenting on his weight. He didn’t take offence, but the school officials became agitated. I was told I must never say anything harsh to the children – even though they were trying to tear me apart. The notion that an adult is not allowed to verbally spar, to give as good as they get, is ludicrous. It is why our educational system has gone wrong. I believe young people need rules. They will respond to discipline.

I don’t blame anyone at Jamie’s school for this. To my mind, the headmaster was simply a representative of the new kind of establishment running our state schools. It is reluctant to discipline, brims over with human kindness and is sceptical about authority.

By the end of the series, I had taught five lessons on everything from jousting to religion. So did I notice a big transformation in the pupils’ attitude? The short answer is there was no miracle. A few weeks is not going to change the pattern of behaviour of someone who is so damaged. You are fighting a continuing battle. The notion you can get these pupils to do what you, the teacher, want is an alien concept.

I did try to engage them as much as I could – and had some success. About half of the class of 20 became enthusiastic about history. By the final lesson, we even talked about how you would write an essay, something they had never done before.

I have stayed in touch with a few of them, including Conor, and a girl called Danielle. I even took Danielle to Cambridge University for a tour. In a different world, she would have been the right girl for Cambridge. Instead, her reaction was somewhere between inspiration, bewilderment and frustration.

I have nothing but admiration for teachers who face these kinds of problems every day. Without wishing to sound too emotional, I also felt deeply for many of the pupils who, with the exception of one or two, were all above average in intelligence. A few others were even higher. It is tragic that they feel so disillusioned and ambivalent about their schooling.

Education might be at the centre of our political debate, but I realise now that until you have stood in front of a class and tried to teach in this kind of challenging environment, you don’t know much about the realities. The programme hasn’t necessarily offered solutions, but it has highlighted the problems we face. And it does provide incontrovertible evidence to show why a lack of discipline is at the root of our educational malaise.

I have nothing but contempt for the new-style head teachers who adopt a “happy family” approach, where everything is laid back. It has failed several generations already – and now society is paying the consequences. Jamie’s restaurants are run like military operations: why aren’t our schools?

And how could we really save the children in Jamie’s school? I would prescribe a good dollop of discipline – and a system of one-to-one mentoring. I am sure this would work wonders.

I’m glad I took part, but sadly, the whole experience has only confirmed that turning our state education system around is a bit like turning a tanker round: it’s a slow and arduous process. One can only hope that we’re not too late to start.

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18 February, 2011

University to Change Policy Defining Religious Discrimination as Oppression by Christians

(Sometimes, even Leftists have to eat a little crow)

The University of California at Davis has backed away from a policy that defined religious discrimination as Christians oppressing non-Christians after more than two dozen Christian students filed a formal complaint.

The definition was listed in a document called, “The Principles of Community.” It defined “Religious/Spiritual Discrimination” as “The loss of power and privilege to those who do not practice the dominant culture’s religion. In the United States, this is institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian.”

“This is radical political correctness run amok,” said David French, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. The conservative advocacy group wrote a letter on behalf of more than 25 students who objected to the policy and wanted it revised. He said it’s absurd to single out Christians as oppressors and non-Christians as the only oppressed people on campus.

Raheem Reed, an associate executive vice chancellor at UC-Davis, said he received the letter and removed the definition Wednesday afternoon. “I certainly can see how a Christian student reading that definition might feel and that’s why it was immediately disabled and taken down,” Reed told Fox News Radio. “This is not how we define religious discrimination.”

However, one student said they complained to administrators last November about the policy and nothing was done. “Christians deserve the same protections against religious discrimination as any other students on a public university campus,” French told Fox News Radio. “The idea that a university would discriminate against Christians is a very old story, unfortunately, and one that we see played out every day.”

One student, who asked not to be identified, said university officials asked her to reaffirm “The Principles of Community” last semester. She refused to do so when she realized that Christians were not protected under the policy.

“To have a non-discrimination policy that excludes the Christian faith is a cause for action,” she said. “In higher academia, one would hope that a diversity of ideas and beliefs would be appreciated. But my experience has been that this has not always been the case. There is a real fear of academic bias against the Christian faith.”

Reed said he regrets that Christian students might feel intimidated. “We want everyone to feel safe, welcomed and supportive,” he said. “Not only are we taking it down, but now we’re going to look at what kind of affirmative steps we can take to reassure those members of our campus community who may have felt somewhat threatened or intimidated by it.”

French said all of the students who complained are fearful of backlash if their identities became known. “This was amazing to actually enshrine in your non-discrimination statement – discrimination against Christians,” he said. “This is a symbol of the seeming impunity in which universities violate the law to establish a radical, secular-left agenda.” Alan Brownstein, a law professor at UC-Davis, said the campus has a generally open and tolerant view of religion.

“It’s a university campus,” he said. “There is robust debate and people will disagree on just about everything.” Brownstein, who is a nationally known constitutional scholar, said any legal challenges to the policy would depend on whether or not it’s a binding document. “Clearly, if you had an enforceable regulatory policy that said, ‘we will discipline Christians who oppress non-Christians, but we will not impose the same kind of disciplinary sanctions on non-Christians who engage in the same kind of harassing behavior against Christians,’ that would be unacceptable and subject to legal challenge.”

Reed said “The Principles of Community” is not a policy. “They are, in fact, aspirational principles we have – to try to make sure we are promoting diversity and trying to build a more inclusive campus community,” he said.

Regardless, Brownstein said it might have been more appropriate to use less-specific language in the policy. “It’s always preferable to be as general as you can when you describe these kinds of unacceptable behaviors,” he said.

SOURCE





Teacher suspended over vitriolic blog post

Teachers must not tell the truth about their students

A high-school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia who was suspended for a profanity-laced blog in which she called her young charges "disengaged, lazy whiners" is causing a sensation by daring to ask: why are students unmotivated - and what's wrong with calling them out?

As she fights to keep her job at Central Bucks East High School, 30-year-old Natalie Munroe says she had no interest in becoming any sort of educational icon.

Her comments and her suspension have clearly touched a nerve, with scores of online comments applauding her for taking a tough-love approach or excoriating her for verbal abuse. Media attention has rained down and backers have started a Facebook group.

"My students are out of control," Ms Munroe, who has taught 10th, 11th and 12th grades, wrote in one post. "They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

And in another post, Ms Munroe - who is more than eight months pregnant - quotes from the musical Bye Bye Birdie: "Kids! They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS."

She also listed some comments she wished she could post on student evaluations, including: "I hear the trash company is hiring"; "I called out sick a couple of days just to avoid your son"; and "Just as bad as his sibling. Don't you know how to raise kids?"

Ms Munroe did not use her full name or identify her students or school in the blog, which she started in August 2009 for friends and family. Last week, she said, students brought it to the attention of the school, which suspended her with pay.

"They get angry when you ask them to think or be creative," Ms Munroe said of her students. "The students are not being held accountable."

Ms Munroe pointed out that she also said positive things, but she acknowledges that she did write some things out of frustration - and of a feeling that many children today are being given a free pass at school and at home.

"Parents are more trying to be their kids' friends and less trying to be their parent," Ms Munroe said, also noting students' lack of patience. "They want everything right now. They want it yesterday."

Ms Munroe has hired a lawyer, who said that she had the right to post her thoughts on the blog and that it's a free speech issue.

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British government uneasy that universities will do what the government says they may do

The Coalition is threatening to cut higher education funding to stop universities imposing blanket £9,000 tuition fees. In a direct warning to vice-chancellors, it was claimed the Government would be forced to slash university budgets to cover the increased cost of student loans. David Willetts, the Universities Minister, said serious pressure would be placed on the public purse if institutions attempted to “cluster” fees at the maximum possible level.

The comments come just days after Imperial College London became the first university to formally declare that it wanted to charge a flat rate of £9,000 for degree courses.

Oxford and Cambridge are considering a similar move and it is feared other leading universities will follow suit to maintain teaching standards. Student leaders have also warned that less prestigious institutions will attempt to impose the highest possible fees.

Under higher education reforms, the cap on tuition fees in England is being raised from £3,290 this year to £9,000 in 2012. Universities that want to charge more than £6,000 will be expected to invest more money in bursaries and outreach programmes to attract the poorest students. Financial modelling carried out by the Treasury suggested that universities would charge average fees of £7,500 next year.

In a speech to vice-chancellors on Thursday, Mr Willetts said: “I want to be frank with you: we will all face a problem if the sector tries to cluster at the maximum possible level.”

Under the reforms, students pay nothing while they study as the Treasury provides loans to cover the cost of tuition fees. Only after graduates have started earning £21,000 a year will they begin to repay the loans.

But speaking at Nottingham University, Mr Willetts said the student finance bill would be inflated to unsustainable levels if too many universities charged £9,000 fees – forcing the Government to make cuts elsewhere.

“We set the maximum level at £9,000 because we think there are some circumstances where fees of this level could be justified,” he said. “If graduate contributions end up higher than £7,500, we would reluctantly be forced to find savings from elsewhere in [higher education].”

Mr Willetts also accused universities of “rushing” to impose higher fees even though the extra cash was often not needed. At many universities, the most common courses cost £7,000 a year to run, he said. “Making an assumption of a £9,000 charge and working backwards is the wrong place to start,” he said. He added: “Some universities are rushing to £9,000 without thinking about the impact on students.”

The comments came as the Government published a report setting out plans requiring each university to draw up “student charters”. For the first time, institutions will be expected to give students written guarantees on issues such as support and feedback from tutors, the number of lectures and tutorials and standards of accommodation. Documents – expected to be around two pages long – are expected to give students clearly defined “rights” in exchange for a hike in tuition fees.

The report – by Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, and Prof Janet Beer, vice-chancellor of Oxford Brookes University – said charters would also “help prospective students to get a ‘feel’ for the institution”.

Mr Willetts said: “Students have a right to know how they will learn, how they will be supported and what they need to do themselves to reach their potential. “At a time of significant change in higher education, students have increased expectations of their university experience. I want a system where students have real choice and universities respond to what students need.”

In his speech, Mr Willetts also denied that the Government was requiring each university to admit "quotas" of students from poor backgrounds. A letter last week to the Office for Fair Access from Mr Willetts and Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said universities should "broaden access" if they want to charge fees higher than £6,000. Universities can also make lower grade offers to students from poor-performing schools who have the "potential" to perform well.

But he said: "Our letter does not introduce quotas – not one iota of a quota, in fact. That is not what Vince or I envisage at all. Not only would quotas be undesirable – they would be illegal."

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17 February, 2011

U. Cal. academics: Jews bad; Muslims good

One hundred faculty members at UC Irvine signed a letter last week asking Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas to drop the charges against 11 Muslim students, 8 from UC Irvine and 3 from UC Riverside, who last year disrupted a speech on campus by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. On February 4, the DA's office announced that it was charging each student with "one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and one misdemeanor count of disturbance of a meeting."

According to the District Attorney, the students planned the disruption several days in advance. At the event, on Feb. 10, 2010, the first student to stand up and interrupt Oren's speech allegedly said, "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not free speech." Another defendant allegedly said, "Michael Oren you are a war criminal," while another said, "You sir are an accomplice to genocide."

"This case is being filed because there was an organized attempt to squelch the speaker, who was invited to speak to a group at UCI," Rackauckas said in a statement announcing the charges. "These defendants meant to stop this speech and stop anyone else from hearing his ideas, and they did so by disrupting a lawful meeting. This is a clear violation of the law and failing to bring charges against this conduct would amount to a failure to uphold the Constitution."

In their letter, the faculty members countered that the students have already been sufficiently disciplined by the university. In addition to individual punishments, the Muslim Student Union was suspended from being a student organization for an academic quarter. [A whole quarter!]

"The use of the criminal justice system will be detrimental to our campus as it inherently will be divisive and risk undoing the healing process which has occurred over the last year," the letter reads. "It also sets a dangerous precedent for the use of the criminal law against non-violent protests on campus."

The letter's signatories include five deans and 14 Chancellor's Professors and Distinguished Professors.

In an interview with TPM, Susan Schroeder, the DA's chief of staff, emphasized that the students are not being prosecuted for protesting. "Protesting is legal," she said.

Schroeder called the students' actions "an organized effort, days prior to the event, to shut down the speech." As a result, Schroeder said, the students deprived the speaker and the audience of their first amendment rights, "and that's against the law." As examples of what the students could have done to protest the speech without breaking the law, Schroeder suggested they could have handed out leaflets, worn t-shirts or asked hostile questions during a Q & A section.

Schroeder also pointed out that the UC Irvine police made the arrests the night of Oren's speech, and brought the case to the DA's office. As a result, the office had a duty to evaluate whether the law was broken. "We just want people to accept responsibility for what they did," she said.

That said, Schroeder also suggested that the consequences of not prosecuting were grave. "If we don't enforce this law we're basically looking at anarchy and chaos," Schroeder said. "It doesn't matter, if we had a bunch of black students who shut down a bunch of Klu Klux Klan members at a place or vice versa."

Schroeder said the DA's office has not been in contact with the Embassy of Israel about the charges. When asked about the faculty letter, she said, "we cant allow public opinion to decide how we enforce the law." ...

The students are scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on March 11.

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Some great examples of free college education

Would you like your college education to be free? Sure, who wouldn't? Well, the people of Tunisia and Egypt are learning that whenever the government supplies something, it is never really "free."

In Tunisia, "free" university education is guaranteed to anyone who passes the government's exams at the end of high school. Largely as a result of this, the number of Tunisians who graduated college more than tripled in the last ten years. This may sound like a good thing, but it has produced a glut of graduates.

Fifty-Seven percent of young Tunisians entering the labor market are college educated. This is while only 30 percent of Americans earn a college degree by the time they are 27. Recent Tunisian college grads have an unemployment rate approximately three times higher than the national average of 15 percent. This is up ninefold from 1994.

The reason for this is not necessarily because having a college education hinders people in getting a job, but because so many college grads are entering the labor market at a time when there are few jobs.

Additionally, government domination of the educational system discourages economic growth. The Tunisian Ministry of Education decides what major students will have. Students are not allowed to change fields during their course of study. This control reduces the type of expertise necessary to create successful businesses.

The Tunisian educational system is also enormously expensive. Of Tunisia's GDP, 7.2 percent is spent on education, more than any European or North American country beside Denmark and Iceland, which also spends 7.2 percent of its GDP on education. Tunisia's educational results, however, appear to be horrible. A 2002 UNESCO report puts its graduation rate at about 30 percent.

Having such a large number of unemployed youths can be dangerous. As George Mason University sociologist Jack A. Goldstone notes, "Educated youth have been in the vanguard of rebellions against authority certainly since the French Revolution and in some cases even earlier."

In fact, the Tunisian protests began after a recent graduate killed himself because government authorities confiscated his fruit stand when they discovered he did not have an "official" permit. The BBC reported that most of the early protesters were unemployed recent graduates.

Like Tunisia, Egypt also has a massive youth-unemployment problem. Unsurprisingly, it also has a system of "free" college education.

In Egypt, enrollment in tertiary education increased from 14 percent in 1990 to approximately 35 percent in 2005. Yet this has not helped the unemployment rate among recent grads. The national Egyptian unemployment rate is 9.4 percent, comparable to the United States, but the unemployment rate for people between the ages of 15 and 29 is 87.2 percent. College graduates, largely because of their age, have a ten times higher unemployment rate than for those who did not attend college.

The Egyptian government also rigidly controls the educational system, just like in Tunisia. A centralized government committee controls decisions regarding curriculum, program development, and deployment of faculty and staff for institutions of higher learning across the entire country. Private universities were only legalized in 1992, and enrollment is very small.

In Egypt, educational expenditures were 3.7 percent of GDP in 2007. By most accounts the Egyptian education system is underfunded. Its educational standards were called "abysmal" by the Economist. Fewer than half of all students graduate, and many universities are viewed as diploma mills.

Although the Egyptian government may have avoided some of the economic costs of "free" higher education that the Tunisian government has incurred, it has not avoided the social costs.

We, in America, might not be as far away from the problems of Tunisia and Egypt as some may be inclined to think.

From 1997 to 2007, full-time enrollment in US tertiary education increased 34 percent. The average college student graduates with $24,000 in debt, a 40 percent real increase from 1997. In 2008, only 57 percent of students enrolled in a four year college graduated within six years. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds is 52 percent. The underemployed as a group may be as large as the unemployed in America. For example, in 1970 only 3 percent of mail carriers had a bachelor's degree, while today the number is 12 percent.

Although our case may not be as extreme as that of Tunisia or Egypt, we are headed in the same direction. And just like in Tunisia and Egypt, our education bubble is fueled by governmental policy.

Government accreditation laws keep potential institutions of higher education out of the market, which allows the institutions already in the market to raise their prices. Accreditation institutions can also force institutions of higher education to make changes that increase costs. For instance, the American Bar Association forced the University of Colorado Law School to increase the number of electrical outlets in the library and to construct an instructional court room, which the university claimed caused them to increase tuition.

Government aid also helps institutions of higher education inflate prices. For instance, although the cost of higher education in real dollars increased by 68 percent between 1986 and 2006, when increased government aid is accounted for the real cost to the student increased by only 29 percent. The ceiling of how much students are able to pay is artificially raised, allowing the colleges to charge more.

Also, if a student defaults on a loan backed by the government, which is by far the most common kind of loan, the lender does not bear the loss, the government does. This obviously encourages the lenders to lend more freely than they otherwise would. Enormous losses have been socialized. There is currently $730 billion of outstanding student-loan debt, and the overwhelming majority of losses will be borne by the government if it is not repaid. Only 40 percent of all student debt is being actively repaid.

There are more causes to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt than just the higher-education bubble, but the effect it has had cannot be ignored. We could be bringing ourselves dangerously close to the point when all the people of our country have to learn, one way or another, that nothing the government provides is ever free.

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Want to get your child into a decent British school? Prepare for war

What the horror of government schools leads to

Between now and the first week of March, there will be much dodging and much gloating at the school gates. The great 11-plus showdown is entering its denouement.

From today, letters go out from grammar and private schools to say whose progeny has won the race for the most prestigious places. There’s no doubt that in the multiple choice of life, the first big test for many comes if their parents decide to try to push them into a selective school at the age of 11.

This year, it is more brutal than ever. Recession has driven more middle-class parents towards the few remaining grammar schools, and those willing to pay want to pay only for the best. Anywhere there are pockets of middle-class parents with even a nod to Tiger Mother-ish tendencies becomes a bloody battlefield.

Military strategies include coaching, styling, the setting up of fake hobbies, playing obscure musical instruments, rehearsing interview techniques and even taking fake exams in big halls.

Many schools now boast a ten-to-one ratio of applicants to places. And the more competitive the entry process, the ‘cockier the attitude of the school’, says an Essex mother, who bemoans the fact that some have started asking pretentious ‘Oxbridge-type questions’ of would-be pupils.

She recalls her ten-year-old daughter’s experience at the hands of ‘two men in tweedy jackets acting like they were in Dead Poets’ Society, with their feet up on the desk’, asking her whether she would rather live on a hill or in a valley, then staring out of the window while she struggled to reply.

Schools would counter that in an age of coaching, only a really left-field question can discover a child’s true self. That’s just what worries the parents.

‘My son Alex was asked which three people he’d have at his fantasy dinner party,’ says Liz Leonard, a Wandsworth mother. ‘By the time he told me he’d answered [teenage pop star] Justin Bieber and someone who plays for Arsenal, I’d given up hope. I’d given him three practice interviews myself, but you can’t prepare for everything.’

The tortuous process kicks off with registration, for which private schools collect an average fee of about £100. (Bear in mind most parents will register for at least four schools.)

‘The worst application form we got was four sides of A4, about three of which were for Frank’s “achievements”. I’m not sure I could fill that, and I’m a grown-up,’ says one Cambridge parent.

‘We ended up exaggerating hideously. A passing interest in stars had to be turned into a passion for astronomy, meaning we had to buy books, a telescope and talk about it all the time before the interview.’

Needless to say, many middle-class parents are making their children’s lives hell over the whole thing. By now, coaching will have been under way for months, and in some cases years. ‘Two years of Saturday mornings’ seems to be an 11-plus catchphrase. Even some expensive private preparatory schools now advise parents to hire home tutors.

At state primaries it is now accepted wisdom that all but the genius children of teachers need coaching to get into a grammar or a competitive private school. And even the coaches are selective — they’ll take on only the most promising pupils so they can claim a 100 per cent success rate, the Cambridge mother says. ‘We had a lovely guy,’ she adds. ‘But we are talking about 20 sessions of maths at £40 a pop.’

Not that many parents admit to coaching. It’s become common practice at the school gates to deny it, let alone share recommendations.

The exams themselves are arduous. Each school has four papers: maths, English, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning — each of about an hour’s duration. So a ten-year-old whose parents have applied to four private schools might face 16 hours of exams.

They won’t necessarily be that formulaic, either — canny schools have started commissioning their own papers. But you can prepare for the scary seating arrangements. ‘We paid £65 to have a practice exam in a hall with other children so that Alex wouldn’t feel daunted by the sight of 250 rival candidates sitting in alphabetic rows and being barked at with a megaphone,’ says Liz Leonard.

‘Some schools make a real effort, assigning elder children to look after young ones, and giving them doughnuts and things. But others are just intimidating,’ adds another parent. ‘At one school, my daughter vomited with nerves and cried when she came out because she thought she’d let us down. I felt so guilty.’

Then another harsh moment — the call to interview. Or, worse, no call. ‘One mother whose son didn’t get an interview at her first-choice school hasn’t dropped him off at his primary since,’ says a fellow parent. ‘Her husband has to. She can’t face it.’

Many schools interview the parents, too, meaning they have to decide not just what the child should wear, but what they’re going to wear. ‘We put Alex in his school uniform so he could wear his Form Captain badge,’ says one mother. ‘They’re not going to know it’s not current.’

But beware: the interviewers can be ruthless. ‘Alex was asked what his parents did, and which school did he really want to go to,’ the mother adds. ‘They always ask that when the parents are out of earshot.’

This is where those niche interests come into their own. If your offspring is not a maths whizz, they’d better be a hotshot at the tuba. And remember, no school with an organ will turn down a child who can play one.

Former Government Inspector of Schools Chris Woodhead says: ‘It’s parents who create the stress. And the cause of it is unrealistic expectations. ‘It is the most difficult thing to be realistic about your own child’s ability, personality and talents, but you don’t want them to scrape in somewhere where they won’t be happy.’

The coaching craze, he adds, ‘in the case of grammar schools, is the inevitable consequence of demand exceeding supply. It would be solved by David Cameron discovering his Conservative convictions and creating some more’.

But on a positive note, human nature has a delightful habit of seeing the upside of things unlikely to work out. Says Liz Leonard of the school where her son name-dropped Justin Bieber as his ideal dinner party guest: ‘I don’t want him to go there anyway. The other parents I met were far too pushy.’

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16 February, 2011

Education cuts needed; excessive spending has spawned waste, fueled deficits

Education expert Neal McCluskey earlier lamented the failure of House Republicans to propose meaningful cuts in education spending:

“despite the fact that the ivory tower is soaking in putrid, taxpayer-funded waste. Quite simply, the federal government pours hundreds of billions of dollars into our ivy-ensconced institutions every year, but what that has largely produced is atrociously low graduation rates; at-best dubious amounts of learning for those who do graduate; ever-fancier facilities; and rampant tuition inflation that renders a higher education no more affordable to students but keeps colleges fat and happy.”

Shortly thereafter, in an effort to trim the deficit, House Republicans came out with some additional cuts, proposing the elimination of some wasteful education programs.

If the GOP is reluctant to make cuts, Obama is a lot worse: he earlier sought to double education spending, and Obama’s recent State of the Union called for more increases in education spending (and other wasteful boondoggles at taxpayer expense), even though students often learn little in college.

Half “the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college,” according to a study cited in USA Today. “36% showed little change” even after four years.

Although education spending has exploded, students “spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.” “32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”

States spend hundreds of millions of dollars operating colleges that are worthless diploma mills, yet manage to graduate almost no one – like Chicago State, “which has just a 12.8 percent six-year graduation rate.”

College degrees are delivering less and less, even as students graduate massively in debt. Law schools deceptively claim that virtually all their graduates get jobs. But they inflate their jobs figures by treating as success stories even students who end up working in low-paying non-legal jobs like “waiting tables at Applebees,” “stocking aisles at Home Depot,” or babysitting — or in part-time temporary jobs. And they sometimes hide joblessness by “losing track” of easy-to-locate nearby graduates who are jobless.

“’Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm,’ says William Henderson of Indiana University, one of many exasperated law professors who are asking the American Bar Association to overhaul the way law schools assess themselves.”

America already produces so many more liberal-arts graduates than it needs that 5,057 janitors have Ph.D’s or other advanced degrees. People who went to college due to rising college attendance rates mostly ended up in low-skilled jobs, even as their tuitions soared to pay for growing educational bureaucracies. Education spending in America is huge compared to most countries.

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The quirks of Oxford and Cambridge

Oxford and Cambridge are unlike any other university in the country, with a number of rituals, traditions and quirks that stretch back centuries



One on one tutorials

No other universities in the country are able to provide one-on-one teaching in the way that Oxbridge does. Students' individual sessions in tutors' (Oxford) and supervisors' (Cambridge) studies are regarded by academics as the most important type of teaching.

Collegiate system

Oxford and Cambridge are not unique in their division into colleges -Durham is among the others - but they are the only ones where teaching is centred in the college. Each college has its own independent academic staff and depending on their subjects students receive a significant amount of their teaching in-house.

Boat race

Yes, other universities have boat races – No, none of them is on the same scale. The annual event between the two universities is known across the world, attracts thousands of viewers and is screened live on television.

Blues

"Blues" are awarded to students who play for the university at the highest level in any sport, the term coming from the colours the teams wear. Other universities have similar awards, such as Palatinates at Durham and Purples at the University of London, but it was Oxford and Cambridge who started the tradition in the 19th century.

Subfusc

Subfusc is a mode of full academic dress worn by students to sit exams and attend university ceremonies such as matriculation at Oxford. Generally it consists of a suit, white shirt and bow tie for men, and a black skirt or trousers with a white blouse for women.

Graduation in Latin

Parts of the graduation ceremony take place in Latin, including statements where degrees are officially conferred on graduates. This tradition has remained despite the majority of students no longer speaking the dead language.

University police

Until 2003, both Oxford and Cambridge had their own private police forces, who were responsible for discipline within the university. The force at Oxford was abolished in 2003 but the Cambridge University Constabulary remains.

Strange interview questions

While many universities now interview applicants, none has a reputation quite like Oxford or Cambridge for intimidating prospective students by asking bizarre and seemingly irrelevant questions such as "tell me about a banana".

Unusual sports

Oxford and Cambridge are some of the only universities in Britain that offer students the opportunity to take part in virtually-extinct sports such as fives, which was developed at public schools such as Eton, and real tennis.

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Australian teachers tied up in red tape

THE just-released National Professional Standards for Teachers, detailing the characteristics of successful teachers and what constitutes quality teaching, apparently, is at the "leading edge of international practice" and is "fundamental to improving educational outcomes for young people".

How do we know? Because Tony Mackay, the chairman of the body responsible for the teaching standards, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, told us so (The Australian, February 10).

In the cliches much loved by Australia's educrats, Mackay boasts that the standards "make explicit the elements of high-quality, effective teaching in 21st century schools", will ensure that "good teachers" become "great teachers" and that the new standards will "enable teachers to constantly strive for excellence".

Mackay also claims the new standards are not about "simple measurement or ticking a box" and that the "standards unambiguously define what is expected of the new teacher and a more experienced teacher".

Not so. The seven standards and accompanying 37 focus areas and 148 descriptors, much like a corporate-inspired, performance management model for staff appraisal, impose a bureaucratic, time consuming and checklist mentality.

The result? Teachers wanting certification or promotion, instead of focusing their time and energy on being effective and inspirational classroom teachers, will have to spend most of their time collecting reams of evidence, attending fruitless in-service programs and genuflecting to education fads such as personalised learning, open classrooms and treating children as knowledge navigators.

Descriptors requiring graduate teachers to "include a range of teaching strategies in teaching", and "Demonstrate the capacity to organise classroom activities and provide clear directions" and "Understand the relevant and appropriate sources of professional learning for teachers" are also vague and generalised.

Most of the descriptors in the AITSL document are motherhood statements reinforcing progressive educational orthodoxy, and the reader searches in vain for any mention of the need for teachers to be judged on how effective they are in raising standards and improving students' results. While testing and examinations should never be the sole measure to judge teachers, students, parents and the wider community have every right to expect that an important aspect of any teacher's employment is to get students to succeed in their studies.

Worse still, the new national standards document, approved by all Australian education ministers last December, fails to detail what evidence will be used to prove that teachers have met the various standards or to ensure that the assessment regime for teachers is rigorous and credible.

The fact that little thought has been given to what evidence will be used to demonstrate whether teachers are effective or not is made worse by the reality that teacher promotion, at least for the first eight to nine years across the different states and territories, appears to be automatic.

Under the present situation, as noted in an Australian Council for Educational Research paper titled Research on Performance Pay for Teachers, "it is rare for increments to be withheld" and it "is difficult to find systematically gathered evidence about underperforming teachers in most school systems".

Much of the Rudd/Gillard inspired education revolution is imported from Britain and the underlying rationale is for increased government intervention and control via bureaucracies and quangos. Copying Britain is understandable given Tony Mackay's involvement with prime minister Tony Blair's favourite think tank Demos and the fact that Tom Bentley, now a senior adviser to Julia Gillard and also with her when she was minister for education, was also involved with Demos as director.

State and territory schools, both government and non-government, are being forced to abide by the dictates of Canberra and ALP-appointed education apparatchiks whether we are talking about the Building the Education Revolution infrastructure program, the national curriculum, national testing or the My School website.

The establishment of AITSL and publication of the National Professional Standards for Teachers are no exception.

Yet there is an alternative. Instead of enforcing a one size-fits-all command and control model, give schools the autonomy and flexibility to design and implement their own approaches to teacher certification and evaluation.

While the Australian Education Union, given its self-interest, opposes giving schools the power to hire, fire and reward teachers, there is increasing evidence that such policies lead to stronger outcomes.

Such freedom explains why Catholic and independent schools, even after adjusting for the socioeconomic profile of students, do so well academically.

Significantly, the British Secretary of Education, Michael Gove, is adopting such an approach in order to rectify the mistakes of the Blair years.

In an interview with Britain's The Guardian, Gove repeated his promise to abolish quangos such as the General Teaching Council for England and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency on the basis that: "There are too many quangos that take up a school's time without leading to any real benefits to standards.

"Teachers tell us that they have to spend hours outside the classroom going to meetings and filling in forms because of bureaucratic requirements. It takes time away from the core purpose of improving learning".

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15 February, 2011

Vouchers for Indiana?

Indiana lawmakers will start the debate Tuesday on the most controversial plank of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' sweeping education platform: a plan to use taxpayer money to help parents send their children to private schools.

Republican lawmakers who control the House and Senate have been successful so far in their efforts to shepherd Daniels' education proposals through the legislative process despite objections from many teachers, education unions and minority Democrats. But the voucher bill, which will be debated in the House education committee Tuesday, seems to be raising the most questions.

Opponents are criticizing the proposals' basic principle -- shifting public money to private schools -- and some lawmakers have more practical concerns that supporters hope to address by amending the bill Tuesday.

"I think there are more questions about this bill among lawmakers than some of the other (education) proposals," said House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican from Indianapolis who is one of the bill's sponsors.

One of those is exactly who should qualify for a voucher, which supporters including Bosma have dubbed "school choice scholarships."

Under the plan, money that would typically go to a public school for educating a child would be given to an eligible parent to use at a private school instead. The state won't give parents the entire amount that would have gone to the public school, however, which could mean the state could save money through the program. Only students currently in public schools would be eligible.

The bill uses a sliding scale that gives the most needy families larger vouchers worth 90 percent of the per-student amount that the student's public school receives. For example, if the state now gives about $6,000 to a public school district for a child's education, it could offer low-income families vouchers worth 90 percent of that, or $5,400. The family could use that toward private school tuition, while the state would keep the remaining $600.

Under the proposal, families that qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch program -- those making about $40,000 a year for a family of four -- would be eligible for a 90 percent voucher. However, the sliding scale provides 25 percent vouchers -- worth about $1,500 in the example situation -- for families of four making more than $100,000 a year.

Bosma said supporters hope to tweak the bill to tighten eligibility requirements to focus on lower-income families.

Daniels says it's a matter of justice that low-income students should have the same choice to attend private schools as wealthier families. He and other advocates say Indiana could lead the nation by creating a wide-reaching statewide voucher program.

"We intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low- and middle-income Hoosier family, 'If you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you're as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here's a voucher, go sign up.'" Daniels said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

Public school teachers have denounced the voucher proposal, saying it is part of Daniels' agenda to erode public education. The Indiana Coalition for Public Education held a news conference Monday saying taxpayer money shouldn't be directed to private schools, which can deny admission to certain students and don't have to follow the same accountability rules as public schools.

"By providing vouchers for private schools, we are diverting public tax money to private schools," said Joel Hand, the group's executive director. "That is not taxpayer-friendly to our Hoosier citizens and it is not good policy."

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Streamlining education in Connecticut

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s announcement this week that he intends to streamline the state’s higher education administrative functions is welcome news.

We have on several occasions called for such actions, in particular regarding the state university system’s top heavy administration, questioning the necessity of the duplication of administrative functions from a central office staff to four separate administrative staffs at each of the four universities.

The governor’s proposal, however, goes much further, recommending the consolidation of the Connecticut State University System, community colleges and the Board of Governors for Higher Education under a single Board of Regents for Higher Education reporting to a single chief executive officer.

We fully support this move, believing that it will produce cost savings through the elimination of duplication of services, and provide greater efficiencies of our higher education systems that in the long run will be a benefit for students and taxpayers.

Also this week, Malloy announced he intends to fully fund the state Education Cost Sharing grant in his proposed budget to be presented Wednesday to the General Assembly. That, too, is welcome news because those ECS funds are crucial for local communities struggling to balance their budgets and maintain the highest quality education possible for elementary and secondary school students.

Granted, fully funding the ECS grants will only result in communities receiving the same level of state aid they received last year, making for another tough budget year for towns. But to accomplish that, the governor will have to replace $270 million in federal stimulus funds, and the governor has not disclosed from where those funds will come.

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Royal Society condemns British High School exams as 'not fit for purpose', and calls for European baccalaureates

Only 3 per cent of students leave university with a degree in maths or pure science, a report shows. Of last year’s 300,000 graduates, just 10,000 studied chemistry, physics, biology or maths, according to the Royal Society. The celebrated research institution also said that one in six secondary schools had not entered a single candidate for A-level physics.

It said the A-level system was unfit for purpose and should be scrapped in favour of European-style baccalaureates. That would see teenagers studying six or more core subjects, including science and maths.

Education Secretary Michael Gove recently introduced a measure into school performance tables to encourage the study of what are seen as more rigorous subjects. The move is aimed at stopping Britain tumbling further down international league tables for science and maths.

And it would bring the state system into line with many private schools which have already adopted the six-subject International Baccalaureate.

Most students study three A-levels but under the IB they would take six courses including a language, a science, maths and a social science.

Followed by 900,000 students in 140 countries, the IB is widely respected by universities and studied in many top private schools. The Royal Society believes it would ensure students are qualified to do a university degree in a STEM subject: science, technology, engineering or maths. Employers complain of a major shortage of such graduates.

The Royal Society report says: ‘Given that higher education institutions tend to want STEM undergraduates to have taken more than one science subject (excluding mathematics), and that many students would welcome being able to take a wider range and number of subjects at A-level, it is clear that A-levels are not fit for purpose.’

The authors say England is lagging behind the rest of the UK. Students in Scotland already take five highers and both Scotland and Wales are looking at Baccalaureate-style qualifications for science and languages for post-16 education.

The report blamed England’s woeful science and maths provision on a shortage of specialist teachers.

Schools are also failing to warn pupils away from picking subjects at A-level that are unsuitable for science and maths degrees.

Dame Athene Donald, a physics professor who is chairman of the Royal Society’s education committee, said: ‘At a time of economic uncertainty, when science and scientists can play a key role in revitalising the UK’s financial outlook, it is deeply worrying to find that numbers of A-level science students are at such low levels.’

Schools minister Nick Gibb endorsed the report’s findings, saying: ‘We echo the concerns of the Royal Society about the need to improve the teaching and take-up of science and mathematics in our schools. ‘The UK continues to fall down international league tables and we now languish at 27th in the world for maths, and 16th for science – falling 19 and 14 places respectively in under ten years.’

However Mark Dawe, of exam board OCR, said A-levels offered choice, flexibility and excellent preparation for university. ‘They also leave curriculum space for other forms of enrichment and development,’ he added.

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14 February, 2011

Education cost top problem for local government

State and local governments face financial difficulties in 2011 and 2012 more severe than they have seen in generations. Pessimists predict major municipal or even state bankruptcies. Optimists insist that, while serious budget problems will increase rather than ease, governments will skirt default by sharply increasing taxes and cutting deeply into services.

Unfortunately, while the threat of increasing Medicaid costs has received significant attention, politicians, analysts, the media and the public seem largely to have missed the $600 billion elephant in the statehouse.

The key structural problem in state and local finances is education, not health care. And a fundamental shift in our K-12 investment strategy is the only way to avoid defaulting on the promise of a public education.

The proportion of resources devoted to education has ballooned over the past two decades. Education spending as a share of tax revenue jumped 90% from 1992 to 2011 at the state level and 73% at the local level. This means governments have few options in responding to our current fiscal crisis.

In 2011, state and local governments will spend 46 cents out of every tax dollar they raise on public K-12 education. Medicaid/ CHIP spending pales in comparison at just 17 cents of every tax dollar. Public education, in other words, consumes a shocking 2 1/2 times the resources devoted to Medicaid at the height of recession-driven health care increases.

Spending Surge

Add in payments needed to meet the approximately $800 billion in underfunded commitments to teacher pension plans over the next 30 years and K-12 education gobbles up 50% of all state and local tax revenue.

Compounding the problem, a massive surge in federal education spending (the "stimulus") will recede this year while the recession drags on. Troubled local governments and school districts will call for more state aid to fill their budget gaps, but it's unlikely states will be willing or able to rescue distressed municipalities as they have in the past. States face a huge reduction in the federal share of Medicaid funding while enrollment in the program expands.

If there is a spike in municipal bankruptcies in 2011 and 2012, a primary cause will be the massive costs public schooling was already imposing when the Great Recession hit.

We face a situation analogous to that of a large number of American families who have been struggling with unsustainable budgets: a house payment that was excessive even at the best of times, the loss of income when a spouse becomes unemployed and rising health care costs.

When a budget doesn't come close to adding up, the biggest expenditure usually has to give. That has meant foreclosure for many homeowners; and it means a serious restructuring of K-12 education spending for public officials. State and local governments need immediate relief from the financial demands of public schooling, and a long-term solution to the system's profligacy.

Teacher pension plans should be based on defined contributions rather than defined benefits to alleviate growing and unsustainable commitments. Public school employees must share a substantial portion of their own health-care costs. And school district finances must be made more transparent so waste can be identified and eliminated.

Tax Credits

While these measures would lessen the immediate pain, they would do nothing to reverse the system's propensity for increasing real spending over time. Inflation-adjusted expenditures per student have more than doubled to around $12,000 over the last three decades, about 50% more than the typical private school spends. The extra resources have delivered no increase in student achievement by the end of high school.

Nine states have begun using education tax credits to encourage more private spending in lieu of government funds we simply do not have. Unlike vouchers, tax credit programs encourage individuals and businesses to invest their own funds, rather than government money, in K-12 education.

Like all private-school choice programs, these tax credits save large sums — more than $500 million a year in Pennsylvania, up to $180 million in Arizona, and potentially billions of dollars over the first five years for many states if they adopt a broad-based education tax credit program. They are also a proven way to increase academic achievement in public schools.

Citizens and businesses want to invest directly in the effort to educate the public, and we should encourage them to do so through K-12 education tax credits. Given our state and local financial outlook, we have no promising alternative.

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An Epic Failure: Detroit Public Schools

Few school districts in America rival the dire condition of Detroit Public Schools: staggering dropout rates, functionally-illiterate high school graduates, a dysfunctional school board and a sea of red ink.

Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb has been trying to fix the city’s public schools which are historically awful. At times, it seems that he is the only one trying to fix a school system that is failing its students.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers has consistently called for Bobb’s removal. The radical socialist group, By Any Means Necessary, makes every effort to stir up racial division and strife. One of BAMN’s leaders was nearly elected president of the teachers union, which shows how radical the union has become.

While making of this film series, we met a recent graduate of Detroit Public Schools who couldn't read. Sadly, he blamed himself. But we know that a whole lot of adults are to blame, too. There were dozens of teachers and administrators who moved him down the assembly line, and were happy to hand him a worthless diploma after he reached the end of the line. All the while, the adults collected their paychecks, enjoyed their generous benefit packages and took comfort knowing that tenure would keep them secure in their jobs.

Detroit’s education system perpetuates the cycle of misery that has gripped the city for years.

After watching these films, ask yourself if America can continue being a great nation when many of its schools and communities are rotting from within.

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Pupils must not be forced to eat halal Church tells schools

The Church of England has told its schools to ensure they are serving non-halal food after concerns that a number are only providing meat slaughtered according to Islamic law. The official guidance was issued after Church members complained that the use of halal meat was effectively ‘spreading sharia law’ across Britain.

The Church’s financial arm has also come under pressure to withdraw its investments – worth millions of pounds – in supermarkets that do not clearly label halal food. The moves follow disclosures by The Mail on Sunday last year that halal products were widespread in schools, hospitals, pubs and sporting venues but members of the public were not informed.

More than 10,000 Christians, many of whom have reservations about eating meat from animals that are bled to death while an Islamic prayer is recited, have signed a petition calling for proper labelling. Animal rights campaigners have also expressed anger because animals are often not stunned before their throats are cut with a sharp knife.

Alison Ruoff, a long-standing member of the Church’s ‘parliament’, the General Synod, said: ‘The Church is only just waking up to this. We have been pathetic and mealy-mouthed but we should be really concerned about this. ‘There is a lot of fear about upsetting Muslims but as a Christian you have to stand up for Christian values. Because we are unwittingly eating halal meat, we are spreading the practice of sharia law.’

An influential official body representing both Muslim and Christian leaders also said non-Muslims should not be compelled to eat halal meat. The Christian Muslim Forum, set up by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams four years ago, said there were concerns about ‘some public authorities which provide only halal products in schools and other institutions’. It said in a statement: ‘We urge all food outlets, catering organisations and public authorities to label halal food properly, for the benefit of both non-Muslim and Muslim consumers.’

John Pritchard, the Bishop of Oxford and chair of the Board of Education, which runs more than 4,000 Church schools, told the General Synod in London last week that guidance had been sent across the country. The guidance said if halal meat was served in schools it should not be the only option and suppliers should be changed.

Mrs Ruoff has challenged the Church Commissioners, who manage the Church’s £4 billion assets, to sell its shares in supermarkets that did not clearly label halal food.

The Rev Patrick Sookhdeo, an Anglican cleric who runs the international Barnabas Fund charity for Christians facing persecution, said some extremist Muslims viewed the growing use of halal food as part of their efforts to ‘impose’ sharia law on the West.

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13 February, 2011

California wants lesbians as mandatory 'role' models

Family advocates call plan 'worst school sexual indoctrination ever'

Lawmakers in the state of California are proposing a law that would require schools to portray lesbians, homosexuals, transsexuals and those who have chosen other alternative sexual lifestyles as positive role models to children in all public schools there.

"SB 48: The worst school sexual indoctrination ever" is how officials with the Campaign for Children and Families describe the proposal, SB 48, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Leno.

Openly homosexual, Leno boasts on his website of founding a business with his "life partner, Douglas Jackson," who later died of AIDS complications.

That description as "worst" is considerable, considering the Campaign for Children and Families was a key player in the battle in the state in 2007 and 2008 over a variety of laws that now forbid any "adverse" portrayal of those alternative sexual choices in school, class, curriculum and by teachers.

On its website, the organization explains the plan by "homosexual activist" Leno "would require all students in social studies class to admire 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender' role models.

"The Democrat state legislators pushing this radical bill want to recruit boys and girls to support the homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda, personally and publicly," the organization's Action Alert explains.

"They want them to become 'LGBTIQ' activists [and] help trample religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, business-owner rights, private property rights, the Boy Scouts, and everything else you hold dear."

Equality California, an organization that advocates for homosexuality, said others sponsoring the plan include Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego; Assembly member Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco; Assembly member Toni Atkins, D-San Diego; Assembly member Rich Gordon, D-San Mateo; and Assembly member Ricardo Lara, D-East Los Angeles.

On his state website, Leno expressed his worry: "Most textbooks don't include any historical information about the LGBT movement, which has great significance to both California and U.S. history.

"Our collective silence on this issue perpetuates negative stereotypes of LGBT people and leads to increased bullying of young people. We can't simultaneously tell youth that it's OK to be yourself and live an honest, open life when we aren't even teaching students about historical LGBT figures or the LGBT equal rights movement," he said.

He said it is confirmed that where schools promote homosexual lifestyles, those who exhibit that lifestyle "are treated more fairly by their teachers and peers."

But the Campaign for Children and Families, which teaches people to stand up for "what's right in God's sight" and encourages them to challenge "liberal forces" and "impact the next generation," is promoting a campaign to have state residents contact state officials with their own concerns

The message warns that if the plan becomes law, "children as young as kindergarten will be taught to admire homosexuality, same-sex 'marriages,' bisexuality, and transsexuality.'"

"Children will be enticed into political activism in support of everything pushed by 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning' political groups, as the bill requires 'particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society.'"

Further, it would require that "teachers will be made to positively portray homosexuality, same-sex 'marriages,' bisexuality, and transsexuality … because to be silent opens them up to the charge of 'reflecting adversely.'"

"This is radical, in-your-face sexual indoctrination that parents genuinely don't want and children certainly don't need," the statement says.

The California Legislative Counsel's commentary on the plan affirms it would "require instruction in social sciences to also include a study of the role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans … to the development of California and the United States."

It also would require "alternative and charter schools" to "take notice of the provisions of this bill."

The law itself requires that schools teach "particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society."

The Campaign for Children and Families, run by executive Randy Thomasson, notes that it would demand that schools boards select textbooks and other materials that actively promote homosexuality, because to be silent "opens them up to charges of 'reflecting adversely.'"

It also notes parents would not be able to exempt their children from the mandatory teaching.

Thomasson told WND that this is the next progression following a multitude of earlier laws adopted in California that serve the dual purpose of cracking down on traditional families and promoting the "alternatives."

"The California public schools are no longer safe places for boys and girls morally," he told WND. "This new bill, SB 48, reflects the desire of the Democrat state legislators to recruit boys and girls to support the homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda both personally and publicly."

Under the law, he said, "textbooks, teachers and school boards will be forced to promote homosexuality, same-sex 'marriage,' bisexuality, transsexuality, sex change operations, cross dressing as positive role models." "Pushing this slop bucket in the face of impressionable kids is disgusting to most people," he said.

It was just two years ago when the Campaign launched the Rescue Your Child effort to encourage parents to withdraw their children from public schools because of such indoctrination.

That followed work by the legislature and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to establish Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 392 as law. Those institutionalized the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices by banning any "adverse" references in schools.

At the time, officials said SB 777 "functionally requires public school instructional materials and school-sponsored activities to positively portray cross-dressing, sex-change operations, homosexual 'marriages,' and all aspects of homosexuality and bisexuality, including so-called 'gay history.'"

The second bill, AB 394, "requires public schools to distribute controversial material to teachers, students, and parents which promotes transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality, all under the guise of 'anti-harassment' training."

Those laws ban in any school texts, events, class or activities any discriminatory bias against those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, according to Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute.

But there are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs. Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.

California also has mandated that public schools honor Harvey Milk – a homosexual activist and reported sexual predator, as well as an advocate for Jim Jones, leader of the massacred hundreds in Jonestown, Guyana.

SaveCalifornia.com led a statewide battle against "Harvey Milk Day" before California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the S.B. 572.

The bill designates May 22 – Milk's birthday – a date of "special significance" and encourages all California public schools to "conduct suitable commemorative exercises … remembering the life of Harvey Milk and recognizing his accomplishments as well as the contributions he made to this state."

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Choices -- not discrimination -- determine women scientists' success, researchers say

It's an incendiary topic in academia -- the pervasive belief that women are underrepresented in science, math and engineering fields because they face sex discrimination in the interviewing, hiring, and grant and manuscript review processes. In a study published Feb. 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cornell social scientists say it's just not true.

It's not discrimination in these areas, but rather, differences in resources attributable to career and family-related choices that set women back in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, say Stephen J. Ceci, the H.L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology, and Wendy M. Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science, both in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

The "substantial resources" universities expend to sponsor gender-sensitivity training and interviewing workshops would be better spent on addressing the real causes of women's underrepresentation, Ceci and Williams say, through creative problem-solving and policy changes that respond to differing "biological and social realities" of the sexes.

The researchers analyzed the scientific literature in which women and men competed for publications, grants or jobs in these fields. They found no systematic evidence of sex discrimination in interviewing, hiring, reviewing or funding when men and women with similar resources -- such as teaching loads and research support -- were compared.

"We hear often that men have a better chance of getting their work accepted or funded, or of getting jobs, because they're men," Williams said. "Universities expend money and time trying to combat this rampant alleged discrimination against women in the hope that by doing so universities will see the numbers of women STEM scientists increase dramatically over coming years."

The data show that women scientists are confronted with choices, beginning at or before adolescence, that influence their career trajectories and success. Women who prioritize families and have children sometimes make "lifestyle choices" that lead them to take positions, such as adjunct or part-time appointments or jobs at two-year colleges, offering fewer resources and chances to move up in the ranks.

These women, however, are not held back by sex discrimination in hiring or in how their scholarly work is evaluated. Men with comparably low levels of research resources fare equivalently to their female peers. Although women disproportionately hold such low-resource positions, this is not because they had their grants and manuscripts rejected or were denied positions at research-intensive universities due to their gender.

Also, females beginning before adolescence often prefer careers focusing on people, rather than things, aspiring to be physicians, biologists and veterinarians rather than physicists, engineers and computer scientists. Efforts to interest young girls in these math-heavy fields are intended to ensure girls do not opt out of inorganic fields because of misinformation or stereotypes.

Also, fertility decisions are key because the tenure system has strong disincentives for women to have children -- a factor in why more women in academia are childless than men. Implementation of "flexible options" to enhance work-family balance may help to increase the numbers of women in STEM fields, the researchers say.

As long as women make the choice and "are satisfied with the outcomes, then we have no problem," they write in the paper. "However, to the extent that these choices are constrained by biology and/or society, and women are dissatisfied with the outcomes, or women's talent is not actualized, then we most emphatically have a problem."

The solution will only be possible if society focuses on changing the women's non-optimal choices and addressing unique challenges faced by female STEM scientists with children, the researchers say.

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Swedish 8th graders assigned sexual essays

Parents of students in a Swedish eighth grade class said they were shocked and outraged to learn their children had been instructed to write sexual essays.

The parents said the class of mostly 14-year-olds at the Kastanje school in Tomelilla were instructed as part of a Swedish lesson to write a half-page essay with "passion," detailing their past sexual encounters or sexual fantasies, The Local reported Wednesday.

"Just the thought that a teacher would sit and ask about their sexual fantasies makes me sick," a parent told the Ystads Allehanda newspaper on condition of anonymity. "Can they really do this? As a parent, it doesn't feel right and it irritates me that we're talking about a graded assignment in a Swedish-language lesson."

A teacher at the school said the assignment was part of a joint lesson the Swedish language department planned with the biology, and sex and well being departments. The teacher said the assignment will be reviewed next year.

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12 February, 2011

Menacing Tennessee teacher gets off free

Would you like your kids to have a rifle pointed at them by a teacher? Particularly when kids are penalized for having such minor things as a butter-knife. The case was clearly not pursued with proper gravity

A Hamilton County grand jury chose not to indict a 46-year-old school teacher arrested last year on 18 charges related to his holding a group of teens at gunpoint as they tried to leave a cemetery late at night.

Stacy Swallows, 46, will not face a criminal trial after the grand jury declined to indict him on any of the nine counts of aggravated assault and nine counts of false imprisonment.

The weekly grand jury report released Wednesday.

The Sequoyah High School teacher blocked the path of nine teens with his car while holding a rifle, late on the night of Sept. 4. as the group was leaving the Shipley Road Cemetery, near Swallows home.

Friends of Swallows testified on his behalf in a November General Sessions Court hearing. Tommy Iles told the court that the cemetery had been “trashed so many times by a bunch of punks,” according to newspaper archives.

Iles and others said Swallows was only trying to protect the private graveyard.

Judge Bob Moon said at the time that the group of teens ghost hunting in the cemetery weren’t doing anything illegal or trespassing. Moon said Swallows simply overreacted.

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Ed problems reside at core

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address illustrated just how much political duplicity has entered the debate about national education standards. While crowing about the success of his Race to the Top in purchasing states’ buy-in to the so-called Common Core math and English standards — and asking Congress for even more bribe money — the president then stood truth on its head by depicting the incipient national curriculum developed by Washington insiders as a grass-roots effort.

Education progressives who delight in this disingenuous exercise of power to push national standards (and soon, federally subsidized tests as well) upon all U.S. public schools ought to take warning from England, a country where statist curricular guidelines are firmly entrenched.

The whimsical words of Roger Miller’s old country tune come to mind: “England swings like a pendulum do.” When a nation with monolithic standards for its schools experiences a shift in political control, the pendulum almost certainly will lurch right or left for education ideology as well.

Witness the changes under way in England led by the Conservative coalition’s minister of education, Michael Gove. The Daily Mail of London reports Gove has severely criticized the previous Labor government for having stripped basic knowledge out of the English, geography, history, and music curricula.

When the leftist Laborites had their turn at mandating what all British children should know and be able to do, they eliminated important leaders such as Sir Winston Churchill from teachers’ suggested lesson plans. The supposed purpose was to give teachers more “flexibility.”

Teachers got loads of leeway, in fact, because “at present, the only historical figures in the entire secondary history curriculum are William Wilberforce, the architect of the abolition of the slave trade, and Olaudah, a freed slave whose autobiography helped persuade MPs (Members of Parliament) to ban slavery,” the Daily Mail reported.

Similarly, “the secondary geography curriculum does not mention a single country apart from the UK or any continents, rivers, oceans, mountains, or cities. It does, however, mention the European Union and global warming.”

In addition, “the secondary music curriculum fails to mention a single composer, musician, or piece of music.”

Gove observes left-wing ideologues believe schools “shouldn’t be doing anything so old-fashioned as passing on knowledge, requiring children to work hard, or immersing them in anything like dates in history or times tables in mathematics.”

Leading the charge for the Tories, the education minister plans to fill in the knowledge gaps. For instance, he will reinstall such authors as John Keats, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy in the English standards. An overhaul of the history curriculum is supposed to ensure that all children thoroughly learn Britain’s “island story” before graduating.

Proponents of knowledge-based learning on both sides of the Atlantic will applaud Gove’s intentions. But what will happen to England’s national education standards when the political pendulum swings back and the Laborites return to power? Out will go the basics and in will come the multiculturalism and political correctness once again. None of this reflects the preferences of parents.

The United States is not yet at the point of no return regarding national standards. There are standards only for English and mathematics, but proponents are talking about adding history and science and maybe more. Forty-four states have voted to accept the national standards, many of them doing so (as the president himself indicated) in a bid to gain favor with the Obama administration in its distribution of Race to the Top cash. However, with only a dozen states winning grants and the Republican-led House unlikely to approve more such loot, some states’ political leaders are talking about revoking their adoption of the Common Core standards.

Now is the time for the nation to decide whether we really want to commit to education standards forever subject to political manipulation by Washington and crazy swings in the national political pendulum. Would we prefer to have a national minister of education decide what our children will study, or be able to choose for ourselves from among schools offering diverse curricula and methods?

Within a marketplace will probably be an approach just right for each child. Parents can’t be sure of that when Washington’s politicians and special interests are writing a common playbook.

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Australia: Law lets NSW private schools expel homosexual students

A SENIOR Anglican bishop calls it "appalling" and a gay and lesbian rights group condemns it as "deeply offensive", but the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, backs a NSW law that allows private schools to expel gay students simply for being gay.

Through a spokesman, Mr Hatzistergos, described the 30-year-old law as necessary "to maintain a sometimes delicate balance between protecting individuals from unlawful discrimination while allowing people to practise their own beliefs".

A relic of the Wran era when homosexuality was still a crime, the law exempts private schools from any obligation to enrol or deal fairly with students who are homosexual. An expulsion requires neither disruption, harassment nor even the flaunting of sexuality. Being homosexual is enough.

Introducing the little-known law in the early 1980s, the then attorney-general Paul Landa told Parliament: "The facts of political life require acceptance of the claim of churches to conduct autonomous educational institutions with a special character and faith commitment."

But the churches are now divided. The Anglican bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, told the Herald: "I don't think our schools would want to use it."

The Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney declined to distance itself from the legislation. A spokeswoman said: "The focus for our schools has always been on supporting our students regardless of the circumstances."

Political support may also be fracturing. "It is an unusual provision in this day and age," the shadow attorney-general, Greg Smith, told the Herald.

He cannot speak for his party, only himself. "I personally think it is something that should be reviewed, looked at with a view to perhaps changing it. Times have changed."

The chief executive of ACON, Nicolas Parkhill, condemned the law as "deeply offensive, patently unethical and damaging to our society on multiple levels. Recent research shows that young same-sex-attracted people are up to 14 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers and that 80 per cent of the verbal or physical abuse they experience occurs in schools.

"Allowing religious schools to reinforce this negative experience by giving them the right to expel the victims of homophobic attitudes is incomprehensible."

Although "not untroubled" by the legislation himself, the chief executive of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, told the Herald the 130-plus low-fee schools in his association saw no reason to ditch the law. Many of the schools regard unrepentant gay students as "disruptive to the religious teaching of the school", he explained. "What we seek to do is to be able to take appropriate action which may include expulsion."

Brigadier Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby has no qualms about the law. The head of the influential Christian pressure group said a church school should have the right to expel any openly gay child.

"But I would expect any church that found itself in that situation to do that in the most loving way that it could for the child and to reduce absolutely any negative affects.

"I think that you explain: this is a Christian school, that unless the child is prepared to accept that it is chaste, that it is searching for alternatives as well, that the school may decide that it might be better for the child as well that he goes somewhere else. I think it's a loving response."

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11 February, 2011

Lack of realism betrays students

The threat of more school closings in New York brought an unruly mob atmosphere to the large public hearing held by the Department of Education this week. The throngs of teenagers screaming “We Don’t Care” is emblematic of more fundamental issues than their not wanting to hear any speechifying by Cathy Black, Bloomberg’s unpopular new appointment as Chancellor. While it may be true that some schools are failing their students, it’s more germane that “students” are failing at school.

When you have an escalating non-graduation rate, an under-reported functional illiteracy rate and growing problems of drugs and violence within the school boundaries, you know that high school is not the place to start making changes. A slew of social problems has created a population of young people, many of whom are incapable of academic work. Their fundamental math and reading skills are so blunted that they have little chance of success at advanced subjects yet we go through the pretense of forcing them through a high school curriculum they have little chance of mastering.

Instead of reverting to more drill work for honing these skills, our educators have gone in the opposite direction of more creative projects, deluding students who haven’t learned grammar or sentence structure into the pretense that they have something interesting to say and sufficient tools for that expression.

Changing the names of high schools to lofty-sounding titles such as “High School of World Cultures,” “The New Explorers High School for Films and Humanities,” “High School for International Business and Finance” is an insulting scam as these institutions have equally egregious graduation rates and aren’t leveling with students about their own severe academic shortcomings.

Catholic schools have traditionally done better with low-performing students by emphasizing structure, discipline, authority and uniforms – all of which create an atmosphere of respect for the classroom and its teachers. What students in public school have learned is the opposite – that teachers can be challenged and even physically attacked, that students are entitled to their rights and their opinions, that an atmosphere of bedlam is often tolerated though it precludes any hope of actual learning.

For those students who manage to graduate and get into community colleges, there is intensive remedial work that must be done. This realization must be very disheartening to students who had been pushed along in a system that just wants to get them out because it can’t handle the enormity of the problem.

Earlier this week, an article reported on the statistical impossibility of something that has been observed in many schools – the absence of numerical grades of 62, 63 and 64. Schools don’t want to fail kids even when they deserve to fail because they are in the business of self-preservation and don’t want to be closed for poor performance. So the cycle of students who can’t do the work and schools which pretend that they can continues until a culture clash erupts with the students and their parents facing off against an administrative reality from which they’ve been unhelpfully shielded.

There are no easy answers to the problems facing New York City schools or those of other large urban areas. More underclass students are entering school with such glaring vocabulary gaps that by five years old, they are already way behind and unlikely to catch up.

Dumbing down the existing curriculum is not a good answer, nor is sugar coating failing work and pretending that it passes. Compounding all of this is our politically correct atmosphere that stifles the honesty necessary to make changes. We are forced to act as if all kids have the same equal opportunity to succeed. They don’t because life is not a level playing field and many kids start out getting an unfair roll of the dice genetically and environmentally.

They’d have a better chance of compensating for that bad fortune if we rethought our pedagogical philosophy in grade school and made sure that children who can’t read or write or count are not promoted to grades where those skills are pre-requisites. We have made some progress in tackling the nutritional aspects of diet in school cafeterias and lunchrooms. What we demand that our younger students learn at school must be as nutritious as the milk that builds bones. Without that foundation, nothing else will work.

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NY School Says Scarf Is Gang Wear

A 9-year-old girl and her parents are upset because of how they say her elementary school is treating her. The debate: Is her attire just head wear or is gang wear?

Vivienne Diaz, 9, is in third grade at Wantage Elementary School in Sussex, N.J. She says she has been wearing a scarf on her head pretty much since the beginning of the school year to keep her hair out of her face. But she says suddenly her teacher had a problem with it because it could be gang-related. "She just came up and said 'Can you roll it up because it looks like a bandana and gangs wear bandanas'," Diaz said. [Gangs wear pants too]

Vivienne's parents were outraged after they discovered what happened Monday morning when Vivienne was getting ready for school.

The school is in a rural farming community. "It's an elementary school...third grade through fifth grade," her father Ed Diaz said. "Demographically, this is just absurd."

Diaz says the principal told him the situation was cut and dry. Diaz says, "I was shocked. I think it's ridiculous. I think this is one step way beyond where the government wants to tell people what to let their children wear on their head."

At the end of the school day Tuesday, the school sent a copy of its dress code policy home with Vivienne. The policy says hats, hoods, visors, headband, and other headgear are forbidden.

SOURCE




Top British universities may be forced to take fixed quotas of state pupils

Leading universities will be forced to take fixed quotas of students from state schools in exchange for the power to charge tuition fees of £9,000, under Coalition plans announced yesterday.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, ordered a government watchdog to "focus more sharply" on institutions, such as Oxford and Cambridge, that have struggled to increase the proportion of places they give to working-class candidates.

He told Sir Martin Harris, the Director of Fair Access, to set targets for individual universities and said they could include benchmarks for "the percentage of students admitted from state schools or colleges".

Any university that failed to do enough to meet its targets could be stripped of the power to charge fees above the basic level of £6,000. Serious breaches of an agreement between Sir Martin and a university could see institutions fined up to £500,000, the minister said.

Private school head teachers condemned the proposed measure as "dangerous" social engineering, warning that it would put the world-class reputation of Britain's best universities at risk. The move would punish talented pupils from private schools who would lose out simply because of their background, they said.

Senior Conservatives described Mr Cable's blueprint as "wrong-headed and shameful".

Under the previous government, Labour ministers became increasingly reluctant to discuss whether universities should take more students from state rather than private schools, preferring instead to speak about candidates from "under-represented groups".

The Coalition's reforms explicitly set out how universities could be given targets for taking more state school candidates.

The Liberal Democrats have been criticised by students and some of their supporters, who are disillusioned that the party's MPs backed plans to triple tuition fees from £3,290 to a maximum of £9,000 from next year. Lib Dem MPs signed a pre-election promise to oppose fees, but were forced to compromise after agreeing to join the Conservative-led coalition.

In an attempt to mollify his critics, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader, demanded that universities should ask for lower A-level grades from working-class students than those from more affluent families. Yesterday, Mr Clegg said:

"Universities can and should do more to ensure fair access. Social mobility in this country has stalled. "It will only improve if we throw open the doors of universities, especially the most selective, to more bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds. "We must ensure that our great universities – often the gateway to the professions – make active and measurable progress to widen participation and advance social mobility."

The Coalition's plan is part of a drive to protect sixth-formers from deprived backgrounds from the worst effects of higher tuition fees.

Every university that wants to charge more than the new basic fee of £6,000 will be required to sign an agreement with the Office for Fair Access, detailing how they will provide more opportunities to working-class students.

In a letter to Sir Martin, the ministers said universities should be judged on how successful they were at ensuring more students from deprived backgrounds were given places. Some students should be offered places "on the basis of lower entry qualifications" than would normally apply. Universities should also waive a proportion of the fees for the poorest students.

"The Government believes that progress over the past few years in securing fair access to the most selective universities has been inadequate, and that much more determined action now needs to be taken,” the minister said.

Universities charging fees of more than £6,000 a year must renew their agreement with Sir Martin annually. Their performance will be assessed against “appropriate benchmarks”, which could include cutting drop-out rates and increasing “the percentage of students admitted from state schools or colleges”.

In 2008-09, Cambridge was set a government “benchmark” to take 70 per cent of its students from state schools but only managed 59 per cent. This week, the university announced that it would be willing to agree to a state school intake target of 63 per cent but any higher would be “not achievable”.

Conservative backbenchers have signed a Commons motion in protest at the reforms. Graham Stuart, the Tory MP for Beverley and Holderness, and chairman of the education select committee said: “Penalising universities for refusing to drop their standards is shameful. "To suggest that they have some sort of bias against children from poorer backgrounds is a profound insult. "We need to improve the quality of schooling, not dumb down the entry requirements for universities.”

Independent school heads reacted with dismay to the plans. David Levin, the head of the City of London School, warned that the measures were “very dangerous”. “A number of independent schools have students from very deprived socio-economic backgrounds,” he added.

Dr Wendy Piatt, the director-general of the Russell Group of leading research universities, said: “Admission to university is and should be on the basis of merit. "Any decisions about admissions must respect the autonomy of institutions and maintain high academic standards.”

Tim Hands, master of Magdalen College School, Oxford, said the reforms would introduce “quotas by any other name”. He warned that universities would no longer be free to recruit the best candidates. “Our universities are of global importance because of their high standards. We are now suggesting that their high standards should be compromised by political interference.”

The Universities Minister, David Willetts, insisted that he did not want to see universities forced to accept “crude quotas”. “It would be wrong to say we are going to put in the bin all applications from private schools,” he said.

SOURCE



10 February, 2011

Social Scientist Sees Leftist bias among academic psychologists

Some of the world's pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology's conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year's meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new "outgroup."

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

"This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity," Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a "tribal-moral community" united by "sacred values" that hinder research and damage their credibility - and blind them to the hostile climate they've created for non-liberals.

"Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation," said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. "But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations."

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted - anonymously - from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.

"I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work," one student wrote. "Given what I've read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not."

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They've independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. "The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy," he said, arguing that this shared morality both "binds and blinds."

"If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community," he said. "They'll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they'll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value." It's easy for social scientists to observe this process in other communities, like the fundamentalist Christians who embrace "intelligent design" while rejecting Darwinism. But academics can be selective, too, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan found in 1965 when he warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks - violating the taboo against criticizing victims of racism.

"Moynihan was shunned by many of his colleagues at Harvard as racist," Dr. Haidt said. "Open-minded inquiry into the problems of the black family was shut down for decades, precisely the decades in which it was most urgently needed. Only in the last few years have liberal sociologists begun to acknowledge that Moynihan was right all along."

Similarly, Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, was ostracized in 2005 for wondering publicly whether the preponderance of male professors in some top math and science departments might be due partly to the larger variance in I.Q. scores among men (meaning there are more men at the very high and very low ends). "This was not a permissible hypothesis," Dr. Haidt said. "It blamed the victims rather than the powerful. The outrage ultimately led to his resignation. We psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage. We should have defended his right to think freely."

Instead, the taboo against discussing sex differences was reinforced, so universities and the National Science Foundation went on spending tens of millions of dollars on research and programs based on the assumption that female scientists faced discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias. But that assumption has been repeatedly contradicted, most recently in a study published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by two Cornell psychologists, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams. After reviewing two decades of research, they report that a woman in academic science typically fares as well as, if not better than, a comparable man when it comes to being interviewed, hired, promoted, financed and published.

"Thus," they conclude, "the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort. Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past." Instead of presuming discrimination in science or expecting the sexes to show equal interest in every discipline, the Cornell researchers say, universities should make it easier for women in any field to combine scholarship with family responsibilities.

Can social scientists open up to outsiders' ideas? Dr. Haidt was optimistic enough to title his speech "The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology," urging his colleagues to focus on shared science rather than shared moral values. To overcome taboos, he advised them to subscribe to National Review and to read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions."

For a tribal-moral community, the social psychologists in Dr. Haidt's audience seemed refreshingly receptive to his argument. Some said he overstated how liberal the field is, but many agreed it should welcome more ideological diversity. A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that's 10 percent conservative by 2020. The society's executive committee didn't endorse Dr. Haidt's numerical goal, but it did vote to put a statement on the group's home page welcoming psychologists with "diverse perspectives." It also made a change on the "Diversity Initiatives" page - a two-letter correction of what it called a grammatical glitch, although others might see it as more of a Freudian slip.

In the old version, the society announced that special funds to pay for travel to the annual meeting were available to students belonging to "underrepresented groups (i.e., ethnic or racial minorities, first-generation college students, individuals with a physical disability, and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered students)."

As Dr. Haidt noted in his speech, the "i.e." implied that this was the exclusive, sacred list of "underrepresented groups." The society took his suggestion to substitute "e.g." - a change that leaves it open to other groups, too. Maybe, someday, even to conservatives.

SOURCE





Australia: Overwhelming load of new red tape for universities

As is to be expected from a Leftist government

NEW reporting requirements under the federal government's $500 million program to boost participation among the disadvantaged have been criticised for lacking evaluative rigour while creating excessive red tape.

The government's proposed reporting guidelines under the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program were released for discussion last week but left many equity executives reeling at the level of detail required, without there being an effective process for evaluating whether outreach programs were working. Under HEPPP, the government has allocated $505m from 2010-13 towards boosting the participation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The bulk of the funding, about $379m, is being paid as a loading for low-SES undergraduate enrolments. The balance, $126m, is for outreach partnerships between universities, schools, governments and community groups. Much of this will be allocated by competitive grants.

The Group of Eight was among those planning to propose a series of changes to the program. Concerns include that reporting on the use of so-called partnership funding appeared to focus on just counting numbers of students involved in outreach activities rather than the depth or effectiveness of programs.

"It is accountability for accountability's sake. They are asking for an enormous amount of detail without a depth of analysis or evaluation," director of student equity at the Australian National University Deborah Tranter said, adding that the usefulness of the proposed reporting requirements was "highly questionable".

"There are no requirements for an objective, independent evaluation process," said Ms Tranter, who is also co-convener of the Equal Opportunity Practitioners in Higher Education Australasia.

"A process of evaluation and reporting that is academically valid and rigorous, and is practical, is what is needed," she said.

A group of independent experts could be established to devise such a process. It could include student and parent surveys and the tracking of students' decision-making once they leave school.

Ms Tranter said without such evaluation universities might fail to learn from each other about what works and what doesn't.

There is also concern that the program could be vulnerable to being shut down by future governments if it can't prove it is working. The Cameron government in Britain has discontinued Aimhigher, a similar program.

Pro vice-chancellor (social inclusion) at Monash University Sue Willis said using a quantitative rather than qualitative approach to evaluation would encourage universities to spread their money too thinly, effectively exchanging coverage for effectiveness.

"Spreading it thinly won't do the job. It may look fair but it will be spuriously fair," Professor Willis said.

Professor Willis, who is also convener of the Go8's Social Inclusion Strategy Group, said the department appeared to be open to feedback.

Director of equity at Queensland University of Technology Mary Kelly said the government should hold universities accountable for their spending under the program, but she wanted to see "less focus on operational detail and more focus on quality, depth and impact of program activities".

She said universities should be asked to outline a medium-term evaluation strategy.

"After this initial collection of reports there should be a national conversation on what it means, whether there is room for a national approach to impact tracking, how we will share good practice with each other," she said.

SOURCE





Update: Mansfield Arabic Program On Hold

After parents protest

A Mansfield ISD program to teach Arabic language and culture in schools is on hold for now, and may not happen at all. The school district wanted students at selected schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant.

The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded to Mansfield ISD last summer by the U.S. Department of Education.
As part of the five-year $1.3 million grant, Arabic classes would have been taught at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and other schools feeding into Summit High School.

Parents at Cross Timbers say they were caught off-guard by the program, and were surprised the district only told them about it in a meeting Monday night between parents and Mansfield ISD Superintendent Bob Morrison.

The Department of Education has identified Arabic as a ‘language of the future.’ But parent Joseph Balson was frustrated by the past. “Why are we just now finding out about it?” asked Balson. “It’s them (Mansfield ISD) applying for the grant, getting it approved and them now saying they’ll go back and change it only when they were caught trying to implement this plan without parents knowing about it.”

Trisha Savage thinks it will offer a well-rounded education. “I think its a great opportunity that will open doors. We need to think globally and act locally.”

Mansfield ISD says in addition to language, the grant provides culture, government, art, traditions and history as part of the curriculum.

Some parents had concerns over religion. “The school doesn’t teach Christianity, so I don’t want them teaching Islam,” said parent Baron Kane.

During Monday’s meeting Morrison stressed the curriculum would not be about religion, but about Arabic language and culture, similar to the Spanish curriculum already in place in the district.

Kheirieh Hannun was born in the Middle East but raised in the U.S. She believes giving students the option to learn Arabic will give her son and others like him the option to learn more about their culture. “It was surprising, but I think it’s okay, and it will help come down on the stereotype.” Hannun says she is hopeful the class could broaden the minds of not only students, but also parents.

The FLAP grant was awarded to only five school districts across the country, including Mansfield. The district says the plan is on hold so it can hear from more parents. After that evaluation is over, the district says it is possible they might return the grant.

SOURCE



9 February, 2011

Zero Tolerance Policies: Are the Schools Becoming Police States?

“We end up punishing honor students to send a message to bad kids. But the data indicate that the bad kids are not getting the message.” -- Professor Russell Skiba

What we are witnessing, thanks in large part to zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students, is the inhumane treatment of young people and the criminalization of childish behavior.

Ninth grader Andrew Mikel is merely the latest in a long line of victims whose educations have been senselessly derailed by school administrators lacking in both common sense and compassion. A freshman at Spotsylvania High School in Virginia, Andrew was expelled in December 2010 for shooting a handful of small pellets akin to plastic spit wads at fellow students in the school hallway during lunch period.

Although the initial punishment was only for 10 days, the school board later extended it to the rest of the school year. School officials also referred the matter to local law enforcement, which initiated juvenile proceedings for criminal assault against young Andrew.

Andrew is not alone. Nine-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. That particular LEGO, a policeman, was Patrick’s favorite because his father is a retired police officer.

David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns.

A 7-year-old New Jersey boy, described by school officials as “a nice kid” and “a good student,” was reported to the police and charged with possessing an imitation firearm after he brought a toy Nerf-style gun to school. The gun shoots soft ping pong-type balls.

Things have gotten so bad that it doesn’t even take a toy gun to raise the ire of school officials. A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time.

A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker.

In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement).

Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was sentenced to 45 days in reform school after bringing a camping utensil to school that can serve as a fork, knife or spoon.

And in Oklahoma, school officials suspended a first grader simply for using his hand to simulate a gun.

What these incidents, all the result of overzealous school officials and inflexible zero tolerance policies, make clear is that we have moved into a new paradigm in America where young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike.

Adopted in the wake of Congress’ passage of the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act, which required a one-year expulsion for any child bringing a firearm or bomb to school, school zero tolerance policies were initially intended to address and prevent serious problems involving weapons, violence and drug and alcohol use in the schools.

However, since the Columbine school shootings, nervous legislators and school boards have tightened their zero tolerance policies to such an extent that school officials are now empowered to punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor. Hence, an elementary school student is punished in the same way that an adult high school senior is punished. And a student who actually intends to harm others is treated the same as one who breaks the rules accidentally--or is perceived as breaking the rules.

For instance, after students at a Texas school were assigned to write a “scary” Halloween story, one 13-year-old chose to write about shooting up a school. Although he received a passing grade on the story, school officials reported him to the police, resulting in his spending six days in jail before it was determined that no crime had been committed.

Equally outrageous was the case in New Jersey where several kindergartners were suspended from school for three days for playing a make-believe game of “cops and robbers” during recess and using their fingers as guns.

With the distinctions between student offenses erased, and all offenses expellable, we now find ourselves in the midst of what Time magazine described as a “national crackdown on Alka-Seltzer.” Indeed, at least 20 children in four states have been suspended from school for possession of the fizzy tablets in violation of zero tolerance drug policies.

In some jurisdictions, carrying cough drops, wearing black lipstick or dying your hair blue are actually expellable offenses.

Students have also been penalized for such inane “crimes” as bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades.

A 13-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia, who accepted a Certs breath mint from a classmate, was actually suspended and required to attend drug-awareness classes, while a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project was charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug. Another 12-year-old was handcuffed and jailed after he stomped in a puddle, splashing classmates.

The American Bar Association has rightly condemned these zero tolerance policies as being “a one-size-fits-all solution to all the problems that schools confront.” Unfortunately, when challenged about the fact that under these draconian policies, a kid who shoots a spitball is punished the same as the kid who brings a gun to school, school officials often insist that their hands are tied. That rationale, however, falls apart on several counts.

First, such policies completely fail to take into account the student’s intentions, nor do they take into account the long-term damage inflicted on school children. For example, as a result of the criminal charges against him, Andrew Mikel, an honor student active in Junior ROTC and in his church who had hoped to attend the U.S. Naval Academy, can no longer be considered as an applicant.

Second, these one-strike-and-you’re-out policies have proven to be largely unsuccessful and been heavily criticized by such professional organizations as the National Association of School Psychologists: “[R]esearch indicates that, as implemented, zero tolerance policies are ineffective in the long run and are related to a number of negative consequences, including increased rates of school drop out and discriminatory application of school discipline practices.”

Third, with the emergence of zero tolerance policies, school officials have forsaken the time-honored distinction between punishment and discipline. Namely, that schools exist to educate students about their rights and the law and discipline those who need it, while prisons exist to punish criminals who have been tried and found guilty of breaking the law. And, as a result, many American schools now resemble prisons with both barbed wire perimeters and police walking the halls.

Fourth, such policies criminalize childish, otherwise innocent behavior and in many cases create a permanent record that will haunt that child into adulthood. Moreover, by involving the police in incidents that should never leave the environs of the school, it turns the schools into little more than a police state.

For example, 9-year-old Michael Parson was suspended from school for a day and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after mentioning to a classmate his intent to “shoot” a fellow classmate with a wad of paper. Despite the fact that the “weapon” considered suspect consisted of a wadded-up piece of moistened paper and a rubber band with which to launch it, district officials notified local police, suspended Michael under the school's zero tolerance policy, and required him to undergo a psychological evaluation before returning to class. Incredibly, local police also went to Michael’s home after midnight in order to question the fourth grader about the so-called “shooting” incident.

Finally, these policies, and the school administrators who relentlessly enforce them, render young people woefully ignorant of the rights they intrinsically possess as American citizens. What’s more, having failed to learn much in the way of civic education while in school, young people are being browbeaten into believing that they have no true rights and government authorities have total power and can violate constitutional rights whenever they see fit.

There’s an old axiom that what children learn in school today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow. As surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches become the norm in elementary, middle and high schools across the nation, America is on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation--one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government. In other words, the schools are teaching our young people how to be obedient subjects in a totalitarian society.

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Teachers Union Honesty Died With Albert Shanker

Former American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker made teachers’ unions what they are today. He was hard-nosed defender of teachers’ rights, but he also came clean about public school performance.

In the making of “Kids Aren’t Cars,” I unearthed a 25-year old PBS interview with Shanker. His indictment of the public education system was stunning.

“You could do things that are absolutely wrong, you can have huge dropout rates, you can have kids who are leaving without knowing how to read, write, count or anything else and what do you do next year? Do the same as you did this year and the following year and the following year…”

And when Shanker – again, 25 years ago – rattled off achievement statistics, the host challenged him:

Shanker: When it comes to the highest levels of reading, writing, mathematics or science – that just means being able to read editorials in the New York Times…or write an essay of a few pages…or do a mathematical equation, not calculus…the number of kids who are about to graduate who are able to function at that level, depending on whether you’re talking about reading, writing, math science – 3 percent, 4 percent...

Host: Oh, come on!

Shanker: No! 5 percent. That’s it.

Does anyone honestly believe our education system – which has had billions of dollars more each year dumped into – is better now than it was in 1986? Anyone??

Shanker was straight with the public – even if he didn’t see teacher quality and accountability as part of the solution.

If only current AFT President Randi Weingarten and National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel would be as candid. But I’m not holding my breath. The AFT and the NEA have presided over the decline of public education in America, and they know it. But if the union leaders admit to that, well, it would undermine their call for ever greater levels of “investment.”

But in the wake of “Waiting for Superman,” Weingarten and Van Roekel are acquiescing to the public outcry for accountability, and taking rhetorical baby steps toward reform, such as maybe one day making student achievement a tiny sliver of a teacher’s overall performance evaluation. Maybe.

The teacher unions are walking contradictions. They portray themselves as experts in education policy, but somehow never manage to deliver the goods. They claim to elevate the teaching profession, yet bend over backward to defend the worst among them, including a Michigan teacher deemed to be a danger to herself and others.

The sad truth is that the AFT and the NEA have an agenda that revolves around accumulating as much money and power as possible for themselves and their political surrogates. The teacher unions are a collection of far-left progressives who use the honored title of “teacher” to conceal their radical political agenda. How else to explain why the Rhode Island chapter of the NEA would participate in a rally for same-sex marriage? What does that possibly have to do with education?

Back to Shanker. Even though he ardently defended teachers, he was genuinely concerned about the quality of education being given to America’s school children. Can the same be said of Randi Weingarten and Dennis Van Roekel?

Consider this quote from social writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer and decide for yourself: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

SOURCE




Cambridge University first to charge £9,000 fees - unless your family's poor



Cambridge has become the first university to announce that it will charge maximum tuition fees of £9,000 a year. But it will give hefty discounts to poorer students, which means the middle classes will bear the brunt of the move.

MPs voted in December to raise tuition fees to £6,000 per year from 2012, with universities allowed to charge £9,000 in exceptional circumstances. Universities have to publish their 2012 fees by March 31 and Cambridge says its move will be followed by ‘most, if not all’ universities.

The elite institution said yesterday that students from homes with a household income below £25,000 will get a reduction of up to £3,000 per year on their fees. There will be other bursaries worth up to £1,625, but the reductions will taper down to zero for students from homes with an income over £42,000.

This means millions of middle-class students will be left paying the full amount of £9,000 per year over the coming years.

A report yesterday from Cambridge University said it would be ‘fiscally irresponsible’ to charge any less than the maximum, as its rivals will do the same. It argued that even with tuition fees set at £9,000, the university is still ‘carrying the burden of a significant loss per student’.

Oxford University yesterday signalled similar plans. It said it would need to charge nearly £8,000 to cover tuition for all its students – but the full £9,000 if it wants to fund bursaries for poorer students.

Oxford’s pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Monaco informally put forward a similar ‘fee waiver’ system for poorer students to that proposed by Cambridge. He said: ‘The message to them would be, it is no more costly to attend Oxford than any other UK higher education institution.’

Pupils from good schools and better-off areas could suffer another blow. Tomorrow, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will order universities to ‘throw open their doors’ to the less well-off.

Controversially, this will include making greater use of ‘differential offers’, where pupils from private schools are required to get higher grades than those from comprehensives. This will discriminate against parents who have saved up to put their children through private school.

He will confirm drastic steps designed to stop £9,000 fees becoming the norm. The number of bursaries and fee waivers that each institution must offer is likely to be fixed.

Private schools believe the ‘fair access’ plans are a ‘sop’ to the Lib Dems and an attack on the middle classes.

Growing numbers of parents are setting up U.S.-style ‘college funds’ because they are so anxious about the surge in the cost of tuition fees, research reveals today. A poll of more than 3,000 people, carried out for the bank ING Direct, found 13 per cent have started a university fund over the last few months, and a further 10 per cent have upped the amount that they are saving to send their children to university.

SOURCE



8 February, 2011

Tennessee County School Board Fires Teachers Union

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now this is more like it. Back in October of 2010 the Sumner County, Tennessee School Board decertified the Sumner County Education Association (SCEA), the union for county teachers, because it no longer satisfied the law by counting as members fifty percent plus one of the total number of employees requiring a teaching certificate. This, school board officials said, means that the SCEA can no longer engage in collective bargaining for teachers.

The school board has used this opportunity to immediately begin rewriting the relationship between teachers and schools.

Naturally, the union is running straight to what is usually the last bastion of mindless obeisance to union obstructionism, the courts, and is suing to force the school board to accede to union demands regardless of the law.

For its part, the union says that just over fifty-two percent of the county schools employees are union members and so they are still in charge. The school board points out, though, that this percentage actually does not satisfy the law because the requirements are that fifty percent plus one of the actual teachers -- those employees requiring a teachers certificate to work -- need to be in the union, not over fifty percent of all school employees -- which includes janitors, administrators and other non-teacher employees.

But the union doesn't care about the law. SCEA representatives want the courts to force the school board to deal with them anyway. As State Senator Stacy Campfield says, "I fail to see why anyone has the guaranteed right to force an employer to negotiate with a union if they don't want to. Where else besides government does that happen in the real world?"

The case will be heard in the courts in the middle of this month, February. But in the meantime, the school board has quickly moved forward to change insurance benefits to require teachers to pay twenty percent of their healthcare insurance instead of the fifteen percent negotiated by the union.

It is good to see government bodies making efforts to eliminate public employee unions. These anti-democratic, budget-killing entities should never have been allowed to exist in the first place. Public employee unions are antithetical to good government certainly.

But there might be even better news in Tennessee on this subject. Tennessee State Representative Debra Young Maggart has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for any school board to have to negotiate with a teachers union at all HB 0130 would eliminate collective bargaining for teachers in the state.

Of course unionists are going crazy over this one claiming that the rep hates teachers and kids! But Maggart insists it isn't an anti-teacher bill.

"This is not an anti-teacher bill," Maggart said. "It is an anti-collective bargaining bill. And I think that this bill serves the best interest for our teachers, our students and our school systems across the state."

Let's hope this bill passes. If you are in Tennessee you should urge your reps to support it. And if it does pass it should serve as a model for other states to emulate. It will be a giant step toward taking back control of our schools as well as a strike for fiscal responsibility.

SOURCE





Georgia teacher sacked for posting picture of herself holding glass of wine and mug of beer on Facebook

The Puritans asre alive and well

With a pint of beer in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, the worst thing you could accuse Ashley Payne of is mixing her drink. But this happy holiday snap has cost the high school teacher her job after a parent spotted it on Facebook - and complained. The picture was taken while travelling around Europe in the summer of 2009.

But Miss Payne, 24, was shocked when she was summoned to the head teacher's office at Apalachee High School, in Winder, Georgia, and offered an ultimatum.

She told CBS News: 'He just asked me, "Do you have a Facebook page?" 'And you know, I'm confused as to why I am being asked this, but I said, "Yes", and he said, "Do you have any pictures of yourself up there with alcohol?"' He then offered her an option: resign or be suspended. She chose to resign.

School officials also took offence to the use of the B-word on the page.

Miss Payne is now in a bitter legal battle with the school to get her job back. Her lawyer, Richard Storrs, said: 'It would be like I went to a restaurant and I saw my daughter's teacher sitting there with her husband having a glass of some kind of liquid.

'You know, is that frowned upon by the school board? Is that illegal? Is that improper? Of course not. It's the same situation in this case.'

The English teacher later found out it was one anonymous emailer who shopped her to the school board after seeing the picture on the social networking site. But she is baffled how a parent could gain access to her page when she has all her privacy settings on 'high', meaning only her closest friends have permission to see her pictures.

She admits putting the 'offensive' snaps on Facebook but says she now feels as if she had stashed them in a shoebox at home for them to be stolen and showed to the headteacher.

Court documents reveal that officials warned teachers about 'unacceptable online activities'. They claimed her page 'promoted alcohol use' and 'contained profanity'.

She now wants to clear her name and claim back her job. She added: 'I just want to be back in the classroom, if not that classroom, a classroom. I want to get back doing what I went to school for, my passion in life.'

SOURCE




British school teaches pupils in classes of SEVENTY... and says children are learning more

The conventional wisdom has long been straightforward: smaller classes equal better lessons. But a headmaster has rewritten the school rules with mammoth class sizes of up to 70 – and he says the result has been a dramatic improvement in standards.

Bure Valley Junior School, in Norfolk, teaches youngsters aged seven to nine in groups of 60 to 70. The classes, which it claims are the biggest in the country, are divided into smaller groups and taught by two teachers and two assistants in one big classroom.

Headmaster John Starling insists that since beginning the experiment two years ago, his pupils have doubled the amount they learn in a year. It has been so successful, he says, that he plans to roll it out to the rest of the school.

Mr Starling believes larger classes make lessons more fun and collaborative for pupils and teachers, improving the quality of teaching. ‘We’ve monitored the children very carefully in core subjects,’ he said. ‘At the end of the first year we found they had made double the progress they had in the previous year. Staff can work closely with specific groups of children within classes and teachers benefited because they had colleagues in the same room. ‘Teachers are enjoying it, they’re not on their own and it’s particularly good for newly qualified teachers because they have an experienced colleague on hand.’

Ofsted has rated the school ‘good’ overall and the teaching in the super-sized classes ‘outstanding’.

With the population set to balloon in the next decade - with 500,000 new primary school places needed by 2018 – ministers, head teachers and educationalists will watch the experiment with interest. At present the average size of a state primary class is 26.2 pupils. By law it is not allowed to exceed 30 for children aged four to eight.

There are, however, no restrictions for nine-year-olds, allowing Mr Starling to boost his classes to 70 for the older children. For the younger children, he got round the law by using two teachers.

The headmaster’s move follows the extraordinary admission of former education secretary Charles Clarke – who was responsible for enshrining in law a 30-pupil maximum – that there was no evidence to suggest smaller classes were better.

But it has brought an angry response from teaching unions, who have long fought to reduce numbers in lessons. And independent schools – which have an average of 9.2 students per class – admit a low pupil-teacher ratio is their key selling point.

Class sizes have been a hot political topic for decades. Until the 1940s education was very ad hoc and pupils of all ages were often taught together in a large village hall. By the 1960s, when 10 per cent of primary classes housed more than 40 pupils, unions campaigned for a 40-pupil maximum. They are now calling for classes of 20 by 2020.

Christine Blower, of the National Union of Teachers, said: ‘The independent sector does not seem to be convinced by the argument that class size does not matter and nor is the NUT. ‘The most common reason given by parents to take their children out of the state school system and go into the independent sector is the issue of smaller classes and the obvious benefits they perceive them to have. This ensures that teachers can give the very best to all children in their class.’

David Lyscom, of the Independent Schools Association, said: ‘We know that low pupil-teacher ratios, maintained over a number of years, are valued by parents of our pupils.’

The Coalition has refused to be drawn on the possibility of enlarged classes, saying it hopes to tackle high demand with new state schools and ‘free’ schools.

SOURCE



7 February, 2011

America's education wars

Recently retired New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein made headlines this week when he told the Times of London that "it's easier to prosecute a capital-punishment case in the U.S. than terminate an incompetent teacher." The New York Post blared, "Joel: Easier to ax a killer than a teacher." The prize for most sensational probably goes to Liz Dwyer's headline, "Joel Klein Compares Teachers to Murderers."

There's plenty of scorched earth between Klein's words and these headlines, reflecting how unnecessarily polarized the education reform wars remain, even over the smallest changes in policy.

Here's the basic fault line dividing the education reform trenches: One side believes that the best way to improve the education system is to focus on improving instruction. The other believes that the best way to improve the education system is to focus on addressing the ways that poverty affects schools with high percentages of low-income students.

Intuitively, both positions make sense. A classroom with an incompetent teacher won't make as much progress as a classroom with a competent one. At the same time, though, it's probably true that low-income students sometimes enter classrooms with unfortunate social and economic -- not intellectual -- handicaps that students in the nation's wealthiest communities don't face.

Both sides also come armed with data. Diane Ravitch and others claim that there is a correlation between a school district's economic well-being and student success. While he found a similar correlation, Ulrich Boser showed that some of the nation's most efficient school districts have high percentages of low-income students. The Widget Effect, a comprehensive study of American teachers, found that our teacher-evaluation systems are laughably broken. Less than 1 percent of teachers in the study received "unsatisfactory" ratings from their districts, but 41 percent of teachers said they had a tenured colleague who should be dismissed.

Both sides can be egregiously unfair. Want to hear that you hate teachers? Claim that those that do their jobs poorly should be dismissed. You'll hear that the data are flawed (or that data are irrelevant), that teachers aren't the problem, that former District schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is not a nice person and that Teach for America is ruining education and this country.

Want to hear that you don't care about students? Claim that poverty might be a factor worth considering for educators working with low-income students. You'll hear that education isn't about serving adults, that all kids can learn, that you are a racist, that it's become impossible to fire a teacher and that teachers unions are ruining education and this country.

Here's some good news: Both sides are right. Teacher quality and poverty can both affect educational outcomes. Here's the bad news: Both sides seem bent on disproving their opponents instead of improving education. To borrow Woody Hayes's famous line, for every three yards of progress in education reform there's a voluminous cloud of dust. This isn't good enough. As Kevin Huffman put it in Monday's Post, parents don't "have the luxury of waiting a generation while intellectuals argue."

If both sides are being honest, it's unclear why they should be opponents. As someone who frequently writes on education reform, I'm always shocked by how rarely critics acknowledge that the American education system is in crisis. Instead, they question each other's sincerity, data or methods.

For example, when we read that it cost New York City $2 million to dismiss three of its 55,000 tenured teachers for incompetence, we shouldn't think, "Scores of teachers are being unfairly victimized." These numbers are too absurd to be simply a matter of bad data or unfair administrators. Instead, we should wonder if Klein was onto something (even if he was over-dramatic).

We could spend our time debating which is easier (or more urgent) to fix -- poverty or school quality -- or we could accept that both are worthy goals. Our ends are the same, and our means aren't as different as they appear. No one wants to dismiss our nation's most effective teachers, and no one is rooting for an education system that consigns low-income students to be part of a permanent underclass. Let's all take a step in from the edges. Let's stop assuming each other's worst intentions. America's students are depending on us.

SOURCE





Ohio Mother highlights poor schools

One might not have much sympathy for a single mother who tries to steal a better education for her kids but her actions could just lead to badly needed change

Perhaps you’ve heard about Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mother who was recently tried and convicted for falsifying residency records so her daughters could attend a better school where they would receive a quality education.

The “better school” hired a private investigator to prove that Williams-Bolar’s children lived outside the district. As a result, she received a 10-day jail sentence, three years of probation, and a criminal record (two third-degree felonies) that will haunt her for the rest of her working life.

All this happened simply because Williams-Bolar wanted her children to receive a decent education. Yes, she broke the law and was punished. On strict legal grounds, that was the correct course of action.

But in the broader sense of right and wrong, what happened to Williams-Bolar is an outrage – possibly of game-changing proportions—and should serve as a wakeup call for Americans about the need for bold, substantial school choice laws throughout the country.

When National Public Radio called for my reaction, I compared her to Rosa Parks, the African-American woman who refused to move to the back of the bus when a white passenger needed a seat.

Since Williams-Bolar is also African-American, some seized on this comparison and began making this a story about race. But let me be very clear: this is not about race, this is about injustice.

If this Ohio story becomes just about Williams-Bolar’s race, it would obscure the fact that children of all colors are trapped in crappy schools, simply because of their zip code. And condemning children to a lousy school solely because they have the wrong zip code is a great injustice.

There’s a deeper reason I compare this Ohio mother to the civil rights matriarch. After Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to move to the back of the bus, Martin Luther King organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For one year, African-Americans refused to use the busses, choosing to walk or share rides instead.

We tend to think that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat and –bam!—people recognized the injustice and it was immediately corrected. In reality, Park’s stand was the first step in a lengthy and difficult process that eventually brought justice and a greater measure of equality. It took a lot of hard work and many uncomfortable moments.

Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mother whose concern for her daughters’ future was so great that it led her to break the law, has put a human face on school choice cause. Now it is up to education reformers to share her story and bring the case for school choice to the country.

What makes the Williams-Bolar case even more powerful is that it occurred during the first annual National School Choice Week, a time in which parents, children, advocates and concerned citizens came together to highlight the need for school choice.

Many American families are trapped in desperate education situations, and they are hungry for school choice. The drastic action Williams-Bolar took to save her kids might be the tipping point in the cause, but only if reformers seize this moment.

SOURCE






Climate education in British schools: a mess of pottage, a porridge of propaganda?

The politicization of Geography teaching seems to be killing off the subject

Indoctrination in schools is illegal in the UK (e.g. section 406 of the Education Act of 1996). Education ought to teach children about their world. But there are those who see the young as so many potential footsoldiers for their cause, little Trojan horses to fill with propaganda to carry back into their homes and into their futures. All to save the planet of course, so who can object to that?

Of course, they are not 'saving the planet'. First of all, 'the planet' is not in danger, and secondly, crippling our economies physically, and our children mentally, are not pathways to robust societies ready to tackle whatever challenges the future may bring them, environmental and otherwise. They are pathways to poverty and dependency.

Geography is an obvious target for proselytising on 'climate change'. It does not seem to be thriving as a subject in schools in the UK.

2009:

'In a speech at Charterhouse School, Surrey, Prof Woodhead cited the example of geography, where the curriculum has been focused on turning children into "global citizens" at the expense of an objective study of the earth.

"I think there is a difference between education on the one hand and propaganda on the other - and I think this is one of the main reasons why schools are starting to abandon GCSEs in such numbers," he said.

"Politicians seem to have this belief that schools and teachers can solve the evils of the world. Simply dump all the deeply intractable social problems on to the curriculum and let the schools sort it out. Schools should be teaching children what they don't know, not attempting to create citizens of the future who are active and responsible." '

2011:

'Geography lessons 'not good enough in half of schools'

Children’s knowledge of capital cities, continents, world affairs and the environment is in sharp decline because of poor geography lessons, inspectors warned today.

In a damning report, Ofsted said teaching in the subject was not good enough in more than half of English state schools. Geography – traditionally a cornerstone of the curriculum – is often undermined by a lack of space in school timetables after being edged out by exam practice and other subjects such as citizenship.

Many primary teachers lacked specialist geographical knowledge, the watchdog said, meaning classes often descended into a focus on superficial stereotypes. The subject had practically “disappeared” in one-in-10 primaries.

In secondary schools, classes were often merged with history to form generic “humanities” lessons that focused on vague skills instead of geographical understanding.

Ofsted said the decline severely reduced children’s ability at all ages to grasp key geographical issues, identify countries or capital cities and even read maps properly.'

['Ofsted' is a government agency in the UK: 'Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. We regulate and inspect to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages.']

How come so many teachers have apparently stopped teaching in order to become facilitators for producing ill-informed agitators? The same malaise has also affected the BBC, an organisation turning into an international laughing stock because of its blinkered, biased approach on climate and its wish to campaign for 'the cause' rather than 'merely' broadcast news, information, and honest investigative journalism.

The scientific case for alarm over CO2 is fragile and has been widely dismantled, not least by Nature herself refusing to follow the purposeful computer models equipped with magical powers for CO2. The political case is also faltering, not least due to the absurdities of the IPCC leadership and publications, and to simple-minded bandwagoning by politicians in many countries running out of steam (see for example, the absence of 'climate change' in the recent State of the Union address in the USA, and several opinion polls showing the declining credibility of eco-alarmism). So will the educational system be the final redoubt for this whole sorry business?

SOURCE (See the original for links)



6 February, 2011

Real school choice options would help to narrow achievement gap

This week, organizations across the country are holding events to celebrate National School Choice Week, so it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the benefits we receive from the educational options that most of us enjoy. The opponents of school choice often deride it, suggesting that it only serves as a means of undermining public education. Most middle- and upper-class parents, however, already exercise control over most aspects of their children’s educations. They choose their homes based in part on the quality of the school district they are located within, or, if they have the resources, they decide among a number of private and parochial schools.

These schools are not perfect — far from it, in some cases — but, for most of these students and parents, the system works relatively well. There is a well-known correlation between academic achievement and socioeconomic status, and students from higher-income families outperform lower-income students on practically every measure. This disparity is also reflected in the achievement gap between white and minority students. Tino Sanandaji, a Ph.D. student in public policy at the University of Chicago, recently compared the scores of non-Hispanic white American students with those of non-immigrant Europeans on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, and found that the American students performed admirably. White Americans scored seventh out of 28 countries, beating students from Denmark, Sweden, and France, as well as an average of 15 European Union countries.

On the other hand, our educational system routinely fails poor and minority students — those least able to choose a different school by moving to another district. Although the racial achievement gap has narrowed somewhat in recent years, at age 17, black and Hispanic students still score about 10 percent worse on average than white students on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). There a number of proven ways we can expand choice and improve academic achievement for those students.

Missouri has already experienced some success with charter schools. According to a 2009 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, students attending charter schools in Missouri show more improvement in both mathematics and reading than similar students in traditional public schools, and this remains true when looking only at black and Hispanic students. Unfortunately, state statute limits the existence of charter schools to the cities of Saint Louis and Kansas City. If that restriction were removed, the gains of charter schools could be expanded to students in other struggling districts.

Furthermore, we could provide parents and students with more options in existing public school districts simply by restructuring how the schools are funded. Under a weighted-student-formula program (also known as “backpack funding”), students can attend any school within the district, and the schools are funded based upon the number of students they attract — with more dollars devoted to students who typically require more resources to educate (e.g., those with disabilities). Schools are then allowed more autonomy to experiment and compete for students — and for the money attached to them. In California, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland both implemented backpack funding and saw large gains in student achievement across ethnic and socioeconomic lines. San Francisco is now the top performing large urban school district in California. There is no reason, outside of political intransigence, that the Saint Louis and Kansas City school districts could not enact the same reforms.

It would be difficult to design an educational system worse for the disadvantaged than one that assigns students to schools based on the housing that their parents can afford. Although our best schools, public and private, are the product of parental choice, poor and minority students are frequently stuck in monopolistic urban school districts. School choice is not a panacea for this problem, but giving parents the power to choose is a necessary step toward ensuring a quality education for all of Missouri’s students.

SOURCE





Teen Faces Criminal Assault Charges for Shooting Spitwads in School

Andrew Mikel II, a freshman honor student and Junior ROTC cadet at Spotsylvania High School in Virginia, hopes to attend the U.S. Naval Academy after he graduates. But for now, the 14-year-old is at home, serving out a suspension sentence handed down from school administrators after he shot plastic “spitwads” at other students.

Last December, Andrew was punished for using the hollow body of a ballpoint pen to blow small plastic pellets at three students during his lunch period.

At first, Andrew was slapped with a 10-day suspension, but the county school board later voted to extend his punishment, citing the school’s Student Code of Conduct no-tolerance policy that requires any student found with “any type of weapon, or object used to intimidate, threaten or harm others“ be ”expelled for a minimum of 365 days“ unless ”special circumstances exist.”

Andrew’s family claims the school is “criminalizing childish behavior” and the freshman is filing an appeal to be reinstated.

But the youngster’s problems could go well-beyond the schoolyard. The school district referred the “assault” case to the Spotsylania Sheriff’s Office which has charged Mikel with three separate misdemeanor criminal counts.

Andrew is now serving out a community service sentence and has been forced to enroll in substance abuse and anger management counseling to avoid further prosecution.

Is there a difference between a kid blowing spitwads at fellow students and a criminal charged with possession of a weapon and misdemeanor assault?

No, according to Spotsylvania Police Capt. Liz Scott. “Assault is assault is assault,” she told Fox News. “There were three victims that were involved in this, and I think the public needs to remember that,” she added.

The school’s assistant principal agrees. During a December 21 disciplinary hearing, Lisa Andruss said Mikel’s behavior indicated a disturbing trend because he was disciplined in junior high for shooting rubber bands. In addition, he was suspended in 8th grade for bringing a comb to school that resembled a pocket knife.

The school guidance department told Andrew that as a result of his tarnished record, he will no longer be considered as a viable candidate for the Naval Academy.

The whole situation has Mikel’s parents baffled. Andrew Mikel Sr., a former Navy Seabee and Marine officer, told Fox News that he’s been left “scratching my head at the whole thing.”

“One thing is he must attend substance abuse counseling – he’s never had a substance abuse issue in his life,” he said.

“Right from the get go the Assistant Principal Lisa Andruss said, ‘Come pick up your son, he’s being suspended for 10 days, we’re recommending expulsion, and we’re going to push this to the fullest extent of the law,” he continued. “When I arrived she showed me what amounts to a pee shooter: a plastic pen casing about four inches long and these little plastic balls that he’d had from a toy guy that he had years ago and found in his closet recently. This thing is harmless.”

Andrew admits his stunt was dumb and only did it because he “thought it would be cool.”

Since the school decided to expel him for the remainder of the school year, the family has enlisted legal help from The Rutherford Institute, a “civil liberties organization that provides free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated.”

“What happened to Andrew Mikel is an example of how oppressive zero-tolerance policies have become,” John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute says. “School officials have developed a very dangerous mindset that allows virtually no freedom for students, while at the same time criminalizing childish behavior.”

“My son did an infraction and he deserves a just punishment, but this is like cutting someone’s hand off for stealing a piece of cabbage,” Andrew’s father said. “If my son, instead of shooting a spitball, went up and punched a student right in the face he would only have gotten five days suspension and even if he‘d drawn blood the school resource officer said police still wouldn’t have gotten involved.” But since police and school officials are considering Mikel’s spitwad shooter as a “weapon,” the case has taken on a whole new meaning.

“It takes four state agencies to go after someone with a spitwad: It takes the sheriff’s department, the commonwealth attorney, the school board on various levels and the department of juvenile justice … what a fine use of taxpayer resources,” he added.

The Mikels plan to appeal their son’s disciplinary sentence next week and hope that his record will be cleared.

SOURCE





Evangelical church based around creationism plans to open free school in Britain

An evangelical church which places creationism at the heart of its belief system is applying to open a free school. e Everyday Champions Church, based in Newark, Nottinghamshire, has said it will teach evolution as a "theory".

Free schools can be set up by charities, universities, businesses, educational groups, teachers and groups of parents.

The church wants to open the new school in September next year and says there are currently not enough secondary places available in the area. Pastor Gareth Morgan, the church's leader, told the Independent: "Creationism will be embodied as a belief at the Everyday Champions Academy but will not be taught in the sciences. Similarly, evolution will be taught as a theory."

Evolution is a recognised part of the science curriculum. But free schools will have freedom from following the national curriculum.

The church's website says the new school, with space for 625 pupils, will be "multicultural in philosophy and will welcome children from all faiths or none". However, it adds that the "values of the Christian faith will be the foundation of the school philosophy".

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

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

SOURCE



5 February, 2011

Have American Teachers Moved “To The Left” Of President Obama?

It seems like a strange time to “move to the left.” But it seems to be happening nonetheless.

Since his self-confessed “shellacking” in last November’s election, much has been said about how President Obama’s rhetoric has shifted to the philosophical “right.” Gone are the pejorative remarks about how Americans must stop consuming more than their “fair share” of the earth’s resources, and the scolding of oil and pharmaceutical companies for earning “record profits” (the President would probably be thrilled if any American business were to set profit records today).

“In” are the kinds of comments that are typical of an American President. Mr. Obama recently announced that he wants to embrace “Thomas Edison’s principles,” and that he desires for Americans to “invent stuff” and “make stuff.” He has even stated that he wants to open-up more foreign markets so American companies can sell more of their products and services globally. Indeed, the past few weeks have seen a dramatic change in the President who spent two years bowing to foreign heads of state, and lamenting America’s superpower status.

But while the President and most of America have moved to the right, big labor doesn’t even seem willing to move the center. In fact, some unions that represent America’s public school teachers seem to have moved further towards the philosophical “left,” even as state and local governments struggle with debt and deficits, and in some cases, the threat of bankruptcy.

A disconnect between the President and the National Education Association is not new. Despite the undying allegiance of the NEA to the Democratic Party, Obama has still been a bit of an infidel for government school bureaucrats because of his support of charter schools.

It’s a concept that has become so popular with parents in recent years that presidential candidates can no longer politically afford to reject it. Still the concept of “charter schools” - schools that are publicly funded, yet managed by private sector individuals and organizations -creates market competition for conventional government-run schools and school districts, and the NEA rejects the idea outright. In fact, the NEA publicly denounced President Obama’s “Race To The Top” agenda at their annual convention last July, precisely because the agenda entailed support for charter schools.

Now, further evidence of a labor union moving starkly to the left of our President has emerged from the very “red” state of Idaho. While the Governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction have embarked on a effort to completely revolutionize public education in their state, the Idaho Education Association (the statewide chapter of the NEA) seems to have been caught flat-footed, and some of its members seem to have succumbed to brazenly Marxist responses.

On January 10th, Idaho Governor Butch Otter delivered the annual “State of the State” address, and on education funding he promised “a fundamental shift in emphasis from the adults who oversee the process and administration to the best interests of our students.” Two days later on January 12th, Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna addressed the state legislature announcing his “Students Come First” initiatives, a plan that would established what he refers to as “customer driven education.”

It’s an outrage that in the milieu of American public education, students often do not “come first” and that decisions are frequently made that serve the interests of employees and not the “customers.” Similarly, “success” is frequently defined by public education bureaucrats in terms of how much taxpayer money is spent (“per pupil spending” is the buzzword of choice), rather than by what is produced with those expenditures.

So in a state that is bound by its own constitution to balance its own budget, Superintendent Luna has vowed that public schools in Idaho will teach “more students at a higher level with limited resources.” To achieve this he proposes that school activity should “not be limited by walls, bell schedules, school calendars and geography,” but rather that students should be issued laptop computers with access to online, on-demand instructional content (Luna has already connected high school students this way with Idaho’s state colleges and universities). He also wants to incentivize more productivity from teachers by offering bonus pay opportunities and wants “full transparency” for how taxpayer money is spent (Luna has uncovered evidence of local school districts paying fulltime salaries to “teachers” who do nothing but organize union activity).

Responses from unionized teachers have been swift and visceral. Most noticeable is the opposition to the “bonus pay” proposals, with cries that it would simply be “unfair” if some received a bonus while others did not (note to teachers: Karl Marx would be thrilled with this “everybody deserves the same amount of everything” economic reasoning – but it’s not a “bonus” if everybody gets one). And while the private sector thrives in a world of online conferencing and “webinars” every day, some of Idaho’s public school teachers insist that such technology has no place in their profession.

It’s sad to see college-educated adult professionals clinging to such simplistic and selfish thinking, and it’s infuriating that children are held hostage to it. But for the moment it’s coming from “big labor” – and not so much from “big government.”

SOURCE





Left State University

William Irvine is a professor of philosophy at Wright State University. He is one of the most courageous and honest professors in the country. Recently, he wrote a column concerning Wright State’s decision to invite the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to speak on his campus. Although he disagrees with many of Reverend Wright’s views, he publicly welcomed him to the campus because he believes that a university should be a marketplace of ideas. That view alone makes Irvine exceptional among today’s professoriate.

Irvine calls out his university for being “curiously one-sided in the speakers it brings to campus.” He notes that liberal speakers are routinely invited and that ultra-liberal speakers including Wright and Angela Davis are occasionally invited. No one seems to think it strange that avowed communists and those with significant criminal backgrounds are paid to speak on campus at considerable expense to the taxpayer. But politically conservative speakers are scarce and in the case of John McCain and Sarah Palin pay for the privilege of using campus facilities.

William Irvine is the rare professor willing to confront his colleagues’ hypocrisy and to publicly quote their silly defenses of rigid ideological conformity. When he confronted another professor with the idea that the university should invite conservative speakers his colleague responded by asking “You mean someone like Glenn Beck?” This kind of reaction shows how off-center our universities have become. What educated person could consider Glen Beck to be more extreme than Angela Davis?

Another professor reacted to Irvine’s reasonable suggestion by saying that it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring any Holocaust deniers to campus. The statement is an odd one indeed. It suggests that most conservatives refuse to accept the Holocaust as fact. I think liberal supporters of abortion are today’s true Holocaust deniers.

Professor Irvine has discovered something I have also discovered about the liberal professoriate; namely, that they see no reason for debate. In their eyes, the debate is over on all the major issues of the day. Of course, in their eyes they won all the major debates. Now, the reward for winning these debates is that we can proceed into the implementation phase. Of course, professors rarely use the word “implementation.” They just mindlessly repeat the word “diversity” like catatonics in padded cells.

Professor Irvine has also discovered that suggestions of bringing people like Thomas Sowell to campus are met with one pretty serious problem: Most liberal professors have never heard of Thomas Sowell.

Many years ago I suggested that Sowell should be required reading for college students. The reaction was amazing. According to one of my left-leaning colleagues - one who actually knows who Thomas Sowell is - the students don’t need to read Sowell because they were raised in conservative homes where those ideas were regularly espoused.

Notice the intellectual sleight of hand my “liberal” colleague employed. His argument is against intellectual diversity. The $64,000 question: Why oppose intellectual diversity? The answer: Since parents do it for eighteen years it is only fair that professors be allowed to do it for four years.

Professor Irvine has accurately identified a big problem in saying that it is now possible for students to get a college “education” without ever encountering a conservative professor. But the problem is even bigger than that. Most professors now believe it is desirable for students to get a college “education” without ever encountering a conservative professor. Their idea of “liberal education” is nothing more than a poorly disguised war on conservatism. This anti-conservative mindset is so entrenched that one of my “liberal” colleagues wants to remove the entire Cameron School of Business from UNC-Wilmington (where I teach). He explicitly stated that a school of business has “no business at a liberal university.” Between his puerile and antiquated lectures on Marxism he denies the existence of any liberal bias. This is the personification of self-indulgence and anti-intellectualism.

Professor William Irvine says that we do not have a fair hearing of conservative views on campus but instead “liberal professors galore, who will be happy to tell you what they imagine the conservative viewpoint on various issues must be and why these viewpoints are wrongheaded.” This statement is bull’s-eye accurate. And his follow-up statement is brilliant: “This is a pale substitute for a genuine political debate, but it is, on many campuses, what students have to settle for.”

Good for him. This debate should remain focused on the shortchanged students. College is not becoming less expensive. But it is becoming less relevant.

The public challenge issued by Professor Irvine is one that every professor, conservative or liberal, should issue to his university. That challenge comes in two parts: 1) Hire at least a few conservative professors. (I’m open to this idea. What better way to remedy the historical oppression of conservatives!). 2) If you cannot stomach hiring conservative professors then at least hire some conservative speakers.

Of course, today’s “liberal” professor will agree to neither of those suggestions. He uses affirmative action to promote his self-esteem not to promote “a diversity of perspectives.” And he uses the word “diversity” only to hide his deep-seated intellectual insecurity.

Our universities are no longer committed to revealing the truth. They are committed to suppressing the truth. And among those truths is that tolerance is not the academy’s most enduring intellectual achievement. It is its most transparent moral weakness.

SOURCE






Australia: Victoria's Education Minister Martin Dixon launches new bid to restore order in classrooms

TEACHERS will seize back control of their classrooms from unruly students under a bid to restore discipline in Victorian schools. The new Baillieu Government will next week push for new laws allowing principals to search students, lockers and school bags for weapons and other dangerous items.

Education Minister Martin Dixon also wants to reverse students' declining respect for authority. He wants to put a stop to bad language, sloppy dress and mobile phones in class.

It follows a surge in schoolyard violence, with Victorian schools now reporting more than 12 assaults every week. Over the past decade, the number of students aged 10-14 committing violent acts has jumped by 80 per cent. "Put simply, violent behaviour in the school yard will not be tolerated," said Mr Dixon, a former principal with 15 years' experience.

"These new powers will ensure principals and teachers have clear authority to maintain order and safety in schools. "We want to send a strong message that we will protect that authority."

Mr Dixon said restoring respect was his top priority. "There's a growing number of parents that have got a lack of respect for any level of authority, whether it be police or school principals," he said. "(And) there's an increasing use and threat of violence in schools. "Assaults, verbal or physical, on teachers and principals used to be unheard of, but they do occur now. It is an issue. We've got to protect principals from that too."

Under the legislation to be debated in Parliament next week, principals would have the power to order students to open lockers and school bags, and turn out their pockets, to prove they were not carrying weapons. Any potentially dangerous items - including glass bottles, sporting equipment and trade tools - could be confiscated.

The legislation would not permit teachers to conduct body searches, but would legally protect them for handling prohibited items, such as knives or guns, before handing them over to police.

Mr Dixon said he was personally opposed to mobile phones in classrooms, sloppy dressing and swearing in school grounds. But principals would set the rules and penalties in their own schools.

Victorian Principals Association president Gabrielle Leigh said the move would make schools safer.

SOURCE



4 February, 2011

Black Education

Walter E. Williams

In my "Black Education Disaster" column (12/22/10), I presented National Assessment of Educational Progress test data that demonstrated that an average black high school graduate had a level of reading, writing and math proficiency of a white seventh- or eighth-grader. The public education establishment bears part of the responsibility for this disaster, but a greater portion is borne by black students and their parents, many of whom who are alien and hostile to the education process.

Let's look at the education environment in many schools and ask how conducive it is to the education process. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nationally during 2007-2008, more than 145,000 teachers were physically attacked. Six percent of big-city schools report verbal abuse of teachers and 18 percent report non-verbal disrespect for teachers.

An earlier NCES study found that 18 percent of the nation's schools accounted for 75 percent of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6 percent accounted for 50 percent. So far as serious violence, murder and rapes, 1.9 percent of schools reported 50 percent of the incidents. The preponderance of school violence occurs in big-city schools attended by black students.

What's the solution? Violence, weapons-carrying, gang activity and student or teacher intimidation should not be tolerated. Students engaging in such activity should be summarily expelled.

Some might worry about the plight of expelled students. I think we should have greater concern for those students whose education is made impossible by thugs and the impossible learning environment they create.

Another part of the black education disaster has to do with the home environment. More than 70 percent of black children are born to unwedded mothers, who are often themselves born to unwedded mothers. Today's level of female-headed households is new in black history. Until the 1950s, almost 80 percent of black children lived in two-parent households, as opposed to today's 35 percent.

Often, these unwedded mothers have poor parenting skills and are indifferent, and sometimes hostile, to their children's education. The resulting poorly behaving students should not be permitted to sabotage the education of students whose parents are supportive of the education process.

At the minimum, a mechanism such as tuition tax credit or educational voucher ought to be available to allow parents and children who care to opt out of failing schools. Some people take the position that we should repair not abandon failing schools. That's a vision that differs little from one that says that no black child's education should be improved unless we can improve the education of all black children.

What needs to be done is not rocket science. Our black ancestors, just two, three, four generations out of slavery, would not have tolerated school behavior that's all but routine today. The fact that the behavior of many black students has become acceptable and made excuses for is no less than a gross betrayal of sacrifices our ancestors made to create today's opportunities.

Some of today's black political leadership is around my age, 75, such as Reps. Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Conyers, former Virginia governor Douglas Wilder, Jesse Jackson and many others. Forget that they are liberal Democrats but ask them whether their parents, kin or neighbors would have tolerated children cursing to, or in the presence of, teachers and other adults. Ask them what their parents would have done had they assaulted an adult or teacher. Ask whether their parents would have accepted the grossly disrespectful behavior seen among many black youngsters on the streets and other public places using foul language and racial epithets. Then ask why should today's blacks tolerate something our ancestors would not.

The sorry and tragic state of black education is not going to be turned around until there's a change in what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior by young people. The bulk of that change has to come from within the black community.

SOURCE






School Reform Advocates Champion Choice

Hundreds of Chicagoland residents flocked to a townhall meeting on education reform last week, as school choice advocates continued a nationwide push to highlight the issue during National School Choice Week. The program, which was co-sponsored by local conservative talk station AM 560 WIND, featured a panel discussion among syndicated talker Michael Medved, political strategist and author Dick Morris, and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The trio traded ideas on how to improve America’s schools and attempted to diagnose a number of the system’s key flaws in a discussion moderated by John Tillman of the Illinois Policy Institute.

“Our current system is wrong. Competition is the bedrock of America, and it’s time that education reaches the market economy,” Hastert asserted, prompting nods of agreement from his co-panelists. “It come down to a core American value: equal opportunity,” Medved added. “Conservatives don’t believe in equal outcomes. But from the time of founding, part of what this country is about is everybody gets a shot. That’s what we’re affirming here tonight,” he said.

Morris suggested that by injecting greater competition into the system, individual schools and districts could serve as educational laboratories. “We’ve tried testing, standards, and funding increases. The only remaining option is opening up the status quo to experiments,” he said, arguing that outcomes should dictate future priorities. “Let’s find out what works, and let the money go with the kids. At that point, when people ask which schools to close, the answer is the empty ones.”

During the wide-ranging discussion, the panel explored a number of potential experimental programs, from inner city public boarding schools, to significantly shortening summer break, to reinstituting trade schools as a viable and respected option for students.

“We have this idea in the US that every child is the same. We also have this idea that every single American child should go to college. That’s not a good idea. College prep work sets up a huge number of children for guaranteed failure. It’s perfectly possible to make a great living and be a wonderful citizen without being a college prep student,” Medved said.

The applause turned to boos and jeers at any mention of teacher’s unions -- although panelists were quick to draw a distinction between what they called the corrupt practices of unions and individual teachers. At one point, public school teachers in the crowd were asked to raise their hands. They were greeted with a prolonged ovation. “Good teachers transform lives, but not every teacher is equal, unless you’re talking to the unions,” Morris said, echoing a sentiment featured in a short film trailer that played during the event.

Medved added a word of caution: “Let’s not just make the teacher’s unions the big bad enemy,” he implored the audience, citing his own mother’s publicly-funded health benefits that helped her afford medical treatment after suffering a stroke. “Teachers making a respectable living and receiving good benefits is not something to oppose. If we do, we’ll lose that argument. The problem is the corruption of unions who protect the worst teachers who have no business being in a classroom. We are not on the side of bad, lazy teachers,” he said.

Each speaker praised innovative steps that have already been taken by some jurisdictions, including tying driver’s licenses to school attendance for teens. Ultimately, though, government policies can only go so far, Hastert contended. “It’s not just money or policy that leads to success. Parents need to care. Then, teachers will care because parents care. We can’t legislate that, but we should encourage it,” he said. “Home schooling is the epitome of that idea, and the people involved in that movement are very vocal. I take my hat off to them.”

Many of the audience questions dealt with breaking the disproportionate strength of the unions, which led to an extended discussion of Governor Chris Christie’s ongoing battle with the New Jersey Education Association. “Christie has started to do what people say can’t be done. He is changing the psyche of the public. But for us to do here [in Illinois] what he’s doing out in New Jersey, we need a different governor,” he said to loud applause. Democrat Pat Quinn was elected to his first full term as Governor of Illinois in November.

SOURCE





Geography lessons 'not good enough' in half of British schools

Children’s knowledge of capital cities, continents, world affairs and the environment is in sharp decline because of poor geography lessons, inspectors warned today. In a damning report, Ofsted said teaching in the subject was not good enough in more than half of English state schools.

Geography – traditionally a cornerstone of the curriculum – is often undermined by a lack of space in school timetables after being edged out by exam practice and other subjects such as citizenship.

Many primary teachers lacked specialist geographical knowledge, the watchdog said, meaning classes often descended into a focus on superficial stereotypes. The subject had practically “disappeared” in one-in-10 primaries.

In secondary schools, classes were often merged with history to form generic “humanities” lessons that focused on vague skills instead of geographical understanding.

Ofsted said the decline severely reduced children’s ability at all ages to grasp key geographical issues, identify countries or capital cities and even read maps properly. In the worst secondary schools, most students were “spatially naļve” and unable to "locate countries, key mountain ranges or other features with any degree of confidence”, the study said.

Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector, said: “Geography provision was outstanding in over a quarter of all the schools we visited but just over half were not using geography to good effect to support pupils in understanding their role in their locality, their country and the wider world.” She added: “Where provision is weaker, schools should focus on developing pupils’ core knowledge in geography, particularly their sense of place.”

Geography is currently a compulsory subject for pupils aged five to 14. But Ofsted’s study – based on inspections of 91 primary and 90 secondary schools – found serious weaknesses in the teaching of the subject throughout the education system.

Geography was “more or less disappearing” in one-in-10 primary schools, the report said. In half the schools visited, pupils in some classes were taught no geography at all.

Improvements were often undermined by primary teachers’ “weak knowledge of geography, their lack of confidence in teaching it and insufficient subject-specific training”, the report said.

Teachers’ lack of expertise occasionally led to a focus on “cultural or exotic aspects” of some countries which could reinforce stereotypes, it was claimed. One lesson for eight and nine year olds seen by Ofsted began with a teacher asking what pupils knew about India. Children said Indians were “famous for their camels”, “do yoga”, “wear colourful clothes” and “ride on elephants”, but the teacher did little to challenge their stereotypes and misconceptions, Ofsted said.

At secondary level, more than half the schools visited cut the amount of time spent teaching geography in the first three years. In many cases, tuition was reduced because timetables were overloaded with other subjects, such as citizenship, or time spent providing “catch-up sessions in English and mathematics”.

Around a third of schools merged history and geography together to form "humanities" lessons, but these classes "tended to focus on generic learning skills rather than knowledge and understanding that was specific to geography", inspectors warned.

The report said “uninspiring teaching” at the start of secondary school led to a reduction in the number of teenagers opting to take a GCSE in the subject. Some 97 secondaries failed to enter a single pupil for GCSE geography in 2007 but by 2009 it increased to 137. Almost one-in-10 academies – the independent state schools championed by the Coalition – shunned GCSE geography altogether, it was claimed.

The report – Geography: Learning to Make a World of Difference – recommended better on-the-job training for teachers, a more rigorous focus on geography in the first three years of secondary education and a rise in the number of fieldtrips for all ages.

SOURCE



3 February, 2011

Education: We need Wal-Mart

According to a recent Fox News survey, most American public school biology teachers are equivocal in their teaching of evolution science because they want to avoid ideological conflicts with students and parents. Fewer than 30% of them teach evolution as a biological fact, and 13% personally reject the idea of evolution, even the scientific method, and explicitly advocate creationism in the public classroom.

It makes me wonder about how many other basic curriculum subjects are distorted or equivocated by public school teachers who fear ideological conflicts among culturally diverse student populations. It doesn’t matter. That’s the nature of public education.

This is just another perfect example of why the immense system of expensive public schools is failing in America, and why all education should be private.

Personally, I don’t care if people believe in creationism. It’s none of my business. Evolution should not be forced on them. The scientific method should not be forced on them. It’s their life.

If the state has an interest in educating it’s citizens -- I don’t think it does -- surely it doesn’t go beyond basic reading, writing, and figuring. Once children have learned how to read, write, and figure proficiently, they are well equipped to engage in further ideological subjects of their choice and on their own in a free society. If we must have public schools, attendance should be voluntary, and graduation should follow the sixth grade.

But we know that the state’s interest is far greater than simply teaching kids the basics. The state wants to shape their attitudes and opinions as well. It wants to turn the kids into compliant supporters of government. It wants to teach kids collective “values.” That’s just fine with most parents because all they want is free babysitting services while they carry on their own productive lives.

So the state has a virtual monopoly business running inferior compulsory education factories in hugely expensive buildings, with all the finest facilities, and armies of staff, much like it runs its prison systems.

Since kids have to be there whether they like it or not to swallow up the prescribed pabulum, little incentive exists for critical thinking or pursuing interests more compatible with their individual attributes and abilities. Thirteen of their most formative years are appropriated by the state for “socialization.”

Education is not the business of government in a free nation.

Human beings no longer need ancient methods of formalized education to learn. Formal education is way overrated. Kids today know how to communicate, type, use computers, ipads, cell phones; they’ve mastered all manner of valuable subjects they didn’t learn in school.

We live in an Internet age in which the very best teacher could teach thousands of students at once instead of just a few at a time. Poor kids can have the benefits of learning from the best of teachers today. Like Wal-Mart, the private sector could cheaply and efficiently satisfy every educational need for those who actually want to learn. Those who want creationism can buy the perfect teacher.

They’ll get no objection from me.

SOURCE





British boys' schools decline in shift towards mixed classrooms

Traditional boys’ schools are “near extinction” as growing numbers of headmasters axe single-sex education to admit girls, according to research. Less than five per cent of establishments listed in the latest edition of the Good Schools Guide – published today – are independent boys’ senior schools. It represents a dramatic decline compared with the first edition of the guide 25 years ago when almost a quarter of schools featured only admitted boys.

Girls’ schools have also fallen in popularity since the mid-80s, it is claimed, forcing some to close or merge with other similar schools nearby.

But according to the guide, boys’ schools are more likely to adapt to parents’ increasing preference for mixed classrooms by axing their single-sex status to go fully co-educational.

In the last 25 years, some of the most famous boys’ schools in the country have converted into wholly mixed schools. This includes Marlborough, Oundle, Repton, Rugby, Stowe, Uppingham and Wellington College. The latest to convert is Milton Abbey – established almost 60 years ago – which will become co-educational in September 2012. It follows the introduction of girls into its sixth-form five years ago.

The move represents a dramatic shift in the attitudes of many parents who traditionally believe boys and girls thrive in separate classrooms without the distractions of the opposite sex.

Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington, said some mothers and fathers believed children were “better prepared for life” after being educated in a mixed classroom. But he added: “Overwhelmingly, I’m saddened by this development because it’s not good for the education system and it denies parents the right to choose between different types of school.”

The Good Schools Guide rates the top state and independent schools in Britain. According to figures, 24 per cent of schools chosen for the guide in 1986 were boys’ independent senior schools, but this year the number has plummeted to just under five per cent. This includes Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s School, Radley, Dulwich College and City of London. Westminster, Charterhouse and Magdalen College School, which admit girls into the sixth-form, are also listed.

Girls' schools represent 13 per cent of the top state and independent schools listed, fewer than half the proportion a generation ago.

Janette Wallis, a senior editor at the guide, said independent boys’ schools were now “near extinction”. “Boys’ schools, like girls’ schools, have been affected by economic pressures and by some parents’ preference for co-ed – probably more so,” she said. “But they have rolled with the punches by taking in girls. “On the up side, this means not a single boys-only school from our first edition has had to close down.

“On the down side, so many of them have gone co-ed - and so quickly – that we now have parents ringing us up in frustration that they are struggling to find a boys' independent school for their son. We’re having to steer them towards the survivors.”

SOURCE






Research achievements among Australian universities

Detailed ratings here. As a graduate of the University of Qld., I was pleased to see it ranked third. All three of the universities where I have studied made it into the top 10, in fact. The big surprise was a former technical college (QUT) squeaking into the top 10

Note, however, that there is a large element of subjectivity in the whole exercise

JANUARY 31 was a landmark day for Australian universities. With the release of the first national report of the Excellence in Research for Australia initiative, we have, for the first time, a comprehensive evaluation of our research achievements against those of our global peers.

The picture is impressive. In total, 65 per cent of units were assessed as performing at world standard, including 21 per cent above and 13 per cent well above the rest of the world.

ERA draws together rich information about discipline-specific research activity at each institution, as well as information about each discipline's contribution to the national landscape. It was a huge exercise. ERA took into account the work of 55,000 individuals, collecting data on 333,000 publications and research outputs across 157 disciplines. In all, 2435 areas in 40 institutions were assessed by committees comprised of distinguished Australian and international researchers: that is, those who know the field interpreted the data. The committees had access to detailed metrics and a range of other indicators (including results of more detailed peer review of individual works held in online repositories).

Australia has lagged behind its international counterparts in the implementation of a research evaluation system. South Africa has been evaluating researchers for more than 20 years, the British exercise was first introduced in 1986 and the New Zealand exercise in 2003. Because of a long gestation, we have been able to use an Australian Bureau of Statistics classification system designed for Australasia and learn from problems elsewhere, consulting the best available expertise to assist in the design of the initiative, as well as using the latest advances in information tools and technology.

This has enabled us to deliver the exercise in a cost-effective manner. Compared with international equivalents, ERA should be seen in the context of an annual investment in research in universities of more than $2.5 billion.

So, what does it mean for government? ERA enables the government to assure the public its investment in our universities is producing quality outcomes. Planning for future investment to build on strengths or develop new areas, encourage collaboration and allocate critical research infrastructure will now have a much stronger basis.

For universities? Leaders can also use ERA outcomes for planning and to guide investment. Potential research students and staff will be able to make informed choices about the best places to go, with the strength of the area, not just reputation or geography in mind. Business will also be able to find the universities with the best of the expertise they need.

ERA 2010 shows the strong research areas in Australian universities include astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, electrical engineering, history, and health and medical science (including cardiovascular medicine, human movement and sports science, immunology, oncology and pharmacology). These complement areas such as marine and climate science, food science and agriculture, where the lead is taken by our science agencies such as the CSIRO.

There is a strong correlation between excellence and areas that have won competitive research funding. The strength of medical science is not surprising, given these areas have had a separate funding council, a history of strong leadership and many successes (including most of our Nobel laureates). Other areas such as geology, plant biology and electrical engineering have support from the Australian Research Council, other government programs and from industry.

The picture for the humanities, arts and social sciences is more complex. ERA has recognised in a formal way for the first time the work of the many talented creative and performing artists doing research in our universities. Traditional disciplines such as history have both depth and breadth. In others (such as psychology, cultural studies, banking, accounting and business) the excellence is concentrated within a smaller number of institutions. The Australian National University aside, there have been fewer opportunities for scholars in these areas to devote themselves substantially to research in the way that has been possible for some areas of science, medicine and engineering. The drive to collaborate to access infrastructure (and the necessary government funding) has also helped many of the areas in science and technology develop the necessary concentration and scale needed to sustain world-class research teams.

ERA has had its critics. A view that applied research would not be recognised has not eventuated. Crop and pasture production, materials engineering and resources engineering and nursing all performed well. Similarly, newer interdisciplinary areas such as environmental science, nanotechnology and communication and media studies have demonstrated excellence despite predictions to the contrary.

Finally, the assumption that measuring research quality will improve what we do has often been challenged. This underestimates our competitive culture. On receiving his results, one vice-chancellor reflected that he was reasonably happy with the outcomes for his university but confident they will have improved by 30 per cent in the next one.

SOURCE



2 February, 2011

Brooklyn College Rescinds Appointment of Pro-Palestinian Activist

I wrote on January 19 about the appointment at Brooklyn College, my alma mater, of a pro-Palestinian activist – just 1 ½ years into his own PhD studies -- to teach a graduate course on the Middle East. After that the New York State Assemblyman of the district adjoining the college protested in a letter to the college president and copied the Chancellor of the City University of New York (who had also received letters of protest from other influentials).

In reviewing Mr. Petersen-Overton’s writings and professional background, I was alarmed about the slanted nature of his works, as well as what can only be termed as his use of hateful invectives against the State of Israel….

Moreover, Mr. Petersen-Overton’s course syllabus reads like a Who’s Who of Palestinian sympathizers and historical revisionists, with no equitable counterbalance….The responsibility of a true academic is to remain objective in imparting information and to allow students to draw their own conclusions.

Instead, Mr. Petersen-Overton’s required and recommended reading selections intentionally stifle the passionate discourse of students who would challenge his political ideologies….

I ask you, Dr. Gould, is Mr. Petersen-Overton, an overt supporter of terrorism, really the best candidate Brooklyn College could find to teach this course? Surely, you must concede that the answer is a resounding “no.” Indeed, Mr. Petersen-Overton would be better suited for a teaching position at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Here’s the follow-up article. The Assemblyman says, “I am absolutely thrilled that Brooklyn College made the right decision and removed Professor Petersen-Overton from his post.”

So am I. It should still be a serious concern to know more about the appointment, as I originally wrote,

It should be of interest what the vetting procedure is at Brooklyn College to select a pool of well-qualified candidates, the criteria by which Kristofer Petersen was selected to teach the Middle East, and how Petersen compared to other qualified candidates. Academic transparency should not be – nor viewed as – a challenge to academic freedom but rather as its necessary bulwark of credibility.

Here’s the straightforward TV coverage from WPIX-New York. Petersen says on TV, “I have very vocal views in favor of the Palestinian cause for self-determination.” The reporter says that Petersen hopes to rally support from other professors and that he plans to appeal. That would be an opportunity to further reveal the answers to how and why this pro-Palestinian activist was hired, and to reveal the CUNY professors who may believe Petersen is a qualified professor.

Update: A pro-Palestinian supporter of Kristofer Peterson shares Peterson's email to him: “I was not contacted by Brooklyn College administration at any time during their decision-making process. This politically motivated action undermines CUNY’s longstanding legacy as a stalwart defender of academic freedom.”



Here's a sample of the graphics that is featured with the writing of this friend of Peterson: "You must act now to stop the Holocaust in Gaza..."

SOURCE





Science report card: Most US students “not proficient”

Just 34 percent of fourth-graders, 30 percent of eighth-graders, and 21 percent of 12th-graders are performing at or above “proficient” in the most recent snapshot from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which gives science scores from 2009. A very small number – just 1 or 2 percent at each grade level – scored at the “advanced” level, and relatively large numbers of students didn’t even meet the most basic level.

“The results released today show that our nation's students aren't learning at a rate that will maintain America's role as an international leader in the sciences,” said Arne Duncan, the US secretary of Education, in a statement. “When only 1 or 2 percent of children score at the advanced levels on NAEP, the next generation will not be ready to be world-class inventors, doctors, and engineers.”

The NAEP science test was revised considerably since the last time students were tested, and the results can’t be compared with previous years. The new framework takes into account scientific advances, science educators say, and does a better job of measuring higher-level scientific thinking. Many questions are open-ended and ask students to design or evaluate experiments, for instance.

“The good news is that this is a really great test,” says Alan Friedman, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board and a former director of the New York Hall of Science. But Dr. Friedman says he is especially concerned by the results at the two extremes: the tiny number of students who score at the advanced level and the large number scoring below basic. In fourth grade, 28 percent of students failed to meet the basic level. In eighth grade, the number rose to 37 percent, and at 12th grade, a whopping 47 percent of students didn’t meet the basic score.

“That is distressing,” Friedman says. “These challenges are very serious for all of us who are into science education and who want our kids to be prepared for living a full life.”

The NAEP results also showed big achievement gaps between races, income levels, public- and private-school students, and gender.

In fourth grade, for example, there was a 36-point achievement gap (on a 300-point scale) between blacks and whites, as well as a 32-point gap between Hispanic and white students. Boys performed two points better than girls, and private-school students outperformed public-school students by 14 points. Strong correlations were evident between better scores and students whose parents had more education.

“The overall performance is bleak, and the gaps are devastating,” says Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs at Education Trust, a nonprofit that focuses on narrowing the achievement gap. “Tonight the president is going to talk about the need for innovation to spur us out of these economic doldrums, and it looks like we haven’t given our kids the skills to do that. Science has always been the springboard of American innovation,... and it looks like we’re losing that.”

Also striking are the state-level results – available at the two lower grade levels for all but four states and the District of Columbia. Virtually across the board, the only states that performed better than the national average were located in the northern half of the country, and the states that performed worse than the national average were located in the southern half. A smattering of states all over had scores that were not significantly different from the rest of the nation.

At the fourth-grade level, the top-scoring states were New Hampshire, North Dakota, Virginia, and Kentucky, while Mississippi and California posted the lowest average scores. In Mississippi, 46 percent of fourth-graders failed to score at the basic level.

Those administering the NAEP project are always careful to shy away from drawing conclusions about the cause of achievement. But Friedman says he worries that the low scores may be partly due to an unintended consequence of No Child Left Behind, which led schools to focus almost exclusively on math and reading. He noted correlations between students who score better and factors such as whether their science classes regularly do hands-on activities or whether older students participate in science activities outside school.

He and others discount the idea that science is important only to a small handful of students who go on to a career in science or engineering.

“We want to enable every child to have the problem-solving, thinking, and communicating skills in the sciences so that they can be productive in whatever they choose to do for their field of work,” says Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of Science magazine and former president of the National Academy of Sciences.

In particular, Dr. Alberts says, it’s important that educators and students stop defining science as simply memorizing words that scientists use. Instead, the focus should be on higher-level thinking and scientific inquiry: “It’s learning how to do science and think like a scientist,” Alberts says.

The NAEP results should underscore how important it is to get qualified science teachers in the classroom, says Ms. Wilkins of Education Trust. “We know that at high-poverty, high-minority schools, kids are much more likely to be taking classes like science and math from out-of-field teachers,” she says.

SOURCE






One in three British students to miss out on university: Surge in applications will leave 250,000 out in the cold

Record numbers of university hopefuls face rejection this year after a dramatic rise in applicants and a freeze on places. Official figures show that a surge in demand from students in Britain and abroad will leave one in three applicants locked out of university in 2011 as 750,000 students compete for fewer than 475,000 places.

Data from the University and College Admissions Service show demand has increased by 5.1 per cent on last year but the number of places on offer has been frozen by the Government because of a funding shortage.

The surge has been blamed on teenagers ditching gap years – so they can get into university before tuition fees treble to a maximum of £9,000 in 2012 – and repeat applications from some of the 210,222 hopefuls who failed to get a place last year.

University hopefuls are increasingly turning to sciences over the arts, figures reveal. As the job market continues to contract, applicants are opting for more practical or vocational courses.

Unions yesterday accused the Government of ‘letting down a generation’ by failing to fund a sufficient number of places, but ministers insisted that going to university has always been a competitive process.

It will compound the misery of youngsters who face crippling debts thanks to the hike in tuition fees and an aggressive job market where one in five new graduates is unemployed, twice as many as in 2008.

Figures from Ucas show 583,500 students submitted applications by January 24 this year for courses starting in 2011, an increase of 28,062 on the same point in 2010.

Although January 15 is the recommended deadline for applications, Ucas estimates an additional 30 per cent of applicants will apply before the closing date in June, swelling numbers to more than 750,000.

There was particular demand from older students, suggesting many school leavers from previous years are reapplying. Applications from 19-year-olds increased by 9 per cent, 20-year-olds by 12.4 per cent and 21-year-olds by 15.3 per cent.

Applications from EU member states are up by 8,000 to 55,318 – a 17 per cent increase on last year – and from non-EU countries by 7.7 per cent to 36,365. Foreign students living in EU nations have applied for one in ten places for 2011.

This comes amid claims few EU students will pay back their UK taxpayer-funded loans because repayment is unenforceable and because many are from poorer countries, such as Estonia, where salaries do not reach the payback threshold of £21,000.

Applications for history and European languages spluttered to a halt and demand for courses such as classics, English and social sciences even declined by up to 2.7 per cent.

Education experts criticised the Government’s failure to provide funding for more places. Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: ‘For the third year running a cap on student numbers looks set to leave tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of well-qualified applicants without a place and forced to contemplate both a long process of reapplying next year and facing a huge increase in fees. ‘Ministers are at risk of letting down a generation.’

Universities minister David Willetts said: ‘Going to university has always been a competitive process and not all who apply are accepted. Despite this we do understand how frustrating it is for young people who wish to go to university and are unable to find a place.’

SOURCE



1 February, 2011

Australia: Should Italian and Chinese lead the new national curriculum?

Foreign languages are an enthusiasm of mine and I have some qualifications in three of them -- but I cannot for the life of me see why everybody should study them. Learning a foreign language is a huge task (and really huge if the language is Asian) and that diverts energies from the large range of other important subjects. And for what? I doubt that 1% will become translators as we have plenty of naturally bilingual people in Australia anyway (children of immigrants) -- JR

Should all students have to study a second language before year 7 as planned under the new national curriculum? The curriculum will cover 11 foreign languages with Italian and Chinese the first to be developed.

Latin and other classical languages have been left out, raising concern. Language teachers say this is a major omission because a knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek underpins understanding of literature, art and the English language. The sign language Auslan has also been left out, also raising concern.

Italian and Chinese have been given first priority because the national curriculum authority says they "represent languages that cater for the greatest range of learners". "Chinese is a national priority, and Italian is learnt by the largest number of students in the primary years and the second largest number of students enrolments over all." Indonesian, Japanese and Korean are also deemed national priorities as part of the second stage of the language curriculum development.

Traditional European languages including French and German and Spanish will also be included because they are among the most commonly taught languages in Australian schools. The national curriculum authority has included Spanish as a "language of global importance".

Parents are hotly debating these priorities, with some saying the options are too narrow and locking their children into choices too early. Some say they want their children to have wider language choices until at least year 10.

Parents have been telling talk-back radio this morning that they disagree with the national priorities given to some languages over others.

SOURCE




Israel Supporters Denied Entrance to Anti-Zionist Event at Rutgers

On Saturday night, January 29, anti-Zionist organizations barred hundreds of Jewish and pro-Israel gatherers from attending an event on the New Brunswick campus comparing Israeli actions to those of the Nazis. The program, titled “Never Again for Anyone,” was intended to coincide with the UN sanctioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day and “honor” the victims of the Holocaust. I, along with Rutgers University Hillel President Sarah Morrison and many others, viewed this event as an outright minimization of the Holocaust and defamation of the Jewish people.

Upon circulating information pertaining to this event around the tri-state area, the Jewish community along with those who seek to preserve the righteous memory of those murdered at the hands of the Nazis sought to audit the event. BAKA – Students United for Middle Eastern Justice, the host of the event, printed on the event page on Facebook that the event was free and open to the public. In addition, the group Never Again for Anyone, which is the host of the abhorrent tour, printed on the website for the event that a suggested donation of $5-$20 would be asked for at the door. Only after 200-400 pro-Israel supporters showed up did the event–held in a state school, paid for by both tax dollars and student fees–begin to discriminate who could enter the event free-of-cost.

First, the organizers of the event asked all of those who gathered together in opposition to the event to stand in a separate line and wait for seating to take place. Meanwhile, those in anti-Israel apparel, keffiyahs and hijabs were taken aside, given green wristbands, labeled as event “staff” and given free entrance. At one point, the hosts of the event, which ranged from groups like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network to the International Socialist Organization, tore apart a suggested donation sign leaving only the admission fee visible. The group then said students could attend free-of-charge if they became members of BAKA. However, this policy once again did not apply for the Jewish students hoping to attend. In fact, at one point, I signed my name and the woman behind the desk read it and furiously crossed out the information I had just posted.

This event demonstrates better than any protest or counter-rally ever could the vehement anti-Israel and concurrently anti-Semitic sentiment growing not only on the campus of Rutgers but across the country. The organizers of the program did not want any recording devices to be inside the event, continuing a recent trend among anti-Israel organizations on campus that have become increasingly secretive. Clearly those who opposed the comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany would not want to monetarily support the creators of the event. So by denying audio and video recording along with the admission of Israel supporters, BAKA effectively removed any open transmission of the program.

SOURCE





Britain's problem pupils will have to enrol at 'boot camps' run by former soldiers

Disruptive children will be sent to ‘boot camps’ run by former soldiers under Government plans. Expelled pupils are to receive a ‘military-style education’ at the special units separate from mainstream schools. Former army officers who fought in Afghanistan will keep the youngsters under close supervision while teaching them teamwork and basic skills.

There will be a strong emphasis on physical exercise including assault courses and training similar to the Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme. Children will be taught maths skills by learning how to use a map in a forest. They will also be expected to volunteer in their community.

Michael Gove yesterday paved the way for the measures as he unveiled his Education Bill, which focuses on boosting standards and improving behaviour in schools. If passed, the Bill will grant the Education Secretary powers to order a local council to close failing schools. And it will strip academy sponsors of their involvement in a school if that school under-performs.

The Bill also seeks to hand teachers more power to tackle bad behaviour in the classroom while freeing them of the reams of unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy introduced under Labour.

There are currently 16,000 youngsters under the age of 16 who are outside the school system, often because they have been excluded and no school will take them in. At present they are taught in one of more than 400 Pupil Referral Units which local authorities are obliged to provide.

Yesterday Mr Gove said most local authority-run referral units ‘are not up to snuff’ and expressed his desire for them to be closed and reopened as academies. He said he envisaged that they would be run by and modelled on charities such as Skill Force, which trains and hires veterans to teach disadvantaged and disruptive young children.

Peter Cross, OBE, head of Skill Force, said he had ‘been in talks’ with ministers about the possibility to running alternative referral units based on the current Skill Force courses. Skill Force already ‘teaches’ 4,000 pupils a year on its once-a-week, two-year course. These pupils, often on the brink of expulsion, are selected by schools to attend the courses.

Mr Cross said the charity has incredible success rates which he attributes to providing the pupils, many of whom are from single families, with a strong male role model.

He added: ‘Many of the veterans have served in Afghanistan. They are used to solving problems. And they have all been given military-style training. They adapt this for the youngsters and they treat them like adults.’

Mr Cross said the charity had also placed injured war veterans alongside their teachers with dramatic effects. ‘It teaches them about responsibility, compassion and courage.’

The Bill also makes it easier for head teachers to expel violent pupils. At the moment they can exclude a pupil for carrying a knife or acting violently. But their decision can be overruled and the head is forced to reinstate the pupil. The Bill states that a heads’ decision can be reviewed but it cannot be overturned.

It will also give the Government more power to intervene in schools that are failing and where pupil behaviour is out of control. Mr Gove will have the right to order a local authority to close a school that is in special measures, requires significant improvement or has failed to comply with a warning notice.

The Government will also be able to direct councils to give a warning notice to an under-performing school, He said that local authorities had not been tough enough on failing schools in the past. ‘More than two-thirds of local authorities had never issued a warning notice; only 100 warning notices had been issued during the history of this provision,’ he added.

‘Now we can insist that local authorities issue warning notices, and not just for schools in special measures but also for schools in the Ofsted category above that – notice to improve – and also for schools where there are real reasons for us to have concern.’

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