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31 January, 2009

Millions of British adults lack the basic skills in English and maths to get by

Millions of people are illiterate and struggle with the basic maths needed to get by in life despite billions of pounds being spent on the problem, an influential committee of MPs said. Even though GCSE achievement is rising, many teenagers are still leaving school without any qualifications in English and maths, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the committee, said that Britain faced dire consequences if the issue was not tackled. “This is a dismal picture, both for the many who face diminished prospects in what they can achieve in life and for the competitiveness of our country in the world economy,” he said. Even if the Government met its targets, he said, Britain would still compare badly with other developed countries. The most up-to-date research, from 2003, estimated that more than five million people lacked functional literacy and nearly seven million were innumerate. This is the equivalent of leaving school without a D to G grade GCSE in English or maths and being unable to read labels or count the change given when making a purchase.

The report said that, despite the Government spending 5 billion between 2001 and 2007 on trying to improve levels of literacy and numeracy, England still had an unacceptably high number of people who could not read, write or count. It said: “The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has helped no more than one in ten of those with numeracy skills below the level of a good GCSE. “Lack of up-to-date information on the skills of the population means that the department cannot be sure that its programmes are equipping people with the skills that the UK economy needs to remain competitive.”

The report found that more than 50,000 pupils left school in 2007 without achieving a grade D to G in maths and 39,000 failed to achieve this basic grade in English. It said that remedial action would be needed later in life to correct the deficiencies in skills. The authors of the report recommended adopting new approaches to recruiting maths teachers, such as targeting specific graduates and making it easier to train in different ways, including through distance learning.

The report also said that more effort should be made to help illiterate prisoners. “Only one in five offenders with very low levels of basic skills had enrolled on a course that would help them,” it said. “This represents a major lost opportunity.”

SOURCE




Church schools to be allowed to ban homosexual staff in South Australia

CHURCH schools will retain the right to refuse to employ gay teachers in South Australia under a watering-down of proposed anti-discrimination laws. Religious schools also will retain the right to prevent students, who belong to a non Christian religion, from wearing the dress or adornments of that religion at school.

The new Bill, which replaces a controversial 2006 Bill, gives employers a loophole under which they can refuse to employ people wearing religious dress, such as burkas, by allowing them to set "reasonable" standards of workplace dress. Proposed legislation to make the changes is set down for debate when Parliament resumes on Tuesday. That follows nearly three years of debate and intense behind-the-scenes negotiations between Labor and the Opposition.

Under the old Bill, church schools wanting an exemption to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality were required to lodge a copy of their policy with the Commissioner for Equal Opportunity and make it available to current and prospective staff, students and parents. That has been watered down so schools only will need to have a written policy available on inquiry and publish it on their website if they have one. Other proposed changes include:

RAISING the age limit from 12 to 16 under which a student can make a formal sexual harassment complaint.

DROPPING a proposed unlawful act of victimisation if a person were to "engage in a public act inciting hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule of a person or group".

DELETING part of the Bill which made it an offence to discriminate on the grounds of where a person lived.

LIMITING discrimination on the grounds of caring responsibilities to those looking after immediate family members while the original Bill had a much wider coverage.

Opposition justice spokeswoman Isobel Redmond said the Liberals, who supported large sections of the original Bill, would decide their position at a shadow cabinet meeting next week.

SOURCE





30 January, 2009

The British schools where NO-ONE speaks English as a first language

There are now ten schools in England without a single pupil who speaks English as his or her first language. Research reveals that there are almost 600 primary schools where 70 per cent or more of youngsters normally speak a foreign language. Across the country, one in seven pupils aged 4-11 does not have English as the first language, which is the equivalent of 466,620 children. But, following years of unprecedented levels of migration, ten schools have now reached a point where every youngster falls into this category.

Their locations range from London to Lancashire. One, St Hilda's in Oldham, is a Church of England school. Some schools are in areas with long-established Muslim populations. In others, the high number of non-English speakers is the consequence of large-scale immigration from Eastern Europe.

Labour MP Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames, co-chairmen of the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, said: 'These figures make a nonsense of the Government's aim of integration and show the very real strain that uncontrolled large scale immigration is already placing upon our society. 'In hundreds of primary schools, English is the second language for over 70 per cent or more of the pupils. 'How can these children be expected to integrate into our society if they are being taught in schools where is English is the mother tongue of no pupils or a minority of pupils?' Mr Field asked the Children's Department to produce a list of all those schools where seven in ten or more pupils did not have English as their first language.

The 591 primary schools out of 17,205 which fall into this category represent around three per cent, or around one in 30. There are a number of local authorities where 20 per cent or more of their schools have at least 70 per cent of youngsters who do not have English as their first language. These include the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets (62 per cent), Newham (46.9), Brent (28.8) and Ealing (28), plus Blackburn (26.7), Leicester (25.9), Bradford (25), Luton (20.3) and Birmingham (20).

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: 'Two successful elements of any immigration policy should be to limit the numbers coming in so that the pressure on all public services is reduced, and to insist on English being spoken to a competent level by people coming here to get married. 'It is relatively easy to cope with a small number of non-English speakers, but incredibly difficult if there are large numbers. Scale matters.'

David Green, director of the Civitas think-tank, has warned that when a large number of immigrant children go into schools, it is very hard for the staff to accommodate them and specialist teachers have to be brought in. Last night, Dr Green said that when the Government was advocating the economic benefits of mass migration, it failed to take into account the impact on schools and other public services. He warned that one of the consequences of having schools where no pupils had English as a first language was that they and their families might lead a sectarian lifestyle.

A spokesman for the Children's Department said: 'It is important to remember that some of the schools with 100 per cent of their pupils with English as an additional language are actually doing very well, especially considering the extra challenges they face. 'Even if a pupil speaks another language they may still be highly competent in English, and many are. In cases recent arrivals from countries such as Poland have helped keep small rural schools open that may have otherwise closed because of falling pupil numbers. 'The language of instruction in English schools is English and this is vital in boosting community cohesion. 'The task is to get every child up to speed in English so that they can access the whole curriculum. 'We have listened to the concerns of head teachers and are increasing funding in the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant to 206million pounds by 2010, to bring students weak in English up to speed.'

SOURCE




Choice, not report cards, will cure schools. The Swedish example

In an effort to show greater accountability for results, school districts across the country from Florida to Missouri to California are issuing so-called school report cards, which contain data on various indicators of student and school performance. Ray Cortines, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), recently announced a new report card on the performance of each school in his district. Parents may welcome the new information but, unfortunately, there is little they can do with that information to improve the education of their children.

The new report card offers a much different picture of school performance than that contained in the state's calculations. For example, the latest state figures claim a graduation rate of 76 percent for Manual Arts High School near downtown Los Angeles. In eye-opening contrast, the district report card says that only 37 percent of the school's students in the class of 2008 graduated on time. Cortines fully acknowledged that in the past school districts cherry-picked statistics to cover up poor performance and accentuate selective successes. Now, says Cortines, "I want both the bad and good, and I don't want it sugarcoated." While Cortines' attitude is highly commendable, the new district report card has holes.

The report card fails to include measurements of teaching effectiveness, campus safety, and satisfaction of parents and students with individual schools. There are even more critical concerns, however, than missing statistics. While it's important that parents receive truthful information regarding their children's school, the question remains what they can do with this information once they receive it. Even if they truly understand how badly their neighborhood public school is performing, there are precious few alternatives.

Imagine you are a parent with a child at Manual Arts High School. You learn from the new district report card that only 13 percent of students at the school score at the proficient level or above on the state English test and 2 percent score at that level in math. What recourse is open to you? Wait for the school to do better? That could take years, if not decades, and your child will be long gone, saddled with an inadequate education, and ill-prepared for higher education or the modern workplace.

How about working to turn the school into a less-regulated public charter school? That might be great, but the process of creating a charter is often extremely political, and the powerful Los Angeles teachers union has fought such efforts tooth and nail. Perhaps paying for private school or private after-school tutoring? Such costly alternatives aren't an option even for many middle-class families, saddled with debt and job uncertainty.

There's really only one effective way to ensure that parents can use the information contained in public-school report cards to improve their children's education immediately. That's by giving them school-choice options such as the universal voucher system Sweden instituted in the early 1990s. While the Swedish banking plan has been cited as a possible way to solve our own banking crisis, the Swedes actually offer a better example for education reform. Under the Swedish voucher system, government funding follows the child, which allows parents of all income levels to choose between local municipal schools and private independent schools. Prior to the enactment of the voucher system Sweden had very few private schools but now about one- third of students in Stockholm attends private school.

Research shows that the Swedish private schools perform at a higher level than the public schools, but that the competition resulting from the program has raised public-school performance. Most important, the voucher program gives parents a ticket to exit public schools that are not meeting the needs of their children.

Per Unckel, current governor of Stockholm and minister of education when the Swedish school-choice law was implemented, says that all parents have the inherent right to send their children to the school of their choice. Parents, he emphasized, should be given choice options immediately, without having to wait for government-run schools to take years to improve, because every year in a failing school is a year wasted in a child's life.

In the end, better information in school report cards will only help parents if they are given the tools to make better education choices for their children. Improved information without choice creates frustration, while improved information with choice creates satisfaction. It's time for policymakers to stop worrying about satisfying the education special interests and start giving real satisfaction to parents and their children.

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29 January, 2009

The race-obsessed University of California

There is a movement afoot to have the University of California’s Board of Regents vote on February 4 to get rid of the SAT II as part of UC’s admissions process. The reason, predictably, is to change the racial makeup of the student body currently being admitted.

And here’s an interesting twist: While designed to increase the number of blacks, getting rid of the SAT II will apparently hurt not only whites but also Asians and Hispanics. State assemblyman Van Tran recently wrote that the proposed move “could diminish opportunities for tens of thousands of UC applicants from minority, immigrant, and disadvantaged families.” Former U.S. Representative Doug Ose agreed, in this op-ed for The Berkeley Daily Planet.

Actually, this twist is maybe not so interesting; it’s becoming old hat. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) recently proposed reinstating racial preferences in its federal highway contracting. And it proposed that, from now on, these preferences would include blacks and exclude not only whites but also Hispanics and some Asians. And if you don’t get a preference when others do, of course, then the fact of the matter is that you are discriminated against.

Tension between blacks and Hispanics in California is not news either. A few years ago, California lawyer Nicolas C. Vaca wrote The Presumed Alliance, the subtitle of which was “The Unspoken Conflict between Latinos and Blacks and What It Means for America.” More recently, New America Media published a survey that highlighted the extent to which there are tensions between Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans.

These inter-minority tensions are not exactly inspiring, but they do point to an obvious solution, which is: As America becomes an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic society, a legal regime that sorts people according to skin color and what country their ancestors came from becomes increasingly untenable. Accordingly, we must embrace without further delay the colorblind ideal rather than a divisive racial spoils system. As a prerequisite to mutual respect, everyone must know that everyone else is being judged by the same standard, without discrimination. And make no mistake about it: Getting rid of selection criteria (like the SAT II) because they don’t give you the racial numbers you want is a form of discrimination.

Suppose the shoe were on the other foot, and the Regents were being urged by whites to stop using a test that was resulting in “too many” blacks being admitted. One hopes that the Regents would simply tell this crowd to get lost.

And, indeed, there is precedent for rejecting such schemes as illegal. The Supreme Court long ago ruled that the infamous “grandfather clauses”—which superficially might appear neutral but were deliberately designed to help whites register to vote at the expense of blacks—were unconstitutional.

The inconvenient truth is that students in some groups (like Asians) are reaching the age of 18 with, on average, better academic credentials than those of students in other groups (like blacks). The reason for this is not that the tests are unfair. Rather, the main reason is that more than 7 in 10 blacks are now born out of wedlock, versus fewer than 2 out of 10 Asians and Pacific Islanders.

As the Educational Testing Service has warned (in a study published in fall 2007, quoting from “the most recent and large-scale synthesis of research on single-parent families in the United States”): “Studies demonstrate quite conclusively that children who live in single-mother families score lower on measures of academic achievement than those in two-parent families.”

Since the tests are perfectly valid, what is unfair—to those who have worked hard and therefore do well on them—is to throw them out because “too many” students of one color have scored high. Harvard, Stanford, and other top schools recognize the value of the SAT II. Harvard’s dean of admissions recently announced that the university’s own internal studies have proven the efficacy of the test in predicting academic success, noting it is a better predictor than high school grades, for instance. Prof. Keith Widaman, who heads UC Davis’s faculty committee on admissions, likewise defended the SAT II in this recent Sacramento Bee article.

Accordingly, the University of California’s Board of Regents must refuse to jerry-rig the undergraduate admissions system to ensure a predetermined, politically correct racial and ethnic mix. Instead, educators ought to figure out what criteria will select students with the most willingness and the greatest ability to do the school’s academic work, and then apply those criteria to all students, without regard to race or ethnicity—and let the chips fall where they may.What’s wrong with that?

SOURCE




Illegitimacy and the Black-White Test-Score Gap

Just about nobody in public life is game to admit the amply documented fact that blacks have ON AVERAGE much lower IQs than whites and Asians. And because it really does measure broad intelligence, IQ is the most powerful predictor of educational success. So people are always trying to find some other explanation for the extraordinary poor performance of blacks in education. The article immediately above nominates the fact that most blacks are born out of wedlock. The post below punctures that polite little fiction

I agree that illegitimacy can affect other areas of life, and almost certainly, if we could restore the black illegitimacy rate to what it was before the welfare state, the black-white gap in academic performance would close some.

However, I don't share your confidence (expressed both here and on the Corner) that closing the illegitimacy-rate gap, in and of itself, will somehow catapult blacks to near-equality academically. This implies that between blacks and whites, differences in illegitimacy explain nearly 100 percent of differences in test scores.

One way to test this idea is to see if the black-white score gap moves in tandem with the black-white illegitimacy gap. On the contrary, illegitimacy rose pretty much continuously between 1940 and the turn of the century, with black illegitimacy always rising faster than white illegitimacy—while the black-white test-score gap either improved or didn't move (depending upon whom you ask).

This situation, in which increased illegitimacy corresponds to steady or even improving test scores, would seem to suggest that other factors are having a large impact on the gap.

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28 January, 2009

Arkansas parents challenge racist law

Why should kids be kept in underperforming schools just because they are white?

Four rural, mostly white school districts in Hot Spring County are being asked to defend the race restrictions in a school transfer law that they'd rather see changed. A group of white parents has sued the districts over the School Choice Act, which forbids the four schools from accepting white students from the racially diverse Malvern district which they're supposed to attend. So when the Ouachita, Glen Rose, Magnet Cove and Bismarck districts were named in the federal lawsuit, they offered no defense of the 1989 law. With that, they've sided with those who favor more choice in selecting schools and against many racially diverse school systems in urban areas where administrators fear white students will flee if the race provisions are removed.

The divide between various school systems presents a challenge for lawmakers who plan to reconsider the law this session while the parents continue their fight in U.S. District Court in Hot Springs. On one side, with higher percentages of white students, are the many rural and suburban schools who want to open their doors to anyone who wants to transfer. On the other side, with higher percentages of black students, are more urban schools such as Hope, Jonesboro, El Dorado, Camden-Fairview and Hot Springs, where administrators say they fear "white flight." "It's hard to please everybody," said Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, who leads the House Education Committee. "It's going to be difficult to find middle ground."

Parents of at least 50 white students in Hot Spring County have sued the Ouachita, Glen Rose, Magnet Cove and Bismarck districts along with the state Board of Education and the Malvern School District, claiming the transfer law violates their civil rights. The parents live within the boundaries of Malvern schools, where roughly one-third of the student body is black, but they want their children to attend the other schools, where the number of white students exceeds 90 percent. The school choice law bans transfers that "adversely affect the desegregation of either district," and it outlines specific formulas to be used in calculating the racial balance.

The lawsuit points to a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restricted race-based enrollment decisions. But there is no consensus among education attorneys in Arkansas on whether the ruling means Arkansas' law is constitutional. The state attorney general's office plans to defend the law in the Malvern case, which is scheduled for a Nov. 30 trial. Still, lawmakers say they intend to propose changes. "This is the biggest policy issue, in my opinion, that this state faces this session," said Tom Kimbrell, executive director of a state association that represents school administrators.

When lawmakers passed the choice act, they intended to increase competition among schools by freeing parents, to some extent, to pick schools, regardless of where they live. In the past few years, fewer than 1 percent of students across the state have transferred out of their home districts under the law, according to the Arkansas Department of Education. This school year, 2,718 of the state's 465,801 students took advantage of the law. There is no way to know how many more would transfer if the race restrictions were removed, and the Department of Education is not studying the matter, a spokesman said.

But Allen Roberts, an attorney for several school districts including El Dorado and Camden Fairview in south Arkansas, says he's convinced that large numbers of white students would leave the more urban schools. "If students were permitted to go to school wherever they wanted to, at school districts in south and east Arkansas, that would result in total segregation to the education system in that area," he said.

Superintendents at districts that stand to gain more students under loosened rules, however, say race should not be a factor in enrollment decisions. "The playing field is not level right now," said Nathan Gills, superintendent of the Glen Rose School District, where the student body is about 98 percent white. The Glen Rose School Board in Hot Spring County even passed a resolution stating their view that the race provisions in the act are unconstitutional. And when Glen Rose and the other area schools were forced to respond to the federal lawsuit that originally named just Malvern, their attorney simply offered that the districts "admit that the race-based provision of the school choice statute is unconstitutional at this time."

In St. Francis County, one district made a bold move this school year to buck the state transfer law and turn a blind eye to the color of the skin of the students seeking transfer. The Palestine-Wheatley School District in the Delta can't accept more white students from its nearby districts, under the choice act. Its student body is about one-third black, compared with the two other districts in the county where the student bodies are nearly 80 percent black. But Superintendent Donny Collins said he thinks the act is unconstitutional, so he took a risk and accepted both black and white student transfers. Enrollment climbed a couple of dozen students to 626, he said. "You just can't base something on race," Collins said.

More here




New British diplomas not suitable for bright pupils, say teachers

More crap education for kids stuck in British government schools

Teachers do not rate the Government's new diploma as suitable for bright teenagers or those wanting to go to university, according to research published today. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, appears to be failing to win round his own workforce in promoting the qualification for 14 to 19-year-olds. Mr Balls has said that the diploma, which is supposed to bridge the academic and vocational divide, could become the qualification of choice, eventually replacing A levels. Teachers, however, do not appear to share his enthusiasm. A survey of 1,300 teachers found that under a quarter thought the diploma was suitable for academically able pupils. Just a fifth believed that students destined for university should bother taking a diploma; A levels were still seen by most teachers as appropriate for clever pupils and for those wanting to progress to university.

The results of the survey are a blow for the Government, which has pushed hard to convince parents, universities and employers of the diploma's worth. The qualification was designed to break down what ministers have called the pernicious divide between theoretical and practical education.

Some universities have agreed to accept the engineering diploma, but Oxford and Cambridge also want students to take A-level physics as a condition of entry to its engineering degree course. Other diploma subjects include construction, hair and beauty, information technology, and travel and tourism. Five diplomas are currently on offer, with plans for an eventual 17. Three announced most recently appear more academic than their predecessors, covering science, languages and humanities, but these will not be available until 2011. Only 12,000 teenagers began taking diplomas last September, a quarter of the Government's original estimate.

The poll, conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research and released by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, found that three quarters of teachers thought the diploma was for schools in poorer areas. Only three in ten believed it was suitable for independent schools. More than four fifths saw the qualification as being for those who wanted to pursue a vocational route.

James Turner, director of policy at the Sutton Trust, said: "At a time when diplomas are being heavily promoted to schools and students, it is worrying that the perception among teachers - who should be best informed - is that these are not for bright young people with university ambitions. This reflects a wider confusion about the role and currency of the different qualifications available in schools and colleges. "There is a real danger of a divide emerging between those pupils in independent and top state schools who are set on an academic path, leading to places in selective universities, and students from non-privileged backgrounds who have those opportunities closed to them."

Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said the survey showed that young people needed better guidance. Diana Warwick, its chief executive, said: "This is a new qualification, so inevitably there will be a learning curve for everyone involved. But we are concerned that there is a perception among the teachers surveyed that the diplomas are not appropriate qualifications for students aiming to go on to university. "Diplomas provide a new route to higher education and enable wider accessibility for students to develop the skills that best meet their aspirations."

Professor Michael Arthur, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds and a member of the Government's advisory group on diplomas, said: "The results of this survey show that we have to work harder on providing high quality information and training to those that are giving our 14 to 16-year-olds advice and guidance about their future studies."

SOURCE





27 January, 2009

British schoolgirls banned from lessons by headmaster for being 'too blonde'

What smallmindedness!

A headteacher has come under fire from parents and pupils after banning two 16-year-olds from school for being 'too blonde'. Raegan Booth, 16, and Aby Western, 15, say they were threatened with expulsion by David Alexander unless they dyed their hair brown. The girls claim they are being forced to adhere to the strict dress code of Rednock School in Dursley, Gloucestershire, in order to sit GCSE exams. But Raegan remains adamant that her hair is a natural shade of blonde. She said:'The school rules clearly state that there are to be no "unnatural" hair colours on students. 'Unnatural hair colours are blue, purple, green and bright red. Blonde is considered a natural hair colour and there are many different shades.

'The head claims that he must follow the rules. To me this suggests that certain students are being made to look a way which is against their will. 'I believe this is wrong and no amount of hair dye affects a person's ability in school.' The teenager, who is refusing to dye her hair a darker shade, added: 'As we are in the middle of our GCSE year, we should not be excluded over something so petty. 'This is a crucial time for us and we should be focusing solely on our grades as opposed to our level of appearance.'

Martin Booth, Raegan's father said: 'Raegan is a model pupil and is working very hard towards her exams. 'She is always well turned out, her hair looks a very natural blonde. 'This is their final year, they are under enough pressure with GCSEs, they do not need to be worrying about their hair.'

Mr Alexander, who is due to meet with Raegan, denies the claims. He said that the girls were sent home only to dye their hair, and that they would still have been allowed to sit their GCSE exams. He said: 'We would not stop any student from sitting their GCSEs, it is in our interests that every student sits their GCSEs at the school. 'We are just trying to be consistent and apply the rules across the board. This code of conduct has been in place for a long time. 'However I am going to be meeting with parents to talk about looking again at the code and making it more clear. 'I think the problem is how you interpret the rules and we need to make it clearer for the students and parents. 'I accept this is a stressful time for the GCSE students, but we have to be consistent with our rules and must apply it to all year groups, otherwise it would be unfair.'

SOURCE




Dumbed down education hits home in Australia

POOR spelling and grammar, verbose resumes and applications that include too many personal details are killing the chance of job seekers finding work. Recruiters and those who help applicants prepare CVs and resumes say they are astounded by some of the obvious mistakes that job applicants make. "The world of texting and emails has lowered people's standards of English," Jeanette Hannan of Brisbane firm Resumes for Results said. "I receive emails with text message jargon. I straight away dismiss them."

Some applicants put too many details about their private lives, and wrote resumes that were 20 to 30 pages long. "They will put in that they are married, how many children they have, even the dog's name," Ms Hannan said. One woman even detailed her husband's and father's job qualifications.

Ms Hannan said job seekers often failed to sell their achievements, such as boosting sales achieved in a previous job. Kevin Alexander, practice leader with recruitment firm Hudson, said many people forgot the importance of the resume document. "It is the document that the candidate will be initially judged against, and therefore it is vital to get right," he said. While candidates could get away with a few lapses in their resume in the past, as the job market intensified this year employers would look for those who stood out, Mr Alexander said. Many people with great resumes fell at the interview hurdle and job applicants needed to be prepared for several interviews, he said.

Recruiter Glenda Stenner said the internet had made it too easy for people to apply for jobs, and as a result some applied for too many positions, including those for which they were not qualified. She has seen bad spelling mistakes, particularly in resumes of people applying for administrative positions.

Ms Stenner said employers and recruiters were being inundated with applications, and resumes and cover letters needed to have enough impact to get the job seeker on to the shortlist. "It should be just the facts," Ms Stenner said. One employer said he sometimes had to scroll down five pages of information before he found out where an applicant had worked. Ms Stenner said some applicants failed to tailor cover letters to the position, and were sending the same cover letter over and over, with the same mistakes.

Deborah Barit of Impressive Interviews said many applicants did not explain what they did and tried to give employers too much information they were not interested in.

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26 January, 2009

British A-levels 'destroyed' by Government interference

A leading independent school is axing A-levels amid claims the exam has been "destroyed by Government interference".

Charterhouse is introducing two new qualifications to replace traditional courses following fears they fail to prepare students for university. The Rev John Witheridge, the headmaster, said schools had been left with a "dumbed down exam" as the Government aims to to increase the number of students gaining top grades as part of a drive to get more school-leavers into university.

Last September, sixth-formers at the school started Cambridge University's new Pre-U qualification - developed as a tough alternative to A-levels. The school is believed to be doing more Pre-U subjects than most other state or fee-paying schools. Now Charterhouse in Godalming, Surrey, has also announced it will offer the International Baccalaureate - the Swiss-based course set up for academic all-rounders - by September 2011.

It comes as the school prepares to stage a conference next week on the future shape of sixth-form education. Mr Witheridge said: "Government interference has destroyed the A-level as an exam for bright sixth-formers. They have reduced the overall level in order to increase the school-leavers passing the exam and going on to university. We are quite certain that the A-level has had its day."

Fifteen state schools and 35 from the private sector offered the Pre-U for the first time in September. Another 100 schools have confirmed they will run the courses in the next three years. It is seen as a return to traditional A-level study before the course was divided into six modules that students can re-sit multiple times to inflate their marks. Pupils take Pre-U exams at the end of the two-year course and answer mainly essay-based questions.

Ministers introduced reforms to A-levels last September, cutting the number of modules and introducing an elite A* to pick out the brightest. But Mr Witheridge said: "We felt that was a minimal change and we were still left with a dumbed down exam."

The school will join names such as North London Collegiate School, Sevenoaks, King's College School and Cheltenham Ladies' College in offering the IB. King Edward's School in Surrey has announced it will offer the IB exclusively from 2010 after running it alongside A-levels for the last four years, while Wellington College is proposing an IB qualification for under-16s. As part of the course, students study six subjects - three at higher and three at a standard level. They also complete a 4,000-word essay, a theory of knowledge module, extracurricular activities and community service.

"Almost every subject department here does the Pre-U and we want to offer the IB as well by 2011," said Mr Witheridge. "We think the Pre-U will be attractive for those students who want to specialist in particular areas, while most generalists among our sixth-form will go for the IB. It means all our students will be able to follow qualifications that are valued by universities, free of Government interference."

SOURCE




Australia: Teachers getting fed up with chaotic schools

MORE than 530 graduate teachers will begin work in State Government schools this week, but twice as many teachers resign every year. There has been a 17 per cent jump in primary and secondary teacher resignations since 2003, according to the latest State Government figures obtained by the Opposition.

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said there would be a shortage of teachers in specialist subjects in government secondary schools this year. Mr Ryan said maths, science and manual arts would be hit hardest. "Enrolments are increasing and the number of teachers also needs to increase," Mr Ryan said. The Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said the Beattie and Bligh governments had taken teachers for granted.

ABOUT 5 per cent of state school classes have too many children. That figure has remained constant for the past three years, despite regular complaints of overcrowding. Education Queensland and the Queensland Teachers Union have agreed on target class sizes for 2009: Prep to Year 3, 25; Years 4 to 10, 28; and Years 11 and 12, 25. "Queensland state school students spend the vast majority of their time in classes under the target sizes," a department spokesman said.

Almost 500,000 students will enrol at state primary, secondary and special schools in 2009. Just under half that number will enrol at private schools. Staffing at the 1250 state schools will be based on rolls on the eighth day of the school year - Thursday, February 5, - the official census day.

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25 January, 2009

How hysterical mothers have driven men out of teaching in Britain

As endangered species go, this one is especially alarming: so rare has the male primary school teacher become that one in ten schools has none at all, while across the country they account for barely 15 per cent of those who teach under-11s. At a time when unprecedented numbers of children live with single mothers, this means that more and more of them have little or no contact with any male role model at all. So parents have decided, as a survey this week shows, that they aren't happy about it. They think, correctly, that it is good for children to have a man to look up to; that many pupils, especially boys, behave better with a man in charge. They think that their children are being shortchanged by the imbalance.

I agree. But I also think that too many of these 'concerned parents' have only themselves to blame. There are two reasons given to explain the slump in male teacher recruitment. The first is that men tend to view the profession as 'women's work'. But if that were true, then why are nearly half of all secondary school teachers men? Nor does it explain why, given the far more rigidly sex-divided jobs of my youth, most of my primary school teachers were men.

So let's hazard a guess at what has changed since then. My old teachers were free to enjoy their jobs because they were exempt from the second, and more truthful, of the reasons given by the Children's Workforce Development Council (which commissioned the survey) for the decline in numbers. It is that these days, men are scared of teaching young children because they are scared of false allegations of child abuse. And if you want to know who is largely responsible for creating an atmosphere in which such a fear is all too horribly realistic, look no further than the twittering bunch of over-protective, over-excitable mothers clustered around our school gates.

These are the people who have bought, wholesale, into the myth of the sexually predatory bogeyman on every corner; the people who have, in a single generation, swept us from the sensible 'don't take sweets from strangers' to the absurd 'all men are paedophiles'. These are the people who breathe the fire of the name-and-shame campaigns of the scurrilous end of the Press; the people who have propelled sensational memoir after memoir of child sex abuse to the top of the bestseller charts. These are the people who declare such abuse to be appalling, but who slavishly follow the titillating thrill of 'kiddie-fiddler' storylines in soaps or films - the same soaps and films that their children also watch.

And that, of course, is the point: observant, clever and calculating as most children can be, they note the drama that thrills Mummy so very much and, sometimes, they spot their chance of a leading role in it. Robbed as they have been of their innocence, familiar with concepts and even words that most of us would not have known at their age, they join in. This is not mere speculation on my part. I have personally known a false allegation to have happened and seen the desperately unfair consequences of it.

Let us call him Roger, this committed and dedicated teacher at an inner-city school. He was impeccably behaved and adored by pupils, staff and the head, who is a close friend of mine. So she was utterly taken aback when an eight-year-old, known already to be disturbed, complained that Roger had touched him 'inappropriately'. But no matter the head's disbelief, rules are rules and, no doubt, rightly so. So Roger was suspended and sent home with his future hanging in the balance until the necessary inquiry could be arranged. In the event, there was not only a lack of proof of his guilt, there was incontrovertible proof of his innocence, as he had never been alone with the child in question.

Back at school, however, this was not enough for the twitterers at the gates. There was much over-excitable chit-chat concerning 'no smoke without fire' - chit-chat picked up by the children until, just a few months later, it happened to him again. Another allegation, another suspension, another inquiry, another total exoneration. But this time, with Roger and his wife racing each other towards mental breakdown, he left teaching: everyone, but everyone, was a loser.

There was an 'abuse counsellor' whom I once interviewed whose immovable principle was that children never lie about such things. That is rot. They do lie. And the question is not why they do, but why shouldn't they? It's a he-said/she-said game. They think they stand a chance of winning it, they get to be the centre of attention, wielding a power unusual (and unhealthy) for a child, and fully aware that if they get caught out in the lie they won't even be punished for it. They know what rattles Mummy's cage so, not surprisingly, they rattle it.

If Mummy really wanted to do her child a favour, she would forego the thrills and spills of paedophile hysteria, complete with its marches, banners, petitions and idiots, and opt for a more rational assessment of the relationship between children and male adults. First, she might look closer to home. When the NSPCC reported this week that the police estimate some 50 allegations a day of sexual abuse against children, they meant, overwhelmingly, abuse at the hands of family or of parents' friends. Mummy should be rather more vigilant about the new boyfriend she allows into her home than she need ever be about a stranger, let alone a professional one. She might also like to monitor far more closely the menace of the internet and its 'grooming' chat rooms in which the real monsters lurk.

But as for the fear of a male primary school teacher turning out to be one of them, she can forget it: so rigorous are today's checks upon teachers that a Home Office spokesman boasts of 'the most comprehensive vetting service anywhere in the world'. In short, the chance of a predator sneaking through is up there with camels and eyes of needles.

We need more male primary school teachers for all our children. For boys, they provide a glimpse of potential for their own futures: a reason to work hard, to play fair, to demand respect from the world around them. It matters, too, for girls. If the first proper contact a girl has with men is as a teenager, when her hormones are raging, the consequences of her lack of experience of them are already too obvious.

But if, back in their formative years, Mummy's fevered and irrational obsession with paedophilia leads her to say - and, believe me, I've heard it said - that there must be 'something funny' about men who want to work with small children, their numbers will continue to fall until there are none left at all. If she cannot look at a teacher like Roger without suspicion, she may think she's only doing her best to keep her precious babies safe. In fact, she might be paying a price they can't afford.

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CT: Court backs school’s punishment of student for off-site writing

This is very dubious. What right has a school got to penalize what people do at home?

Burlington school officials acted within their rights to discipline a student for an Internet posting she wrote off school grounds, a federal judge has ruled. US District Court Judge Mark Kravitz rejected Avery Doninger's claim that administrators at Lewis B. Mills High School violated her rights of free speech and equal protection. She also alleged they inflicted emotional distress when they barred her from serving as class secretary because of the 2007 posting, which criticized the administrators for canceling a popular school activity.

Kravitz's ruling relied partly on the ambiguity over whether schools can regulate students' expression on the Internet. He noted in his ruling that times have changed since 1979, when a landmark student speech case set boundaries for schools regulating off-campus speech. Now, he wrote, students can send e-mails to hundreds of classmates at a time or post entries that can be read instantly by students, teachers, and administrators. "Off-campus speech can become on-campus speech with the click of a mouse," Kravitz wrote.

Kravitz cited previous rulings in his decision that school administrators were entitled to qualified immunity. That shields public officials from lawsuits for damages unless they violate clearly established rights that a reasonable official would have known. The officials could not reasonably be expected "to predict where the line between on- and off-campus speech will be drawn in this new digital era," he wrote.

Kravitz's ruling let Doninger's claim stand that her right to free speech was "chilled" when an administrator prohibited students from wearing T-shirts that read "Team Avery" to a student council election assembly. That matter can proceed to trial.

Doninger's attorney, Jon Schoenhorn, plans to appeal the rest of the ruling and said the case may ultimately have to be decided by the US Supreme Court. "We are not backing down," he said.

Thomas R. Gerarde, attorney for Regional School District 10, likened the case to "taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning" and pointed out that every ruling has favored the district so far. "The school district is pleased to have won another decided victory in this seemingly never-ending saga," Gerarde said.

The case stemmed from a 2007 dispute over comments that Doninger, then the junior class secretary, made about administrators in her blog after they canceled a popular event she helped plan. The event was later rescheduled. Administrators prohibited Doninger from seeking reelection as class secretary, but she refused to withdraw her candidacy and won as a write-in candidate. The school then barred her from serving in the post. Doninger, who graduated in 2008, now works for AmeriCorps in an impoverished school in Denver.

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24 January, 2009

"Stimulus:” $142 billion to schools … with strings

Surprisingly reasonable "strings" though

The USA's public schools stand to be the biggest winners in Congress' $825 billion economic stimulus plan unveiled last week. Schools are scheduled to receive nearly $142 billion over the next two years — more than health care, energy or infrastructure projects — and the stimulus could bring school advocates closer than ever to a long-sought dream: full funding of the No Child Left Behind law and other huge federal programs. But tucked into the text of the proposal's 328 pages are a few surprises: If they want the money — and they certainly do — schools must spend at least a portion of it on a few of education advocates' long-sought dreams. In particular, they must develop:

• High-quality educational tests.

• Ways to recruit and retain top teachers in hard-to-staff schools.

• Longitudinal data systems that let schools track long-term progress.

"The new administration does not want to lose a year on the progress because of the downturn in the economy," says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education Committee. "So I think these are all things that are clearly doable."

Testing, a key part of the No Child law, has gotten short shrift from most states, says Thomas Toch of Education Sector, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "Existing state tests are not as good as they could be," he says. "Putting new money into building stronger state assessments is what's needed."

But he and others say a big challenge will be to ensure that states don't simply cut their own education budgets in anticipation of massive federal increases. "That's going to be a challenge because the states are all hurting," Toch says.

The plan also will help schools modernize and fix buildings. Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust, an advocacy group, says she's "pretty excited" about the requirement that states spend a portion of the stimulus cash attracting their best teachers to schools that serve low-income and minority students. "There's nothing they could do with it that would be more important for high-poverty kids."

But Charles Barone, a former congressional staffer who helped design the education reform law, says the plan doesn't go far enough. He predicts states won't do much to change how they hire teachers — and they'll still get their money. "All they're going to have to do is copy and paste what's in their current plan to get this money," says Barone, who now consults about education and writes a popular blog. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he says. "It seems to me you'd ask more from states and districts in terms of the kind of changes you've been talking about for years."

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French 'Maths fairy', Stella Baruk, uses fingers to add up

WHEN Stella Baruk first proposed a teaching method for mathematics that involved magic squares, fingers and dogs' legs, there were howls of protest from the French elite. That was 30 years ago. Today, Mrs Baruk is being hailed as a saviour, making les mathematiques understandable to children whose inability to grasp square roots, algebra or geometry has come to be seen as a national crisis. She is dubbed "the maths fairy" by the radio station Europe 1 and "the J.K.Rowling of figures" by Le Nouvel Observateur, and her methods are influencing teachers and teaching programmes in France and abroad.

Schools report a spectacular improvement in the results of pupils taught her way. Her books, including her latest, an 851-page dictionary of mathematical terms, sell tens of thousands of copies.

The best-connected parents fight to send their offspring to the private lessons she gives.The Iranian-born Mrs Baruk argues that pupils' failures in school are down to the often impenetrable language in which mathematics is taught: "Teachers think their pupils understand what they are saying when, in fact, they are often understanding something entirely different." Dismissing modern maths teaching methods as nonsense, she starts children counting by displaying five fingers and then getting them to recognise five lines and dots.

There is no question of simply counting from one to 10 in the Baruk method. After introducing her pupils to five, she moves on to six and seven, three and four, eight and nine, and two and one before leaping to 37, a number "which has sufficient tens for it to be worth using them". Only later does she go back down through the twenties to 10, a number which she says is far harder to integrate. In an attempt to ensure pupils have grasped the concept, she shows them different objects, such as a dog in the lesson about four. Some children say the number is appropriate because it has four legs, others that it is inappropriate because there is just one dog. Either way, they have understood the "ideality" of four, Mrs Baruk says.

Additions are taught by putting fingers together. "Show seven fingers," she said. "Now I add seven fingers. That makes 14. It's easy to see and easy to memorise." Such methods infuriated traditionalists when Mrs Baruk first began to air them in the 1970s. But France, the land of Rene Descartes, perhaps the most celebrated Western mathematician, has slipped to 17th in the international comparison of mathematical performance at secondary school, and purists have had to think again.

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23 January, 2009

The American Association of Unprincipled Progressives

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the 13th General Conference of the National Association of Scholars in Washington, D.C. Among the highlights of the conference was a debate between AAUP President Cary Nelson and NAS President Peter Wood. During the Q & A some of the comments by Nelson made me thankful that I am now a member of the NAS and that I have never been a member of the AAUP.

Cary Nelson claims the AAUP shares many of the same goals as the NAS including an atmosphere conducive to open debate on our college campuses. He also claims the AAUP is opposed to speech codes. When people question the AAUP's opposition to speech codes they often cite their lack of response to many cases, which are instead taken up by the FIRE, a non-partisan civil liberties group based in Philadelphia.

Nelson responds to such criticisms, in part, by saying the AAUP is not as well-equipped as FIRE is to offer a quick response to such controversies. Nelson implies that the FIRE takes a lot of cases the AAUP would take were it not beaten to the punch. I disagree. I believe the AAUP is simply an unprincipled organization that ignores campus controversies because its victims are generally conservatives.

That conclusion is based on years of bad experiences with the AAUP's members - beginning with my first major free speech controversy after 911. Some readers may remember that the controversy began when a student charged me with libel for simply implying that her mass email blaming 911 on America was "bigoted," "unintelligent," and "immature."

When the university announced that it would be necessary to read my private emails in search of evidence for this bogus libel charge I turned to the FIRE for help. No member of the AAUP contacted me about the case until one year after the incident. Curiously, when the AAUP member did finally comment on the case he claimed falsely (in an email to the entire faculty) that the university did not read my private email correspondence as I had claimed. He specifically accused the FIRE of circulating a false press release.

After the university counsel corrected the completely misinformed AAUP member he was forced to apologize. I did not hear him comment on another free speech case for over a year. When he did, he completely mangled the facts of that case, too. This second infraction was much worse because it involved the attack of an AAUP member on some students, rather than on another professor.

The students were fighting to keep Democrats from joining their College Republican group with full voting rights as well as the right to run for office. They claimed the freedom of association clause of the First Amendment trumped the university's non-discrimination clause. Eventually, the Republicans won the fight. Of course, the AAUP member couldn't resist the temptation to write about the controversy in the local paper. Unfortunately, he defamed the students claiming falsely that they were trying to keep blacks and Jews out of their organization. When the kids asked for an apology for the defamation the card-carrying AAUP member refused.

During the very same semester there was another free speech controversy that was enlightened by more AAUP brilliance (sarcasm: on). This one began when a history professor claimed she had friends who were terrorists in the Middle East. The statement was made in a public forum by a professor who was a public figure on the issue of terrorism. In response, a conservative student decided to publicize her claim in the student newspaper. After the student simply reported what the public figure said, she threatened the student newspaper with a libel lawsuit.

So the former president of the UNCW chapter of AAUP came to the rescue. But he came to the rescue of the professor, not the newspaper. In a news interview the AAUP propagandist said the students were "totally confused" if they thought the general theme of the professors remarks was "terrorism." The students rightly pointed out that his remarks were - in typical AAUP fashion - completely irrelevant. They were complaining about a single sentence - "I have friends who are terrorists in the Middle East"- not the theme of the talk.

When our friend from the AAUP invited the students to engage in an email debate he said they should feel free to share it with friends. The two students - Michael Pomarico and Zeb Wright - simply excoriated the AAUP professor. The debate was so lopsided that he rescinded the offer to share the emails. Unfortunately, the student newspaper yanked (from the online site) the original article reporting accurately that the professor who had terrorist friends in the Middle East said "I have terrorist friends in the Middle East." She was allowed to offer a dishonest rebuttal, which would be the final word on the controversy. The newspaper capitulated to a bogus legal threat due in part to AAUP support of a dishonest professor with terrorist friends in the Middle East.

And, now, finally, nearly two years after I filed a federal lawsuit claiming violations of my First Amendment rights, I have read a communication about the case from the former Oregon State University AAUP President. Some will remember that he sent me a series of emails last week showing why he has the requisite mental stability to be a Professor Emeritus of Psychology. Among the epithets he hurled were "dishonest", "hateful", "stupid", "idiotic", "indecent", "propagandist" and "bigot." In an internet posting that added the new epithets "failure," phony," and "homophobe" the former AAUP chapter president claimed falsely that I had filed a suit against UNC over "anti-Southern bigotry." Furthermore, he botched literally every single fact in the post, which he subsequently pulled in an act of intellectual onanism.

The point here is not that every member of the AAUP is an unhinged bigot engaging in psychological projection. The point is that literally every time a member of the AAUP gets involved in a free speech case, the motivation is one of politics not principle. The debate always dwindles after the first AAUP "contribution." So, naturally, I hope that serious First Amendment defenders will continue to support the NAS. And I hope the AAUP will stick to issues they can handle such as faculty parking and separate bathrooms for trans-gendered professors.

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Australia: Some very strange "research"

The findings I have highlighted are so contrary to eveything else we know that I think the whole study has to be disregarded. The findings were based on self-reports and factors such as boasting and embarrassment could well have distorted the results

IT doesn't matter what your background is, the key to earning big bucks at work is having a university degree or apprenticeship under your belt, a new report reveals. Young employees who have completed a bachelor's degree increase their earnings by about 31 per cent on average, while apprenticeships increase income by 23 per cent, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) report says. A university diploma will make your wallet 17 per cent fatter, while a TAFE diploma increases pay by 14 per cent. A traineeship will increase earnings by just eight per cent and a TAFE certificate by a meagre five per cent.

The study was based on interviews with a group of young people over a decade, from 1995, when they were students in Year 9, through to 2005, when 77 per cent were working full-time and their average age was 24. The report's author, Gary Marks, says post-school education and training leads to higher-status jobs and earnings, regardless of social background. Generally the effects of factors other than qualifications on earnings were small or negative,'' Mr Marks writes in The Occupations and Earnings of Young Australians. "The results indicate social background plays only a small role in accounting for differences in occupational status and earnings, indicating education is enhancing social mobility.''

People from non-English speaking and higher socioeconomic backgrounds, and those who attended Catholic or independent schools, earned five per cent less on average than their counterparts.

But ACER research director Phillip McKenzie said those somewhat surprising results could be related to these groups studying for longer periods of time. "Hence they may have had less time in the workforce,'' Dr McKenzie said. "This was a period of pretty strong job growth and people who left education earlier have been able to get pretty good jobs with good incomes.'' But Dr McKenzie suggests even the relatively small difference in earnings due to background may cancel out over time.

While background doesn't play a big role in determining status and pay, sex does matter. Young women were slightly more likely to be in prestigious jobs than young men, but they earned 20 per cent less. The report says this could be due to the incidence of full-time work being substantially higher among young men than women.

On average, people who completed an apprenticeship earned $907 per week while university graduates earned $816 per week. Someone with a TAFE certificate earned $663 per week while those with a TAFE diploma earned $674 per week.

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22 January, 2009

British Parents want more men to be school teachers, survey shows

Parents are calling for more men to become teachers because they fear their children lack male role models, research showed yesterday. Demand is even stronger among single mothers, who told the survey their children had little contact with men in caring roles. The study found one in six children living with a single mother spends less than two hours a week with a male role model, such as a father figure, relative or teacher. One in three of these children has such contact for under six hours a week.

Over the past 20 years there has been a dramatic decline in the number of men working in schools and nurseries and a growing trend for children never to be taught by a man. The slump in male recruitment has been blamed on a perception among men that teaching, especially of young children, is 'women's work' and that they risk false allegations of child abuse.

But 55 per cent of parents in yesterday's poll said they wanted to see male staff working with the youngest children. This rose to 66 per cent among single mothers. More than a third of all those polled agreed that male teachers give boys someone to look up to and set a good example. A quarter believe boys behave better if taught by a man. A majority of parents told the survey that men and women have different skills to offer young children and that nurseries should better reflect the real world's gender mix. But despite the demand for male staff, almost two-thirds of the 1,000 parents polled said the childcare they use has no male worker.

The Children's Workforce Development Council, which commissioned the survey, said it wanted to encourage more men to see childcare and nursery work as a viable career. Campaigns are already underway to encourage more men into primary and secondary teaching. Thom Crabbe, the council's national development manager for early years education, said: 'Parents are right to want to see more men working in early years. 'It is important that during the crucial first five years of a child's life they have quality contact with both male and female role models.'

However, there are signs that the economic downturn may change the make-up of the teaching profession. The Teaching and Development Agency has seen the number of potential applicants shoot up 50 per cent on this time last year. In the past two and a half months, 424,802 people made inquiries through their website - up from 283,641 during the same period a year earlier. There is no gender breakdown but the increase is thought to be linked to rising redundancies in areas such as banking, manufacturing and transport, which have mostly male workforces.



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Australia: Disgusting "postmodern" university media studies program still in deep Doo Doo

If a conservative had made a film called "Laughing at the Disabled", there would have been hell to pay. But if you are a "postmodern" Leftist, your university will back you to the hilt -- and even attack your critics

Queensland University of Technology and one of its PhD filmmakers, Michael Noonan, face a maximum $250,000 damages claim after mediation talks with an Aboriginal woman broke down. The dispute, which has ramifications for how research involving indigenous people is conducted, has moved to the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia after conciliation talks were terminated.

Brisbane solicitor Stephen Kerin, representing May Dunne, has alleged the Boulia elder was racially vilified by depicting her as an intoxicated Aboriginal woman in a stereotypical manner in video footage as part of Mr Noonan's PhD project, "Laughing at the Disabled". Ms Dunne has denied she ever signed a consent form authorising her appearance in the film which has the working title "Darren & James' Down Under Mystery Tour". Mr Noonan maintains that he is holding a consent form signed by Ms Dunne after she danced with one of the disabled men in the Boulia pub.

Mr Noonan maintains that the clip shown at his confirmation hearing, the "Boulia pub scene", has been unnecessarily demonised by his academic opponents, John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, and was unlikely to have ever made the pilot.

In April 2007 two QUT academics, Dr MacLennan and Dr Hookham, wrote an article in the HES condemning the project as an unethical exercise in mockery. A dispute on many fronts was unleashed. QUT convicted Dr MacLennan and Dr Hookham on disciplinary charges, apparently on the basis they had overstepped the limits of civil debate. They said QUT had trampled academic freedom. The two academics responded with a Federal Court challenge, which was settled on confidential terms. They resigned, were cleared of misconduct charges and walked away with $200,000 each, the HES reported.

QUT is named as the second respondent to the latest complaint as Mr Kerin alleges it gave ethical clearance to Mr Noonan's PhD project, which included the footage depicting Ms Dunne. A QUT spokeswoman told the HES yesterday it is not appropriate for the university to comment on a matter that will be before the courts.

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21 January, 2009

Why Did UVa Cancel Classes Only This Time?

On Jan. 20, 2005, George Bush was sworn in as president of the United States. On Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. The University of Virginia decided to suspend classes on only one of these important days. Can you guess which one?

Arthur Garson Jr., the executive vice president and provost of UVa, announced by e-mail that classes will be suspended on Jan. 20, 2009 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., in honor of the inauguration of Barack Obama. In 2005, while I was an undergraduate at UVa, classes carried on as usual for George Bush's Inauguration Day.

UVa also will be opening the doors of the basketball arena for live coverage of the swearing-in ceremony. In his e-mail to the UVa community, Garson explains, "The coming together of a nation at the same time every four years for presidential inaugurations -- as dictated by the Constitution for noon on Jan. 20 -- is an educational moment that binds us as a nation and a people." His e-mail continues: "In order to allow our students, as well as other members of our community, to participate in this exercise in democracy, the University will suspend classes between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009."

Based on the actions of the UVa administration, George Bush's Inauguration Day was somehow not "an educational moment" or an "exercise in democracy." This explanation is suspect. Furthermore, neither Garson's e-mail nor the official press release announcement that the suspension of class on Inauguration Day is a new policy that will be implemented well into the future regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat is elected.

Explaining the liberal bias on college campuses can be challenging because it is often a combination of overt and covert action and inaction. The suspension of classes for the inauguration of Barack Obama -- but not for George Bush -- gives a clear example of this bias.

One might try to dismiss this suspension of classes as the deci sion of one administrator. However, this was not the decision of one man and he is not the only one defending it.

In response to further student inquiries, Carol Wood, the assistant vice president for public affairs at UVa, wrote: "As you know, the interest among young people across the nation -- regardless of their party -- was unprecedented during the recent presidential campaign. Our own students here at the University were equally as engaged and they have expressed a desire to participate in some way in Inauguration Day. Given the number of important issues facing our country and the world, students told us they wanted to hear live -- with their friends -- what President-elect Obama would have to say in his Inaugural address."

Wood celebrates the 2008 election and the youth participation in it although youth voter turnout was not as high as anticipated. Oddly, she highlights the "unprecedented" participation of young people in this election, while ignoring the fact that the main way students participated was through technology -- the same technology which will make Barack Obama's Inauguration Day speech available to students 24 hours a day.

From my experience of four years of college and almost three years of law school at UVa, I do not recall classes ever being suspended for a planned political event. For example, despite student petitions, classes carried on as normal during Election Day last year.

On Jan. 20, I plan to attend the classes for which I am paying, regardless of how college administrators weigh my interest in classes against my interest in hearing Barack Obama's speech live. I also plan to watch some of the Inauguration Day activities, but I will do so on my own time.

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British kids wearing stab-proof vests to school

BRITISH children are wearing stab-proof vests to protect themselves from becoming victims of violence, according to a report on the impact of gangs on schools. The report, given to London's The Independent newspaper, said teachers at one school where pupils are said to be "seriously involved in gangs" were "aware of young people wearing bullet-proof/stab-proof vests in school".

It cites one estimate that the number of pupils under 16 involved in gangs had doubled in the past five years.

The report, commissioned by the NASUWT teachers' union and prepared by consultancy firm Perpetuity, is the first in-depth look at how youth gang culture is influencing schools, The Independent reports. It comes to the conclusion that children as young as nine at primary school are becoming involved with gangs used as "runners" and "couriers" to ferry messages by older members.

"Some of the case study schools felt the problem had increased over the last few years with gangs becoming more dangerous involving children at a younger age," the research says. "Some schools have problems with pupils carrying weapons in school. This can include young people who carry weapons and/or those who hide weapons in and around school grounds." The most common weapons teachers reported seeing were BB air pistols and batons. In one incident a teacher saw a meat cleaver.

One pupil told researchers he was wearing body armour because of "needing to", although attacks were more likely to take place on the way to and from school. The report suggests several measures to lessen the impact of gang involvement, such as sending children on prison visits to see the effect of loss of liberty

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20 January, 2009

Elite pay for math and science teachers needed

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, an international test of fourth- and eighth-grade student achievement, recently released its latest results. As in prior years, the mean U.S. scores were roughly on par with those in most developed nations in Europe, though well below those in Asia. But students in other developed nations far outpaced U.S. students in top-level science scores. For instance, only 10 percent of American eighth-graders performed at the highest level in science, placing the U.S. 11th among the tested nations and well behind countries such as England (17 percent), Japan (17 percent), and Singapore (an astounding 32 percent).

It's no surprise, then, that the U.S. also lags the world in the proportion of students earning a college degree in technical fields. According to the National Science Foundation, only about 17 percent of U.S. college graduates earned a degree in subjects related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM for short). That's well below the world average of 26 percent. We trail not only economic competitors such as China (52 percent), India (24 percent), Japan (64 percent), and Russia (33 percent), but even Mexico (25 percent) and the nations of the Middle East (24 percent). These figures become even more disturbing when we consider that American colleges grant many of their STEM-related degrees to foreign students, the majority of whom go back home.

American schools simply don't produce the scientists and engineers whom we need to remain competitive in a technology-driven world. In their excellent recent book The Race Between Education and Technology, Harvard University economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz convincingly show that the economic and political dominance of the U.S. throughout the twentieth century was based on its better-educated workforce, which could create and swiftly adapt to new technologies. But we've been losing that edge since our educational attainment began to stagnate in the mid-1970s--and as more nations surpass us in education, they also chip away at our economic dominance.

The troubles in STEM education mirror the broader problems of American K-12 education. The primary issue--and our best chance to make improvements--concerns teacher quality. A wide body of research has consistently identified teacher quality as the most important means within a school's control to improve student learning. That likely goes double for STEM subjects, which require instructors not only to be knowledgeable but also to be able to convey difficult technical information in a graspable way. Attracting such people to STEM teaching requires a compensation system that recognizes their talents. Unfortunately, though, the way we pay public-school teachers today--based exclusively on seniority and number of advanced degrees held--doesn't work.

Research consistently finds that these two attributes have little or nothing to do with teachers' actual ability to improve student learning. Paying the same salaries to teachers of widely varying effectiveness is inefficient, to say the least. But another big problem with the current pay system, especially when it comes to STEM teaching, is that it compensates teachers in different subjects equally, too, and this ignores labor-market realities. With the same number of years in the classroom and the same number of advanced degrees, a high school gym teacher earns the same salary as a high school chemistry teacher.

A better system would pay STEM teachers more than their counterparts. After all, the skills required to teach STEM subjects are often more valuable in the broader labor market than those required to teach most other subjects. Of course, not every good math teacher would make a good engineer, and vice versa. But an individual with math and technology skills has more attractive job opportunities than, say, someone with the skills to teach elementary-level reading. The bottom line: public schools must dig deeper into the labor skill pool, hiring STEM teachers of lower quality than teachers in other subjects.

A system of differential teacher pay, on the other hand, could not only attract new teachers from the outside labor market, but also encourage the current crop of teacher talent to move into STEM subjects, which they're currently shunning for understandable reasons--the coursework required to become a teacher in a non-technical subject is much less demanding than what's necessary for STEM subjects. We need to give these people a financial motive to take the more difficult STEM path. Teachers' unions support increasing the pay of STEM teachers--so long as the pay of all other teachers goes up as well. But spreading dollars around equally means giving small increases to all teachers instead of large pay increases to those we most need.

We can still ensure that this century will be as much an American Century as the last--but only if we address our students' performance gap in math and science. And the best way to do that is to incentivize more teachers to master the hard stuff.

SOURCE




British bureaucracy to destroy popular school

Destroying success is what they are best at -- witness all the vanished Grammar Schools

Sometimes, government promises and proclamations can sound a little hollow. When it comes to schools, Ed Balls talks often of parental choice. Hearing this, many parents shake their heads as they know that it's a promise which hasn't been fulfilled for them. But in Stoke-On-Trent, many parents are doing more than shake their heads. They are campaigning vigorously. And this is not because they don't have a choice of good school to send their children to; it's because they feel their choice is being taken away for no good reason. This may be a "local" story, but it has a much larger resonance.

Julian Teed is a father of two from Stoke. His son is set to start at Trentham High School, a local community school which is under the auspices of the LEA, this coming September. In the new league tables and GCSE results, it's the top performing non-selective school in the city. And Louis Teed is going to start there, even though the school is under threat of closure. It, and another local school, Blurton, are set to be amalgamated and turned into an Academy. That Academy will be opening in September 2010. "Trentham is a well loved and respected school in the centre of our community," says Teed. "Every child can walk or cycle there, it is perfect."

Two years ago, Trentham High went into special measures. A new head, Sue Chesterton, was brought in and she appears to have turned the school around. It came out of special measures a year later, the day after parents were told at a consultation evening that the school would be closing. Trentham High is now second only to St Joseph's, a grammar school and 57 percent of the children just received 5 A-C grades in their recent GCSEs, including maths and English. The head is convinced that this will continue, indeed improve, if the school is given a chance. "I've always argued that it is potentially one of the highest performing schools in this city" says Ms Chesterton. "And parents are delighted with the progress we've made. Academies are normally for failing schools, but neither Blurton or Trentham are failing. It's very strange."

It certainly is strange, but for parents, it is horribly real. They feel that change is imminent, and that the government's fondness for Academies and reluctance for be drawn into local battles, means they are fighting a losing battle. I'm afraid they are right; but I don't know why. Sue Chesterton feels that parents have fought a very long and hard battle over this. "They feel very let down," she says. "They feel betrayed by the council...the community is centred around the school."

Trentham - which caters for 11-16 year olds - is not a huge school. It lost some pupils when it went into special measures and has just under 600 pupils at present. But it is part of a community, open every evening for community activities and with sports facilities which are heavily used by local residents. With all this local involvement, the school appears to be behaving exactly as the government wants its schools to. But it is still in danger.

The current situation began because of Stoke's involvement in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF)programme. This has the specified aim of "Placing the school at the heart of the community", an aim which may well sound more than a little hollow to local parents. Stoke on Trent council has had problems with its schools for a few years now (that's a understatement: it was named the third worst local authority for education in the country). It brought in a private company, Serco, to assess what should happen next as part of the BSF programme and Serco decided that various schools should be closed down or amalgamated. Parents at another school, St Joseph's College, are also up in arms.

Julian Teed, who is part of the Save Trentham High campaign, says that he and other parents don't want a huge school (the new Academy would be aimed at 900-1200 pupils, which seems too small:if you add the current pupils from Trentham and Blurton together, it comes to over 1400). The council claims that birth rates are falling, and that is partly why some schools need to be closed, but parents dispute that. They also claim there are major safety issues with the changes. The only way to the new school (which will be located on the Blurton site) is down a very busy main road. "It's a travesty" he says.

Parents are also unhappy that the choice of sponsor for the Academy is the Ormiston Trust, which at least according to its website, is set up to help disadvantaged children. They have been campaigning for over a year, but feel that they are simply not being listened to. Ed Balls has said that he's happy for parents to get stuck into their schools and set up smaller secondaries. But the Save Trentham parents, who feel that this is exactly what they want to do, are not finding that it's possible. And this is despite the fact that no new school would save the council an awful lot of money!

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, talked about this last November, but parents won't be thrilled by what he said (you can see his comments here; he seems to take all the councils' assertions as correct).

No story is one-sided, and a spokesman for the council says that parents' views and opinions have been "taken into account throughout the consultation process." He adds. "We do understand their concerns. The Building Schools for the Future programme is ongoing and we will continue to consult and draw opinions from parents and all those who who have an interest in the education of children in Stoke-on-Trent."

Parents are expecting the council to make its decision on January 21st, but I'm afraid that it has already been taken. The report, which you can see here (dated January 21st) clearly states: "That the Council approves the publication of the statutory notices proposing the closure of Brownhills, James Brindley, Berry Hill, St. Peter's CE, Mitchell, Edensor, Blurton and Trentham High Schools to enable the establishment of five replacement academies in accordance with the timetable outlined in section 7." This is despite the fact that the report contains a litany of concerns from parents. How depressing - and yet not surprising at all.

SOURCE





19 January, 2009

Arizona: Traditional schools thriving in Valley

Traditional academies relying on age-old curriculum methods paired with a structured learning environment are thriving in school districts Valley-wide. Laveen Elementary School District opened a traditional elementary school, and the Madison Traditional Academy in Phoenix is in its second year. The majority of schools with traditional curriculums are elementary schools, but next year Chandler junior-high students will be able to benefit from the education style when a new traditional school opens in the Chandler Unified School District. Parents asked for the junior high to bridge the gap between the district's four traditional elementary schools and high schools.

At most traditional schools, students are taught as a whole group with the teacher in front of class giving direct instruction. Desks are in neat rows facing the front, not in clusters that some public schools use. Students wear uniforms, and homework relating to the day's lessons is given usually every night. "I'm a firm believer in the traditional philosophy," said Casey George, principal of the Madison school. "It creates a solid foundation and leads to a higher level of critical thinking."

The curriculum at several of the schools is also accelerated. At Chandler's traditional elementary schools, students work about a year ahead in math. Expectations are high, and teachers push beyond state standards, said Don Shelley, the brainchild behind Chandler's traditional schools. He'll also serve as the junior high's principal. "Kids can do more than they are currently doing if they are given the chance and are expected to do it," Shelley said.

Traditional schools throughout the Valley post high scores on AIMS. At Alhambra Traditional School in Phoenix all the school's third-graders passed the math and reading portions of the state standardized test in 2008. The state average for the grade was 71 percent passing in math and 69 percent in reading. Traditional schools, tied to public school districts, offer parents a choice in how their children are educated. A traditional school opened in Mesa Public Schools 31 years ago. Now the Benjamin Franklin Elementary Schools has four campuses.

Parents grew concerned of decisions public schools were making that strayed from long-held practices such as phonics and self-contained classrooms, said Gayle Householder, principal of Franklin East Elementary School in Mesa. Most traditional academies in Phoenix use the Spalding Method, an integrated language-arts approach based on phonics that's used to teach reading comprehension, spelling and penmanship. At Alhambra, students aren't called out of class, and assemblies and field trips are limited. "We use every possible moment of the day dedicated to teaching and learning for teaching and learning," said Tracey Lopeman, the school's principal. "We see state standards as our floor. Not the stopping point but the beginning."

When Chandler Traditional Junior High opens next year, it will serve sixth- and seventh-graders. Grade 8 will be added during the 2010-2011 school year, and when school enrollment reaches a certain point, Grade 6, already offered in the district's traditional elementary schools, will be phased out. The school, to be located at the Pathways Learning Center near Arizona Avenue and Chandler Boulevard, fulfills a longtime need for parents. When the district's first traditional elementary school opened several years ago, parents were already asking for a junior high. "Some parents see this as a great opportunity to carry on with what they've grown to love," said Shelley at a Chandler Governing Board meeting in December.

SOURCE




HIGH-TECH MARXISM COMES TO AMERICA

Deep down, most Americans once thought they were immune from blatant propaganda, government-sanctioned media-bias and psychiatric hospitals-cum-prisons - hallmarks of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Josef Stalin's Communism. Such confidence is shifting as folks increasingly fear speaking their mind - on schools campuses, on the job, in houses of worship and public places. Worse, a metastasizing mental health industry has convinced government leaders that "nonprofessionals" - especially parents - are unqualified to make decisions on behalf of children. Average Americans find themselves intimidated by bureaucracies ranging from Child Protective Services to universities to the Environmental Protection Agency. These are just three agencies steeped in a deep-rooted presumption of citizen incompetence - precisely opposite the view of American Founders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Today's national leaders, agency heads and mainstream reporters are mostly hostile to American idealism, Christian morality and Western culture, which have taken the hardest hits under the banner of political correctness.

TV sitcoms, women's magazines, and much of what passes for news daily prove that traditional notions of integrity and decency are in their death throes, while psychology (despite its dismal track record) is promoted as being firmly anchored in "science," just as it was under Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. The difference today - thanks to exponential advances in computer cross-matching, identification and tracking - is that politically incorrect "troublemakers" can be identified and marginalized before they secure careers involving leadership, status or influence. That, of course, is always the end-game of campaigns in political correctness.

The Forty-Five Year "Leap Forward"

Just as in Mao Tse-tung's "Great Leap Forward" (a.k.a. "cultural revolution"), during which millions were murdered, the current state of affairs in America did not emerge suddenly. There were abundant warnings. Many writers, myself included, penned well-read works signaling a multitude of subtle twists and turns which our government, together with special interests, had undertaken since World War II in pursuit of, first, a socialist America, and then a totalitarian Superstate.

For some reason, Americans resist ominous signs. Perhaps it is because this nation was founded upon optimism, not created out of desperation. The earliest immigrants to our shores left everything familiar to institutionalize a different sort of governing style, one in which individuals were important instead of being servants of the State. This was a huge departure from prior ideas about the relationship of government to the governed. Modern citizens have pretty much lost touch with the radical nature of that single step.

The "Mouse" That Morphed

Today's schools, of course, barely touch on anything about the early values, philosophies or ideals that formed the "America" of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This is not surprising. Every "wannabe" tyrant that ever existed has always tried to wipe out knowledge about a nation's past, or recast it to reflect "new" thinking. Today's elites and special interests are no different - except for one thing: the computer. Sophisticated mathematical models and data-collection techniques make it possible, with the click of a "mouse," to know which people are "buying in" to the incessant flow of disinformation and which citizens are not. Those who are not "buying" are "resisters." Those who do "buy" are accepted into the better colleges, obtain the influential jobs and enjoy "status."

Within the space of 30 years, computer giants had perfected software and hardware packages that gave the public - and, more importantly, its overseers - "what they wanted." (For step-by-step details of data-collection and tracking, see Educating for the New World Order, 1991 and its sequel, Microchipped, 1994, Halcyon House Publishers). Meanwhile, a silent revolution was taking place in the media. The so-called "mainstream" sources - and both major political parties - started engaging in turf battles, which meant, basically, ignoring any "competitor" who might be saying something a little different. Nobody wanted to lose funding to somebody else. This resulted in fewer forums for real whistleblowers, and less dissemination of ideas. Despite the conveniences of the Internet, average people found it necessary to become proactive in obtaining their news. They couldn't rely on any of the old standbys. Even libraries and bookstores displayed "preferred" books and magazines prominently (for money, of course) and relegated everything else to the back wall or to "special order." Consequently, one had to know beforehand what to ask for. Americans had to sleuth around in a way they never did previously. Most people thought they had more pressing priorities.

Schools: The Primary Aggressor in the War Against America

The National Education Association (NEA) became a primary aggressor in the war against parents, religion and national sovereignty during the post-war period, beginning with its landmark publication, Toward World Understanding and its co-founding of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, co-founded in 1947 with a grant from the NEA and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching). Passing itself off as a "professional teacher's organization," the NEA's leftist leadership lured educators by offering incentives like insurance and retirement benefits, then proceeded to create proxies to infiltrate teachers' colleges and dictate weird accreditation standards. The orthodoxy of parental incompetence began pervading teacher-preparation programs. Politicians were neutralized as they came to fear loss of NEA support more than loss of American principles. Other institutions and corporations soon fell into step. The new supercomputers introduced features most people had ever heard of in a pre-personal-computer world. In 25 years, the era of psychological dossier-building was a done deed (see Chapter 3, "Taking a Ride on the SPEEDE-ExPRESS," in my 1998, award-winning book, Cloning of the American Mind, available from the NewsWithViews.com bookstore. Note: Book out of print, supply is limited). Analysts with concurrent degrees in psychology and statistics sealed the deal.

Today, children are "empowered" - blatantly encouraged to circumvent their parents and defy traditional values. Unfortunately, their "empowerment" had more to do with creating chaos and a vigorous data-collection effort than with self-determination.

Applying Marxist Terminologies to Psychological Profiling Programs

The 1995 Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), inaugurated in Texas (and funded by the leftist Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) under then-Governor George W. Bush, morphed into a congressionally funded universal mental-health screening program and psychotropic drug-treatment plan encompassing some 25 federal agencies by 2004. This would enable a future administration (incoming President Barack Obama?) to enforce psychological profiling (and mandatory drugging, if "necessary") on every man, woman and toddler under an umbrella of "security." Today, TMAP goes by the Marxist-like moniker "New Freedom Initiative" and is linked directly to political correctness. A quiet campaign of coercion, hidden amongst computerized records collected over two decades was launched. Today, the Powers That Be can access and merge information about you, "flag" anything that might prove damaging to you down the road (should you become a "refusenik"), while simultaneously editing out anything positive, and relegating it, in effect, to the cutting-room floor. How would anyone know, after all?

Among the first hints that such atrocities were under construction occurred in 1973. Parents in Pennsylvania got wind of intimate questions being included on a standardized achievement test. The "test" supposedly required parental consent and voluntary participation, but complied with neither directive. These parents called in the American Civil Liberties Union. The case was settled out of court in favor of the complainants. The Chief of Pennsylvania's Department of Testing was told that if he henceforth would agree to adhere to a policy of voluntary participation and provide notification, then charges would be dropped.

But a decade later, the old U.S. Office of Education took on cabinet-level status as the U.S. Department of Education. Its state clones, called "state education agencies," decided that such admonitions could be safely ignored. An avalanche of what-would-you-do-if queries and word-association games passed off as legitimate test items were disseminated to 120,000 students in the 5th, 8th and 11th grades through Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment (EQA). Irate parents were shuffled between the local, state and federal bureaucracies, each of which blamed the other. When Pennsylvania's Division of Testing took the fall (again) - this time for linking curriculum directly to the tests, renamed "assessments," as well as for failing to give notice - politicians dithered. It turned out that the money trail for both the assessments and the "remediating" curriculums (bearing the EQA logo right on the covers) led back to the federal government, through salaries and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

The whistleblowers were already too late.

More here





18 January, 2009

Who'd be a teacher in today's nervous educational system?

Comment from Australia -- but what it describes is true in the UK and USA too. It documents the familiar modern practice of allowing one whiner to dictate to everyone else. Policy should be changed only when there is an extensive demand for it, not just a demand from one individual

WANTED: A mature adult, with tertiary qualifications, good values, ability to work long hours to educate tomorrow's leaders in everything from maths to English to good manners. Need to be able to be criticised, abused and possibly even assaulted.

Who would apply to be a teacher in 2009? As the school doors closed last year, the debate centred around whether red pens should be used in classrooms and whether building a replica of Noah's Ark amounted to Christian indoctrination. But as those teachers preparing to go back into the classroom this month will tell you, that's only the beginning. Each day, someone will question the decisions they make. They accept that. But more and more often, the questions become complaints, which are taking up more and more of a teacher's time. And it's the consequence of that that we should be worried about.

Teachers are rethinking their career choices; many with years of experience are choosing to leave and none of the debate is focusing on where that leaves our education system -- or the children at its centre. The following is a list of real examples you will not have heard about; they are complaints given to organisers of the Queensland Teachers Union.

* A primary school teacher had a complaint lodged by a parent because she had given the kids a worksheet headed "Spelling demons". The parent's objection centred around "the association with the supernatural" and thought the children would be frightened.

* A primary school in a regional area in Queensland withdrew yoga classes that had been offered to students as part of their fitness program. The reason hehind the forced withdrawal? A parental complaint about yoga's association with "foreign religions" .

* Another primary school removed Harry Potter posters after a parent complained that the posters "introduced children to witchcraft".

* Similarly, a parent of a high school student complained about Macbeth being studied in English classes because it "promoted witchcraft".

* The parents of a high school student complained about the "grave health risk to their child" who was asked to pick up papers from the school grounds as a consequence of persistent disruptive behaviour.

* Melbourne Cup Day was difficult last year -- as it is every year - because of the litany of complaints it brings. For example, the last race prompted complaints from parents because students were not allowed to discuss "the big race". The teachers were accused of being un-Australian. But the same day - and race -- brought complaints from parents of children who were allowed to discuss it, because it allegedly promotes gambling.

* In cases wbere Santa was allowed to be part of recent classroom celebrations, these complaints were logged. 1. Santa promotes a fantasy figure and should be banned. 2. Teachers were promoting an unhealthy overweight role model to children and should be brought into line 3. The presence of Santa in the classroom promoted "greed". You'd think that would make a teacher's plan for the next Christmas easy: Ban Santa and stop the complaints. But no. An equal number of complaints are received each December when Santa is not part of celebrations. Parents have complained that (a) it is political correctness "gone mad"; and (b) that teachers are denying children exposure to a well-loved traditional and cultural figure.

Even the sun-safe "no hat, no play" rule - which has been in place in Queensland state schools for years - brings regular complaints from parents who claim their children have been "discriminated against" if they are not allowed on to the oval because they have no hat. The issue of homework, too, is fraught with problems. Some parents argue that children should do all their work during school hours. But those on the other side say not giving enough homework means teachers are not fully providing for their education and how can all education be achieved from 8.30am to 3pm five days a week?

Add to that the appalling pay given to our teachers, and you wonder whether we are setting our education system up to fail. Of course, parents should have a say in the education of their children. But surely once you investigate the options, and select a school for your children, barring real evidence that your child is being damaged, shouldn't we leave the education to those trained to do it?

The spectre of daily complaints and even legal threats must have an effect on those at the front of the classroom. Why would you go the extra yard, think outside the square, or add to the curriculum if the risk is a barrage of complaints and the threat of legal action? It's our children who risk missing out here.

The above story by Madonna King appeared in the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of Saturday 17, January, 2009




Short-Changing the Gifted

For elites, more should be required.

I see the College Board is axing four of its AP courses after the current academic year. The axees are: Italian, Latin-literature, French-literature, and the higher-level of their two computer-science courses.

AP stands for "Advanced Placement." These are courses taught to the brightest kids in high schools, allowing them to get college credits. Not just in high schools, either: the College Board is independent of the public-education and teacher-union power structures, and anyone can take an AP exam just by signing up and paying the (very modest) fee. AP is therefore a step in the direction of the general "certification" model of libertarian education, as described by Charles Murray in his recent book. AP programs are a Good Thing.

[Before continuing, I had better apologize for the gross act of political incorrectness I committed in the second sentence of my previous paragraph. It is of course not the case that some kids are "bright" while others are "dull." There are only "privileged" kids and "disadvantaged" kids. As the lady from the New York Times told Charles when interviewing him about his book: "Given the opportunity, most people could do most anything." To suggest otherwise is shameful, bigoted, and hurtful. I am sorry. Sorry sorry sorry! May I continue please? Thank you!]

Since AP programs are a Good Thing, the cancellation of four of them is a Bad Thing. It's especially a Bad Thing in the educational environment of today, when more and more public-education resources are devoted to the slower students [Gosh darn it, there I go again-Sorry! Sorry!] in pursuit of No Child Left Behind goals. If no child is to be left behind, teachers can justify giving most of their attention to the stragglers while ignoring the ones who are forging ahead. Something like this has been happening.

The cancellation of Italian is a doubly Bad Thing. This is the first time a language AP program has ever been cancelled in the 50-odd years these programs have been available. Cancellation of programs is anyway a rare thing. A music-appreciation course was dropped in 1991; I don't know of any other instances. In the case of Italian, the College Board declared that they were faced with "a question of funding." Some part of the fault lies with the Italian government, which had promised to help out with the funding. Unfortunately, the Italian government is even more hopelessly incompetent at getting anything done than the average national government-which is to say, very, very incompetent indeed.

The College Board emphasizes that these are small programs. Only 1,930 students nationwide took the AP Italian exam last May, compared with 4,322 for Chinese and over 100,000 for Spanish. We are, indeed, drifting towards a situation where "foreign-language instruction" in public schools means Spanish. My own two kids were given a free choice of foreign language by their over-indulgent parents when the time came. They both opted for Spanish (from menus that included French, Italian, and Latin). We couldn't dissuade them. Why Spanish? "Because all my friends are doing it." References to Exodus 23:2 were of no avail.

I'm guessing, in any case, that my kids made the right choice. Though decently good students when pushed, neither shows signs of being an academic superstar. For ordinary middle-class Americans, Spanish probably is the best choice of a high-school language, to the degree it matters. (Which is not, in my opinion, much. Very few of us can attain mastery of a foreign language by school instruction. Most of us, in fact, once we have graduated, lose whatever of our school language we had. Learning a foreign language is a good mental discipline, and in a few scattered cases it will have some future advantage; but vocation-wise, high-school language instruction is mostly pointless.)

For the gifted few, though [Sorry! Sorry!], a different logic applies, or should. Charles Murray:

The proposition is not that America's future should depend on an elite that is educated to run the country; but that, whether we like it or not, America's future does depend on an elite that runs the country. The members of that elite are drawn overwhelmingly from among the academically gifted. We had better make sure that we do the best possible job of educating them.

These brightest [I am flagellating myself!] kids are exactly the ones taking AP programs in their Junior and Senior years of high school. The number is about a million, taking an average two programs each. That's out of a total of about 16 million high-school-age Americans. For these members of our future elite, the rules should, as I said, be different. For them, considerations above and beyond the merely utilitarian and satisfactory should apply.

Of course we want all our young people to leave school acquainted with the civilization they belong to. I should be ashamed for my own kids to enter adulthood unfamiliar with at least the names, nationalities, and approximate dates of Plato and Aristotle, Alexander and Caesar, Henry VIII and Louis XIV, Newton and Darwin, Shakespeare and Dickens, and so on.

For elites, though, more should be required. These students should engage with our civilization and its high culture, and that involves good, close acquaintance with at least one modern European language and one ancient one. For ancient languages the choice is of course Latin or Greek. In modern languages, I'd put French at the head of the list, with German close behind, Italian below that, and Russian and Spanish, in that order, considerably below that. For complicated historical reasons, Spain simply didn't contribute much to European civilization. Spain had novelists, poets, painters, composers, philosophers, and scientists to be sure, but nothing like as many-not remotely as many-as the other great European nations. To take just one aspect of civilization dear to my own heart, try clicking on the various European regions here to see the birthplaces of great mathematicians.

To the degree-which, I say again, is not very far-that there is any point in teaching foreign languages to average, un-brilliant kids like mine, Spanish should be the language of choice, just because it's the other big language of our hemisphere, and most likely to be some use to them in adult life. On the gifted few, though-the ones taking AP programs-we should press those languages that encode the high civilization of the West. So far as modern languages are concerned, that means French, German, and Italian. With the decision of the College Board to drop Italian, something has been lost. Not much, perhaps; but at this point in our civilizational decay, how much can we afford to lose?

SOURCE





17 January, 2009

My Application for LGBTQQCC

by Mike S. Adams

Dear Oberlin College Division of Student Life and Services:

I recently read your advertisement seeking applications for the position of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/ Transgender/Queer and Questioning Community Coordinator in the Multicultural Resource Center at Oberlin College.

I believe that I am perfect for this full-time, twelve-month administrative and professional staff position, which reports to the Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Multicultural Resource Center. I am definitely not "questioning" my interest in this position. I am ready to begin as LGBTQQCC ASAP!

In your ad, you mention that the incumbent will have responsibility for assessing and addressing the specific cultural/social/ political needs and concerns of LGBTQQ students while also working with other students who belong to historically disenfranchised communities. Among the other groups you list are: Africana, Asian/Pacific American, Latino/Latina, Native American, and multiracial communities, first-generation and, finally, low-income college students.

I want to make it very clear that I am willing to work with any students who are not both pure bred Caucasian and heterosexual - unless, of course, they are first-generation or poor. Also, as one who is 1/32 Native American I subscribed to the belief that with a single drop of non-white blood one ceases to be a Caucasian. I learned this from my relatives in Mississippi and Alabama.

As a member of the Multicultural Resource Center staff, I understand that the LGBTQQCC acts as a link between the Associate Dean/Director and LGBTQQ students, as well as between the Multicultural Resource Center and the rest of the College communities. I also understand that additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

*Identify the social, cultural, educational, and political needs of LGBTQQ students, as well as those of other student communities.
* Under the direct supervision and guidance of the Associate Dean/Director, assist LGBTQQ students to foster a strong sense of self, to strengthen individual communities, and to build coalitions with other departments and communities.
* Assist the Associate Dean of Students/Director in identifying the concerns of LGBTQQ students, as well as those of Africana, Asian/Pacific American, Latino/Latina, Native American and multiracial communities, as well as first-generation and low-income college students.
* Work as part of a collaborative team that includes the Associate Dean of Students/Director, the Africana Community Coordinator, the Asian/Pacific American Community Coordinator, and the Latino/Latina Community Coordinator.
* Collaborate on diversity and multicultural education workshops and trainings.
* Help to create connections between the LGBTQQ community at Oberlin College and the LGBTQQ community in the greater Cleveland area.

I noted in your ad that you require a B.A. degree in LGBT and Queer Studies, Sexuality Studies, African American Studies, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, or related field. I hope you will consider the fact that my PhD in Criminology was actually granted in a sociology department. In order to get a PhD in a sociology department one has to study at least as much worthless "scholarship" as one has to study to obtain a Queer Studies degree. I hope you agree and will, therefore, consider me to be qualified.

I also noted that you require "experience working with the issues and concerns of LGBTQQ students." I have long recognized the fact that the LGBTQQ community has issues - for example, anti-religious bigotry - and I have addressed their issues in numerous columns. I hope you will, therefore, consider me qualified in this regard.

Among your "desired qualifications" I noticed you listed "experience working with the issues and concerns of students of color especially within a higher education context." Given the paucity of "people of color" at my present institution, UNC-White, I consider this the weak point of my application. I hope you will consider my other strengths including my firm commitment to immediately bring "white" and "colored" restrooms back to higher education. This will be possible after we get rid of the "men's" and "women's" restroom distinction that so clearly discriminates against our LGBTQQ brothers and sisters - as well as those who are not sure whether they are our brothers or our sisters.

Your ad indicates that "Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience and skills for an entry level administrative position." I am willing to waive my salary as LGBTQQCC at Oberlin because I am sure that enough material will come from this job to make millions on books, speeches, and columns.

Along with this email, I will send a letter of application, resume and the names and addresses of three references to: LGBTQ Community Coordinator Search, Oberlin College, 135 West Lorain Street, Wilder Hall 105, Oberlin, OH 44074. I will also urge other academic dissidents to do the same.

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That degree in Disco Studies may yet come in useful

[British] NuLab has hugely increased state spending on education. This year they will spend well over 80bn pounds, comfortably more than double what they inherited in 1997. In inflation adjusted terms, spending has increased by 5% pa, much faster than GDP. And state education's share of GDP has risen by nearly one full percentage point. In fact, at 5.3% of GDP, we are now spending more on state education than any other G7 country except France (on 5.6%).

So what have we got for all that money? Have we had the promised leap in education standards, and can we now see that bright new workforce equipped to triumph in the post-industrial hi-tech challenges of the 21st Century? Er, no. We've had record GCSE results, record A Level results, and record numbers of university graduates, but we haven't had any of that other stuff - the stuff we actually need. We are spending tens of billions extra every year, yet the results are no better.

In fact, so ill-equipped is the bright new workforce now pouring out of our state schools and universities, that the government is having to pay employers to take them on, even temporarily. Last week, we heard taxpayers' money was being used to bribe employers to take on 35,000 unemployed school leavers as "apprentices" (see this blog). And today we hear another bunch of employers are being bribed to offer an unspecified number of "internships"* to unemployed university grads. Skills Secretary John Denham (most assuredly no relation to The Bloke) explains:

"They [new graduates] will be a very big group: around 400,000. We can't just leave people to fend for themselves. At the end they will be more employable, and some of them will get jobs."

Wow! Some of them might even get jobs? And pray explain again why we've got 400,000 graduates - graduates who are so ill-equipped for life that they can't even be left to fend for themselves. Remembering of course, that when Labour came to power, our unis were only producing 200,000 grads per year.

Yes, we know there's a recession/slump on, but the problems with all these new grads go much deeper than that. As we've blogged many times (start here), both the nation and the students themselves have had shocking value from Labour's gung-ho expansion of "higher" education and its entirely arbitrary 50% participation target. A brief recap:

* Taxpayers now spend 12bn pounds pa on higher education; the students themselves spend a whole lot more

* There are 2.3m students, or 4% of the entire population (including 27,000 doing the Major's favourite, the degree in media studies)

* The 50% participation target is "aspirational" - ie entirely arbitrary (admitted to the PAC by the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England - see this blog)

* The average HE participation rate across the OECD is 35%: ours is already 40% and heading for 50%

* Thousands of graduates now do non-graduate jobs, and that number is growing rapidly- their M Mouse degrees have simply not equipped them to do anything else (according to HESA, 75% - yes, 75% - of 2002-3 graduates were still in non-graduate jobs four years after graduation; what's more, 26% weren't in full-time jobs of any kind

* The average financial return to a degree is plummeting - according to PWC, the gross return to an Arts degree is now only about œ30 grand, and that takes no account of the costs of study and the earnings foregone - net net an average Arts degree almost certainly reduces lifetime wealth.

The truth is that despite all their "challenges of the globalised economy" wibble, Labour have never seen education in economic terms. From comprehensivisation to Laura Spence, Labour's priority has always been social engineering. For them, it has always been far more important to put everyone on the same level, than to pursue educational excellence.

So let's thank God for private education. Because without it, Britain really would be in the merde. All our top jobs would have to be filled by people who'd been processed through our dumbed-down state social engineering factories. Yes, Brown's new Equality Commissar - Haze of Dope Milburn - is perfectly free to rant on about the unfair advantages private education brings on the employment front. But we all know the truth: the reason that social mobility has stalled so badly is that Labour politicians sacrificed state education on the altar of social engineering.

And unfortunately, as the slump gathers pace, the dismal results of their approach are going to be even more apparent. People who may have been employable in a credit boom are going to find it very tough in the harsh future now unfolding before us. As someone whose life chances were transformed by high quality state education, it really does make me want to scream.

*Footnote- So HowTF has our deadend government persuaded sensible companies like Microsoft and Barclays to offer these internships? Well, first - as per - it sounds like classic vapourware and probably won't happen. "A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company in principle "absolutely supports" the idea and had been "really enthusiastic" when the government approached it. Asked what the scheme involved, she said: "We have to sit down and go through the scheme in detail." Hmm. And second, Microsoft... major government supplier... needs to be seen as A Good Citizen in these troubled times... Barclays... big bank with big debts... needs to be seen as A Good Citizen in these troubled times... nope, I don't get it at all.

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16 January, 2009

British Labour's children fail to make the grade at GCSE: Half leave school unable to read, write or add properly

Fewer than half of teenagers finish compulsory schooling with a basic set of GCSE qualifications and one in five fails to gain a single C grade, official figures revealed yesterday. Results for the first pupils to go through their entire education under Labour show that more than 340,000 16-year-olds failed to meet the Government's secondary school benchmark - five GCSEs at C grade or higher including English and maths. More than 135,000 failed to achieve even one C grade last summer.

The figures also show that more than 375,000 secondary pupils - around one in seven - are being taught in comprehensives which Gordon Brown has threatened with closure unless their results improve. A total of 440 schools face being shut down or taken over if their GCSE performance fails to get better by a 2011 deadline. Nearly a third of these schools expect to remain in the doldrums at least until 2010 - putting them at grave risk of closure, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last year, just 47.6 per cent of candidates finished compulsory schooling with a basic mastery of the three Rs and three other GCSE subjects or their vocational equivalent. Results were up on 2007 but progress is half what it needs to be if ministers are to meet a 53 per cent Treasury target set for 2011. The figures also showed that 21 per cent of pupils failed to achieve a single C grade in any GCSE subject, although five per cent achieved C grade standards in vocational qualifications deemed equivalent.

At the other end of the spectrum, one in seven schoolchildren - 14.2 per cent - achieved three A grades at A-level. Grammars, faith schools and part-private academies were revealed as more effective at raising exam standards than so-called 'bog-standard comprehensives'. But the figures for GCSEs suggested attainment in the core subjects such as the three Rs is rising more slowly than for other subjects. The proportion gaining any five GCSEs rose almost four percentage points but the numbers able to count English and maths towards those five qualifications - the Government's preferred measure - went up just 1.3 points. Fewer than one in three students achieved at least a C in a modern foreign language.

The national data, was published ahead of school-by-school tables due out today. The Prime Minister set a minimum standard in 2007 requiring schools to ensure at least 30 per cent of pupils achieve the secondary performance benchmark, and identified 638 schools which fell below the threshold. Under the National Challenge scheme, they are given extra help and monitoring - sometimes including conversion into academies - to ensure they meet the deadline. A total of 440 schools, educating some 375,000 youngsters, remain below the threshold and figures from local councils show that 59 out of 214 schools for which predictions were made are expected still to be languishing below 30 per cent in 2010.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls will attempt to reinvigorate the National Challenge programme today. 'We need to continue to concentrate on the remaining schools and ensure we are giving them the support and challenge they need to make sure no child is left behind,' he said. But Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove said: 'Sadly, too many children are still being educated at schools which the Prime Minister classes as failing, and the gap between richer and poorer schools is widening.'

SOURCE




And these are the schools that Britain's sub-moronic socialists want to abolish:

Grammar schools are taxpayer supported but their pupils are selected for admission on the basis of proven scholastic ability, which is only partly true of private ("independent") schools

Grammar school pupils outperformed their privately educated counterparts at A level by a record margin last summer, piling more pressure on the beleaguered fee-paying sector. As the recession forces many middle-class families to question whether they can afford private education, new figures reveal that the average grammar school pupil attained 73 more A-level points than those educated privately. The points system, in which an A grade is worth 270 points, is used by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service to assess applications to higher education.

The latest statistics, based on last year's results, show that a quarter of all grammar school pupils achieved at least three A grades at A level, the highest level to date. The average A-level score achieved by grammar pupils was 966, compared with 893 in the independent sector. Independent schools still have a higher percentage of straight-A pupils, but the gap has narrowed.

It was another record crop of exam results, with the largest annual increase in GCSE top grades in almost 20 years. Nearly two thirds of pupils (65.3 per cent) were awarded five good GCSEs (A* to C), up from 63.3 per cent and the biggest jump since 1990.

Comprehensives scored an average of 727.8 A-level points per pupil, while the average for the state sector as a whole was 757.4. The proportion of pupils passing the Government's tough new threshold of at least five C grades including English and maths rose 1.3 percentage points to 47.6 per cent. It still means that fewer than half of all pupils achieved the standard. About 100,000 pupils failed to gain at least one Grade C. Only half of pupils attained two science GCSEs and only a third passed a modern language. Girls strengthened their dominance. Almost 70 per cent gained at least five good GCSEs, compared with 60.9 per cent of boys.

About one in eight A-level candidates achieved at least three A grades. More girls got A grades in A-level maths, further maths, physics, chemistry and economics than boys. Boys did better at A level in modern languages, usually a female strength.

Nearly a third of the schools threatened by the Government with closure last summer face a reprieve after improving. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, categorised 638 schools as "National Challenge" institutions last year because fewer than 30 per cent of pupils achieved five good GCSEs. That has dropped by a third to 440. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "The focus on raising achievement in these schools, particularly in maths and English, is producing results and it is regrettable that the task was made more difficult by the . . . torrent of consultants, plans and meetings that followed."

State school successes included Perry Beeches, in Birmingham, named last year as one of the worst performing schools but now one of the most improved. It went from having 21 per cent of pupils achieve five good GCSEs to 51 per cent.

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15 January, 2009

British Independent schools weathering the recession

It is going to hurt. We all know it is going to hurt. But how much is it going to hurt? As the rest of us brace ourselves for a bruising recession, independent schools, outwardly anyway, are calmness personified. "Right now, this does not really feel like a middle-class recession," says David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents more than 1,300 fee-paying schools. "It is business as usual for most of our members. We are certainly not looking over the edge of some kind of precipice."

In theory, independent schools are no more immune than anyone else from economic vicissitudes, but the experience of the last recession, in the early Nineties, suggests that any impact is likely to be significantly delayed. "At times of belt-tightening," explains Lyscom, "parents give top priority to continuity of education for their children. They don't do anything drastic unless they absolutely have to." Statistics bear him out. The last recession started in the third quarter of 1990, with negative growth lasting until the start of 1992. At first, according to an ISC census, pupil numbers held firm. It was not until the end of the recession, in 1992, that they began to decline. There were further small falls in 1993 and 1994. If that pattern were to be repeated, one would not expect pupil numbers to fall appreciably until 2010-11. But savvy schools and parents will certainly not be burying their heads in the sand until then. Budgets are being reviewed and, in some cases, trimmed.

"Schools are used to living in the real world," says Lyscom. "They know how to adapt to hard economic times. The canniest schools will also realise that as one door closes another opens." The plummeting pound, he believes, is a case in point. For parents in Geneva or Hong Kong, the cost of sending a child to an English boarding school has suddenly fallen, not risen. There is a new market out there, waiting to be tapped. "The recession will have all sorts of knock-on effects, not all of them negative," agrees Paul Smith, headmaster of Hereford Cathedral School. "The fees at this school are 10,000 pounds a year, which compares favourably with other independent schools in the area. It is not difficult to foresee parents with a child at one of those more expensive schools electing to send a younger sibling here."

Not all schools, inevitably, are going to survive the recession unscathed. In November, two private preparatory schools, Bramcote Lorne in Nottinghamshire and Brigg in Lincolnshire, announced they would be closing at the end of the term and merging with nearby schools. There will no doubt be other closures and mergers. But then there always are, in good times and bad. "It is the small schools that are most vulnerable," says Jonathan Cook, general secretary of the Independent Schools' Bursars Association. "If they lose, say, 10 pupils from a school roll of 150, that is a potentially crippling blow. At larger schools, economies of scale are possible. You can raise class sizes from 14 to 16 or trim the number of A-level subjects from 42 to 40 without doing lasting damage."

Some capital building programmes may have to be put on hold, according to Cook, although even that is not a foregone conclusion. "Borrowing is cheap at the moment. You can get a builder and strike a good deal. Financially, independent schools are pretty straightforward operations compared with other businesses. They establish how many pupils they are likely to have in the next school year, then plan accordingly."

Pupil numbers for 2009-10 cannot be anticipated at this stage, but there is already plenty of anecdotal evidence, says Cook, of parents struggling to pay fees on time. "They are asking for fees to be deferred or paid in stages and, where possible, schools will do what they can to help."

If education professionals are bullish, many parents are clearly twitchy. There has, for example, been a boom in applications for grammar schools (up 20 per cent in Kent alone). In October, at Wallington County Grammar School, Surrey, there was such a scrum of applicants, more than 10 per place, that police had to be called to keep order during the entrance exam. But it is not panic stations yet. Prudent housekeeping by schools and careful planning by parents should keep the damage to manageable proportions.

Common sense suggests that, despite the optimistic noises coming from the independent education sector, there will be schools that cut their fees in a bid to retain the loyalty of parents. But they are likely to be in a small minority.

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A private education and proud of it

Comment from Australia below. Note that private education is a mass phenomenon in Australia. The overall numbers attending private schools are not too different from elsewhere (approx. 7% in Britain, 11% in the USA and 13% in Australia) but that changes radically if we look at secondary school enrolments only. About 40% of Australian teenagers go to private schools. In other words, many Australians are happy with government schooling in the early years but see it as inadequate in the later years.

Language note for American readers: "Whingeing" (pronounced "winjing") is a derogatory Australian/British word for the sort of persistent whining a little kid does when it is tired etc. It is derogatory when applied to adult complainers and critics

LET'S get a few things straight from the outset: I went to a private school; my parents aren't rich; they worked hard to pay for a total of 39 years of private education for their three daughters. Should they or I be ashamed of this? No. I'm tired of the whingeing about private schools, their pupils and parents. The beauty of earning income is that you can spend it on whatever you choose. My parents chose to spend a significant portion of their earnings educating their kids. We worked hard at school and did well, the only way we knew how to repay them.

At 26, am I now an idle eastern suburbs "lady who lunches"? No. The moment my HSC exams finished, I was on my own. I got a part-time job, paid my way through uni and got a "real job" at the end. I now work alongside alumni of both the public and private systems in investment banking.

There is a small number of private school students who do rort the system; who use daddy's funding of a new wing for the school as leverage to get their own way. They are the minority who give us all a bad name. There are also kids in the public system whose behaviour is equally unscrupulous.

Just because I was educated at a private school it doesn't mean I'm lazy, up myself and undeserving of what life presents me. I drive an entry-model Japanese car, rent a small apartment and, like most, struggle to pay my bills and wish I had more money to pursue the things I desire.

Why isn't there similar outrage against people who buy a European car instead of a domestic make because they can afford it? Could it be because it's their money to spend as they wish?

It is time people stopped complaining about the "evils and excesses" of the private school system and started looking at the failures and problems in the public system. For me the most telling thing I've heard was a case of a public school teacher who would not send his three sons to a public school. His wages, by no means excessive, were poured into educating his boys at a private school. If all the energy spent complaining about private schools and their pupils was channelled into improving the dire state of public schooling, we might have a public school system worth defending.

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14 January, 2009

British parents are turning to "no frills" private schools as the recession hits middle-class families

Note that Britain has a very large range of private schools. One guess why

Schools with fees set at a fraction of the national average are reporting increased demand during the economic downturn. Some cheap and mid-market independent chains are even preparing to open new schools despite fears of falling interest elsewhere. It comes just days after a leading headmistress warned the financial slump would result in a "difficult" year for schools. Jill Berry, president of the Girls' Schools Association, said elite schools should abandon the facilities "arms race" to cut costs.

Grammar schools [taxpayer-supported selective schools] are already reporting more interest, with the number of children taking the 11-plus jumping by up to a fifth this year.

Last year, average independent school fees increased by more than six per cent to 11,253 pounds. It is believed the downturn will lead to increased interest in schools with relatively low charges. The New Model School Company - linked to the Civitas think-tank - is opening two new prep schools in London charging around 5,000-a-year. Its one other existing school in West London is also expanding. Robert Whelan, Civitas deputy director, said: "The demand is fantastic. It is a question of finding buildings."

Talks are under way for a school to join the Alpha Schools Group, which has four "affordable" schools in the capital. Other independent schools are also looking to sell to private education companies which often keep fees down by sharing running costs between several institutions.

Sue Fieldman, of the Good Schools Guide, said lower fees were becoming more important to parents in considering which school to choose. She said: "If you have two schools more or less the same, if one is 500 cheaper, they are going for that rather than the flash swimming pool or the expensive theatre."

Chris Woodhead, former head of Ofsted, runs the Cognita chain, which currently charges an average of 8,500. He said the organisation - which has 44 schools - was in negotiation with more schools then ever before as owners consider selling up. Prof Woodhead has been critical in the past of the "frills and frippery" wasted by some independent schools. "I am not saying that facilities are unimportant but I do think that the competition between schools to provide five-star facilities in recent years has driven fees up," he said. "I think it is the case that if you are sending your children to a school like Eton or Millfield at the top end of the market then a few thousand pounds here and there isn't going to make a great difference. But if you have not got much spare cash you are going to shop around to find the best value for money."

But David Lyscom, chief executive of the ISC, insisted the number of pupils at top independent schools was "holding up well" - and branded talk of falling pupil numbers was "scaremongering". "Anecdotal evidence from heads suggests a healthy sector," he said. "Much as we do not wish to play down the seriousness of the economic situation for the UK as a whole, it should not be assumed that the independent schools sector will be badly hit by the downturn."

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British credentialism implodes

Making higher and higher levels of education normal too often leads to overqualification for the available jobs and is very disappointing to kids who have to end up doing jobs that they could have done without a degree

After 12 years of school, four years of university and a degree in business management, Grant Bostock was last week sitting on a factory production line checking the solder on electronic circuit boards. If the solder was not complete, he dabbed an extra bit on. "It isn't exactly what I planned," he said. "I want to do something that gives me opportunities, so that I can work towards something. I am qualified to do all sorts of things, but I am working in a factory."

His hopes of a career that would use the knowledge he spent so much time and money acquiring have faded fast in recent months. "A lot of firms have just pulled their graduate schemes," said Bostock, who lives in Cheadle, Staffordshire. "It feels like hitting your head against a wall. If the jobs are out there, you can try your best; but if they aren't, there isn't anything you can do about it. "I am still living at home, which isn't exactly what I wanted either. I want to move on to the next step of my life, but I am stuck here."

In some ways, however, he is lucky: he has an income even though his job is temporary. Mike Leader, who graduated in English from Birmingham University last summer, is still unemployed despite heading to London in search of a job. "I applied for a few jobs in August and September but I didn't hear back from any of those," said Leader. "Then I decided to go to the Jobcentre and apply for work there. I don't think I've heard back from any job I've applied for there."

He has even struggled to claim benefits amid the bureaucratic maze of Gordon Brown's welfare system. "I'm living with someone who has managed to get a part-time job in a coffee shop so I was turned down," he explained. Despite his degree, Leader remains unemployed. And, yes, his girlfriend, the coffee-shop worker, is also overqualified for her job: she is a graduate, too. They are among an army of graduates emerging from the education system who face the toughest employment prospects for years as the recession deepens. The government, having encouraged youngsters into higher education that has saddled many with large debts, is deeply worried. Graduate numbers are hitting a record high just as the number of jobs is shrinking.

As John Denham, the skills secretary, said in an interview published yesterday: "They [new graduates] will be a very big group: around 400,000. We can't just leave people to fend for themselves." His solution is a scheme to create government-backed graduate internships, paying modest wages, at large firms. Barclays and Microsoft are among those that have agreed to take part, and Denham hopes to have what is being called the national internship scheme running by the summer.

Don't get too excited. Pay will be little more than the current student grant of 2,835 pounds, and it is not clear yet how much, if any, government money would be committed. But Denham hopes that the experience and skills gained by interns will pay dividends. "At the end they will be more employable, and some of them will get jobs," he said. "Employers won't want to let good people go."

However, critics question how many graduates the scheme will be able to help. "Businesses taking on graduate interns is welcome, but this does not match the scale of the crisis facing young people trying to find jobs," said David Willetts, the Conservative spokesman on skills. "This is another one of Gordon Brown's ill-thought-out initiatives that comes apart within 24 hours. It seems pretty clear there's going to be no extra public money for it."

Contemplating his unemployment prospects, Leader also welcomed the idea of internships, but he, too, pointed out one simple drawback. "The bar will be raised for everyone," he said. "When you go for a job, you'll be up against people who have had three months' internship."

So what are the prospects and what can be done? The looming crisis stems from two broad trends heading in opposite directions: more graduates and fewer jobs. Since Labour came to power, it has encouraged more school leavers to apply for university, with Tony Blair originally setting a target of 50% of all school leavers going on to higher education. As a result the number of graduates emerging from the university system each year has risen by more than 70%, from 206,000 in 1997 to 358,000 in 2007 (the latest confirmed annual figure). Even before the credit crunch struck, some graduates were finding it hard to obtain jobs commensurate with their qualifications. At institutions such as Plymouth, Thames Valley and Lancaster universities about 40% of graduates remained in "non-degree-level" jobs six months after leaving university, according to a study published last year. The proportion of graduates still in non-graduate jobs five years after university has also risen: up from 22% for male students in 1992 to 33%.

While students at the top end have seen huge rewards from their investment in education, overall the financial benefits have declined. The extra lifetime earnings generated by having a degree were estimated in 2004 to be an average of 400,000; that has now fallen to 100,000, as even one vice-chancellor, Deian Hopkin of London South Bank University, admitted recently. At the same time higher education fees and student debts have risen.

Coming the other way is the recession, which started in financial services and the City, the source of many graduate opportunities in recent years. Student boasts of fat starting salaries at City banks have been replaced with ruthless competition for a declining number of openings, even for high fliers.

Paul Kavanagh, 20, in his final year of an economics and management degree at Oxford, has experienced a sea-change in the recruitment process. "Every other year the banks handed out jobs to people on my course, but not this year," he said. Despite a predicted first-class degree, he has been turned down for seven investment banking posts. Boutique firms are taking on one graduate this year, compared with up to 10 previously, he said. "All the deadlines are now gone and a lot of my friends are in the same position," he said. "I'm really panicked about it. It's just really bad timing." He is applying to do a masters degree, though he fears the course fees will put him a further 20,000 in debt. "Doing the masters is going to be a real financial struggle and there's only bits of funding available," he said. "Doing a paid internship is definitely something I would consider." ...

A spokeswoman for the skills department said Denham's scheme was at a "very early stage" and the department was still making initial approaches to companies. No detail beyond what Denham had said was available. It could give no estimate for the number of internships that would be created. As the government tries to flesh out the scheme, economic assessments remain gloomy. "While the recession began in May, the rate of recession increased sharply in the autumn," said the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in a report yesterday. The way it has hit new graduates is reflected in the latest labour market figures: of the 137,000 rise in people unemployed in the three months to October, 55,000 were in the 18-24 age group.

Whether or not Denham's scheme succeeds, students are likely to think harder whether university is worth the cost and commitment it now entails.

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13 January, 2009

Richer people have smarter kids

But the British government seems to think it can change that! How come? They cling to the nonsensical but classical Leftist myths that all children are born with equal genetic potential and that heredity does not matter. And I suppose they also deny that being smart helps you to get rich. A lot of denial there but Leftists never have been much interested in reality

A child's chances of success still depend largely on the background and earnings of his or her parents despite the billions poured into education in recent years, according to an independent report today. The Social Mobility Commission, reporting the day before a long-awaited white paper on the subject, finds that social class accounts for much of the gap in attainment between higher and lower achievers. It is evident from the early years that the gap widens as children get older.

Increased spending on education has disproportionately favoured the middle classes, the report says. Last year only 35 per cent of the poorest pupils obtained five or more good-grade GCSEs, compared with 63 per cent of better off children. While the proportion of poorer children getting degrees has risen by just 3 per cent, the increase among those from wealthier backgrounds is 26 per cent.

Martin Narey, chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's and a former head of the Prison Service, chaired the commission, which was set up by Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party. Mr Narey said that children from disadvantaged backgrounds all too often ended up in the worst schools and achieved the worst results.

The report comes as Alan Milburn was appointed by Gordon Brown to chair a panel of industry leaders charged with producing policies to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds into the professions. Ministers have identified limited access to the professions, such as law, medicine, the senior civil service, media, finance and the upper ranks of the Armed Forces, as a serious obstacle to those from poorer families. Mr Milburn, MP for Darlington, will chair a panel of representatives from the professions who will generate proposals to widen access in their particular spheres.

The panel will report its recommendations to the Government when it produces a policy statement in June. Issues to be considered include financial obstacles to access and progression, the role of work experience and internships, recruitment practices and encouraging new applicants for certain jobs. Mr Milburn said he would be trying to ensure that "the best people, regardless of their backgrounds, have a fair crack of the whip". He said: "This is the right time for the Government to make its core purpose creating an upwardly mobile society again."

Mr Narey commented: "Although any move to open up professions seen as elitist should be applauded, it is far more important for the Government to focus on reducing the inequalities in the education system. "Children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds all too often end up in the worst schools and achieve the worst results. "Only if these inequalities are tackled will children from disadvantaged backgrounds be able to fulfil their potential and become the doctors, army officers and barristers of the future."

The commission said that more resources ought to be provided for schools with the most disadvantaged children and better incentives offered to teachers to work in the most difficult schools. Mr Clegg said: "This expert analysis shatters the idea that Britain in 2009 is a free and fair society. Martin Narey and his colleagues deserve enormous credit for a report that cannot be ignored by anyone who wants a fairer Britain. "It is an outrage and a tragedy that two children born at the same time in the same hospital should have wildly different life chances, based simply on the income of their parents."

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Colleges Bite the Bullet

Could the global economic crisis actually force the nation's colleges and universities to rethink their priorities? The Wall Street Journal's Eric Gibson noted, after a recent tour of campuses, that today's student life resembles something like the Court at Versailles. "One college tour guide proudly informed us that upon arrival every freshman is issued a brand-new laptop. Even students who already have one? `Why yes,' the guide replied."

The lavish school menus cater to every ethnicity, food group and taste. And it doesn't take long to realize that maintaining this upscale lifestyle requires "higher taxes," which Gibson says is the reason for all those tuition hikes. "Not even the actual government is that brazen," he said.

However, because of the economic crunch, the pendulum has finally started to swing the other way. In fact, there has been a sharp increase in applications to state schools during the past few months.

Colorado College President Richard Celeste summed up the current situation, saying that "several years ago, we started thinking about sustainability in environmental terms," adding that "now we need to be thinking about sustainability in economic terms."

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12 January, 2009

School Choice: The Real Test

It's official: President-elect Barack Obama's two daughters are attending Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. The decision comes as no surprise. That elite private school launched former first daughter Chelsea Clinton on the path to success years ago. And the Obama girls are certainly used to attending a private school.

The Obamas steered clear of the Chicago's failing public schools, where 34 percent of the students fail state reading tests and only about half the pupils graduate from high school. So there was never any reason to expect the Obama family to subject Sasha and Malia to D.C.'s failing public schools.

Yet as president, Obama will have some promises to keep. Not only to his daughters, but to all Americans. During his campaign, he vowed, "We cannot be satisfied until every child in America -- I mean every child -- has the same chance for a good education that we want for our own children." And the best way to give students that chance is to give their parents a choice.

If parents were allowed to pick their children's school (as the Obamas have now done twice), they'd pick the best available school, not merely the one that happens to be in their neighborhood.

Obama's decision should serve as a teaching moment for his administration's education policymakers. Lesson number one would be that spending doesn't equate to success.

D.C. spends some $14,000 annually on each child in its public schools. A lot of that funding comes from the federal treasury, which means all American taxpayers are subsidizing the D.C. public schools. That's one of the highest per-pupil costs in the nation. Yet if the District were a state, it would rank 51st -- dead last -- in test scores.

To address these failings, Congress created the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program four years ago. The plan provides low-income children the chance to attend a school of their parents' choice. Some 1,900 disadvantaged children now attend private schools in the District.

Parents are happier with the schools they've picked, and the students are making progress, too. A testing evaluation shows that participating students scored higher than their peers who remained in public school.

Sadly, Obama seemed to be leaning in the wrong direction. "What I do oppose," he told the American Federation of Teachers, "is spending public money for private school vouchers. We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools, not throwing our hands up and walking away from them."

Yet real reform would involve expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program so that all children in the District can have the chance to attend a safe and effective school. That's not "throwing up our hands." That's doing something. Something other than simply throwing more money at a problem. We'd be expanding a successful program, so students could attend better schools and their parents could be more involved in their education.

The Obamas are already a role model for this, of course. They arrive in D.C. as an intact family, and both Barack and Michelle are clearly involved in their children's education. The key is to take this to the next level by making school choice available to all parents in the nation's capital.

Powerful politicians of all stripes routinely exercise school choice. A recent survey of Congress found that 37 percent of representatives and 45 percent of senators had sent at least one child to private school. The Obama administration could pave the way for a better education system nationwide by extending school choice to those less fortunate than Washington's elite power brokers. That would be a change Americans deserve.

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Regulator said 15,000 useless teachers worked in British schools. Nine years on, how many have been fired? Just 10

Only ten teachers have been struck off for incompetence in almost a decade despite a Government crackdown on poor practice, it emerged yesterday. This means only two teachers have been barred for every 100,000 working in the state system since the General Teaching Council was set up in 2001 to protect children from under-performing staff. The watchdog admitted yesterday the system for passing on concerns about weak teachers was 'virtually non- existent' in many areas. Councils are legally required to pass details of incompetent teachers to the watchdog but two-thirds have not made one referral in seven-and-a-half years. 'The issue for us is whether all children can be assured that the teacher in front of them is competent,' said chief executive Keith Bartley.

The revelation that only ten out of 500,000 teachers in the system have been removed makes a mockery of Labour pledges to root out the incompetent. A claim by former Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead that there were 15,000 incompetent teachers led the then Education Secretary David Blunkett to introduce a fast-track procedure for firing poor staff within a month. Labour also backed legislation setting up the GTC within months of taking power in 1997.

Ten years on, Schools Secretary Ed Balls admitted the system needs tightening up and in his ten-year Children's Plan, issued in December 2007, called on the GTC to root out teachers whose 'competence falls to unacceptably low levels'. In response, the GTC has begun an investigation to find out why so few under-performing teachers are being referred to it. In cases where a teacher is dismissed for incompetence or resigns when dismissal is likely, their employers are supposed to inform the GTC.

Figures disclosed by the GTC show it has received 155 referrals from employers in the past seven and a-half years, which resulted in 64 competency hearings. Of these, only ten resulted in the teacher being struck off. A further 39 entailed disciplinary sanctions including suspension or a reprimand. In 13 cases, the GTC ruled there was no case to answer. The GTC investigation will conclude later this year and is expected to lead to a crackdown on employers who shun their duties. Mr Bartley said: 'I am hopeful we can now address the issue in underperformance.' He told the Times Educational Supplement: 'I don't think we are talking about a broken workforce. It's the best qualified it's ever been, and the best trained.'

The number of incompetence cases emerged a few days after current Ofsted chief, Christine Gilbert, warned that ' boring' lessons were contributing to falling standards of discipline. The Policy Exchange think-tank concluded last year that it was likely that teachers are being ' recycled' around the system. Sam Freedman, the report's author, said 'no one believes' that there were so few incompetent teachers.

John Dunford, general secretary the Association of School and College Leaders, said some heads found it difficult to proceed against incompetent staff because a lack of support from local authorities.

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11 January, 2009

British Private schools urged to accept bigger classes to keep fees down

An eminently sensible suggestion. The desirability of small classes is a shibboleth in modern education but the evidence says that they just encourage the hiring of incompetent teachers. See here

Private schools should consider increasing class sizes to keep fees down as the credit crisis bites, the head of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) has said. Smaller class sizes have long been the selling point of independent schools, and are frequently cited by parents as the main reason for educating their children privately. Typical class sizes in prep schools range from 8 to 16, while secondary schools belonging to the Independent Schools Council boast a pupil-teacher ratio of 10-1, against an average of 26 and 21 pupils per teacher in state primary and secondary schools.

David Hanson, chief executive of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, whose members educate 130,000 children aged 3 to 13, said the sector's obsession with keeping class sizes small represented a "self-inflicted wound". "We need to abandon ship on the idea of small classes and focus instead on the quality of teaching and learning. The answer is quality, quality, quality. Small classes are not the answer. Many of our schools could transform their situation by increasing class size. "There is no magic number. You can have schools that are too small. Eight or ten children to a class can be too small. It's too intensive," he told The Times. "For the children it can be like having an intensive tutorial all the time."

John Tranmer, headmaster of the Froebelian School in Leeds and chairman designate of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, said that, at 24, the average class size at his school was well above the average for the independent sector. But the school was nevertheless among the top 100 in the country (out of more than 20,000) in the performance tables for 11-year-olds. "There are some schools that still think that trading on class size is the key thing. They are missing the point," he said.

What mattered more was to attract the best teachers. Rather than have two classes of 12, each with a fully qualified teacher, schools should consider merging the two classes under a single teacher and a classroom assistant. "You save on staffing costs, but the teaching quality is the same," he said. "It's all about the quality of staff and the effective use of teaching assistants - they are of incredible support to teachers." Mr Tranmer, who used to teach in a school in Surrey with classes of eight pupils, said that the social dynamics in such small classes could be very difficult to manage.

The IAPS's change in position on class sizes is unlikely to be universally welcomed by many parents, who remain firmly attached to the notion of small classes.

On the wider issue of how private schools would weather the recession, Mr Hanson said that while some parents would struggle to pay school fees, the most vulnerable schools were likely to be very small, family-owned institutions that did not have the backing of a professional association such as the IAPS. Within the association's 560 member schools, he predicted that at least three schools may be forced to merge to save costs. In other cases, schools were achieving savings by forming informal federations to do bulk ordering on equipment or by sharing specialist teachers.

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Half-empty government schools in Britain

No mystery why in most cases. Demographic changes are part of the story but low standards and bureaucratic inertia also figure

Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are being wasted each year on nearly 800,000 "empty desks" in schools. According to government figures, nearly one in seven primary schools and one in 10 secondaries are at least a quarter empty, their pupil rolls slashed by falling local birth rates or parents choosing better schools further away. Areas with the most surplus school places range from rural counties such as Kent and Norfolk to inner-city areas such as Knowsley on Merseyside.

With government spending on schools likely to be reined in after the recession, pressure is likely to grow for a "cull" of empty places in primary schools in sparsely populated areas and in unpopular comprehensives. "Many areas are going to be facing some very difficult decisions as primary school numbers continue to fall," said David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, who obtained the figures in a Commons written answer. They cover the period 2001-7. "With this number of secondary school surplus places, it is also clear many parents are rejecting their most local school."

Alan Smithers, education professor at Buckingham University, said politicians were reluctant to reduce surplus school places, despite the expense of keeping them open. "The corollary of parental choice is supposed to be that parents move their children away from poorly performing schools and that those schools eventually go out of business, raising standards across the system," said Smithers. "At the same time local communities are very attached to their schools and politicians are after their votes." The area with the highest proportion of empty secondary school places is Hackney, east London, where 22% are surplus to requirements. In Wakefield, West Yorkshire, 21% of primary places are unfilled.

Another badly affected area is Kent, where the number of primary schools at least a quarter empty nearly doubled from 44 to 80 between 2004 and 2007. In the past year, the council has closed about five schools and amalgamated others.

Those whose pupil rolls have been falling include Cranbrook Church of England primary school near Tunbridge Wells, the register has dwindled from about 400 six years ago to just 215 today. Peter Wibroe, 52, the headteacher, said: "In times of financial uncertainty I believe people will be less inclined than ever to have children, or move to areas like this with their families and boost the intake at small schools. "We have had to adapt very quickly. When I started two years ago, there were 10 classes. Now we have just eight." [i.e. In a private school, changes have been made which eliminate "empty desks"]

Local authorities contacted over the figures said they were keen to avert school closures wherever possible. Some pointed out that it was advisable to retain surplus places because pupil numbers were set to begin rising again after years of decline.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said funding announced in November's pre-budget report by Alistair Darling, the chancellor, for building new schools could be used to reduce surplus places, for example by removing temporary accommodation in cabins. She added: "Closing schools is a drastic last resort."

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10 January, 2009

Good news!

Lennie of Education Matters has agreed to become a co-blogger here. He is from Illinois and his wife homeschools their kids but he still takes a lively interest in what is going on in public education. He will not be posting here daily but his postings will add a valuable new perspective to this blog.




Congress contemplates future of DC vouchers

The arrival of a new Congress and administration is casting doubt over the future of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, the federally funded school choice program serving disadvantaged students in the nation's capital. The scholarship program-administered by the nonprofit Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF)-served more than 1,900 children from low-income families during the 2007-08 school year, its fourth year of operation. Families accepted into the program can send their children to the private schools of their choice, using scholarships worth up to $7,500 per student. Since its inception, approximately 7,200 students have applied to participate, representing about four applicants for every available scholarship.

The high demand for school choice in the District should come as no surprise to those familiar with the DC public school system, home to some of the worst-performing public schools in the country. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress standardized test, only 31 percent of DC eighth-graders scored "basic" in math, compared with 68 percent nationally in 2007. Only 45 percent of District students can read at a basic level, whereas nationally the number is above 70 percent. Only 59 percent of students in DC graduate high school. These low achievement figures persist despite the District spending nearly $15,000 per student each year.

Poor performance in the public school system has created a natural constituency of parents pushing for the Opportunity Scholarship Program and the better circumstances it creates for their children. In 2008, Congress voted to provide funding for the program for another school year, despite strong opposition from some leading voices on Capitol Hill. DC Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), who strongly opposes the program, said in a June 9, 2008 Washington Post op-ed, "I can tell you that the Democratic Congress is not about to extend this program."

With expanded liberal majorities in Congress and a new, Democratic administration, Norton's warning could come true, analysts say. Congress must reauthorize the program this session in order for funding to continue beyond the 2009-10 school year. Failure to extend the program would result in many participating children returning to DC public schools. Since the average income of participating scholarship families is $22,736 for a family of four, few will be able to afford the tuition costs without the benefits of a scholarship.

According to Virginia Walden Ford, a school choice advocate and head of DC Parents for School Choice, the Opportunity Scholarship Program is providing hope and opportunity for families throughout the District. "The Opportunity Scholarship Program has empowered parents by giving them the chance to get their children out of low-performing schools and send them to schools that meet their individual needs," Walden Ford said. "We have seen that, when children are placed in nurturing educational environments, they succeed and their parents become active and involved. We've heard over and over that it would be devastating if this program were to end and parents would have to look for new schools for their children who are doing so well in the schools they are currently attending.

"The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program has changed the educational direction of all the children involved," Walden Ford continued. "When children are doing well in educational environments, because of expanded options for the families who have had no choice, we see happy endings-not only for the children but also their families and their communities."

Ending the program would be unwelcome news to participating parents. Surveys have shown scholarship families have high levels of satisfaction with their children's schools and increased feelings of student safety. Sheila Jackson, whose daughter is in the program, told DC Parents for School Choice in November, "For the last two years my daughter has been in the scholarship program at a school I chose, and I see the transformation in my child. At 13, she is becoming a disciplined young lady who likes school. She feels safe. I feel relieved."

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Sex clinics 'to open' in EVERY British school so pupils as young as 11 can be tested... without parental consent

Sexual health clinics could soon be open in every secondary school as part of a drive to cut teenage pregnancies.

Sexual health clinics could soon be open in every secondary school and college. All pupils would have easy access to emergency contraception and pregnancy testing without their parents being told. Around a third of secondary schools in England - almost 1,000 - already have clinics. Some are mobile units shared by a number of schools. Now an influential study, commissioned by the Government, has recommended extending the coverage to all state secondaries and colleges in a drive to cut teenage pregnancies. Advocates of the approach say children can be deterred from seeking sexual health services if they have to travel to community centres.

But critics say the policy is a 'social experiment' which risks encouraging under-age sex instead of curbing it. Already, the morning-after pill is available to a million schoolgirls.

The survey of school clinic provisions was carried out by the National Children's Bureau on behalf of the Sex Education Forum. It found that single-sex, faith and independent schools were less likely to have clinics. Just 14 per cent of all-girl schools and 10 per cent of boys' schools had them. Only a fraction of the clinics restrict services to children over 16 - the legal age of consent. Among further education colleges, which teach four in ten 16-year-olds and growing numbers of 14-year-olds, almost three- quarters have on-site sexual health services. Some colleges offer condoms only in emergencies but others provide them in vending machines.

The report admits there is a 'lack of research evidence' about the effectiveness of school-based clinics, accessible by children as young as 11. But it says: 'School (and alternative provision) is the one place that the large majority of children and young people attend. 'Not all young people will need to use a sexual health service at school age, but providing a service in school is the best way of making sure that those young people who need the service can use it.'

Ministers have set a target for all schools to achieve 'healthy' status by next year. This means they must either set up clinics or refer youngsters to similar services in the community. But there is concern about the permissive approach of many clinics. Researchers in Bristol, who studied 16 school-based clinics catering for 11,805 pupils, found that only one in four youngsters who attended were advised to consider delaying sexual activity. A major study in the U.S. found the evidence was 'not strong' that clinics increase contraceptive use or bring down teen pregnancies.

UK rates of teenage pregnancy are the highest in Europe and the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show a shock increase last year, despite a ten-year Government strategy aimed at cutting rates by half. Critics say the increase casts serious doubt on the policy of increasing access to contraception and sex education. Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said: 'Sexual health clinics on school premises send out the message that it is normal for schoolchildren to engage in sexual activity. 'Confidential clinics in schools are part of a mix that is removing the restraints which previously limited underage sexual activity. 'There is no evidence that school clinics result in lower teenage conception rates. Instead, they encourage some teenagers to become sexually active when they would not otherwise have done so. 'The fact that these clinics keep parents in the dark is also a great concern. Confidentiality policies drive a wedge between parents and children and expose young people to the risk of abuse and disease.'

Children's minister Beverley Hughes said: 'The Government supports the provision of on-site services where schools have identified a need and where the scope of the service has been agreed by the school's governing body following consultation with parents. 'On-site services provide young people with swift and easy access to health advice that survey evidence suggests they are reluctant to access through GPs or clinics.

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9 January, 2009

California Courts Rule for Charter Schools Again

A Los Angeles charter middle school is moving into new digs thanks to a court ruling on equal treatment that has national implications. One of the largest obstacles charters nationwide face is finding adequate facilities. Across the United States, only 26 of the 41 states with charter laws include procedures for providing space. California law requires districts to make unused facilities available to local charters, yet receiving the facilities continues to be a rough road.

Proposition 39, passed in 2000, requires school districts in California to treat charter schools the same as they do other public schools. Wayne Johnson, then-president of the California Teachers Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle charter schools were getting the leftovers and should be entitled to adequate facilities.

In the 2007-08 school year, New West Charter Middle School in Los Angeles was looking for a new facility to house its 285 students. The school's contract on its location was up for renewal in June 2008 and would require $1.5 million in rent. Fairfax Senior High School, just 15 minutes away in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), had unused classrooms that could accommodate the middle schoolers at far less expense. In October 2007, New West requested the vacant Fairfax classrooms from LAUSD. In April 2008, Fairfax made New West an offer, which the charter school accepted the next day. But only a few hours later, New West received a faxed notice saying LAUSD would not provide the facilities.

New West had little choice but to sign the $1.5 million contract for its current space. Administrators took the case to court, arguing the charter had been denied the equal treatment mandated by Proposition 39. On October 3, 2008 the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled in New West's favor, ordering Fairfax Senior High to provide 13 classrooms. The transition will take place at the beginning of 2009. New West hopes to sublease its current site in order to recoup the money spent on the legal process.

"This has far-reaching implications for charters nationwide" said Gary Larson, a spokesman for the California Charter School Association. "This and other cases will have ramifications as to whether or not charter school students will be afforded the same treatment as any other public school students."

Charter schools have always faced an uphill battle for support from sponsoring districts. Over the past two years, two similar cases have been brought to California courts by groups denied facility requests by LAUSD. "Districts do not seem to want to comply with the law," said Sharon Weir, executive director and principal of New West Charter Middle School. "Now there is a precedent for districts to be held accountable to the law." Weir doubts the move to new facilities will hurt students' performance.

The small charter is fulfilling its mission "to provide an academically rigorous, highly individualized education." New West earned an 867 on the state measurement of the Academic Performance Index (API). A passing proficient score is 800, and New West has exceeded it three years in a row. According to the California Department of Education, this API ranks higher than all other LAUSD middle schools, including public and charter schools. "It is attributed to the quality of our teaching staff," said Weir. "They are non-tenured teachers, but they teach wholeheartedly."

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Labour sees SATs pass marks plunge for English and maths

British Sats are exams taken during and at the end of primary schooling

SATs test marks appear to be on a consistent downward trend. The pass mark in SATs tests has fallen sharply since Labour came to power, figures show. Youngsters needed to score just 43 per cent to make the grade in English last year and 45 per cent in maths to reach pass standard. A decade ago, they needed 48 per cent and 52 per cent respectively, according to figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats.

Ministers insisted that pass marks only fall when papers are judged by exam watchdogs to be harder, thus ensuring standards are maintained year-on-year. But opposition politicians claimed the figures cast doubt over the reliability of marking - and questioned why pass marks appear to be on a consistent downward trend. Results in tests for 11-year-olds in both English and maths have risen over the past 10 years, sharply until 2000 and then more slowly.

The Liberal Democrats said the figures would further weaken public faith in SATs marking following the debacle over late and chaotic results last summer. And they claimed a new independent exams watchdog being set up by the Government to dispel dumbing down worries was not independent enough. 'These figures reveal there has been a decline in the marks needed to get the basic maths and English levels since Labour came to power,' said education spokesman David Laws. 'They will raise inevitable concerns about a dumbing down of standards and there must now be serious questions about the reliability of the SATs results. 'We need a fully independent Educational Standards Authority to restore confidence in standards and ensure that the national tests really are rigorous.'

Figures disclosed by Schools Minister Jim Knight in a Parliamentary written answer showed that in 1999, pupils needed to achieve a minimum of 48 per cent in English and 52 per cent in maths to reach 'level four', the standard expected of 11-year-olds. However in each of the last three years the threshold has been 43 per cent for English. In maths, it was 46 per cent in 2006 and 2007 and 45 per cent in 2008.

The proportion of pupils making the grade and achieving level four has risen over the same period. In 1999, just 71 per cent scored level four in English and 69 per cent in maths, against 81 per cent and 78 per cent respectively in 2008.

However, experts at Durham University, who compared SATs results with independent tests, believe primary reading standards are little changed since the 1950s and maths standards have improved only marginally. Evidence from international studies is mixed, with a study of reading literacy claiming in 2007 that standards in England have fallen 'significantly' but a 2008 study in maths saying our primary pupils are among the best in the world.

The figures for marks thresholds over time were issued by the now-defunct National Assessment Agency, which was wound down late last year after a devastating report into failings that led to the summer's marking chaos. Mr Knight, writing prior to the findings, said: 'The NAA uses a range of statistical and judgmental procedures to ensure that the standards of performance required for the award of each level are maintained consistently from year to year. 'The content of each test changes every year, therefore different numbers of marks may be required in different years to achieve a certain level. 'Levels are anchored to the national curriculum so that a level four achieved in one year represents the same level of performance as a level four achieved in any other year.'

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British schoolchildren aged FIVE expelled for sex offences, girls molested by classmates: Playground bullying takes a shocking twist

Arriving punctually at her school in South London, the 15-year-old girl - let's call her Sarah - would not have expected that day to be different from any other. She would have greeted friends, familiar faces gliding past hers in the corridor as she prepared for the first classes of the morning. But for her, those classes did not happen. Her headmaster told me the brutal story of what happened next: how Sarah went missing some time between her arrival and assembly and then, a while later, reappeared looking withdrawn and anxious.

Initially, her teacher wondered why she had entered her classroom late. Then Sarah became distraught and the teacher took her to one side. Eventually she revealed how that morning, she had been marched into an empty classroom by a group of boys - themselves pupils at the school and all aged under 16 - who had physically forced her to perform a sex act on one of them. The head told me: `The incident had actually occurred in the school building. The boys concerned had just gone off to their lessons afterwards as though nothing had happened.'

His astonishment is still evident as he speaks. `The girl herself was immediately badly affected. She took some time in the toilets to recover from it. Eventually, she disclosed that something had happened.'

Arrests and court action followed. The boys later pleaded guilty to sexual assault and were given custodial sentences. But Sarah's story did not end with their conviction. She left the school and remains terrified that she might see her attackers again. Her father told us that even now, 18 months on, he is still shell-shocked. `You see your child off safely to school and you don't worry about them, really, until the point when they leave school to come home. This was something that occurred at a time when I just couldn't have possibly expected her to be a victim of anything.'

Yet when he complained to the council and asked for a home tutor for his daughter so that she did not have to go straight back to the same classrooms where her attackers were taught, they refused. `The council official I spoke to said: "I'm very sorry, we only provide home tutoring for children who've been excluded from schools, such as the boys who've assaulted your daughter. We don't provide it for their victims." 'ent part of the city, but he can still see the fear in her eyes. `If she goes into town or if she's on the train and she sees anyone from her old school, she becomes very fearful and very distressed.'

A sexual crime on school premises, committed by one set of under-age pupils against an equally young victim . . . It sounds as if it must be, thankfully, a vanishingly rare event. Yet this case is just one example of a shocking new trend in sexual bullying among children that is the subject of a BBC Panorama report on Monday night. We investigated Sarah's story, and others like it, to see whether they tell us anything about the world our children inhabit when they congregate at school.

For among experts there is a growing conviction that, up and down the country, something disturbing is happening. It is difficult to break this kind of activity into statistics. But the Government did supply us with its most recent figures, compiled in summer 2007, showing that in the previous year there were 3,500 school exclusions for sexual misconduct - which can include anything from daubing sexually explicit graffiti through to serious physical assault. In 20 cases, the guilty party was only five years old. But informal evidence suggests the problem may be worse. A survey of 11 to 19-year-olds by the charity Young Voice found that one in ten had been forced against their will to take part in sex acts.

How can this be happening? In one sense, the evidence is all around us. Fuelled by a sex-addled culture that parents cannot hope to shield them from, children can be fluent in sexual terminology long before they turn the legal age of consent at 16; often, even, before they hit ten. Sexual words can become sexual actions - so playground bullying is becoming sexual, too. Michelle Elliott of the charity Kidscape says: `Sexual bullying has become much more prevalent. On the Kidscape helpline we used to get maybe one or two calls a year. Now we are getting two or three a week. It's probably the tip of the iceberg.' If the emergency calls made to Michelle's office are the summit of that iceberg, far more are happening lower down the slopes, in routine exchanges between schoolchildren.

I was amazed when I met a group of teenagers in the offices of an anti-bullying charity. There were around 20 of them, some aged over 16 and some under.We were sitting in a circle inside the headquarters of Beatbullying, where helpers counsel youngsters whose lives have been made a misery. They were from local state schools; all had, in some way or other, come across verbal sexual bullying.

They all talked of the way sexual language was part of the daily currency. The word `slag' has survived from my schooldays, but new ones such as `sket' and `junge' have the same meaning and are thrown around with equal malice. `Gay' has become an all-purpose term of abuse. But what fascinated me was the way the wordplay so easily drifted into physical interference. According to Opey, a girl of 17, there is a lot of `grabbing and touching' between pupils, mainly with girls the victims of boys. She hears them bragging threateningly about sexual activities: `It would be verbal a lot of the time. Like: "She did this and she did that, so will you do this? Will you do that?" It happens quite a bit.' So, I asked, are she and her friends upset when it happens? `For the most part, yeah, but after a while you just learn to deal with it,' Opey said sadly.

Gang culture has contributed to the problem, of course. In some cases, boys are told to have sex with particular girls as part of `initiation rites', while young girls are bullied into performing sex acts for their `protection'. This hateful culture has now spread into the mainstream arena. I am told that 25,000 homepages on Bebo, the social networking site for children, have the word `slut' on them.

Words give way to actions. Every one of the youngsters I met at Beatbullying knew someone they thought had been sexually groped inside their own school. Dwayne, 16, said some of the boys he knows `touch girls where they don't want to be touched, especially in a public place at school'. I asked what the teachers did about it. `They ain't aware,' he replied, and I sensed my question showed me to be hopelessly out of touch. `They're, like, oblivious to everything.'

Even when the authorities are notified, it doesn't guarantee they will punish the perpetrators. In one horrifying case, a five-year-old girl was locked in a school room and sexually assaulted by another pupil. Astonishingly, the school urged her mother not to notify the police. She informed them anyway - only to be told that the boy responsible was under the age of criminal responsibility.

So whose fault is this sexualisation of the young, and where does it start? Without hesitation Monique, an eloquent 15-year-old I met at Beatbullying, blamed popular culture and magazines which have thrown sex at her and her friends for years. `It has a big impact on the sexual bullying side of things,' she said. `Music especially. Most of the songs you hear are `sex this' and `sex that'. And magazines have things at the back for positions, and things to do with sex.' She says even 12-year-olds see such material. `If you're 12, you shouldn't really be thinking about that.' Next to her sat Ramanae, 16. She told me: `My eight-year-old cousin, if she's on the internet, a pop-up advertisement will appear - a pornographic one - and she'll go to her mum: "What's this?'' '

What I found saddest was that all the youngsters spoke as if such exposure to sexual harassment was a fact of life. Monique said, matter-of-factly: `I have seen people bullied sexually. It's all around you; in school, outside of school, if you're out with friends after school, at weekends.' And when it escalates, it can bring disaster. Paula Telford of the NSPCC said: `We have had examples, for instance, of a 16-year-old boy who raped a much younger boy in a secluded setting in school. We have had a ten-year-old who was forcing other children to perform sex acts on him, and performing sex acts on them. And we have had much younger children who've been inappropriately touching each other.'

There are many grey areas. The sexual attack which causes a headmaster to call the police, and results in criminal prosecution, is clear enough. But in lesser cases, it can be difficult for teachers to decide how to intervene when so much of the traffic between pupils can be excused, optimistically, as general teasing and banter in the roughhouse atmosphere of a school.

So now Children's Minister Ed Balls is preparing guidance for teachers on when they should step in. Yet if the problem comes from our culture, what can a minister do? Not one of the parents I met had any idea how to stop sex arriving in the playground.

I gathered a group of a dozen mums and dads in a bar to talk about it. They spoke about mobiles, music and the internet, freely admitting that policing TV viewing was nigh-on impossible because of the ease with which children can access programmes out of hours. The ITV2 series Katie And Peter, featuring fly-on-the-wall footage of Jordan and her slightly preposterous husband, Peter Andre, was cited frequently as an example of a show which a child might be drawn to, but which had strong sexual content - they frequently joke about `shagging' and fall into bed with other.

But why, then, do their parents not ban it, I wondered. One mother, Lisa, told me: `I look like such a bad parent, don't I? Yes, we absolutely love that show. OK, I'm not happy about the language - but my daughter, she's only ten and she looks up to Katie Price and she thinks she's amazing. And you know what, in some ways she is not a bad role model. My daughter sits there going: "Oh Mummy, I want to be like her.'' ' Another mum, Jane, said she had found out through her child that ten-year-olds in the playground were `boasting about who they'd snogged.' She was alarmed, but what could she do about it?

I tried to remember if I had any concept of that at ten; were ten-year-old boys doing that in the Seventies? These days, as the father of two daughters aged four and two, I worry about the sort of world they are growing up in. Sometimes, it can seem so innocent - like the moment this weekend when Martha, the oldest, took five minutes to help her little sister undo her cardigan buttons. There was something so innocent about this moment of sisterly support, amid all the usual rows over who owns which toy, that it made my heart leap for joy. But then I remembered all the interviews we did for Monday night's film, and how that innocence can so easily be dismantled. It seems that whatever we parents do, childhood is invaded by knowledge far earlier than we would wish - and danger can follow.

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8 January, 2009

Michael Palin replaces Alexander Pope in Britain's English lessons

Authors from an earlier age give a view of a different world and hence highlight different values. Losing that is to lose perspective on the follies of the modern world

They are the writers who have inspired generations of schoolchildren. But now such literary greats as Coleridge, Shelley and Browning have disappeared from school exams to be replaced by more modern writers like Hornby (Nick) and Palin (Michael). Dead poets and authors who are central figures in the canon of English literature are no longer being featured in GCSE papers, according to new research by Cambridge Assessment, the school examinations arm of Cambridge University. And as they lose their place in exam syllabuses to more contemporary text, their study is dying out in schools.

The analysis of GCSE papers and predecessor qualifications at ten year intervals, from the 1870s through to the present day, revealed that a number of literary greats have endured, such as William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Hardy. However, others, from Alexander Pope to Jonathan Swift, have fallen out of fashion. Even Geoffrey Chaucer, described as the "father of English literature", had not appeared in the last two sample papers from 1997 and 2007.

Researchers found a general trend towards more contemporary authors. In the 1950s, for instance, it was common for pupils to study writers who had been born well over 200 years earlier. In modern papers, this time lag had been cut by half. "Overall it is possible to see that the exam specifications show increasing modernity," the study said. "More recently there has been a tendency to include a broader view of literature along side 'literary greats'."

Susan Hill, the award-winning author, said the pendulum had swung too far in the "modern direction". "Iris Murdock once told me that school students should not be studying her novels, they should only read the classics, the great Victorians, the major poets - in other words, the dead," said Ms Hill, whose novel I'm the King of the Castle, has featured in GCSE syllabuses. "I am sure that the brightest should indeed be studying the canon, as well as some modern writers - the key words being 'as well'. "At GCSE, the emphasis is almost wholly on modern writers, at A-level slightly less so, but the pendulum has still swung far in the modern direction over the last few decades."

Ms Hill said too many teachers took the easy option when a choice was offered in GCSE courses because they were afraid of pupils being bored or that older work would not be considered "relevant" to pupils today. "Once it was 'Hamlet or King Lear', now it is 'the poems of Wordsworth or Carol Ann Duffy' - and it is easier to teach Duffy than Wordsworth, I'm the King of the Castle than Wuthering Heights," she said.

A shake-up of GCSEs four years ago introduced non-fiction to English literature courses in an attempt to entice teenagers, especially boys, to read more. Nick Hornby's autobiographical book about being an Arsenal supporter, Fever Pitch, and TV travel presenter Michael Palin's bestseller Pole to Pole, have since featured on syllabuses. Thousands of pupils can also now sit an English language GCSE which they able to pass without studying any plays, poetry or classic novels. Other modern authors now studied are Frank McCourt, Penelope Lively and Janni Howker.

Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University, said: "We want young people to study works which illuminate the human condition. This tends to be true of works that have stood the test of time which are perhaps in a better position than more recent authors who could turn out to be a fad."

A spokesman for Cambridge Assessment said the study could not be used to provide a commentary on exam standards over time. Exams have changed because at the turn of the 20th century, only a tiny proportion of 16-year-olds sat the School Certificate, whereas the vast majority are now entered for GCSE. As a consequence, exam papers had to be more assessable, he said. "Modern questions must be worded in such a way that all students being targeted can make some attempt at answering," he said. "The target candidature of past questions, particularly those from the earliest years sampled, was undoubtedly very different."

The study also found that earlier question papers required a much closer knowledge and memory of the poetry and novels studied. For example every paper between 1877 and 1937 required candidates to quote verbatim from memory substantial sections of the prescribed text. Later papers give more emphasis to the candidate's own response to the work, for instance asking which character students "feel most sympathy for". There is also greater discussion of the overall meaning or themes of a text.

OUT: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith

IN: Nick Hornby, Michael Palin, Frank McCourt, Penelope Lively, Janni Howker, Carol Ann Duffy

Source




Poorer pupils are falling farther behind, say British Tories

The British Labour party is committed to lifting up the poor but their addled policies (such as attacks on selective schools) have the opposite effect

Poorer pupils appear to be falling farther behind their middle-class contemporaries as better-off families increasingly colonise the best state secondary schools.

An analysis by the Conservatives of government data shows the achievement divide between rich and poor schools to have risen by two percentage points within a year, despite the resources directed at reducing it. The proportion of teenagers achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths in schools where more than half of pupils are eligible for free school meals fell from 14 to 13 per cent between 2006 and 2007. At schools where fewer than a tenth of pupils are eligible, the proportion rose from 57 per cent to 58 per cent.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children's Secretary, said that the system favoured those fortunate or rich enough, to live in areas with good state schools. The Tories plan to allow good new schools to open in deprived areas, with extra cash for children from poor homes.

Source




Philadelphia libraries to become 'learning centers'

Nutty Nutter again: Who needs those silly old books?

As library supporters booed Mayor Nutter and called him a "liar" at City Hall yesterday, he announced that with outside financial help, the city plans to transform the 11 library buildings slated to close after tomorrow into "knowledge centers." Appearing unfazed by the catcalls, Nutter - flanked by staff and supporters that included four members of City Council - pledged that free computer access will be at the heart of the new public centers.

The city will lease the buildings to the new operators, which include community groups, foundations, corporations and others that would provide funding and staffing for the facilities, Nutter said. Five organizations already have offered to create programs, and as soon as all 11 sites are spoken for, Nutter said, details about the services that the centers are to provide will be made public.

Shutting the libraries will save $8 million a year and $40 million over five years, city officials have said. The move is part of the effort to make up what is estimated to be at least a $1 billion shortfall in the city's five-year financial plan. "This is a very bad situation," Nutter said. "We've come upon this economic crisis. We didn't create it, it was created by others." He insisted that concerns about the libraries that were voiced by citizens during eight community meetings were heard and taken into consideration.

Not so, said Eleanor Childs, 62, a teacher at Montessori Genesis II, a small private school in Powelton Village. "This is really a crime against the people," the library backer said after the news conference. "It's a civil-rights issue, this is a human-rights issue. This is not a budget issue." The Charles L. Durham Library, which Childs' students visit each week, is one of the 11 branches scheduled to close.

Nutter also announced that the LEAP (Learning, Education and Play) after-school programs housed in the 11 closing libraries will be relocated to nearby recreation centers, schools and other facilities on Jan. 12, the day the program is scheduled to restart for the new year. Eight of the new LEAP sites are within three blocks of the old sites, Nutter said, adding that one is eight blocks away but in a residential area. Nutter said that on Saturday he walked from the libraries to the new locations to gauge the distances. In all, more than 50 federally funded LEAP sites around the city provide more than 80,000 1st- through 12th-grade students with homework assistance, computer help, workshops, mentoring and other enrichment activities from September to June.

Nutter said that books and other materials likely would stay at the new knowledge centers, but computers leased by the city would not remain, and the new operators would equip the centers with new ones.

The dozens of teachers, students and other protesters who packed the news conference were unimpressed by what Nutter had to say. At 9:30 a.m. today some of them, members of several groups calling themselves the Coalition to Save the Libraries, planned to gather outside City Hall to "indict" Nutter. The charges against the mayor, according to a news release, include "wasting the minds of children," "promoting illiteracy" and "eliminating safe havens for kids." "I think it's a compromise that we cannot afford to make," Abby Miller, 34, a coalition member, said of the knowledge centers. "Community-run centers don't have the support that libraries have. They don't have trained librarians. It's a substitute for something that every neighborhood deserves."

The library issue has led City Council members to take sides. Council President Anna Verna and members Frank DiCicco, Marian Tasco and James Kenney stood with Nutter at yesterday's announcement. "I don't think I have any choice but to support the mayor," said Kenney. "People need to understand this is an international economic meltdown. We are in two wars and our economy is falling apart. . . . Screaming at the mayor in a rude way when he's trying to do his best to keep it all afloat, I think is crazy."

On the other side of the issue are three Council members who've filed a lawsuit to stop the library shutdowns: Bill Green, Jack Kelly and Jannie Blackwell. "All of my communities are united, whether it be Cobbs Creek or Mantua, whether it be Powelton Village in University City," said Blackwell. "All my neighborhoods, all races and income groups, everybody." "Last week before the issue of the lawsuit came up," Blackwell added, "I had teachers from my area saying, 'We're ready to go to jail.' "

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7 January, 2009

CO-BLOGGER WELCOME

The field of education is vast and I can cover only a small corner of it. So someone with a conservative or libertarian perspective who has views about education -- probably a person with some teaching background -- might like to consider blogging here. This blog gets about 120 hits a day, which may not seem much, but which is still in the top 99% of all blogs. Building up to that from scratch might take some time. And there is no doubt that this site could be developed much further with a bit more effort.

So if you would like to blog here, email me on jonjayray@hotmail.com




Home schooling grows in the USA

The ranks of America's home-schooled children have continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new research suggests broader reasons for the appeal. The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007. "There's no reason to believe it would not keep going up," says Gail Mulligan, a statistician at the center.

Traditionally, the biggest motivations for parents to teach their children at home have been moral or religious reasons, and that remains a top pick when parents are asked to explain their choice. The 2003 survey gave parents six reasons to pick as their motivation. (They could choose more than one.) The 2007 survey added a seventh: an interest in a "non-traditional approach," a reference to parents dubbed "unschoolers," who regard standard curriculum methods and standardized testing as counterproductive to a quality education.

"We wanted to identify the parents who are part of the 'unschooling' movement," Mulligan says. The "unschooling" group is viewed by educators as a subset of home-schoolers, who generally follow standard curriculum and grading systems. "Unschoolers" create their own systems.

The category of "other reasons" rose to 32% in 2007 from 20% in 2003 and included family time and finances. That suggests the demographics are expanding beyond conservative Christian groups, says Robert Kunzman, an associate professor at Indiana University's School of Education. Anecdotal evidence indicates many parents want their kids to learn at their own pace, he says.

Fewer home-schoolers were enrolled part time in traditional schools to study subjects their parents lack knowledge to teach. Eighteen percent were enrolled part time in 1999 and 2003, compared with 16% in 2007. Kunzman says this might be because of the availability of online instruction.

The 2007 estimates are based on data from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, says the estimates are low because home-schooling parents "are significantly less likely to answer government-sponsored surveys."

Source




A day in the life of an ordinary British school: drugs, violence and intimidation

Documents released to the Sunday Telegraph paint a disturbing picture of the challenges facing Britain's teachers. It is 9am, the start of the school day, and already an English teacher has been on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse from a 15-year-old boy. Outside on the playing field, the PE teacher has stopped a lesson to deal with teenage pupils who are swearing and not doing as they are told. Later that afternoon, three more members of staff will report being verbally abused by their charges, and the day will end with a pupil vandalising the library.

This is just another typical day at Northfields Technology College in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. It is not a particularly extreme example of the unruliness that many state schools have to deal with on a regular basis, but it is a snapshot that will horrify parents as they prepare their children for the new term.

Records of classroom and playground incidents, known as behaviour logs, from five schools on the National Challenge list (those in which fewer than 30 per cent of pupils leave with five "good" GCSEs, with grades A* to C), reveal for the first time the struggle to maintain order in our secondary schools. The logs, obtained by the Sunday Telegraph under freedom of information legislation, and taken from April and October 2008, show some secondaries recording up to 30 incidents a day. Children storming out of class and refusing to work is now commonplace. More worrying, however, are the serious offences contained in the logs. During one week, which was chosen at random, a pupil at Tong School, Bradford, was stabbed in the thigh by a student and had to be taken to hospital.

"The age of deference is dead," says Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. "As these documents show, in some schools, keeping behaviour under control is a massive challenge. Schools may well be coping, but it shows the level of indiscipline that teachers have to deal with every working day."

The picture painted by the logs comes as no surprise to Colin Adams, 50, a former IT teacher who was awarded 250,000 pounds compensation in an out-of-court settlement last month after an assault by a pupil ended his career. Adams joined the teaching profession after working as an engineer. He loved his job and was head of department at Kingsford Community School in east London. In 2004, a 12-year-old pupil strangled him to the point of unconsciousness. Colleagues who witnessed the attack were at first too afraid to pull off the boy in case they were accused of assaulting him.

According to Adams, deteriorating behaviour in schools is a reflection of society. "I have seen children coming in high because they have smoked their fourth joint on their way to school," he says. "I have also had students who have brought knives in to school because they are worried about what will happen to them on their way home. Society, if it is not broken, has a lot of problems and these are mimicked by children."

The boy who attacked him fits an all too familiar profile - he came from a broken home, with a father who lived 100 miles away. Within a few months of joining the school, the pupil had chalked up 27 serious incidents, nine for violence. Adams was on the receiving end of the tenth. "The day he assaulted me, he had already punched two other pupils, but was still in school. I had not been made aware of what had been going on," says Mr Adams. "He came from behind and ran at me, knocked me down and when I was on the floor, he strangled me. The teacher who eventually intervened had to prise his thumbs off my neck." Months earlier, the boy was involved in a fight which led to staff requesting his permanent exclusion from the school. Their concerns were not acted upon.

However, the former teacher's experience, and the incidents revealed by the Sunday Telegraph's investigation of school behaviour logs, are not recognised by the Government as significant. Ministers insist that behaviour in schools is improving, and that head teachers have more powers than ever to deal with unruly behaviour. Last week, they dismissed figures which revealed that thousands of pupils were escaping expulsion, despite violent and sexual offences which the Government's own guidelines class as serious enough to deserve permanent exclusion.

Teachers' unions complain that head teachers - under pressure from local authorities, which have a duty to provide alternative education for expelled pupils - are avoiding the ultimate sanction. Heads are also finding their decisions increasingly overturned by appeal tribunals or even their own governors, who are afraid of legal challenges.

Even the National Union of Teachers, which argues that schools are still one of the safest places for many children, has concerns. "While teachers have the powers to deal with bad behaviour, it has become a serious matter for wider society that the behaviour of a minority of pupils and, in some cases, their parents, has seriously worsened in recent years," says Christine Blower, the NUT's acting general secretary.

Even if schools are dealing swiftly and efficiently with the challenging behaviour they encounter, at the very least other children are having their education ruined on a daily, even hourly, basis. At Cheshire Oaks School in Ellesmere Port, the behaviour log for one week shows 73 cases of pupils talking, shouting and disturbing lessons, 61 refusing to obey the teacher, including more than 20 incidents of children simply walking out of the lesson, 65 incidents of poor behaviour, 32 refusing to work when asked, 39 cases of rudeness, 20 cases of verbal aggression towards staff, 10 incidents of children wandering around the classroom or using mobile phones, 14 incidents of lateness, 15 cases of pupils throwing things in lessons and four physical assaults.

And during one week at John Bunyan School in Bedford, pupils were reprimanded for smoking, verbal abuse, aggressive behaviour, drugs, dangerous behaviour and physical assault. Hayling Manor High, in Croydon, averaged between 20 and 30 incidents of bad behaviour a day.

None of the schools which provided records for the Sunday Telegraph study are thought to be failing in the eyes of officialdom. Indeed, inspectors say many are improving, and have "clear and consistent" policies for dealing with threatening behaviour from pupils. However, all of the schools studied are operating in difficult circumstances. Each has a high proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals. Ofsted inspections have found that many children entered these secondary schools, at the age of 11, still unable to read and write properly.

According to Adams, despite the big increases in spending in the last 10 years, staff do not have the training and resources to deal with the increasing number of pupils who display problems. "It is true that some head teachers and local authorities do not take behaviour seriously enough and support teachers," he says. "But there is also not enough money to deal with these children. I had one class where eight of the 19 pupils had behavioural and emotional difficulties. When you're spending your time trying to separate them and keeping them in their seats, the level of teaching plummets."

The Conservatives have promised greater powers to exclude pupils who otherwise "fester" in the mainstream, as well as better provision for those who are kicked out. Labour's answer is the 5 billion academy programme, which is supposed to transform education in deprived areas. However, recent problems at academies in Southampton and Carlisle have revealed that these "independent" secondaries are not immune from the behaviour issues that plague other schools. As revealed last month in the Sunday Telegraph, an emergency Ofsted inspection was triggered at the Richard Rose Central Academy in Carlisle, when complaints were made about gang fights and bullying. The head of the Oasis Academy in Southampton resigned in November after a riot at the school led to five pupils being expelled and 25 suspended.

"The public has no idea about what goes on in schools," says Adams. "At the three I worked in, there were examples of children involved in prostitution, the selling of drugs, gangs, intimidation. Teachers do their best to police it and keep these things external, but they are still getting in to our schools."

Source




Playing outdoors protects young eyes from myopia

The differences reported below do seem to be quite stark and well controlled so the "safety" freaks who try to stop almost all outdoors childhood play may be damaging the vision of those children

The hours spent in front of the PlayStation or at the computer play no role in ruining a child's sight, with Australian researchers finding that being cooped up indoors is what gives children glasses. Children should spend two to three hours a day outside to prevent them becoming short-sighted, says a study by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science. A comparison of children of Chinese origin in Australia and Singapore, which has the highest rate of myopia in the world, found the only significant difference was the time spent outdoors.

The study, conducted on the centre's behalf by Australian National University and Sydney University researchers, challenges the prevailing assumption that near work, such as watching television, reading a book or playing computer games, ruins vision. Ian Morgan from the ARC Vision Centre yesterday said exposure to daylight appeared to play a critical role in limiting the growth of the eyeball, which is responsible for myopia or short-sightedness.

Professor Morgan said it had been apparent for a couple of hundred years that more educated people were short-sighted, but the research suggested spending some hours a day outdoors could counteract the myopic effects of study. "Video games are as ineffective as reading on vision," he said. "Computers are pretty neutral, watching television doesn't seem to affect vision. The only difference we could find is the amount of time spent outdoors. "As you are involved in intensive education through to studying at university, you ought to be conscious of this well into your mid-20s."

The research says about 30 per cent of six-year-olds in Singapore are short-sighted enough to need glasses, compared with only 3 per cent of Chinese-Australians. Both groups spend the same amount of time studying, playing video games, watching television and reading books. But Singapore children spend an average 30 minutes a day outdoors compared with two hours in Australia.

Professor Morgan said similar trends were seen in India, with 5per cent of rural-dwelling Indians being short-sighted compared with 10 per cent of their urban cousins and 65 per cent of those living in Singapore.

Myopia is increasing in urban areas around the world, and is described as an epidemic in parts of east Asia, with Singapore the world capital. Australia has a level of myopia more commonly found in the Third World, with only 0.8 per cent of six-year-olds of European origin being short-sighted. They spend on average three hours a day outdoors.

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6 January, 2009

The "anti-discrimination" laws behind the education boom

How "anti-discrimination" laws actually make life harder for blacks

Like pebbles tossed into ponds, important Supreme Court rulings radiate ripples of consequences. Consider a 1971 Supreme Court decision that supposedly applied but actually altered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. During debate on the act, prescient critics worried that it might be construed to forbid giving prospective employees tests that might produce what was later called, in the 1971 case, a "disparate impact" on certain preferred minorities. To assuage these critics, the final act stipulated that employers could use "professionally developed ability tests" that were not "designed, intended or used to discriminate."

Furthermore, two Senate sponsors of the act insisted that it did not require "that employers abandon bona fide qualification tests where, because of differences in background and educations, members of some groups are able to perform better on these tests than members of other groups." What subsequently happened is recounted in "Griggs v. Duke Power: Implications for College Credentialing," a paper written by Bryan O'Keefe, a law student, and Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University.

In 1964, there were more than 2,000 personnel tests available to employers. But already an Illinois state official had ruled that a standard ability test, used by Motorola, was illegal because it was unfair to "disadvantaged groups." Before 1964, Duke Power had discriminated against blacks in hiring and promotion. After the 1964 act, the company changed its policies, establishing a high school equivalence requirement for all workers, and allowing them to meet that requirement by achieving minimum scores on two widely used aptitude tests, including one that is used today by almost every NFL team to measure players' learning potentials.

Plaintiffs in the Griggs case argued that the high school and testing requirements discriminated against blacks. A unanimous Supreme Court, disregarding the relevant legislative history, held that Congress intended the 1964 act to proscribe not only overt discrimination but also "practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation." The court added: "The touchstone is business necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited."

Thus a heavy burden of proof was placed on employers, including that of proving that any test that produced a "disparate impact" detrimental to certain minorities was a "business necessity" for various particular jobs. In 1972, Congress codified the Griggs misinterpretation of what Congress had done in 1964. And after a 1989 Supreme Court ruling partially undid Griggs, Congress in 1991 repudiated that 1989 ruling and essentially reimposed the burden of proof on employers.

Small wonder, then, that many employers, fearing endless litigation about multiple uncertainties, threw up their hands and, to avoid legal liability, threw out intelligence and aptitude tests for potential employees. Instead, they began requiring college degrees as indices of applicants' satisfactory intelligence and diligence. This is, of course, just one reason why college attendance increased from 5.8 million in 1970 to 17.5 million in 2005. But it probably had a, well, disparate impact by making employment more difficult for minorities. O'Keefe and Vedder write:

"Qualified minorities who performed well on an intelligence or aptitude test and would have been offered a job directly 30 or 40 years ago are now compelled to attend a college or university for four years and incur significant costs. For some young people from poorer families, those costs are out of reach."

Indeed, by turning college degrees into indispensable credentials for many of society's better jobs, this series of events increased demand for degrees and, O'Keefe and Vedder say, contributed to "an environment of aggressive tuition increases." Furthermore they reasonably wonder whether this supposed civil rights victory, which erected barriers between high school graduates and high-paying jobs, has exacerbated the widening income disparities between high school and college graduates.

Griggs and its consequences are timely reminders of the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is increasingly pertinent as America's regulatory state becomes increasingly determined to fine-tune our complex society. That law holds that the consequences of government actions often are different than, and even contrary to, the intended consequences.

Soon the Obama administration will arrive, bristling like a very progressive porcupine with sharp plans -- plans for restoring economic health by "demand management," for altering the distribution of income by using tax changes and supporting more muscular labor unions, for cooling the planet by such measures as burning more food as fuel and for many additional improvements. At least, those will be the administration's intended consequences.

Source




Costly innumeracy in Britain

Children who fail to master basic maths cost society up to 44,000 pounds by their late thirties, a report concludes. Research by KPMG suggests that innumeracy costs Britain 2.4 billion every year as people fall behind at school and in the workplace. Children who fail to master basic maths are more likely to truant and be excluded from school, and run a higher risk of being unemployed and being drawn into crime, it says.

The report was commissioned by Every Child a Chance Trust, an educational charity, which says that 30,000 children leave primary school each year unable to do simple calculations. The report says: "Competent numeracy would appear not only important in relation to employability and the economy, but also as a protective factor in maintaining social cohesion." An earlier survey that tested maths skills concluded that 15 million adults have numeracy skills at or below those of an 11-year-old.

The KPMG research said that there was a significant link between poor numeracy and antisocial behaviour, even when other factors were considered. The raw wage premium from having adequate numeracy is greater now than in the early 1990s, according to researchers from the London School of Economics, the report said.

Teenagers who leave school without basic maths cost the taxpayer 1.9 billion a year because of unemployment, the report's authors calculated. The report said that those costs were incurred by people with numeracy difficulties, but who were competent at reading and writing. It added: "For all those with numeracy difficulties, the total costs to the public purse arising from the failure to master basic numeracy skills in primary school are estimated at between 4,000 and 44,000 pounds per individual to the age of 37, and between 4,000 and 67,000 over a lifetime."

The charity is starting a campaign to encourage businesses to help local children with maths problems. Children will receive maths toolkits that include dice, counters, bead strings, traditional games such as dominoes and snakes and ladders, maths computer games, and CDs of number songs. John Griffith-Jones, chairman of KPMG and of the trust, said: "Every pound put forward now will save the nation at least 12 later on in reduced crime and unemployment and other savings."

Source




Australia: Exodus from Queensland government schools continues

The public school system has lost more than 55,000 students to private schools since Labor won Queensland in 1998 and rebranded it the Smart State. Figures obtained by The Courier-Mail show a 3.4 per cent drop in public school students compared with the private sector, from 1998 to 2007. And of the 206,000 extra private school students in Australia over that time, about one in three has been from Queensland. The net result means just 68.6 per cent of Queensland students attend state schools.

Over the decade, annual education funding has dropped 3 per cent as a proportion of total government funding, to 22 per cent. A spokesman for Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the decrease was "because of an elevated focus on health funding" and total spending should double, from 1998 levels, to $8.17 billion this financial year.

Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle claimed the march out of state schools showed parents did not trust the Government to deliver quality education. Falling literacy, numeracy and behavioural standards in classrooms were the main reasons parents were aggrieved, he said.

Even as the economy slows dramatically and widespread job losses loom, more Queensland parents are choosing private, paying upwards of $15,000 a year. Brisbane parents Ben and Lisa Wavell-Smith said they had chosen St Elizabeth's Primary at Tarragindi for their daughter Malena because the Catholic school "brand" delivered a better, more rounded education than state schools. "You get the feeling also teachers seem to be more involved in their school," Mr Wavell-Smith said.

A week before Christmas, Premier Anna Bligh set terms of reference for the Masters Review into Queensland's underperforming primary school system, leaving the door open for Professor Geoff Masters to investigate any "systemic cultural issues (within Education Queensland) that are inhibiting performance", including bullying of teachers by EQ staff.

Experts say recruitment and retention of quality teachers is pivotal to a student's success. Former Queensland Studies Authority chairman Professor Bob Lingard said state school teachers were regularly blocked from promotion by self-interested EQ bureaucrats. "Often we get those promoted because they go along with what's happening with those above them," the Professor said. "If you want schools to do better, you have to get rid of some of those broader inequities as well."

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5 January, 2009

In support of early explicit phonics teaching

Human speech has long been present in every culture, and our brains have evolved specialized features to enable its rapid development when we are exposed to the speech of others. Reading however is a relatively recent skill, and we have no such dedicated reading module to guarantee success. Fortunately, our brains are able to adapt to the task, although there is considerable variation in the assistance learners require to achieve it.

Humans have produced numerous writing systems in their attempts to create a concrete form of communication, and those languages employing an alphabet have provided the most powerful means of achieving this goal.

The invention of the alphabet was one of the greatest of human achievements. It required the appreciation that the spoken word can be split into its component sound parts, and that each part can be assigned a symbol or letter. All that is additionally required to have an amazingly productive writing system is for the learner to be able to identify the sound for each letter, and blend the sounds together to recreate the spoken word. This is known as the alphabetic principle, and allows us to write any word we can say. Our written language is thus a code, and phonics is simply the key to unlocking the code.

Should we explain to our students through phonics teaching how our speech is codified into English writing? It sounds obvious that we should; indeed, that not to do so would be cruel. But perhaps there is a better way. English is after all a complicated language, having absorbed so many words from other languages with differing spelling patterns. But, no, it turns out from years of research that there is a significant advantage in demonstrating from the beginning how the alphabetic principle works. This benefit is particularly evident in the 30% or so of our students who struggle with learning to read. It also has become clear that demonstrating this principle systematically is more effective than merely sprinkling a few clues here and there as a story is read with or to a student.

If we do not introduce this principle early, there is a risk of students developing less productive strategies in their efforts to make sense of print. Some of these strategies have a surface appeal because they provide a veneer of reading progress, but become self-limiting over time.

For example, routinely using pictures to determine word identity draws student attention away from print, thereby diminishing the central importance to students of the alphabetic principle. Asking students to remember words as a primary strategy gives the unhelpful message that reading involves the visual memory of shapes, of letter landscapes devoid of alphabetic significance. Stressing the integrated use of multiple cues leaves students with too many ill-defined options, and produces marked variability in the first approach most favoured by students. Of course, many of the better students will gravitate to phonics as a foundation anyway; however, those less fortunate will be left to scour their memories for word shapes or attempt to predict upcoming words based on sentence/passage meaning or on the sound of initial letters. Syntactic cues tend to be less employed among this group as their skills in grammar are likely to be under-developed also.

The problem is often not identified until about the fourth grade; hence, the term fourth grade slump. In truth, the problem was there from the beginning, and had an instructional source, but was unrecognised because of some teachers' misunderstanding of reading development.

What happens to these apparently progressing students? As text becomes more complex, prediction becomes less and less accurate. Many sentences now include difficult-to-decode words that carry non-redundant information, and hence become more difficult targets for prediction. There are now increasing numbers of such words. For the memorisers, the number of words that must be recalled from visual memory outgrows students' visual memory capacity.

These moribund strategies collapse, but in the absence of a productive course of action, students often hold on to them, resisting a return to decoding as a first option as too hard or too babyish. Resolution of the problems of these older readers is very difficult for both teacher and student. Better not to create this situation in the first place.

Even when the value of early phonics teaching is recognised by educators, students vary significantly in the ease with which they develop from their initial painstaking attempts at decoding through to effortless fluent orthographic-dominant reading. Our challenge as educators is to be truly sensitive to every reader's progress through careful monitoring, and to ensure the intensity and duration of instruction is appropriate to their needs. Once they are on their way, future progress becomes a self-teaching issue, driven largely by how much they choose to read. However, until reading is effortless, we cannot expect children to choose books over the many alternative communication modes available to them today.

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Useless credentialism

BARACK OBAMA has two attractive ideas for improving post-secondary education - expanding the use of community colleges and tuition tax credits - but he needs to hitch them to a broader platform. As president, Mr. Obama should use his bully pulpit to undermine the bachelor's degree as a job qualification. Here's a suggested battle cry, to be repeated in every speech on the subject: "It's what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it."

The residential college leading to a bachelor's degree at the end of four years works fine for the children of parents who have plenty of money. It works fine for top students from all backgrounds who are drawn toward academics. But most 18-year-olds are not from families with plenty of money, not top students, and not drawn toward academics. They want to learn how to get a satisfying job that also pays well. That almost always means education beyond high school, but it need not mean four years on a campus, nor cost a small fortune. It need not mean getting a bachelor's degree.

I am not discounting the merits of a liberal education. Students at every level should be encouraged to explore subjects that will not be part of their vocation. It would be even better if more colleges required a rigorous core curriculum for students who seek a traditional bachelor's degree. My beef is not with liberal education, but with the use of the degree as a job qualification.

For most of the nation's youths, making the bachelor's degree a job qualification means demanding a credential that is beyond their reach. It is a truth that politicians and educators cannot bring themselves to say out loud: A large majority of young people do not have the intellectual ability to do genuine college-level work.

If you doubt it, go back and look through your old college textbooks, and then do a little homework on the reading ability of high school seniors. About 10 percent to 20 percent of all 18-year-olds can absorb the material in your old liberal arts textbooks. For engineering and the hard sciences, the percentage is probably not as high as 10.

No improvements in primary and secondary education will do more than tweak those percentages. The core disciplines taught at a true college level are tough, requiring high levels of linguistic and logical-mathematical ability. Those abilities are no more malleable than athletic or musical talent.

You think I'm too pessimistic? Too elitist? Readers who graduated with honors in English literature or Renaissance history should ask themselves if they could have gotten a B.S. in physics, no matter how hard they tried. (I wouldn't have survived freshman year.) Except for the freakishly gifted, all of us are too dumb to get through college in many majors.

But I'm not thinking just about students who are not smart enough to deal with college-level material. Many young people who have the intellectual ability to succeed in rigorous liberal arts courses don't want to. For these students, the distribution requirements of the college degree do not open up new horizons. They are bothersome time-wasters.

A century ago, these students would happily have gone to work after high school. Now they know they need to acquire additional skills, but they want to treat college as vocational training, not as a leisurely journey to well-roundedness.

As more and more students who cannot get or don't want a liberal education have appeared on campuses, colleges have adapted by expanding the range of courses and adding vocationally oriented majors. That's appropriate. What's not appropriate is keeping the bachelor's degree as the measure of job preparedness, as the minimal requirement to get your foot in the door for vast numbers of jobs that don't really require a B.A. or B.S.

Discarding the bachelor's degree as a job qualification would not be difficult. The solution is to substitute certification tests, which would provide evidence that the applicant has acquired the skills the employer needs.

Certification tests can take many forms. For some jobs, a multiple-choice test might be appropriate. But there's no reason to limit certifications to academic tests. For centuries, the crafts have used work samples to certify journeymen and master craftsmen. Today, many computer programmers without college degrees get jobs by presenting examples of their work. With a little imagination, almost any corporation can come up with analogous work samples.

The benefits of discarding the bachelor's degree as a job qualification would be huge for both employers and job applicants. Certifications would tell employers far more about their applicants' qualifications than a B.A. does, and hundreds of thousands of young people would be able to get what they want from post-secondary education without having to twist themselves into knots to comply with the rituals of getting a bachelor's degree.

Certification tests would not eliminate the role of innate ability - the most gifted applicants would still have an edge - but they would strip away much of the unwarranted halo effect that goes with a degree from a prestigious university. They would put everyone under the same spotlight.

Discrediting the bachelor's degree is within reach because so many employers already sense that it has become education's Wizard of Oz. All we need is someone willing to yank the curtain aside. Barack Obama is ideally positioned to do it. He just needs to say it over and over: "It's what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it."

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4 January, 2009

Bell "problem" in British schools

What will British teachers find to whine about next?

School bells which ring too loudly could be damaging the hearing of pupils and staff, a teaching union has warned. The Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association (SSTA) claimed some schools were buying one very loud bell, instead of several smaller ones, to save money. It said while infrequent exposure was acceptable, repetitive and prolonged ringing could be harmful.

Jim Docherty, SSTA's acting general secretary, said new schools were among the worst offenders. He said: "Schools build under PPP/PFI arrangements are worse than many older schools. There has been a consistent failure to carry out adequate risk assessments, as required by the Health and Safety at Work act, in many schools. "Quite simply many of these schools have been built on a 'minimum cost' basis."

Mr Docherty called on local councils to address the issue. He said: "School authorities must recognise these concerns where they are expressed and act accordingly before the hearing of staff and students is damaged. "The result will inevitably be legal action against the authorities."

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1984 Now

Imagine the widespread panic if doctors nationwide abandoned genuine medical expertise labeling it old-fashioned, out of touch, and insufficient for treating patients. Suppose medical schools focused on patient psychology and beside manner instead of anatomy, diagnosis and prescription therapy. What if your family M.D. suddenly morphed into a wellness facilitator (W.F.) encouraging you to "discover" your own path to better health? Would you passively accept the change? Would you buy such blithe explanations as, " We treat the patient, not the disease," or "Our holistic approach to medicine more thoroughly meets the needs of 21st century patients"?

Before you dismiss the above as demented lunacy, please recognize this is no updated 1984 scenario. In reality we're not talking about the medical profession of the future. We are talking about the education profession in America NOW. The parallels are frightening but all too true.

Most teachers certified in the last decade or so are teaching subjects they never majored in. Your children are in their classes. Parents expect subject mastery and expertise from today's educators, but both are sadly missing. It's outright deception on a massive scale. Education professors and their required courses brainwash future teachers into believing anyone schooled in child psychology and progressive education doctrine can facilitate learning anything in any discipline. This notion is recycled rubbish, fermented and fomented in the compost heap of American ed. philosophy. It's been with us since before the turn of the 20th century, but it's news to American parents.

The teaching profession in 2009 is populated with young teachers too inexperienced to know anything different, established teachers too in debt to risk job security, and endangered traditional teachers too rare and too ostracized to be taken seriously. Administrators and union officials entrenched in John Dewey progressive dogma salivate over anticipated government grants using your tax money. Meanwhile parents and traditionalists within the system are ignored and castigated.

Ideologues thoroughly proficient in "edu-speak" euphemisms run American public schools today. They're public relations experts keeping parents happy but out of touch. I'd call their obfuscation a national swindle. "Child-centered" certainly passes a hoodwinked public's apple-pie test. "Outcome-based" assures everyone of attainable goals. "Pathways" pacify parents concerned about directionless kids. "Constructivist" no doubt betokens a solid "back to basics" foundation.

But wait. These sound-good sound bites represent updates of a progressive ed. philosophy in high fashion way back in the late 1800s. Thoroughly discredited ever since, progressive ed. has reinvented itself every generation with new "edu-speak" jargon. Just ask any veteran teacher old enough to have survived the cycles.

These specious catch phrases reflect the views of well-intentioned but wrong-headed utopians who invariably thought socialism would save the world. Their adherents still reside in ivory-tower academia, bad mouthing America and willfully ignoring the horrific lessons of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Cuba. Worst of all, these education Ph.D.'s are teaching our teachers and have been since the `60s.

The shocking truth is today's public schools don't even attempt to provide a solid academic foundation for ALL students. It's what parents expect and what parents thought they were getting. Only students who opt for college prep courses get a shot at solid academics, and practically speaking even these classes have been systematically dumbed down during the 37 years since I began teaching.

Schools don't promote independent thinking anymore. Even math problem solving routinely becomes a group project. Ninth graders, supposedly algebra ready, still cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide on paper. At 58, I managed simple math in my head before my students figured out which calculator keys to push. They thought I was a math whiz. The difference is 45 years ago I learned my times tables. Memorizing anything nowadays "ist verboten!" in progressive ed. America-has been for decades.

Today's facilitators (edu-speak for teacher) think their job is merely helping kids learn on their own during group "discovery" sessions. In English, my chosen field, I was the only teacher in my department who failed to embrace the facilitator approach. Today's facilitators have no clue about the expertise a traditional English teacher was expected to display "back in the day." (Aside: Good thing my current M.D. memorized the location of my appendix. Glad he didn't have to operate by the "discovery" method.)

Of my 28 colleagues in the English dept. only one other geezer and I know what a direct object is. My grammar diagnostic test routinely given to 7th graders in the 70s proved way too tough for my current high school TEACHER colleagues. Our Language Arts department has no Standard English textbooks. The facilitators wouldn't use them anyway. "Besides, nobody cares about stuff like subject-verb agreement anymore," I've been told. Meanwhile glaring errors such as, "Her and me feel the same," pass muster with both students AND their facilitators.

With group work practically universal, cheating is rampant and registers little social stigma among students. Street-wise "players" within groups dump responsibility on the smart ones, hoping to slide by with the least effort possible. No longer does a high school diploma guarantee even basic subject expertise. Students are, however, well rehearsed in co-operative activities with their peers, and they do feel good about themselves.

If schools and young teachers committed to groupthink activities were truly honest, they'd start granting one group diploma on graduation day. That practice would certainly shorten ceremonies, but would Emily Spitzer, Group Diploma Recipient #247 who plans to become a neuro-surgeon, qualify for a 21st century med. school? Hope she finds some smart lab partners!

Wise up, America. By default public education has declared the earth flat again and fallen off the edge. Somebody please re-discover Pythagoras, and let's get back to a truly well-rounded, grounded education for all.

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3 January, 2009

Academia's Top 10 Abuses of 2008

Banned conservative speakers, stolen votes, assaults on religious liberty, gay English classes, and forbidden Thanksgiving & Christmas celebrations

Political correctness ran amuck in our nation's school system this past year, and Young America's Foundation has once again compiled our "best of the worst" academic abuses for 2008. From "free speech zones" to transgendered speakers at military academies, the following list may make you both laugh and cry in the same breath. That probably isn't too surprising, however, since we are talking about academia after all.

1. The free speech "zone." A student at Yuba College in California was sent an ultimatum by the school's president: discontinue handing out gospel booklets or face disciplinary action and possibly expulsion. That's right-gospel booklets. Ryan Dozier, the 20-year-old student, had the audacity to distribute Christian literature without a school permit, which restricts free speech to an hour each Tuesday and Thursday. Yuba College even directs students to where on campus they are allowed to exhibit free speech. In this case, it's the school theater. Campus police threatened to arrest Ryan if he didn't comply with the "free speech zone," oblivious to the fact that students don't need permission to exercise the First Amendment's free speech and religious clauses.

2. Transgendered activists in, pro-life speakers out. Liberal administrators at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic institution in Minnesota, censored the appearance of prominent pro-life speaker Star Parker because campus officials felt "uncomfortable" and "disturbed" by previous conservative speakers at the school. The University's mission statement claims it values "the pursuit of truth," "diversity," and "meaningful dialogue." Except, not really-or better yet, as long as the said "pursuit" doesn't offend leftist predilections. Meanwhile, within the past year, the same school hosted Al Franken, the bombastic liberal comedian, and Debra Davis, a transgendered activist who believes God is a black lesbian. Realizing they had a public relations disaster on their hands, the head honchos at St. Thomas eventually reversed the ban on Star Parker.

3. A new meaning of Duty, Honor, Country. Cadets at West Point, the nation's foremost military academy, must maintain disciplined, selfless behavior-a precursor to the standards graduates are expected to uphold and reinforce once commissioned as military officers. So how does leftist instructor Judy Rosenstein of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership encourage cadets to appreciate the military's code of conduct? By hosting a transgendered speaker in class, of course! "Allyson" Robinson, a West Point grad him-, er, herself, switched genders after leaving the Army. Upon returning to West Point as a guest speaker, "Mrs." Robinson found it "worrisome" that the student composition seemed more socially conservative than when "she" was a student. Perhaps West Point's leadership should confine speaker invitations to those whose behavior, if emulated, would not get cadets booted from the academy, much less the Army.

4. 2008's stolen election? Columbia University recently polled students on whether or not they would support the return of the Navy's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) to campus after a 40-year absence. Columbia claimed the referendum lost by 39 votes. However, the University inexplicably closed the online poll at different times for different students and discarded more than 1,900 votes out of the 4,905 cast. To boot, the university showcased its "anti-fraud" measures, revealing they caught one person who purportedly voted 276 times! So much for secure, front-end identification control. In the end, 1,502 "valid" NAYs trumped the 1,463 AYEs. Does anyone else smell some anti-military electioneering rats?

5. When English class turns gay. Heads turned when Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois required this book as part of an Advanced Placement English literature course: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The book is laced with graphic sexual content, much of it too inflammatory to print here-although there are "milder" exchanges fit to report, such as one character pleading with his sexual partner to "infect" and "make [him] bleed." Supporters of Angels in America say the book is useful because it depicts "forgiveness, kindness, and compassion," as if HIV-positive sodomy is the best way to promote empathy to minors.

6. You can't pray here! The First Amendment, is it a bestowed right given from above and protected by our government or a meaningless, antiquated concept to be disposed of? If you're the folks at the College of Alameda in California, you'd pick the latter. How else do you explain their threatening to expel a student who prayed on campus? It all started when a student, Kandy Kyriacou, visited her professor to give her a Christmas gift. But when Kandy saw that her teacher was ill, she offered to pray for her. The professor agreed. That's when Derek Piazza, another professor, walked in and freaked out that a prayer-gasp, a prayer-was occurring on college premises. "You can't be doing that in here," Piazza purportedly barked. Kandy received a retroactive "intent to suspend" letter from the administration, claiming that she was guilty of "disruptive or insulting behavior" and "persistent abuse of" college employees. Further infractions would result in expulsion, the letter read.

7. Hey, that feather cap is racist. For decades, kindergarten classes in the Claremont district of California have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians and sharing a feast. Harmless, eh? Apparently not. In a letter to her daughter's elementary school teacher, Michelle Raheja, an English professor at University of California-Riverside, fumed that such activities are "dehumanizing" and serve as a "racist stereotype." In fact, Ms. Raheja whined that the Thanksgiving costume party is comparable to parading children around as "slaves" and "Jews." The school district capitulated, and now the toddlers are prohibited from wearing "their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests."

8. Ho, ho, forgetaboutit! Who's offended by Christmas decorations? All the white liberals who celebrate Kwanza? Must be. Florida Gulf Coast University's president, Wilson Bradshaw, sent holiday festivities packing because he didn't know "how best to observe the season in ways that honor and respect all traditions." Holiday decor wasn't the only thing to go, under Mr. Bradshaw. The school's greeting card contest got tossed as well. Cheer up, says, the President-Christmas merriment was replaced with an "ugly sweater competition." Mr. Bradshaw ultimately had a change of heart, after his embarrassing attempt at censorship became public.

9. Leftist factions compete on who is more multicultural. When eco-fanatics at UC-Berkeley illegally saddled themselves in trees on campus and hurled urine and feces to block the construction of a multi-million dollar athletic facility, probably the last thing they expected was to be called racists. Yet the school's chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, labeled them just that, saying the environmental radicals were impeding the completion of a new athletic facility designed to attract "minority student athletes." Puzzled that the chancellor played the race card on them, the tree dwellers argued that "three of the final four" protestors were "Latinos" and the very first hijacker was a "Native American." One of the Berkeley zealots, who goes by the name "Running Wolf," said that Mr. Birgenaeau attempted "to pit colored against colored."

10. Who knew? Universal health care is actually a non partisan issue. Administrators at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota-the nation's largest Catholic women's college-unexpectedly blocked young conservatives on campus from hosting Bay Buchanan, a popular conservative commentator and U.S. Treasurer under President Reagan. College officials deemed Ms. Buchanan's remarks on "Feminism and the 2008 Election" too politically charged, citing concerns about the school's tax status. Those same "concerns," mind you, didn't prohibit the school from sponsoring programs that push for universal healthcare and minimum wage increases or hosting Frank Kroncke, an anti-war radical who is reliving the Vietnam days. But Bay Buchanan? Well, she's partisan, according to St. Catherine's administration.

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UK: Big Brother spying on 4-year-old pupils

Schools have installed CCTV cameras and microphones in classrooms to watch and listen to pupils as young as four. The Big Brother-style surveillance is being marketed as a way to identify pupils disrupting lessons when teachers' backs are turned. Classwatch, the firm behind the system, says its devices can be set up to record everything that goes on in a classroom 24 hours a day and used to compile `evidence' of wrongdoing. The equipment is sold with Crown Prosecution Service-approved evidence bags to store material to be used in court cases. The microphones and cameras can be used during lessons and when a classroom is unattended, such as during lunch breaks.

But data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner has warned the surveillance may be illegal and demanded to know why primary and secondary schools are using this kind of sophisticated equipment to watch children. Officials said they would be contacting schools to seek `proper justification' for the equipment's use. Classwatch is set to face further scrutiny over the role of Shadow Children's Minister Tim Loughton, the firm's 30,000 pounds-a-year chairman.

The equipment, which includes ceiling-mounted microphones and cameras and a hard drive recorder housed in a secure cabinet, is operating in around 85 primary and secondary schools and colleges. The systems cost around 3,000 to install in each classroom or can be leased for about 50 pounds per classroom per month. The firm says the devices act as `impartial witnesses' which can provide evidence in disputes and curb bullying and unruly behaviour and protect teachers against false allegations of abuse - plus provide evidence acceptable in court.

The firm also promotes its equipment as an educational tool, allowing `key lessons and class discussions to be recorded for revision, or for pupils who have missed important material or who may need extra help'. Schools are required to inform all parents that microphones and cameras are monitoring their children.

But last night an Information Commissioner's Office spokesman said the system raised `privacy concerns for teachers, students and their parents'. He said the ICO would contact Classwatch and schools using the devices. He added: `The use of microphones to record conversations is deeply intrusive and we will be seeking further clarification on their use in schools and, if necessary, we will issue further guidance to headteachers.'

Martin Johnson, deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, added: `We strongly object to schools or colleges having free rein to use CCTV and microphones, especially in sensitive areas such as classrooms, changing rooms and toilets. `We expect CCTV be used appropriately and not to spy on staff or pupils.'

Classwatch director Andrew Jenkins, who set up the firm with his wife, said he welcomed further discussions with the Information Commissioner. He said Classwatch had tried to guard against accusations of bringing Big Brother into schools. `The system can be turned on and turned off as they wish,' he said. `It is a bit like a video at home. This is not Big Brother. The system is under the control of the teacher.'

Asked whether the company had taken account of the Commissioner's strict rules on workplace monitoring, he said: `Compliance with the Data Protection Act has always been a priority. `Schools are required to ensure they follow protocols which recognise the privacy of pupils and staff. The overwhelming experience has been that pupils feel safer and that teachers feel more in control of their classrooms.'

Last night, Tory frontbencher Mr Loughton insisted there was no conflict between his political role and part-time job. He said: `I am not the Shadow Minister for Schools, I am the Shadow Minister for Children. I don't speak on school security.' He declares his involvement with the firm on the MPs' register of interests and added: `I have never sought to advocate this. I went through this very carefully before I got involved in it and it doesn't conflict with anything I do.'

Labour MP Barry Sheerman, the chairman of the Commons Education Committee, said: `If the Information Commissioner is concerned, we all should be concerned and I think that my committee should look at it when Parliament returns.' A Schools Department spokesman said: `We do not prescribe what schools must do to tackle security.'

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2 January, 2009

New High-School Elective: Put Off College

Like many motivated, focused high-school students, Lillian Kivel had worked hard academically and in community service in hopes that her efforts would win her acceptance into a good college. It did. Trouble was, Ms. Kivel's focus was much less clear when she had to decide which college to attend -- the Boston-area senior had applied to 38 schools because her interests were so varied.

At the suggestion of friends, Ms. Kivel decided to take a gap year -- a year outside of academia between high-school graduation and college matriculation. It wasn't rest and relaxation that Ms. Kivel sought, but rather an opportunity to gain life experience and focus her goals. Gappers, as they're called, typically feel that taking a year off will give them a head start in college -- and life. "I [have] the opportunity to explore my interests, like medicine and China, outside the classroom," she says.

Ms. Kivel eventually decided to attend Harvard College, but deferred entrance until fall 2009. Ms. Kivel lived at home this fall and interned at the Boston branch of Partners of Health, a global health outreach nonprofit. She's also serving as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts Statehouse. And she's auditing at anthropology class at Harvard.

To fill her spring months, Ms. Kivel turned to gap-year consultant Holly Bull, president of Interim Programs, to help her sift through more than 100 different programs in China. Ms. Kivel will live with a host family in Shanghai, study Chinese language, history and culture in a classroom setting, and teach English to children. "I have gained so much by ... becoming more responsible and independent [and] exploring my interests," Ms. Kivel says.

The increased focus, maturity and motivation that gappers obtain -- along with a brief escape from the intense pressure that leaves many high-schoolers burned out -- has led more high-school guidance counselors and college admissions officers to suggest gap years to high achievers and strugglers alike. "Not every 17-year-old is ready to enter college, and a gap year... allows them to be in the real world, do service and approach college much more deliberately," says Karen Giannino, senior associate dean of admission at Colgate College.

Longtime educator Karl Haigler, co-author of "The Gap-Year Advantage," agrees. "We think that there should be more of a focus on success in college, not just on access to college," he says. That's partly what motivated Princeton University to become the first school to formalize a gap- or bridge-year program. It will be launched in the fall of 2009, starting with 20 students and growing to 100. Students will be invited to apply after they have been accepted to the school. The program will send students for a year of social service work in a foreign country. Students won't be charged tuition and will be eligible for financial aid.

Formal gap-year programs typically cost between $10,000 to $20,000, including living expenses, says Ms. Bull. Students can often apply for financial aid through Free Application for Federal Student Aid (www.fafsa.ed.gov), or look for scholarships and individual study-abroad loans through specific programs. There are also community-based programs, like Americorps, where students receive room and board in exchange for service work and a small stipend.

To get the most out of the experience, students should already be accepted into college and defer admission before the gap year begins, says Missy Sanchez, director of college counseling at Woodward Academy, a private school in Atlanta. "They can use the necessary high-school resources for their applications and have something to come back to after their year off," says Ms. Sanchez.

The year should be well-planned and researched to avoid a lot of downtime. "Most students choose to do a smorgasbord of two or three programs through out the year," says Ms. Bull. That was Sabrina Skau's strategy. She spent three months teaching English in a small Costa Rican town. She taught Spanish at her local high school in Portland, Ore., for two months. She spent three months working in a hospital and orphanage in Cordova, Argentina. And she wrapped up the year with a five-week Spanish program in Barcelona. Though Ms. Skau had deferred her admission at University of Rochester, she also reapplied to Brown University and was accepted. She began her freshman year in August. "The gap year prepared me to be much more focused and independent at college because I have already been away on my own," Ms. Skau says.

Students can research many of the 8,000 educational programs, internships and public-service jobs on their own, but many find it daunting. Several private schools across the country, such as Atlanta's Woodward Academy, have begun to hold gap fairs, where vendors come to meet prospective participants. Students from any school can attend. Another option is to hire a gap-year consultant. They typically charge about $2,000 to help research and guide students to reputable programs.

It's important to investigate the program's track record, credibility, supervision, structure and safety, says Mr. Haigler. Get references from at least two past participants and speak to them personally -- don't just settle for email. Finally, check your status for family medical coverage. Insurance policies often don't cover adult-age dependents if they are no longer full-time students, but temporary insurance policies are often available.

Ms. Kivel was able to remain on her parent's insurance policy. She will fund the $12,000 cost of her Shanghai semester from savings from a part-time job and help from her parents. "I'm just thrilled to be taking the year off," she says.

Source




Strike threat after British PE teacher is sacked for wearing trainers to class

A PE teacher who has worn a tracksuit and trainers to school for 30 years has been sacked after the acting headteacher decided he was flouting the dress code. Adrian Swain, 56, was dismissed a week before Christmas because he refused to follow a ban on trainers. The school's local education authority has backed the sacking - claiming teachers 'should not wear clothing children are not allowed to wear themselves'. Now fellow teachers at the comprehensive where Mr Swain has taught for 17 years are threatening to strike if he is not reinstated.

Mr Swain said of his dismissal for wearing the clothes he teaches in: 'I am stunned that in this day and age you can be sacked for wearing the wrong type of shoes. 'I haven't a blot on my character and have suddenly been sacked for something I have always worn.' Mr Swain of Stratford, east London, who has 30 years teaching experience added: 'Children would much rather have a good teacher who wore trainers than a bad one who was dressed like a businessman.

The school dress code was imposed by an acting head teacher, Lorraine Page, at the state comprehensive who has since left.

Mr Swain added: 'Pupils learn best in an atmosphere where they feel comfortable and not in a corporate, office-like setting, so I really don't like the way that education is going.' Mr Swain worked with special needs children, at St Paul's Way Community School in Bow, east London. His colleagues are pressing for a ballot on industrial action in protest at his dismissal. Mr Swain said he had worn tracksuit bottoms and trainers to school throughout his 30-year teaching career without any complaints. Mr Swain, believes he has been victimised as he is a union representative for the National Union of Teachers. He said: 'I was singled out and fired while other staff have regularly worn banned items. 'It is clear that this is not about what I wear or what kind of teacher I am. This is victimisation because I have consistently worked to protect union members against bullying and intimidation. Mr Swain said he has a final appeal against his dismissal next term.

The school's website boasts of its 'excellent' PE facilities which include two gymnasia, a swimming pool, a weight training room and a table tennis hall inside, and two floodlit hard court areas for football, netball and cricket outdoors.

Professor Margaret Talbot OBE of the Association for Physical Education said that she thought the teacher should not have been sacked. She said: 'While teaching, PE teachers obviously need to wear appropriate dress. My personal view is that all teachers should be dressed in a professional manner to go to school. On the other hand I don't think it's a sackable offence.'

A 2006 Ofsted report ranked the 900 pupil comprehensive as 'satisfactory'. Around 80 per cent of the school's pupils are from Bangladeshi families. In one unusual feature of the school's uniform policy, female pupils at the school are allowed to wear the jilbab - an all in one black garment covering the head and body, but not the face.

A spokeswoman for Tower Hamlets Council confirmed that a teacher at St Paul's Way School was dismissed last week for 'continually failing to comply with a reasonable management instruction'. She said: 'Staff in Tower Hamlets schools are expected to set a good example to the students they teach. It's vital that standards are set in terms of appearance and behaviour, and staff are asked not to wear items of clothing that students are not permitted to wear themselves, eg trainers.'

'The decision followed consultation between the school, Tower Hamlets Council and trade unions and the member of staff still has the right of appeal.'Colleagues of a PE teacher sacked for wearing trainers and a tracksuit to school have threatened strike action if he is not reinstated.

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1 January, 2009

Muslim bigot is made British school inspector

He has objected to carol-singing

A hardline Muslim teacher who caused a furore by denouncing pupils for celebrating Christmas has been made a Government schools inspector. Israr Khan's Ofsted appointment was described by a former colleague as 'absolutely astonishing'.

Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols. He leapt from his seat, yelling: "Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah." As children in the audience began booing and clapping, a number of choir members - both white and Asian - walked out, some in tears.

Mr Khan, a maths teacher, was asked to work from home pending an investigation but there was no disciplinary action. It has been claimed that Washwood Heath school was then a 'hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism'. Rashid Rauf - the airline terror bomb suspect whose extradition is currently being sought from Pakistan - was a pupil there at that time. Mr Khan left Washwood Heath a year later to found the independent Islamic Hamd House Preparatory School in Small Heath, Birmingham, where he is headmaster. Earlier this year, he was appointed as a governor of Anderton Park Primary School, in Sparkbrook, Birmingham.

A former Washwood Heath colleague laughed openly when told of Mr Khan's role as an Ofsted inspector where he has the responsibility for passing or failing schools. He said: "Given the man's history, it's absolutely astonishing. It's just the cheek of the man that he's been able to reach that position. He always was an extremely clever man. "He gave me many insights into the Islamic cause and their hatred of the US and the Western World. He had a big support base among some of the Muslim parents. "But there were some very influential, radical elements at Washwood Heath at that time and Israr Khan was very close to all that."

Earlier this year, Anderton Park, where 99.5 per cent of the pupils are Asian, received a dismal Ofsted report which branded its teaching and its achievements as inadequate. One Muslim father, who asked to be known only as Mohammed, said: "As a governor, Mr Khan will be able to exert a great deal of influence over the school and its policies. "By his previous actions, he seems to represent what I would call a hardcore attitude to Islam."

Mr Khan declined to comment about his appointment, waving questions away at his large home in Moseley, Birmingham. An Ofsted spokesman said: "Israr Khan was appointed as an additional inspector via a highly competitive recruitment and selection process. He has undergone all the relevant security checks."

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Free-market education

A high-school calculus teacher scored a victory for capitalism and dealt socialized education quite a blow this year. A recent article in USA Today reported that Tom Farber had devised a brilliant, free-market way of funding the tests that he felt were necessary for his students.

Mr. Farber was faced with a dilemma felt by teachers across the country. His supplies budget was cut by the district, which meant that if Farber wanted to give his students the much-needed practice tests that would prepare them for later placement tests, he would have to find funding elsewhere. Many teachers either would have paid for the additional expense out of their own pocket or deprived their students of the requisite practice tests. Farber estimated that, had he paid for the copies out of pocket, it would have cost him almost $200.

Unwilling to shortchange his students or to pay for the copies himself, the visionary teacher found an alternative: he began to sell advertisements on his test papers. According to USA Today, he charged $10 per ad on quizzes, $20 per ad on chapter tests, and $30 per ad on semester finals. Within a few days he had over 75 email requests for ads! Farber has already generated $350 in ad revenue. The article also states that approximately 67% of the ad sales are inspirational messages, paid for by parents. Others are from local businesses.

This free-market solution enables parents to voluntarily provide additional funding in order to help their children. It also allows local businesses to benefit from targeted advertising. Local businesses may also benefit from an improved labor pool due to the improved education students receive from their funding. It is an excellent example of parties participating in voluntary exchange and everyone benefiting: students benefit from the improved education; parents are pleased by improved placement scores; and businesses benefit from a better labor force and more customers. This is capitalism at its finest.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when the knee-jerk reaction is to demand more funding from the government. Mr. Farber has demonstrated that free-market solutions are superior to any that can be provided by government. This also provides a prime example of one of the fundamental flaws with government funding. Government-funded organizations inherently rely on thinking in which decisions are made from the top and imposed on the lower levels. This stifles the ingenuity of the people who have firsthand experience actually doing the work and defers decision making to bureaucrats and committees.

If we are to believe that monopolies are bad because they do not have the best interest of the consumer in mind and have little incentive to improve their product, then why are we to believe that a government monopoly over schooling is good?

It can be reasonably argued that this particular government monopoly is worse than private-sector monopolies, because citizens are forced to pay even if they do not consume the service. To illustrate the point, consider a hypothetical shoe monopoly. If the government declared that shoes are a practical necessity of life in this country, and that there are people unable to afford the best-quality shoes available in the free market, would we then support a "shoe tax" to allow the government to manufacture and distribute shoes free of charge to everyone?

In this scenario, citizens could still purchase shoes from other providers but would be forced to pay their share of the "shoe tax" as well. Since the citizens are already paying for these government shoes (through taxation), the demand for private-sector-produced shoes would be fairly low. Since the demand for privately made shoes would be low, those who desire better shoes would be forced to pay prices that are far higher than those that existed prior to government shoes. The citizens, seeing the high price tag on privately made shoes, would then conclude that they really do need government shoes because only an elite few could afford private shoes.

The success of Farber's experiment shows that, contrary to the common contention, parents would not be forced to shoulder the cost of educating their children alone in the absence of public schools. This is concrete proof that businesses do understand the importance of well-educated students and are willing to provide funding for such a valuable resource. Advertisement revenue is not the only source of funding for schools but it is an important illustration of one of the ways of providing excellent education without extracting funds by force.

Under the current system, everyone is forced to provide funding for schools, regardless of how poor the quality of education provided by those schools. Under a private system, various schools would compete for students and for funding. Both parents and businesspeople would be more willing to devote their resources to the better schools. Students would be the ultimate beneficiaries of such competition.

Many people would agree that the education provided in public schools today is far less than ideal. While there are public schools that provide excellent educations for their students, the costs to taxpayers are too high and the funds are obtained in a highly unethical manner. The lesson to be learned from the success of Farber is that truly private education is plausible and even preferable to the current education provided by the government.

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