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31 July, 2007

Higher College Standards Stimulate Achievement

Post lifted from Democracy Project

The New York Times reports that “CUNY Plans to Raise Its Admissions Standards.”

The chancellor said he had long planned to ratchet up standards further. The new move, which has been discussed with some college presidents but has not been announced publicly, is also a response to some professors’ complaints that too many students are poorly prepared for college work, especially in math….

“We are very serious in taking a group of our institutions and placing them in the top segment of universities and colleges,” said Matthew Goldstein, the university chancellor, who described the plan in an interview. “That is the kind of profile we want for our students.”

When I started at Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. in 1964, on the first day of freshman math the professor gave us the final exam, saying that any who couldn’t pass it didn’t deserve to be at Brooklyn College. We all passed, and the professor spent most of the rest of the term in one of the most fascinating expositions – no one cut class -- of the nuances of Alice In Wonderland.

At that time, Brooklyn College ranked in the top tier of American colleges. To be admitted, you had to rank in the top 2% in the country. I barely squeaked in.

Brooklyn College and the other senior colleges of C.U.N.Y. currently rank well, in the top 400, and C.U.N.Y. is trying to recapture its former stature.

That’s a challenge.

CUNY is proud of its legacy as a supportive environment for immigrant talent. At present, 40% of our more than 400,000 students were born outside the United States. These students represent nearly 170 nationalities and speak 120 different languages.

My aunt Muriel, now 90 and still able to out-debate me, was one of Brooklyn College’s first students. When she began primary school, she only spoke Yiddish. She hammered me mercilessly in high school to try harder, because getting into Brooklyn College was all we could afford, and it was an outstanding launch in life. C.U.N.Y. graduates were considered top rate.

The New York Times article continues:

Still, some CUNY professors fear that the new requirements will keep low-income and black and Hispanic students from entering bachelor’s degree programs. The same concern was voiced nine years ago, when students needing remedial instruction were barred. Students, faculty and some elected officials also argued then that enrollments would plunge.

Enrollments, in fact, have grown since then. But the proportion of black students at the top five colleges fell to 14 percent of regularly admitted freshmen last year, from 20 percent in 1999, according to the university’s data. (Those figures do not include those admitted through SEEK, a program for economically and educationally disadvantaged students, who do not have to meet the same criteria.) The proportion of Hispanic students has held even.

William Crain, a City College psychology professor who fought the earlier change, said he opposed the new plan because he feared it would keep low-income and black and Hispanic students from entering bachelor’s degree programs. “This is turning the university into more of a middle-class university,” he said.

Duh! That’s the mission objective of C.U.N.Y., to give opportunities to the poor to join the middle class, and upper. C.U.N.Y. graduates, including General Powell, and the country benefited from C.U.N.Y.’s high standards.

In 1967, I attended a faculty senate debate on the SEEK program, the consensus being that it was the college’s heritage and mission to reach out. I worked in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and participated in tutoring, but most of SEEK was even more basic, like providing bus and subway fare to poor but otherwise qualified students. The program was small and fairly successful.

Then, in 1970, Mayor Lindsey expanded SEEK to insanity, imposing “open admissions” on C.U.N.Y. The New York Times article doesn’t refer to the destruction of a great university. Blogger Fausta, who attended C.U.N.Y. in the early 1990’s tells of her experience with a text for native Spanish speakers:

The professor, by lowering his standards so the students wouldn't have too much hardship, was condemning his students to sounding like ignoramuses.

Fausta quotes an article from the Economist:

What went wrong? Put simply, City dropped its standards….City scrapped its admissions standards altogether. By 1970, almost any student who graduated from New York's high schools could attend….

The quality of education collapsed. At first, with no barrier to entry, enrolment climbed, but in 1976 the city of New York, which was then in effect bankrupt, forced CUNY to impose tuition fees. An era of free education was over, and a university which had once served such a distinct purpose joined the muddle of America's lower-end education.

By 1997, seven out of ten first-year students in the CUNY system were failing at least one remedial test in reading, writing or math (meaning that they had not learnt it to high-school standard). A report commissioned by the city in 1999 concluded that Central to CUNY's historic mission is a commitment to provide broad access, but its students' high drop-out rates and low graduation rates raise the question: “Access to what?”

Dropout rates soared, and those who attained a degree were considered third-rate.

C.U.N.Y. has been trying hard to recover from its near destruction, with successes, not by pandering but by returning to its roots: excellence. And, those wanting to attend and advance their lives now try harder in high school, and in college.

Back to the New York Times article:

Some CUNY officials, like Ricardo R. Fernández, president of Lehman College in the Bronx, who were not big supporters of that change, said they had come to embrace it.

“Perhaps I have become more convinced that students are able to rise to the challenge,” Dr. Fernández said.

He added that higher admissions standards would give Lehman added cachet and help it attract some of the 8,000 Bronx students who attend CUNY colleges in Manhattan that have tougher admissions requirements than Lehman does.

Edison O. Jackson, president of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, said higher admissions standards had increased the proportion of students in the college’s bachelor’s degree program to about half of his student population, while the college’s associate’s degree track had shrunk.

“Students are coming in and saying, ‘I want to move into the baccalaureate program and into my major much more quickly,’ ” Dr. Jackson said. “And they are.”

Australia: Pupils moving out of government schools

Which pushes some government schools to lift their game

STUDENTS have fled NSW public schools at a rate of 125 a week - equal to two busloads - in the past decade as low-fee private schools boom. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal how parents have snubbed local public schools, often in favour of new faith-based schools backed by Howard Government subsidies.

A Daily Telegraph analysis of the census data shows that in areas like Penrith there has been a mass walkout on public education, cutting their market share by almost a half of all enrolments. Almost 68 per cent of Penrith students attended public high schools in 1996, but this slumped to 54.79 per cent by the 2006 census. In the same period, Catholic school enrolments grew from 23.7 to 33.21 per cent and the "Other Non-Government" category grew from 8.4 to 12 per cent. Across NSW, government secondary schools had 67.1 per cent of all enrolments in 1996 - but this has shrunk to just 60.83 per cent. In raw numbers, about 46,000 students have vanished from public primary schools and 19,000 from public high schools over the decade. There have been similar changes in areas such as Camden, Hawkesbury, Wollondilly, Liverpool, Bankstown, Holroyd, Sutherland and Warringah where public school market share has dropped 10 per cent or more.

The popularity of low-fee private school enrolments indicates why Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has abandoned previous ALP policy to reallocate private school funding. Even in suburbs such as Canada Bay, Waverley, Marrickville, Manly, Lane Cove and Randwick parents have been moving away from public schools.

But it's not all bad news for public education. In Sydney's inner-west, Strathfield Public School enrolments have bucked the trend, surging from 39.35 to 49 per cent. Public school enrolments in nearby Ashfield and Burwood have also increased. In Baulkham Hills, the Blue Mountains, Pittwater and Ryde previous losses have been stemmed.

An Education Department spokeswoman said the public schools sector realised they now operate in an environment where "greater emphasis is being placed on choice". She said the most recent trends were positive for government schools. Kindergarten, Year 3, Year 8 and Year 11 market share had all slightly increased this year, reversing the declining trend over many years. Schools singled out as success stories include Ku-ring-gai High, Cherrybrook Technology High, Wattle Grove Public School, Arthur Phillip High, Rouse Hill Public and Parklea Public.

But Christian Schools Australia, which represents dozens of newer private schools, says its enrolment growth across NSW has increased by 25 per cent in five years. "There's no doubt people are making a choice," chief executive Stephen O'Doherty said. "Many families have gained prosperity under Howard and are using the extra income to move to affordable non-government schools. He said much of the enrolment growth in swinging seats would help determine the federal election later this year.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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30 July, 2007

School Stops Scheduling Class Time For Muslim Prayer

A San Diego school that drew international attention for setting aside time for Muslim students to pray in the classroom will no longer do so, it was reported Friday. Instead, Carver Elementary's schedule will be reconfigured so students can say their required midday prayers during lunch. Courts have long upheld students' rights to pray on their own during lunch or recess, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. When the new school year begins, Carver will have two lunch periods, including one that will fall when Muslims typically say their midday prayer -- between 1 and 2 p.m., the newspaper reported. Another controversial element of Carver's educational program geared toward Muslim students -- single-gender classes -- will be eliminated, the Union-Tribune reported.

Superintendent Carl Cohn stressed in a July 18 memo that single-gender education is legal under federal law, but at Carver it "has become a serious distraction from learning rather than a vehicle to promote learning," according to the newspaper. Carver added the single-gender classes and a daily 15-minute in-class break for voluntary prayers last September after it absorbed a failed Arabic language charter school that served primarily Somali Muslims.

Since a substitute teacher publicly complained about Carver's practices in April, the San Diego Unified School District has been inundated by letters and phone calls from as far away as Europe and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Union-Tribune. Some alleged that the school was violating the separation of church and state by giving Muslims time to pray. The district maintained that it is legally required to approve students' request for religious accommodation.

Source




Gross official educational fraud in Indiana

Only 52 percent of Arlington High School's original Class of 2006 made it to graduation last year. Worse, the Indianapolis Public Schools' high school program isn't adequately preparing enough of the students who do graduate for the rigors of college and life. Thirty-five percent of Arlington's graduates collected diplomas despite repeatedly failing the Graduation Qualifying Exam, which they are required to pass in order to receive diplomas. These are students who didn't pass despite having five chances to do so. They didn't pass an exam that tests them only on the eighth- and ninth-grade English and math skills they should have already mastered.

A Star analysis of data released last week by the Indiana Department of Education to the state's Education Roundtable reveals that the problem isn't limited to Arlington. Too many schools are granting waivers to too many of their students. In the process, they are undermining the state's high school graduation requirements and degrading the value of diplomas. As Gov. Mitch Daniels declared last week during a roundtable meeting, schools are handing to students "a counterfeit certificate." Ultimately, they are sending poorly educated students into an economy and society that increasingly demand high-level thinking skills of its citizens:

At 52 high schools, 10 percent or more of graduating seniors receive diplomas despite failing the GQE: These high schools account for 44 percent of all students graduating without passing the GQE, even though they account for 14 percent of the statewide Class of 2006. The list is growing: Only 42 high schools allowed 10 percent or more of their seniors to graduate without passing the test during the 1999-2000 school year, the first year students took it.

The problem is widespread: Twenty-four of the schools on the list are in urban districts. Seven are in IPS, including three of the 10-worst in the category -- Arlington, Northwest and Broad Ripple. This problem isn't limited to the urban areas. Just across from Louisville in suburban Jeffersonville, Ind., 17 percent of the local high school's graduating class failed the GQE. They still received diplomas.

Some schools have become waiver factories: Over the past seven years, seven Indiana high schools have allowed, on average, 10 percent or more of their seniors to collect diplomas despite repeatedly failing the graduation test. Four more schools have done so for five consecutive years. Those who failed the GQE at Northwest High made up, on average, 27 percent of the school's graduating classes, among the worst in that category over a seven-year period. IPS school Emmerich Manual has done little better, with an average 23 percent of graduating seniors collecting diplomas without passing the test. Fort Wayne's South Side High, an average 21 percent of graduating seniors did so without passing the test.

There's little evidence that those getting the waivers are special education students: Some argue that most of the students being granted waivers suffer from either a learning disability or are in special-education classes. While there is no breakdown currently available, that would be statistically unlikely. Learning-disabled and special-ed students made up just 16 percent of IPS' high school enrollment in 2004, according to a Star analysis of U.S. Department of Education data, the last year available. At North Vermillion High School, learning-disabled students make up just 10 percent of its enrollment. Student attrition, along with their small numbers, almost assures that they wouldn't account for a significant portion of those granted waivers.

GQE failures account for only 6 percent of graduates statewide. Those numbers are growing. One reason: School principals have the discretion to grant the waivers, guaranteeing that there will be uneven application of state standards. More will likely join those ranks in coming years thanks to a so-called "work-readiness" waiver approved by the General Assembly last year. That allows students to graduate without passing the GQE if they meet a series of requirements, including completing some sort of work-readiness assessment.

State education officials could exercise far greater oversight in this area but they haven't, claiming that there's no law explicitly saying that they must. As a result, a waiver process originally reserved for students with solid grade-point averages and demonstrated academic skills is hampering the state's efforts to improve the quality of education.

This has national implications. Several states, including Massachusetts, have adapted Indiana's process of granting waivers. Schools in those states are likely being granted a free pass as students are getting shortchanged.

The state education department can scrutinize the quality of waivers being granted as part of the auditing process instituted with the overhaul of the graduation rate formula. It should be zealous in doing so. Legislators should also give the power over granting waivers to the department in order to ensure that they are rarely granted. Tightening the waiver standards, including raising the grade-point average required to get one, is key. Requiring more evidence that the student is actually doing well academically is a must.

Eliminating the work-readiness waiver would do a great service in removing a loophole that misleads students about what it takes to be prepared for productive citizenship. The state is already struggling to end its culture of low educational expectations. Further degrading is unacceptable.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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29 July, 2007

There They Go Again: Social engineering in our schools

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Louisville and Seattle school districts, race-based student assignment policies are mostly illegal. Superintendents around the nation are seeking other ways to maintain social diversity in their hallways and classrooms.

Last week, John Edwards entered the discussion, opting for this month's faddish solution to K-12's problems: income-based integration. (The Washington Post is on the bandwagon, too.) This "assign them by income" idea is based on the premise that district school-assignment policies can achieve integration by using socioeconomic status - not yet a proscribed category. The formula is being touted by school officials, journalists, policy wonks (and, now, presidential candidates) as diversity's best hope in the current jurisprudential climate (see here and here).

As Reagan might say, there they go again, with yet another rendition of social engineering via public schooling.

To be sure, income integration doesn't collide with the same legal barriers as race-based policies. But it will founder for much the same reason that race-based policies failed. Integrating school systems, on whatever grounds, requires heavy-duty busing. Students are reassigned to schools based on demographics, not geography or preference. Kids and parents understandably balk, especially the middle-income ones (those who don't leave for private schools, that is).

They're right, too. Trying to manufacture school diversity - whether through race or income - is a well meaning but ultimately bad idea. Districts should focus on improving schools for all students and providing real school choice for all families, not on re-jiggering pupil assignment plans.

Diversity is no bad thing but in itself does little to further the real mission of schools, which is teaching all comers well. Many diversity defenders claim (some of them explicitly) that poor and minority students can learn only when they're sitting next to wealthier, white and Asian students - i.e., that academic achievement hinges on having a well-mixed classroom.

They cite various studies that claim to demonstrate this truth. Yet such a view is defeatist and, in some respects, racist, besides being disproved by dozens of high-performing, majority-minority schools. Such schools don't succeed because they're packed with middle-class or white kids but because their principals and teachers cultivate achievement-based outlooks and refuse to accept excuses (especially those based on race or income) from their pupils.

Some claim that integrating kids by income is the best way to close achievement gaps. But consider the experience of Wake County, North Carolina, which encompasses Raleigh, a booming city with a strong economy and growing population. Beginning in 2000, the district has integrated its schools socioeconomically: no school is supposed to have more than 40 percent low-income students.

Wake County has garnered much attention and media praise for this program because its test scores have risen. But compared to the rest of North Carolina, is Wake County doing a notably better job of educating kids? Not really. Between 2000-01 and 2005-06, the percentage of black, eighth-graders across North Carolina who scored at grade level on state reading tests jumped by nine points. In Wake County, the percentage increased by only 6 points.

Over the same stretch of time, the percentage of low-income, North Carolina eighth-graders reading at grade level rose by ten points, slightly more than in Wake County.

Breathless newspaper coverage notwithstanding, Wake County's educational progress does not knock the top off anything; it has roughly mirrored that of the state overall. Which doesn't justify the district's implementation of an intrusive, income-integration plan that was implemented in large part to increase test scores of low-income and minority students.

While test scores may not soaring in Wake County, logistical problems are. Demographic shifts, for starters. The number of poor residents is increasing, and that's affecting the district's school assignment plan. Thus, at the end of the 2005-06 school year, 31 of Wake's 116 elementary and middle schools were over the 40 percent low-income ceiling, and enrollments in 18 had exceeded 50 percent low-income.

Such numbers indicate that Wake County is either unwilling or unable to stick to its income-integration goals. But bigger problems are arising from parents, many of whom - upset by lengthy bus rides across the sprawling county and by annual school reshufflings that will move 11,000 students this fall - are opposing the pupil-assignment scheme. Most recently, a group of middle-income parents won their legal battle against the district's plan to force some students into year-round schools.

Other prosperous parents aren't bothering with the courts. They're simply pulling their kids out of the public system and enrolling them in private alternatives - exactly as some white (and middle income black) families did in response to race-based busing.

Parents love having their kids transported to school but their attitude changes sharply when bus rides last for hours due to social engineering. It makes little difference if students are bused to achieve racial or economic diversity - parents don't want their daughters and sons used this way. Polling in Wake County, for instance, shows greater support for neighborhood schools than for socioeconomic balance in schools.

Whether or not income-based school assignments are Constitutionally permissible, they suffer from all the other logistical, political, and parental challenges as the race-based kind. Effective school-assignment policies do not offend vast numbers of their clients. Nor do they allow only wealthy parents to exercise educational choice, while less well-off families are stuck in public-school systems that they may not like and that may not be meeting their needs.

Forget elaborately gerrymandered school districts and pupil assignment schemes. School leaders ought to be offering parents a robust menu of high-quality educational options, such as magnet programs and charter schools, and improving neighborhood schools, too. That way, families can make the best education decisions for their children, choices unaffected by their income or lack thereof.

Schools need to return to the task at hand: educating all kids, regardless of what they look like or how much money their parents make.

Source




Schools giving Muslims special treatment

Some public schools and universities are granting Muslim requests for prayer times, prayer rooms and ritual foot baths, prompting a debate on whether Islam is being given preferential treatment over other religions. The University of Michigan at Dearborn is planning to build foot baths for Muslim students who wash their feet before prayer. An elementary school in San Diego created an extra recess period for Muslim pupils to pray. At George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Muslim students using a "meditation space" laid out Muslim prayer rugs and separated men and women in accordance with their Islamic beliefs.

Critics see a double standard and an organized attempt to push public conformance with Islamic law. "What (school officials) are doing . is to give Muslim students religious benefits that they do not give any other religion right now," says Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center, an advocacy group for Christians.

Advocates say the accommodations are legal. "The whole issue is to provide for a religious foundation for those who are observant while respecting separation of church and state," says Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, based in Los Angeles. Many schools accommodate the Christian and Jewish sabbaths and allow Jewish students to not take tests on religious holidays, he says.

Barry Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, says however that the law is murky on these expressions of faith. And the American Civil Liberties Union says overt religious symbols like crucifixes are not legal, but whether Muslim foot baths and prayer rugs fall into that category is not clear. "That's a difficult one, and it's right on the edge," says Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU program on freedom of religion and belief in Washington, D.C.

At the forefront of the movement is the Muslim Students' Association, which has formed a Muslim Accommodations Task Force to push for foot baths and prayer rooms. At least 17 universities have foot baths built or under construction, including Boston University, George Washington University and Temple University, and at least nine universities have prayer rooms for "Muslim students only," including Stanford, Emory and the University of Virginia, according to the MSA's website. The association did not return calls seeking comment.

Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim and chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, which promotes separation of mosque and state, says he is concerned about the accommodations. "Unusual accommodations for one faith at the cost of everybody else doesn't fall on the side of pluralism," he said.

At George Mason University, non-Muslim students were asked to observe Muslim rules in the prayer area, such as keeping men on one side and women on the other and removing their shoes, according to Broadside, the school newspaper. Alissa Karton, assistant to the vice president for student life, said the article prompted the school to order students to roll up prayer rugs when not in use and move the dividers.

The University of Michigan agreed to install foot baths after talks with the MSA, said Terry Gallagher, director of public relations at the campus. Some Muslims ritually wash their feet before praying five times a day.

Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum, a conservative think tank, sees the requests as part of a movement to force the public to acquiesce to Islamic law. "The goal of Islamists is the application of Islamic law," Pipes says.

In the San Diego case, a substitute teacher at Carver Elementary School alleged that teachers were indoctrinating students into Islam. The San Diego Unified School District determined that a teacher's aide was wrong to lead Muslim students in prayer. Carver still has a special recess to allow 100 Muslim students to pray.

The ACLU, which has often sued schools for permitting prayer, says it is waiting to see what kind of policy the school settles on before deciding whether to sue. It says promoting prayers is unconstitutional. "If you start carving out time in the school day that you would not do but for the need to let students pray, then it begins to look like what you're trying to do is to assist religion," says David Blair-Loy, legal director for the ACLU in San Diego.

Thompson says such conflicts are bound to proliferate. He and other Christians, he says, are preparing to ask for equal consideration such as a Christian prayer recess. "What you're going to see out there is more of these kinds of cases as the Muslim community tests how far it can go in the public school system," he says. "If this can happen for Muslims, it can happen for Christians and other religions."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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28 July, 2007

British socialists have betrayed the working class kids they purport to help

They hate and have managed to close down as "elitist" most of the schools that were once the highroad to a top education for poor kids -- the Grammar (selective) schools. But talented poor kids are still there

Fifteen pairs of eyes fix on the patient's shrivelled white limb. The toes are black. "It's gangrene," says the surgeon cheerily to his summer school students. The patient says his leg hurts more when he is lying down. "That's probably because less blood can circulate when it's on the level," says a mullet-haired youth with a Rotherham accent. An Asian girl suggests comparing blood pressure in the arm and leg to diagnose arterial disease. Long ringlets from Somerset agrees.

Over 90 minutes they forensically diagnose the patient. No one giggles, or chats, or doodles on their notes. I did science A-levels and I can't follow it all. These 17-year-olds, all from comprehensives and families where no one has been to university, are super-bright. They are the doctors and surgeons of the future, whose knowledge will save us when we are sick.

There has been much national soul-searching of late over Britain's alarmingly bad - and deteriorating - social mobility. Last week, to add to the gloom, our leading universities revealed they are taking fewer students from poorer areas and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation announced that the gap between rich and poor is the largest for 40 years.

Education is the missing link; if poor bright kids don't make it to the best universities to become the surgeons, businessmen and other professionals of the future, the engine of social mobility runs out of petrol. Oxford is the most glaring example with only 53.7% of its students coming from state schools (less than 20% from standard comprehensives). This matters because 90% of our kids go to them and, as I had rammed home to me during my day at the Oxford summer school, intelligence has nothing to do with class, income or accent.

The miracle, as I discovered as I heard more about the lives of the summer school kids, is that these teenagers have made it this far. "I kept quiet about coming here," one lad from Lancashire told me. "Me mates would think I was daft going to school in the holidays." The others laughed and agreed, and one added: "At school you wouldn't let on that you are clever. The others look down on you. You have to hide it." The best thing about summer school is finding that "there are people like you who are on your intellectual wavelength".

They all say they thought they would be the most stupid person on the week-long course. One girl told me she nearly got off the train because she was so sure she couldn't cut it. To them Oxford is not just another world, it's a different planet. Many had unemployed parents, nearly all were on EMA (education maintenance allowance) which is paid to over-16s who are still studying and whose family income is less than 31,000 pounds a year, and nearly all did jobs - waitressing, supermarket checkouts, bar work - as well as their studies.

They all said how proud their parents were that they'd come to Oxford to be students for a week. I had expected their schools to be proud, too - that their teachers would have picked them out, encouraged them to attend (it is hard to get on the summer school, 1,500 apply for 250 places). Not a bit of it. "My school didn't tell me about it," chorus a few voices. They'd found out from the local paper, posters in college, from the internet. Mostly off their own bats. Had their teachers encouraged them to apply? A few obviously had, but the majority implied that the teachers felt that Oxford was "divisive" and "elitist" - not for kids like them. With attitudes like this it's no surprise that we are not getting bright, poor kids into our elite universities. Harvard and the other US Ivy League institutions have teams of scouts truffle-hunting poor kids from bad schools with high SAT results.

A friend told me how he sat in on an admissions board at Harvard where they discussed a bright young black single mother from the ganglands of Los Angeles with SATs at the lowest end of their range but who they believed had the potential to be the mayor of a city, who with their help could be a catalyst for change. They wanted to create social capital. Despite the risks and the other higher qualified candidates, she was in.

At Oxford, by contrast, until 10 years ago the university ran no outreach programmes to get bright kids from unlikely schools and backgrounds into its colleges. Peter Lampl, an Oxford alumnus and himself a poor grammar school boy, was appalled to discover after spending 20 years in America that things here had gone backwards educationally. "I realised," he said, "that a kid like me had little to no chance of making it to Oxbridge or another Russell Group university. Something had to be done." He started funding the Oxford Summer Schools, which have proved so successful that they now run in 10 other top universities and the government is involved in rolling the programme out further.

At the dinner on the last night of the course the sense of thrill, of widening horizons, was palpable. "I thought everyone else would be an egghead, but they're not, they're just like me," said a hipster from Wales. "Oxford just seemed completely out of reach before I came here," said another, "but now I'm going to apply." A week of living in college, going to seminars and hanging out with students who are already there has shown them that this could be their world, too. Half of the kids who come on the summer school apply to Oxford and about 40% of those get in. Of the rest, almost all will get a place at a top university. As one Asian boy from Birmingham put it: "I always thought I'd go to the local college with my friends. Now I'm going to apply to Oxford, Bristol and Edinburgh."

It felt a privilege just to watch the bright young faces, chatting confidently, feeling on the cusp of great things, realising they've got what it takes. During the speeches when Lampl told them that they all had a great future, a black girl on the next table shouted "Yeah!" Lampl told them to work hard for their A-levels, that the next year would have more influence on the rest of their lives than any other. That anything was possible for them. I left feeling humbled. I had expected to go to Oxford since as a child my parents (who met there) had walked me round the quads. At St Paul's school and Westminster I was coached to get in. My time there was fantastic but not productive. I feel ashamed of my immense privilege and how arrogantly I wore it. We need to get our brightest kids, wherever they are from, into our best universities. If we don't, we all suffer.

Source




AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION NEWS TODAY

Three current articles below

Crap English curriculum in NSW

ANALYSING camera angles in the Australian movie Ten Canoes, which is spoken mainly in the indigenous language Ganalbingu, or deconstructing a website on multiculturalism would hardly seem to have much to do with the study of English in high school. But those two "texts" are part of the new draft HSC English reading list for 2009 to 2012, as revealed by Hannah Edwards in The Sun-Herald last weekend.

The films, websites and various multimedia offerings that clog the draft syllabus list show that, even after six years of criticism and complaints from students, parents and teachers, the curriculum designers at the NSW Board of Studies are determined to patronise the ability and desire of high school students to comprehend great ideas and expand their minds with classics. "There is a failure of nerve on the part of curriculum [designers]," says Dr Barry Spurr, a senior lecturer in English literature at Sydney University. "They don't want to present the children with the difficulty of texts, or deal with difficult language . [and] historical context. It's a failure of belief in English as a discipline."

Even while primary school children all over the state are willingly burying their heads in the new 607-page Harry Potter book, the Board of Studies, which has apparently consulted "stakeholders" for years about its latest selections, doesn't trust senior students to read big books. Instead they can analyse Wikipedia, or websites about multiculturalism and the September 11 terrorist attacks. They can deconstruct the "visual images" of the German language film Run Lola Run or the US political satire Wag the Dog. Or they can read short novels, such as the 216-page domestic violence novel Swallow the Air, or Jhumpa Lahiri's 291-page The Namesake or 202 pages of Raimond Gaita's biographical Romulus, My Father or the 78-page play A Man with Five Children by Nick Enright.

Spurr does point to some gems in the new offerings - chiefly the return of Patrick White with The Aunt's Story (304 pages), though he says White should never have been dropped. Spurr says his department gets "the best and the brightest [school-leavers] but they do not know how to construct an essay". Since most of their university study involves essay-writing, and in the business world report-writing is a crucial skill, he is perplexed that the syllabus does not adequately equip students.

In a scathing critique of the 2006 HSC English exam for his school magazine, Spark, Roland Brennan, a year 12 student last year at St Ignatius College, Riverview, writes: "Have I really taken away anything valuable from my HSC advanced English course? I have not been nourished with substance, rather stuffed to the brim with a syrupy, sloppy waste. Junk. Welcome to the HSC English syllabus." He forensically dissects the exam paper and says essay writing is "fast becoming obsolete".

"King Lear . has now been deconstructed and rebuilt within the framework of modern theories such as feminism, Marxism and existentialism. "Contrary to what the Board of Studies seems to think, a 'text' is not 'anything'. The term implies something in a written format, poetry, drama or prose. Not an image or a film clip. Similarly, Shakespeare was a playwright, Coleridge a poet and Huxley an author. They were not 'composers' . We are . readers or viewers, not 'responders'. "The misuse of terms is typical of the HSC syllabus and appears to be used to cover up ignorance." Brennan also says many students do not speak out for fear of being labelled "uncool".

Conservatives have launched ferocious attacks on the HSC English syllabus in recent years, with little apparent effect. The Prime Minister, John Howard, who is married to a former English teacher, last year decried what he called the "dumbing down" of English in which "what I might call the traditional texts are treated no differently from pop cultural commentary".

The problem for the Board of Studies is it has to cater for many HSC students who are not interested in English. The subject is compulsory in years 11 and 12, making it a wearisome task to cajole students into the most basic learning. A high school teacher who sat on a committee choosing HSC texts in the 1990s says the pressure to make English compulsory for all HSC students came from the University of NSW medical faculty, which was worried about churning out doctors without adequate English skills. Perhaps medical schools could conduct English lessons rather than force reluctant students to do a subject they detest.

The other problem is that today's students are so focused on their HSC results that teachers are under intense pressure to confine themselves to the syllabus, says Daniel Brass, a 26-year-old teacher of advanced English at a coaching college for years 11 and 12. "English is not to improve your mind," he says. "It's just to get your marks to get into uni."

In this way the English syllabus places teachers in an intellectual straitjacket. Brass doesn't mind websites and films crowding the syllabus. He doesn't even mind authors being renamed "composers" and readers "responders". But he says the board has usurped teachers' autonomy, deciding not only the texts they must teach but prescribing how they must teach them.

There is hope, Spurr says, as the students he sees in first-year university are increasingly demanding to be taught the classics, hungry for real literature and fed up with incoherent jargon. But this is no consolation for "less-gifted students who should have as much right to be exposed to the best that has been known and thought in the world", he says. Instead they are encouraged to fritter away perhaps their only opportunity to improve their minds.

Source




Student achievement must be detectable and rewarded

Little Johnny understands the convention of printing ... little Suzie understands the operation of addition ... The rest of us, well, we don't understand what's happening in our schools any more. If anybody other than a school teacher can decipher the true meaning of the "convention of printing" - a convoluted little phrase appearing on report cards across the state - then they deserve a ribbon. (Which is only fair, because everyone in school gets a ribbon these days. More on that later.)

NSW's school teachers have won a necessary victory over the Iemma Government in their refusal to implement a state-wide ranking system on student report cards - but hold off the backslapping just yet. There was a reason Premier Morris Iemma couldn't understand his daughter's report card, which prompted his ultimatum, and why the Federal Government also felt it necessary to weigh in. It is the teachers' fault.

Report cards have become such a dog's breakfast of political correctness, convoluted jargon and deliberate clouding that no parent can understand what they say or are meant to say. The convention of printing? Supposedly, it means little Johnny knows to hold the book the right way up, that he knows to read left to right and that one line follows another. The operation of addition? Little Susie can add up. Why teachers don't say it like it is any more is anyone's guess.

Indeed, so clouded are any meanings, and so subtle have become the gradings between "achieving", "working towards" and "more effort required", that they are virtually useless.

The grading system proposed by the State Government was impractical. For example, grading every kid from A to E is unfair on the average kid at a smart school, who is unfairly pushed to the bottom of rankings. It is unfair to the average kids at a below average school, getting A's when they are by any realistic measure average. Comparing grades uniformly from school to school doesn't work. It's apples and oranges.

The biggest reason for this awful system is, apparently, self-esteem issues. How would Johnny, struggling to understand the "convention of printing", feel if he showed Mum and Dad his report card with a D for literacy? It is an understandable concern but the pendulum has now swung too far the other way. "Rotational reward" is the term, and the liberal-thinkers have got it backwards. Rotational reward is a reaction against the naturally intelligent kids - for example, the ones who win all the prizes even though, unlike little Johnny trying hard to understand the convention of printing, they don't have to work nearly as hard.

Rotate the rewards until little Johnny, putting in all that effort, finally gets a ribbon. Sounds great. It works until the average kids work it out, then question why they should try harder when their reward is going to come around sooner or later anyway. Worse, it creates a wave of school children who drift through school, never needing to sharpen their competitive instincts because they get the reward as a matter of course. The problem comes after graduation, when they find themselves in a world that doesn't give rewards on a rotational basis but for achievement. Soon enough they find they're ill-equipped to survive the competitive environment of this real world.

Kids need to compete. There is nothing wrong with teaching a child to win. Or that work brings reward. Nothing wrong with showing a child that, if they work harder, they can climb from the middle of their class and win a ribbon. The hard-earned victories are the sweetest. If every child gets a prize, soon the prize won't mean much at all. So, far from the backslapping, the NSW Teachers Federation needs to come up with a better system, one that lets kids and parents know exactly where they stand in relation to other kids in class. The criteria for achievement in our schools has to be more clear-cut - give that gift to our children and one day those children will become our gift. Believe it.

Source




Bloated teacher-training courses highlighted

And the establishment is resisting. I went into secondary teaching without one second of teacher training and my students did very well

The head of education at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia says it is important to consider all kinds of programs to get more people into teaching.

The Nationals are preparing a report to be tabled in State Parliament which will recommend a teaching course used in the United States be considered in WA. The Nationals' spokesman for education, Grant Woodhams, wants to introduce a fast track seven-week training course offered to university graduates. He says it will give people wanting a career change, the university qualifications to teach.

While Professor Gary Robson says all options need to be considered, but he doubts two months is enough time. "On the face of it I would be very nervous about seven weeks, if that's all it was. Seven weeks would not seem to be a sufficient time for people to acquire the skills that are needed to be a good practitioner in this day and age," he said.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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27 July, 2007

Britain: History education too haphazard

Children must be taught landmark dates in chronological order from primary school, to give them a common sense of British history and identity, Ofsted tells the Government today. Far from knowing the order of key events, such as the Battle of Hastings or the signing of Magna Carta, pupils have no overview of history and cannot answer the “big questions” it poses, the schools’ inspectorate has found. Not only are key events in British and world history overlooked, but without a sense of the order in which they occurred, students cannot make any connections with the periods that they have studied.

The damning assessment of pupils’ understanding and the way history is taught in England’s schools, particularly primaries, comes after academics and historians have called repeatedly for a review of the way the subject is taught up to the age of 14. “History is taught in all primary schools, but we are recommending that the syllabus is looked at to promote a coherence in what’s being taught – a core, with some local discretion,” said Miriam Rosen, Ofsted’s director of education.

Dr Rosen acknowledged that history had been squeezed in some primaries, because of their need to raise standards in the three Rs. “We quite understand why schools have focused on literacy and numeracy, but we think they are beginning to see they can link history teaching to make sure it’s not lost and that there’s still a focus on the core subjects,” she added. Her comments appear to be at odds with the latest proposals by the Government to allow schools to teach themes such as creativity and cultural understanding, rather than individual academic subjects, such as history and science, at secondary level.

In History in the Balance: History in English Schools 2003-7, the inspectors targeted their criticism mainly at the education of 7 to 11-year-olds, “which continues to disappoint”. While the teachers themselves often had not studied the subject beyond 14, they were also poorly trained in history and tended to jump from one topic to the next, the inspectors found. They cited one primary, where eight-year-olds studied the Romans one term, learnt how children coped in the Second World War the next and finished with Ancient Egypt.

Although the National Curriculum calls for pupils to develop a “chronological framework” and to make “connections between events and changes in the different periods”, the inspectors said this rarely happened in practice. “Consequently they often have little sense of chronology and the possibility of establishing an overarching story and addressing broader themes and issues is limited,” they wrote.

The inspectors praised history teaching post14, but noted that only 32 per cent of pupils study it at GCSE level and even fewer post16. Although 66 per cent achieve A grades at GCSE, a third of A* grades are from independently educated pupils.

The report echoed concerns aired by academics and historians, including Kate Pretty, principal of Homerton College and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who said that Britain was losing a sense of shared identity, because children were not being taught basic general knowledge in primary school. “It’s not secondary school that instills the deficit, but primaries. It’s the primary view of the great stories in the past, like Alfred burning the cakes, Magna Carta, Columbus sailing the ocean blue – all that sort of stuff,” she said. “The little tiny stories that make up the common thread which you can pull on, we’re expecting students to somehow implicitly know. It’s not about A-level knowledge of a particular subject, but a general web of understanding that binds us to a past. That seems to me is being lost somewhere in all of this.”

The report comes as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority proposes allowing schools from next year to teach themes such as creativity and cultural understanding rather than individual academic subjects from the ages of 11 to 14. The curriculum watchdog is already piloting a new GCSE syllabus in 70 schools where periods of history are replaced by themes including “conflict and its lasting impact” and “people’s diverse ideas”. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said he agreed with many of the points raised by Ofsted, which had been addressed in the revised secondary curriculum introduced last week. “The new curriculum has strengthened the requirement that all pupils need to have a good chronological understanding of history. This is compulsory at primary Key Stages too,” he said, adding that they would improve the training of primary teachers.

However, Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary, said the report underlined the dangers of the new curriculum. “The changes Ed Balls [the Education Secretary] announced last week would mean more of the flabby, woolly, ‘theme-based’ teaching this report warns us about,” he said. “Ofsted underlines the importance of rigour and giving pupils a proper connected sense of what went on in the past. Ed Balls’s plans for five-minute lessons and writing Churchill out of the past are the complete opposite of that, and won’t give the next generation the understanding it deserves of our national story.”

Source




Australia: Teachers' union beats attempt to set standards

TEACHERS have inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Iemma Government demands by blocking student report cards. The NSW Teachers' Union has won a three-year battle to stop a "one-size-fits-all" report that would have ranked children in the classroom based on their performance. Public school teachers are now gloating that not one of them has been disciplined over the refusal to prepare the reports requested by Premier Morris Iemma.

Mr Iemma championed A to E grades two years ago, saying he could not understand his daughter's report and needed a meeting with the teacher to determine her ranking in class. "The report that came home was confusing to us and required very careful reading and raised a number of questions that we could only have addressed at the parent-teacher night," he said in 2005.

But now, Mr Iemma's demand for a simple, uniform report card system has been stymied, with different approaches being taken across schools at the behest of the Teachers Union. Teachers were taken to the Industrial Commission after banning the new reports claiming they would label children as failures and could be used to judge their work in class. The union has told each of the state's 2240 schools to decide their own preferred format for student reports. The successful campaign effectively prevents any comparisons of performance between students, teachers or schools.

Threats by the Howard Government to withdraw $3.7 billion in school funding if the reports were not implemented also have come to nothing. The Daily Telegraph can reveal that many schools across the state are not grading students on an A to E scale or telling parents they can request details of their child's ranking. "The majority of NSW public schools did not conform to the department's reporting requirements," a fax sent to schools by the union during term two said. "No federal funding was lost. No teacher was disciplined."

Primary Principals' Association president Geoff Scott said yesterday that individual schools were deciding the best way to report to parents. "There is variety . . . most schools have reached a compromise with their communities on Plain English reports," he said. "There is no compiling of league tables ranking students." Public Schools Principals' Forum chairwoman Cheryl McBride also said a "whole lot of schools are doing their own thing in consultation with their communities". "Many schools are not doing A to E but are using word descriptors (such as 'outstanding' or 'limited' to indicate a student's progress)," she said. "Some have made up their own (descriptors) or are using just four instead of five. "There won't be a direct comparison between schools because of the differences (in report formats)."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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26 July, 2007

The lying Ward Churchill gets the ancient order of the boot

Statement to Faculty, Staff and Students from CU-Boulder Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson:

A message to the faculty, staff and students of the University of Colorado at Boulder:

Earlier today, the University of Colorado Board of Regents, acting on the recommendation of University of Colorado President Hank Brown, voted to dismiss Professor Ward Churchill from the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I want each of you to know that I have carefully reviewed the documentation and reports prepared by the various committees and by Professor Churchill, and I fully endorse this decision. It is my hope and expectation that this action will bring to close an unpleasant chapter in our history, and allow us to move forward to a future that more appropriately befits the many outstanding contributions the faculty, staff and students of the University of Colorado at Boulder makes to the state, the nation, and the world.

The University followed due process in the dismissal proceedings against Professor Churchill, according him all the rights and privileges due a full professor in such a case. I further believe the institution upheld the long tradition of academic freedom by standing firm on the issue of academic integrity. Finally, I want to reaffirm that the University’s decision was not based on Professor Churchill’s writings, politics or expressed personal views, but rather upon his scholarship and its quality. That scholarship was examined by three separate panels and more than 20 tenured faculty members who conducted a thorough review, and who found that it fell beneath the acceptable standards of our profession and the expectations of faculty here at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Academic freedom caries with it a high level of responsibility that we as an academic community cannot allow to be compromised. When these issues are raised, we have a responsibility – in fact, the obligation – to act accordingly.

Perhaps the most important lesson for our community in the painful ordeal surrounding Professor Churchill’s case is rooted in the values we must uphold and convey to our students. The young people who come to us are transformed by this institution, and they in turn, transform it with their energy, idealism and hard work. They deserve to be taught by faculty who embody high academic and personal standards. In a time such as ours, in which the very concept of “truth” is often bracketed by relativism, battered with cynicism and reduced by manipulation and “spin,” our students must know that when they enter our classrooms, they occupy sacred territory where truth is always pursued on a foundation of ethics, honor, and integrity.

We must now reaffirm our core values and not be deterred in our quest to provide the very best environment for our faculty, staff and students and to promote high ideals. Far from those who have said this case represents a “chilling” of academic freedom, I believe it forms an important annunciation of academic freedom, which time and practice have shown must be rooted in academic integrity to prevail.

So, as we continue our pursuit of excellence in research, scholarship and education, I believe we now do so with a stronger academic community, one ready to face a new and challenging time in American higher education. Our students are facing the challenges of a new century, a new global economy and a new era of global conflict and uncertainty. We have an important role to play in preparing them to enter that world, and in preparing that world to receive them. We must now return our full, undivided attention to that urgent cause, and I know we will.

Source




Louisiana governor vetoes school choice measure

This is the incompetent who could do nothing other than wring her hands during the "Katrina" disaster

Tax breaks for parents who pay private and parochial school tuition, for business utility costs and for the replacement of hurricane-damaged property were vetoed Friday by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in a flurry of last-minute bill rejections. Those tax break bills were included in a batch of a dozen vetoed bills that Blanco's office said wrapped up the governor's actions on all measures passed by lawmakers in the regular legislative session that ended last month. Blanco then headed to Michigan for a meeting with the nation's governors.

The vetoes were Blanco's first of any tax break bills from the legislative session. Lawmakers approved a host of tax breaks big and small, and the governor agreed to many of them. The tax breaks she rejected Friday were overwhelmingly approved by lawmakers. In her veto message to the Senate about the private school tuition tax break, Blanco - an ardent supporter of public schools and opponent of voucher programs - said the bill by Sen. Rob Marionneaux could "subsidize private schools at the expense of public school children."

Marionneaux's bill would have allowed parents to take an income tax deduction for 50 percent of private and parochial school tuition and fee costs, up to a maximum $5,000 deduction, starting July 1, 2008. Supporters said the tax break would help parents who struggle to pay for private school tuition. They said in some areas the state's public schools performed so poorly that parents had little choice but to turn to private and parochial schools to educate their children.

The Rev. William Maestri, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, said the archdiocese was disappointed with Blanco's actions. "This veto clearly indicates that Gov. Blanco is acting on behalf of teachers' unions and teachers' organizations rather than on behalf of parents and students," Maestri said in a statement.

Opponents called the bill a backdoor attempt to enact a voucher program statewide that would funnel state money away from public education to private schools. "I understand the sacrifice some parents make to send their children to private schools," Blanco wrote in her veto letter. "But, state government's primary responsibility is to maintain a public educational system."

More here




Oppressive use of police as a substitute for school discipline in Oregon

More hatred of kids. The police should never have been involved

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting. But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days. Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?

Bradley Berry, the McMinnville district attorney, said his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children. "These cases are devastating to children," he said. "They are life-altering cases." Last year, in a previously undisclosed prosecution, he charged two other Patton Middle School boys with felony sex abuse for repeatedly slapping the bottom of a female student. Both pleaded guilty to harassment, which is a misdemeanor. Berry declined to discuss his cases against Mashburn and Cornelison.

The boys and their parents say Berry has gone far beyond what is necessary, criminalizing actions that they acknowledge were inappropriate. School district officials said Friday they had addressed the incident by suspending the students for five days.

The outlines of the case have been known. But confidential police reports and juvenile court records shed new light on the context of the boys' actions. The records show that other students, boys and girls, were slapping one another's bottoms. Two of the girls identified as victims have recanted, saying they felt pressured and gave false statements to interrogators. The documents also show that the boys face 10 misdemeanor charges -- five sex abuse counts, five harassment counts -- reduced from initial charges of felony sex abuse. The boys are scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20.

A leading expert called the case a "travesty of justice" that is part of a growing trend in which children as young as 8 are being labeled sexual predators in juvenile court, where documents and proceedings are often secret.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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25 July, 2007

APOLOGIA FOR HAMAS AT HARVARD

Post lifted from Dan Mandel. See the original for links

Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, complained recently of censorship because her review of a book by the Washington Institute's Mathew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, was rejected by a peer review panel at Tufts University's Fletcher Forum on World Affairs as one-sided and lacking in objectivity. (Apparently, peer review is regarded by Roy as a mere formality, something akin to the approval of a presidential decree by the Syrian parliament). Cinnamon Stillwell has a detailed account of the issue. Roy's review was in the end published elsewhere and upon reading it, the justification for its earlier rejection is readily apparent.

This is what Roy had to say in her review about Hamas, the Islamist movement whose innovation in Palestinian politics has been to move in its Charter beyond the customary call for Israel's extinction by violence to the general murder of Jews:

Since Hamas's victory in the January 2006 legislative elections, there has been a further evolution in its political thinking - as evidenced in some of its key political documents - characterized by a strong emphasis on state-building and programmatic work, greater refinement with regard to its position on a two-state solution and the role of resistance, and a progressive de-emphasis on religion.

Really? Here are some indicators of Hamas' record since January 2006: In February 2006, senior Hamas figures Mahmoud Zahar and Saed Siyam rejected any possible peace negotiations with Israel, with Zahar saying that Israel was an enemy, and thus not a partner for negotiations.

In April 2006, Musa Abu Marzouq, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, reiterated in an interview that "One of Hamas's founding principals is that it does not recognize Israel. We [participated in] the elections and the people voted for us based on this platform. Therefore, the question of recognizing Israel is definitely not on the table unless it withdraws from ALL the Palestinian lands, not only to the 1967 borders."

In June 2006, Hamas blasted Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas for suggesting that it may accept a two-state solution and recognize Israel.

In September 2006, Marzouq said: "Hamas has serious reservations about the [Arab Peace] initiative since it involves acceptance of two states, Palestine and Israel. Hamas rejects this because it means recognition of Israel."

At a 20 October 2006 Hamas convention in Khan Yunis, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar stated that "Israel is a vile entity that has been planted in our soil, and has no historical, religious or cultural legitimacy. We cannot normalize our relations with this entity ... [We say] no to recognizing Israel, regardless of the price we may have to pay [for our refusal]."

In March 2007, Hamas issued a statement reaffirming that it was still committed to Israel's destruction despite having signed a power-sharing agreement with Fatah in Mecca: "We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine." Later that month, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum stated, "We stress that we do not and will never recognize the right of Israel to exist on one inch of Palestinian land."

In April 2007, Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan declared in a sermon televised on Palestinian television that "The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: `Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!' We must remind our Arab and Muslim nation, its leaders and people, its scholars and students, remind them that Palestine and the Al Aqsa mosque will not be liberated through summits nor by international resolutions, but it will be liberated through the rifle."

Not particularly telling examples of "refinement" with regard to its position on a two-state solution (a defective euphemism for accepting Israel) or anything else. Roy's Orwellian apologia for Hamas is a telling instance of the corruption of academic standards in Middle East studies.




Australia: Back to basics for misguided educators

Public debate is the first step towards improving the nation's failing school systems, writes Kevin Donnelly

HOW successful is Australia's education system? Based on apparent high rates of illiteracy, automatic promotion of students without the necessary knowledge and skills, our second-rate performance in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study tests and a dumbed-down, outcomes-based approach to curriculum, the answer is: not very.

Unsurprisingly, as noted in the federal government-funded survey Parents' Attitudes to Schooling, on being asked to give their views about the quality of school education, only 58.3per cent of parents of primary school-aged children expressed satisfaction, while at the secondary level that figure was 39.9 per cent.

Two of the top three parental concerns are the quality of the curriculum and the standard of teaching. As may be expected, those responsible for falling standards and under-achievement argue that all is well and that any talk of a crisis is a media beat-up or a conservative political ploy.

Take the Australian Education Union's submission to the Senate committee's inquiry into education standards, which held hearings across Australia early this month. The AEU argues that "standards in Australian schooling compare favourably with those in most other countries and historically", and that the Howard Government's concerns about standards are simply "a means of diverting attention from the inequity of its funding mechanisms and attacking its critics". By making public the parlous state of our education system, commentators such as myself, in articles in The Australian, are condemned by the AEU as being involved in "reactionary witch hunting" and guilty of employing "myths, misconceptions and deceit".

The AEU is not alone in wanting to shoot the messenger. Last year the educrats from the Australian Curriculum Studies Association and the Australian Secondary Principals Association put out a media release arguing the education debate had been "hijacked by partisan political views and media commentators pushing their own barrows". The Australian Association for the Teaching of English is another organisation that argues all is well; it describes Australian education as "spectacularly successful". Australia's high ranking in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment tests for 15-year-olds and the results of national literacy tests are used as evidence that our approach to education is world's best practice.

In opposition to public concerns about the way classic literature has been destroyed by politically correct theory and critical literacy, where students are taught to deconstruct texts in terms of power relationships and victim-hood, the AATE also argues that such theories represent the best way to teach English. Judging by other submissions to the Senate inquiry, it is obvious that fears about falling standards are not a media beat-up and that many respected and well-qualified teachers and educators argue that much needs to be done to strengthen and improve our education system.

As noted in the submission from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, advocates of the PISA test ignore that the test evaluates so-called real-life skills, not the school curriculum. The AMSI submission also argues that PISA "is not a valid assessment of the mathematics knowledge, as only a fragment of the curriculum is tested" and "some of the questions are effectively general aptitude tests rather than mathematical ones".

Based on the results of the TIMSS tests, Australian students are in the second XI when it comes to international mathematics and science performance, and we have a longer tail of under-performing students. According to AMSI, the reasons for Australia's under-performance include the inferior quality of our curriculum documents, lack of expertise and confidence among primary-school teachers caused by flaws in teacher training and, as a result of universities dropping prerequisite subjects, a decline in the numbers of students taking more difficult senior-school courses.

Notwithstanding the AATE's claim that Australia has "internationally acclaimed, rigorous, research-based and balanced curricula and teaching methodologies", literacy is another area where there is increasing evidence that teachers and schools are being let down.

Kerry Hempenstall, an academic specialising in literacy at RMIT University in Melbourne, argues in his submission that many of the curriculum innovations that regularly wash over Australian classrooms lack a rigorous research base. The reality is that fads such as whole language, where the assertion is made that learning to read is as natural as learning to talk, have bred generations of illiterate students. As noted by Hempenstall, "These assertions have influenced educational practice for the last 20 years, yet they have each been shown by research to be incorrect. The consequence has been an unnecessary burden on struggling students to manage the task of learning to read. Not only have they been denied helpful strategies but they have been encouraged to employ moribund strategies."

One of the most telling critiques of outcomes-based education has been developed by a group of teachers associated with the Perth-based People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes (www.platowa.com). PLATO members have worked tirelessly in opposition to extending outcomes-based education into years 11 and 12 and have been instrumental in the West Australian Government's efforts to ameliorate the worst excesses of the new certificate. In their submissions, PLATO members Igor Bray, professor of physics at Murdoch University, Stephen Kessell, a retired associate professor at Curtin University, and Marko Vojkovic, a teacher, suggest that standards have fallen, that more needs to be done to strengthen teacher education and that teachers need to be properly supported in their work with academically based, clear and succinct syllabus road maps.

While many of those responsible for the present malaise vilify the media for placing education firmly on the public and political agenda, ignored is the fact education is far too important to leave to the so-called experts, and the first stage of strengthening and improving the system is public debate.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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24 July, 2007

The culture gap and school failure

Cut through all the statistical squid ink surrounding the issue of economic inequality, and you'll find a phenomenon that genuinely deserves public concern. Over the past quarter-century or so, the return on human capital has risen significantly. Or to put it another way, the opportunity cost of failing to develop human capital is now much higher than it used to be. The wage premium associated with a college degree has jumped to around 70% in recent years from around 30% in 1980; the graduate degree premium has soared to over 100% from 50%. Meanwhile, dropping out of high school now all but guarantees socioeconomic failure.

In part this development is cause for celebration. Rising demand for analytical and interpersonal skills has been driving the change, and surely it is good news that economic signals now so strongly encourage the development of human talent. Yet -- and here is the cause for concern -- the supply of skilled people is responding sluggishly to the increased demand.

Despite the strong incentives, the percentage of people with college degrees has been growing only modestly. Between 1995 and 2005, the share of men with college degrees inched up to 29% from 26%. And the number of high school dropouts remains stubbornly high: The ratio of diplomas awarded to 17-year-olds has been stuck around 70% for three decades.

Something is plainly hindering the effectiveness of the market's carrots and sticks. And that something is culture. Before explaining what I mean, let me go back to the squid ink and clarify what's not worrisome about the inequality statistics. For those who grind their ideological axes on these numbers, the increase in measured inequality since the 1970s is proof that the new, more competitive, more entrepreneurial economy of recent decades (which also happens to be less taxed and less unionized) has somehow failed to provide widespread prosperity. According to left-wing doom-and-gloomers, only an "oligarchy" at the very top is benefiting from the current system.

Hogwash. This argument can be disposed of with a simple thought experiment. First, picture the material standard of living you could have afforded back in 1979 with the median household income then of $16,461. Now picture the mix of goods and services you could buy in 2004 with the median income of $44,389. Which is the better deal? Only the most blinkered ideologue could fail to see the dramatic expansion of comforts, conveniences and opportunities that the contemporary family enjoys.

Much of the increase in measured inequality has nothing to do with the economic system at all. Rather, it is a product of demographic changes. Rising numbers of both single-parent households and affluent dual-earner couples have stretched the income distribution; so, too, has the big influx of low-skilled Hispanic immigrants. Meanwhile, in a 2006 paper published in the American Economic Review, economist Thomas Lemieux calculated that roughly three-quarters of the rise in wage inequality among workers with similar skills is due simply to the fact that the population is both older and better educated today than it was in the 1970s.

It is true that superstars in sports, entertainment and business now earn stratospheric incomes. But what is that to you and me? If the egalitarian left has been reduced to complaining that people in the 99th income percentile in a given year (and they're not the same people from year to year) are leaving behind those in the 90th percentile, it has truly arrived at the most farcical of intellectual dead ends.

Which brings us back to the real issue: the human capital gap, and the culture gap that impedes its closure. The most obvious and heartrending cultural deficits are those that produce and perpetuate the inner-city underclass. Consider this arresting fact: While the poverty rate nationwide is 13%, only 3% of adults with full-time, year-round jobs fall below the poverty line. Poverty in America today is thus largely about failing to get and hold a job, any job.

The problem is not lack of opportunity. If it were, the country wouldn't be a magnet for illegal immigrants. The problem is a lack of elementary self-discipline: failing to stay in school, failing to live within the law, failing to get and stay married to the mother or father of your children. The prevalence of all these pathologies reflects a dysfunctional culture that fails to invest in human capital.

Other, less acute deficits distinguish working-class culture from that of the middle and upper classes. According to sociologist Annette Lareau, working-class parents continue to follow the traditional, laissez-faire child-rearing philosophy that she calls "the accomplishment of natural growth." But at the upper end of the socioeconomic scale, parents now engage in what she refers to as "concerted cultivation" -- intensively overseeing kids' schoolwork and stuffing their after-school hours and weekends with organized enrichment activities. This new kind of family life is often hectic and stressful, but it inculcates in children the intellectual, organizational and networking skills needed to thrive in today's knowledge-based economy. In other words, it makes unprecedented, heavy investments in developing children's human capital.

Consider these data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, an in-depth survey of educational achievement. Among students who received high scores in eighth grade mathematics (and thus showed academic promise), 74% of kids from the highest quartile of socioeconomic status (measured as a composite of parental education, occupations and family income) eventually earned a college degree. By contrast, the college graduation rate fell to 47% for kids from the middle two quartiles, and 29% for those in the bottom quartile. Perhaps more generous financial aid might affect those numbers at the margins, but at the core of these big differentials are differences in the values, skills and habits taught in the home.

Contrary to the warnings of the alarmist left, the increase in economic inequality does not mean the economic system isn't working properly. On the contrary, the system is delivering more opportunities for comfortable, challenging lives than our culture enables us to take advantage of. Far from underperforming, our productive capacity has now outstripped our cultural capacity.

Alas, there is no silver bullet for closing the culture gap. But the public institutions most directly responsible for human capital formation are the nation's schools, and it seems beyond serious dispute that in many cases they are failing to discharge their responsibilities adequately. Those interested in reducing meaningful economic inequality would thus be well advised to focus on education reform. And forget about adding new layers of bureaucracy and top-down controls. Real improvements will come from challenging the moribund state-school monopoly with greater competition.

Source




Campus Watch and California's Middle East Academic Radicals

By Cinnamon Stillwell

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it became painfully clear that if America was to become more engaged in the Middle East, it would need to develop a greater understanding of the area. Scholars of Middle East studies at our nation's universities were called upon to explain the religious, cultural and political dynamics of the region to students, journalists, and politicians Unfortunately, many of the leading academic lights in the field proved to be woefully unprepared for the conflict at hand and-much worse, were actively hostile to the interests of the United States and its allies.

It was for this reason that in Sept. 2002, Middle East Forum director and Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes started Campus Watch (campus-watch.org), a project intended, as stated at its website, to "review and critique Middle East studies in North America, with an aim to improving them." Campus Watch has since focused its efforts on the West Coast, where no shortage exists of Middle East studies academics with problematic perspectives. Consider the following views publicly expressed by denizens of the ivory tower:

"As far as I can tell, American empire is safe and secure, despite my best efforts to topple it (although Musab al-Zarqawi seems to be doing a good job in Iraq)."

UC Irvine history and Islamic studies professor Mark LeVine

"Israel is an 'apartheid state' and a 'colonial state,' but Hamas and Hezbollah are 'liberation movements.'"

Diablo Valley College Middle East studies instructor Imam Amer Araim

"America's military presence is metastasizing throughout the Arab world to the point of malignancy. Isn't it curious that Muslims are the ones under pressure to proclaim that their religion is the 'religion of peace'?"

UC Berkeley Islamic studies professor Hamid Algar

"You can't have a Palestinian state with its own rights, when you have 150,000 Jewish extremists sitting in the middle."

UCLA history professor Gabriel Piterberg

"It's about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. ...They're gonna say some Palestinian being too radical - well, you haven't seen radicalism yet!

UC Berkeley Islamic studies lecturer Hatem Bazian

Unfortunately, such sentiments are par for the course at California colleges and universities where a culture of political correctness has allowed apologists for radical Islam to dominate Middle East studies. Instead of offering college students the historical basis and intellectual tools to help them better understand the realities of a changing world, far too many Middle East studies professors engage in indoctrination. The classroom has become merely a tool for pushing a political agenda.

At the same time, students that dare to buck the prevailing orthodoxy often find themselves the victims of intimidation and suppression at the hands of their own professors and administration. Professors that diverge from the party line can also face ostracism and, at times, discrimination.

In working to stem the tide of intolerance and academic dishonesty on California's colleges and universities, Campus Watch will inevitably run up against the sort of smears to which it has long been subjected. Critics often accuse Campus Watch of practicing "McCarthyism" or "censorship," but they couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, Campus Watch analyzes and critiques Middle East studies, employing specialists in the field, original research, and the largest archive of related news and information available on the Internet.

Campus Watch holds no governmental power, nor does it control academic and financial decision-making at colleges and universities. Campus Watch takes no position on debates over tenure and, according to its mission statement, "fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds." Only those who equate criticism with censorship could confuse Campus Watch with being anything other than what it is - a participant in the free exchange of ideas. After all, rigorous debate should be the very essence of higher education.

Yet in the rarified, insulated world of academia, professors arrogantly assert that they should be answerable to no one: Not even the taxpayers who foot the bill for keeping the universities running. In what other profession would such a demand for unaccountability be tolerated? Simply by shedding light on the discipline, Campus Watch is bucking that trend. Judging by the level of vitriol generated in response, its efforts are paying off.

The state of Middle East studies should concern us all. And, lest one be misled, the issue at hand has nothing to do with political or religious affiliation. Rather, it's about the importance of providing students, politicians, and journalists with accurate and fair information on this most important of fields during this crucial time. The next generation deserves no less.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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23 July, 2007

Schools should be protected from unreasonable searches

The 4th Amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

As an attorney, I believe that government schools should be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment ban of unreasonable searches. The recent police-state raid in Goose Creek, South Carolina is another in the growing list of proofs.

Government schools have a special exemption under the 4th Amendment, a lowered standard that promotes police-state raids. A raid was caught on videotape when gun-toting police burst into a high school, ordering students to lie flat on their stomachs in hallways as they searched for drugs at Goose Creek, South Carolina on Nov. 7, 2003. Police handcuffed anyone who apparently didn’t comply quickly enough. The tape showed police waving their guns and searching lockers. Worse still, the media reports that the school maintains constant video surveillance of students through various cameras available to police.

During my legal career, parents have asked me if it is wise (or constitutional) for government to control everyone’s education. Government schools create milquetoasts in the same way that Cuban schools create socialists. That is why parents subject their own children to government schools with constant video surveillance and police-state tactics. Government schools in the U.S. are different only in degree from schools in the former USSR

The 4th amendment should be improved to specifically include “schools” with the same high standard given to homes. Of course, the only real solution is to end government schools. Many parents have already rescued their children from government schools in favor of the many better alternatives. The U.S. did not have government schools when the Fourth (and First) Amendment was written. If the authors of the Constitution had foreseen the government’s education monstrosity then the Fourth Amendment would have included government schools, and the First Amendment would have banned Congress from the establishment of religion and education.

The Constitution should be amended to include “education” next to “religion.” The separation of school and state is as important as the separation of church and state. And for the same ideological reasons. The proposed constitutional amendment is discussed in detail at http://www.rexcurry.net.

Even if an excuse could be made for the initial creation of some government schools, their ongoing existence is proof of their ongoing failure to educate people to handle their own (or their childrens’) educations without government schools. The Post And Courier newspaper in Charleston reports the high school is one of the largest in the state with 2,760 students. It has an academic reputation as one of the Low country’s best. But that doesn’t show from the subservient comments of the students and parents. The media reported that “the commando-style raid has parents questioning the wisdom of police tactics.” Sadly, no media reported that the raid has parents questioning the wisdom of government schools. And that is more proof that government schools are dangerous and must end.

One media outlet reported that a parent said, “I was just upset knowing they had guns put to their head and a K9 was barking at them and about to bite somebody. It was awful.” Only through years of government schooling can a parent actually make such a statement and not announce that she is withdrawing her student from government schools. She did not even question the constitutionality of government schools per se.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the media reports state that parents and students are already aware, and have done nothing about, the fact that the school maintains constant video surveillance available to police. The paper quoted a law enforcement officer as saying that he watched school surveillance tapes from four days that showed students congregating under various cameras, allegedly to avoid being filmed. “They know where the cameras are. If they stand directly under them, the camera’s don’t look directly down,” the law enforcement officer told a paper.

The 4th amendment states “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Police didn’t find any criminals in the armed sweep nor any drugs. Goose Creek police and school administrators defended the draconian measures as necessary for crime prevention.

Source




Testing defended in Britain

The new Children, Schools and Families Secretary set himself on a collision course with the teaching establishment yesterday by pledging that national testing and school league tables were here to stay. Despite growing pressure from the Government's own examinations regulator and the majority of the teaching profession about overtesting in schools, Ed Balls said that "testing and the publication of results" were the only way to ensure accountability. "It enables us to be able to see as policymakers what is working, who is not performing well and, in the extremes, being able to tackle poor performance," he told The Times. It was necessary also, he said, to help parents to judge the performance of their child's school.

Mr Balls's comments will disappoint the main teaching unions, as well as the professional body, the General Teaching Council. All complain that, far from raising standards, overtesting encourages a narrow curriculum, alienating students from learning and increasing their anxiety.

Children in England typically sit 70 tests and exams in their school careers and are the most tested in the world. Despite this, Britain is near the bottom of international league tables for the number of students leaving school with valuable qualifications.

Critics of testing include Ken Boston, head of the examinations regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, who has argued that national tests for children aged 7, 11 and 14 should be replaced by the random testing of a sample of pupils and teacher assessments.

Mr Balls's opposition to this approach will also distance the Government from the Conservative Party, which has promised "fewer but tougher" tests and the dropping of Key Stage 3 tests at 14. In his first newspaper interview since he was appointed three weeks ago, Mr Balls also attacked Tory support for more streaming and the promise made by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, for a "grammar stream" in every comprehensive.

Mr Balls stopped short of banning streaming, which involves separating children into groups according to overall ability and teaching them in the same class for all subjects, arguing that individual head teachers know what works best in their own schools. But he emphasised that it was "backward-looking and divisive", imposing an arbitrary judgment on children's intelligence and ignoring individual talents. He said that he would rather see a greater use of setting, where children are separated into ability groups for individual subjects. "I do not find anybody sensible advocating streaming in schools. As somebody who went through streaming myself through secondary school I saw how deeply socially divisive it was," he said.

Mr Balls said that he would be making a series of impromptu visits to schools to spend time with teachers and pupils, who would not be informed who he was. He made his first such visit on Monday, when he spent the day at Banbury School in Oxfordshire, having informed only the head, the deputy and two senior staff members of his intention to visit. He arrived on foot, having asked his driver to drop him some distance from the school and was introduced to teachers and pupils as "a visitor".

He said that there was an old-fashioned view that you either focused on the welfare of the child or drove up standards in the classroom. His visit to Banbury had shown him that this was a false choice. "You can only drive up standards if you are actually focusing on the whole child, tracking their learning on an individual basis, but also knowing that if they aren't ready to learn because they are not sleeping or have difficulties at home, it's not possible for them to do well," he said.

He was determined to tackle the "achievement gap" in society, emphasising the importance of closer cooperation between education, health and social care services for children. "There are children in the same borough, on the same streets sometimes, and even going to the same schools, who have radically different experiences, shaped by family income and family environment, by poor health. The scandal is not England v Sweden, but Blackbird Leys v Headington. It's Harehills v Roundhay. It is North Kensington v South Kensington," he said.

Mr Balls said that more than 400 city academies could be set up, but insisted that they should become part of the "mainstream" and work more closely with nearby schools. The man who has spent most of his political life advising or working for Gordon Brown admitted that he felt "a bit liberated" at being outside the Treasury at last and declared himself ready to argue hard with his former colleagues for cash. Acknowledging that plans for a more flexible national curriculum would place a heavy burden on teachers and head teachers, he said that he would welcome the appointment of head teachers from outside the teaching profession.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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22 July, 2007

California: Battle over exit exam concluded

Exam stays

State education officials and lawyers representing students who failed the California High School Exit Exam settled a lawsuit Thursday that began last year in an attempt to eliminate the test as a graduation requirement. Under the agreement, the test remains in place but schools must continue to educate students who fail for an additional two years after 12th grade -- if those students want to return and try the test again.

Both sides saw it as a victory. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell gets to keep the test, which has been a cornerstone of his platform as the head of the state's public school system. Advocates for low-performing students get to keep those kids in school a bit longer, with the hopes they'll pass the test and earn a diploma. "For our clients, this is absolutely a victory," said Arturo Gonzalez, the San Francisco attorney who represented students in the classes of 2006 and 2007 who couldn't graduate from high school because they failed the exit exam. "It just means that if (a school is) going to have a special course to prepare students for the test, you may have to invite five kids from last year who didn't pass. And that's a lot better than having those five kids out on the street."

Gonzalez sued O'Connell over the test last year, months before the first class required to pass it was scheduled to graduate. The courts initially sided with Gonzalez and tossed the test. Then the state Supreme Court overturned the decision and restored the test. The parties have been hashing out a settlement ever since. "We won the lawsuit to the extent the exit exam stayed in place, but the litigation was never dismissed. There was always the potential for the case to go to trial," said Hilary McLean, O'Connell's press secretary. "We thought it was important to end the threat of a potential lawsuit."

The state is paying Gonzalez's law firm $87,000. And the state is paying county offices of education $1.5 million to oversee that districts comply with the terms of the settlement. The cost of educating students who return after 12th grade will come from the funds schools already receive from the state to prepare students for the exit exam, McLean said. Students who return can receive test preparation in English and math. Those who are not fluent in English can take more classes to learn the language, according to the agreement. "We are going to ensure that districts immediately begin notifying students in the classes of '06 and '07 that they have the opportunity to come back for additional instruction," Gonzalez said. "They need to set up a program and then do whatever they can to get students to attend."

The settlement will become final if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approves Assembly Bill 347, by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. The bill, which awaits approval in the Senate, spells out the details of the settlement.

Source




Serious loss of mathematics skills in Australia

AUSTRALIA is losing its mathematical skills as school courses are hijacked by fads and divorced from modern mathematics as practised in industry and business. At a time when economic growth is underpinned by jobs in maths-related fields, the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute says the teaching and learning of maths in schools and universities is in serious trouble and suffering from a lack of input from mathematicians. Not only is the number of students taking maths continually falling, especially at an advanced level, but even students studying related fields such as engineering and science are taking fewer maths courses.

In a submission to a numeracy review being undertaken by federal, state and territory governments under the auspices of the Council of Australian Governments, AMSI is critical of the review for its ignorance of modern maths and its application in industry and business, and for failing to include mathematicians in the process. "Mathematicians and statisticians have had few opportunities to be involved in school mathematics for a number of years," says AMSI, representing 30 universities and mathematical organisations. "As a result, serious misconceptions concerning modern mathematics are arising ... particularly concerning the role of foundation or 'pure' mathematics."

AMSI says that in the absence of input from experts and users of mathematical sciences across the trades and professions, school curriculums tend not to reflect pertinent mathematical content and have become the victim of fads. Mathematics has also "lost coherence and many of its successful teachers". "We are deeply concerned by the failure of the background (review) paper to address specific content, the apparent lack of knowledge of modern mathematical sciences, the inability to give examples of good practice (at) high-achieving schools and failure to address Australian curriculum expectations compared to those of other nations," the submission notes.

It says school curriculums tended to reflect the belief that pure maths courses were only required for highly specialised areas, when pure maths was a vital element of many new applications in various fields, such as climate change, as well as providing the fundamental understanding required to apply mathematical concepts.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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21 July, 2007

Vast racial gap in American educational achievement

As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the best results with black education have in the past come from old-fashioned high-discipline schools -- which is exactly what the education mandarins today oppose most fervently. So all the pious hopes expressed below are just desperation. Reality is bound to disappoint those who are guided by wrong theories.

If you could take a class photo of the 1.2 million young people who drop out of high school in this country each year, one detail would be obvious -- and troubling. Students of color, usually poor, dominate. It's true in Detroit, where one recent report estimates that city schools graduate only 24.9 % of students who start 9th grade, and shows up in every major study of the dropout population. Failure to complete high school is an epidemic problem among poor minorities, the population that's most in need of education to escape poverty.

So it's encouraging to see many of the nation's leading civil rights groups band together -- belatedly, given how long this has been a problem -- to make educational inequity a more urgent agenda item for state and federal policymakers. The groups behind the Campaign for High School Equity include giants such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the National Indian Education Association and the National Urban League, each with solid track records of improving opportunities for minorities.

Working in conjunction with the Alliance for Excellent Education, this new super group should have clout and data to command the attention of the political leaders and the community groups, parents and children who have first-hand knowledge of the costs of this crisis.

Nationally, minority students are four times as likely to be enrolled in one of the 2,000 high schools that have been identified as producing approximately half of the nation's dropouts, according to the Campaign's report, "A Plan for Success." Anyone daring to dismiss this fact as just another minority problem isn't paying enough attention to the population trends. The minority students who are either dropping out of school or getting a grossly inequitable education are also the growing segments of the U.S. population. Finding ways to keep them in school now and ensuring they get proper skills is a sounder solution than paying for their education deficits later.

Source




A profound loss of culture in modern Britain

If even literary people don't recognize some of Britain's greatest literary work, what hope is there for the mass of the people even to know what they are missing? Education once transmitted a people's inherited culture. The only thing it transmits well now is Leftist propaganda

A frustrated author has confirmed what other unpublished writers have long suspected: even Jane Austen would have difficulty finding a book deal in the 21st Century. But what really astonished David Lassman was that only one of 18 publishers and literary agents recognised her work when it was submitted to them under a false name. Mr Lassman, 43, had spent months trying without success to find a publisher for his own novel Freedom's Temple. Out of frustration - and to test whether today's publishers could spot great literature - he retyped the opening chapters of three Austen classics: Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

He changed only the titles, the names of the characters and his own name - calling himself Alison Laydee, after Austen's early pseudonym "A Lady" - then waited for the offers to roll in. Instead he received yet another sheaf of rejection letters, including one from Penguin, which republished Pride and Prejudice last year, describing his plagarised chapters as "a really original and interesting read" but not right for Penguin. That was one of the gentler rejections. But Mr Lassman said: "Penguin neither requested to see the rest of the novel nor did they recognise a work they already publish.

"I wasn't surprised that the publishing process rejects people out of hand, but I was staggered that no one recognised the work. Here is one of the greatest writers that has lived, yet only one recipient recognised them as Austen's work. "At best their letters were mildly apologetic about declining the material and at worst completely indifferent to what they had in their possession. If major publishers can't recognise great literature, who knows what might be slipping through the net."

Mr Lassman concocted his plan after returning from the Greek island where he had been writing his own novel and found himself facing a brick wall. "I was having a hard time getting it published and I was chatting to friends about it, saying I wondered how Jane would have fared today. "Getting a novel accepted is very difficult unless you have an agent first, but I had no idea at the scale of rejection poor old Jane suffered."

The literary agency Christopher Little, which represents J.K. Rowling, regretted that it was "not confident of placing this material with a publisher". Jennifer Vale of Bloomsbury publishers turned down Northanger Abbey, renamed Susan, saying "I didn't feel the book was suited to our list."

The one publisher to recognise the deception was Alex Bowler, assistant editor at Jonathan Cape. His reply read: "Thank you for sending us the first two chapters of First Impressions; my first impression on reading these were ones of disbelief and mild annoyance, along with a moment's laughter. "I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I'd guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter and make sure that your opening pages don't too closely mimic the book's opening. After all, there is such a thing as plagiarism and I'd hate for you to get in any kind of trouble with Jane Austen's estate."

Last night a spokeswoman for Penguin admitted that Mr Lassman's submission may not actually have been read. She said: "We don't take anything that is not agency-led, so I doubt the person would even have read it. I can't comment on this individual case but I don't think we have done anything bad." Neil Blair at Christopher Little said Mr Lassman had received a standard response. He said: "As you can imagine we get hundreds of submission each week - some from genuine writers or would-be writers, but also some from cranks. Our letter was a polite note declining representation and provided a standard response. "However, our internal notes did recognise similarities with existing published works and indeed there were even discussions about possible plagiarism. We chose an approach was designed to end the chain of communication with this person and not start a whole new one. Sadly, we have had experience of where accusations of plagiarism can lead to." Bloomsbury declined to comment.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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20 July, 2007

Children denied the joys of competition

On Saturday, the river Thames at Henley was a picture of grey. Contented, fulfilled, cheery, but undeniably grey. And occasionally bald. It was the Henley Veterans' Regatta, a rowing competition held the week after the grand Royal occasion, after the corporate hospitality marquees had gone, the picnic tables been folded away and the jazz bands packed up their instruments. Here rowers in their forties, fifties, sixties and in several cases seventies wheezed and sweated their way down the very same course the elite athletes had so recently taken, persuading themselves for a moment that they were still contenders

Everywhere you looked, the joys of competition were in evidence. It wasn't the winning - though for a few that provided a singular pleasure - but the fact they could still take part that was the point. The clutch of nerves gripping the stomach at the start line, the adrenaline rush of the first few strokes, the long haul up the most picturesque sporting track in the world: it made them feel more alive. For these people, sporting competition had been a vital part of their being for as long as they can remember.

I couldn't help comparing the energy, the vibrancy, the camaraderie with another event I attended: a non-competitive team morning at a primary school. Emphatically this was not a sports day: sport, for the head teacher, needed to be eradicated in all its forms, as pernicious an evil as sexism and racism. Sport represented competition at its most corrupting: trying to beat someone else at games was, to this head, morally indefensible. And so the children were obliged to stand in line, hanging around waiting to do things like tip water into a bucket or sort plastic bricks into colour-coded lines. Running was banned (someone might hurt himself) and winning didn't happen.

As the head passed between the rows of children congratulating herself that she had discovered the root of youthful nirvana, every child she passed wanted to know one thing: who was winning. "Nobody wins here," she'd trill, apparently oblivious to the groans her every remark solicited. I have never seen such a listless, bored bunch of children. Those veterans at Henley may have been 10 times older, but they had 10 times the spark of these seven-year-olds. What these children wanted was competition.

They didn't know about all those long-term, beneficial side-effects the old rowers had enjoyed, they just wanted to pitch themselves against their peers. Yet they were being denied the one thing they craved by an educational philosophy that made no sense.

The image that haunted me was of an 11-year-old girl, who looked like Denise Lewis must have done at that age, all balance, grace and legs like a gazelle, being scolded by the head teacher for running, beautifully and at sprint speed, during one of the challenges. "We don't do that sort of thing here," she was told, as if what she were doing were a social embarrassment, like picking her nose in public.

Far from offering encouragement to help nurture her natural ability, here was the girl's educational mentor telling her that her skill was worthless. All this happened not in the grounds of some expensive boarding school established by utopian loons for the offspring of the Bohemian, but at a bog-standard, mainstream north London primary school.

My memories were stirred this week when Gordon Brown announced his wholehearted support for competitive sport in schools. Of all the things the new man has said that we can cheer (the end of the super-casino among them), this is the most important.

Yet the gap between prime ministerial proposal and reality can be as wide as the space between that head teacher's ears. The non-competitive team challenge I witnessed took place at the tail end of John Major's watch, when the PM was waxing on about warm beer on the boundary, even as great swathes of his education system were treating all sports as if they were a dangerous perversion.

Brown needs to ensure competition is given room on the curriculum, that those many great teachers who appreciate its value are supported, that the facilities are developed in which it can be practised. Proposals, initiatives, study documents are not enough. We have allowed almost a whole generation to be schooled without sport, marooning them on the sofa, sagged down by their ever-expanding waistbands. The next generation must rediscover the spirit of their grandparents competing at Henley; and that requires actions, not words.

Source




Christian fraternity sues University of Florida, claiming discrimination

A Christian fraternity sued the University of Florida on Tuesday, claiming discrimination because the university refuses to recognize it as a registered student group.

University officials have told Beta Upsilon Chi that it cannot be registered as an on-campus student group because only men are allowed to join, which amounts to sex discrimination, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Gainesville.

And Beta Upsilon Chi is not allowed to join the off-campus Greek system of fraternities and sororities because the fraternity requires its members to be Christians, the suit said. The organization that governs the university's Greek system prohibits religious discrimination.

"As a Christian fraternity, (Beta Upsilon Chi) is locked out of the UF campus," the lawsuit said. "The only way UF will recognize (the fraternity) is if it chooses to give up its identity as a men's organization or if it abandons its religious criteria for members".

"They're caught in a conundrum," said Timothy J. Tracey, one of the attorneys who filed the suit. By not being registered as a student group, the fraternity is deprived of benefits including access to meeting space and the ability to advertise and recruit members on campus, the suit said. University spokesman Steve Orlando said the school does not comment on pending litigation.

Beta Upsilon Chi, also known as Brothers Under Christ, was founded in 1985 and has 21 chapters nationwide. The University of Florida chapter has eight members and claims that the school's failure to recognize it has hampered recruiting efforts.

Source




A degree in prostitution?

New Zealand wackiness

Funding for tertiary courses in prostitution could be considered under changes aimed at boosting quality and relevance in the sector, New Zealand education officials say. But MPs on parliament's education and science select committee were told today that although courses in the world's oldest profession might be considered if providers put them forward, they would still have to meet tight criteria to get funding.

The questions on prostitution, posed by New Zealand First MP Brian Donnelly, surfaced as MPs were quizzing Tertiary Education Commission officials on changes to how tertiary education was funded. Under the changes, from next year, institutions will be bulk funded on the basis of agreed three-year plans rather than on the number of students enrolled in specific approved courses.

Tertiary Education Minister Michael Cullen has said the changes are aimed at increasing the "quality and relevance" of courses. However, they have raised questions regarding the TEC's actual control over individual courses. National Party education spokeswoman Katherine Rich said she was concerned by the TEC's apparent "agnostic" attitude towards the content of courses under the new system. She questioned whether it might lead to a continuing proliferation of courses such as twilight golf seen under the old system. TEC chief executive Janice Shiner said under the new system a request to provide prostitution courses would be assessed against the same criteria as any other course.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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19 July, 2007

University of Michigan finally goes colour-blind (?)

The University of Michigan has long been one of America's most colour-conscious campuses. Both the Supreme Court and a State constitutional amendment were needed to stop them discriminating between blacks and whites. Have they finally learnt their lesson? Not really. The events below show clearly that their agenda is still a fanatically racist one. Post below excerpted from Discriminations. See the original for links

In this long struggle the official student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, has rarely if ever encountered any "color-conscious" program or activity that it opposed. Now, finally, it appears to have found one

Man mugged at gunpoint by campus
DPS issued crime alert to warn suspects
By Emily Barton, Daily News Editor
7/16/07

The Department of Public Safety issued a crime alert Saturday after an Ann Arbor resident was mugged at gunpoint near campus because the suspects are at large and potentially dangerous.....

The victim told police that the men were of average build, about six feet tall and wearing black hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up.

Now, here is a report of the same incident in the conservative Michigan Review:

The Michigan Daily goes colorblind! After years of trolling for a racially-sensitive admissions process, the Michigan Daily has seemingly come to the realization that race just isn't that important - at least when it comes to armed robberies near campus. An Ann Arbor resident was robbed at gunpoint near the intersection of Lincoln and Hill. The suspects fled, and are described by police to be at large and potentially dangerous. According to the Daily, the suspects were:

"of average build, about six feet tall and wearing black hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up."

According to DPS [Department of Public Safety] however, the suspects were:

"#1: Black male, 6'2", medium build and clean-shaven, wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt with hood up and dark pants.

#2: Black male, 6'0", medium build, wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt with hood up."

The Michigan Daily - where skin color is central to college admissions, but not relevant to armed robberies.

Look, we all know that criminals come in all shapes and colors. And if these suspects had been apprehended, I don't have a problem with the Daily withholding their race. But if there are two gun-toting dudes prancing around campus, robbing people two blocks away from East Quad (the home of Summer Orientation) and the University's own Department of Public Safety issues a crime alert, for the love of God, can't the Michigan Daily put the racial agenda on hold for two seconds.

Apparently not.




Disgrace at another Michigan university

We read:

School officials on Monday fired Eastern Michigan University President Jim Fallon, and accepted the separations of the college's Department of Public Safety Chief Cindy Hall, and James Vick, vice president of student affairs, months after top school officials were accused of covering up the rape and slaying of a student by publicly ruling out foul play, school officials said.

Eastern Michigan University's Board of Regents confirmed Fallon's Sunday evening firing today before announcing they also were accepting the separations of Hall and Vick. EMU Board of Regents Chairman Thomas Sidlik also said Monday that the board would put a letter of discipline in the file of university legal counsel Kenneth McKanders. In addition, the board appointed Provost Donald Loppnow as executive vice president. In that dual role, Loppnow will serve as the school's chief executive until an interim president is selected.

The Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents voted unanimously, by telephone, to fire President John Fallon. His termination -- two years into a 5-year contract -- comes on the heels of a report that blasted EMU officials for their handling of a student's death in December. The key findings in an 18-page U.S. Department of Education report said the school failed to report in a timely manner such crimes as rape, alcohol, drug and weapons violations.

The report came following an investigation of how the university responded to the death in December of Laura Dickinson, 22, of Hastings. The U.S. Department of Education report said the university failed to alert the public of the rape and killing of Laura Dickinson, and that it violated federal law by underreporting and misreporting other crimes on campus since 2003.

It was roughly 10 weeks before EMU announced that there may have been foul play in Dickinson's death on Dec. 15. A fellow student, Orange Taylor III, 20, of Southfield, had been arrested and charged. His trial is set to begin in October.

Orange Taylor is black. See pic below. He has a history of arrests for drugs and break-ins on campus, and was kicked off campus -- but allowed to remain a student -- two months before Laura's death. Cameras filmed Taylor sneaking into the dormitory behind another student, a practice called "tailgating." The cameras caught him leaving more than an hour and a half later, one of Laura's gift bags in hand. Sometime during those roughly 90 minutes, he killed her, prosecutors say. Even as investigators zeroed in on Taylor as a suspect, after they interviewed him in January and after his DNA was found in the room, EMU insisted there was no foul play. Not until Taylor was arrested, 10 weeks after her body was found, did the university acknowledge Laura had been killed.

Source



Covering up black crime seems to be a deep-seated compulsion in Michigan universities. There is probably a very popular course in most of them called "Deceit, deception and lying 101".

It's a strange compulsion. Do they really think that Americans are not aware that 9 out of 10 crimes of violence in America are committed by blacks? Who do they think they are fooling? Abetting crime out of such a compulsion really does suggest that they are seriously deranged.

The victim was not too good either. She was a "happy hippie" who did not even lock her door. She no doubt heartily agreed with her university's race policies.




College jocks rape unconscious woman

After the Duke Lacrosse player scandal we can expect to see this in all the media, can't we? Not likely! The reason why is at the foot of the post: Photos of the accused

Prosecutors call it rape at a drunken party which was caught on cell phone video. They have charged University of Minnesota cornerback Dominic Jones with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. However, WCCO-TV has confirmed that another U of M football player who'd been kicked off the team actually organized the party. Robert McField had been convicted of two armed robberies but was somehow still living in campus housing the night of the attack. On Monday, Jones was charged with sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

The woman's blood-alcohol level was estimated at least 0.30 percent by a doctor who reviewed police reports and witness statements, according to the criminal complaint. Stephen Smith, the doctor, based his estimate on her size and weight and descriptions of the amount of alcohol consumed.

A friend of Jones had taken a video of part of the assault on his cell phone at the apartment that night. The file was deleted, but forensic experts examining the phone were able to recover a portion of the deleted file. The female in the video was unresponsive and was identified as the victim. The male in the video was identified as Jones.

Prosecutors said Jones was involved in an incident at the University Village apartments late on the night of April 3 or early April 4. On April 6, a woman told police she was raped in the University Village complex. The woman was taken to a local hospital and evidence was collected.

"It's amazing what the forensics can do to reconstruct that. That cell phone video ... A picture is worth 1,000 words, and that video reflects what happened, at least at that point in time," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. "The charges represent a significant next step in this case. The charge is a serious one."

Source



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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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18 July, 2007

Strikes at public universities

In a free society when employers and employees negotiate on terms of trade, both sides are free to walk away from the table. Employers would then be left with the need to hire new staff, while employees would need to find a new job. Neither is a welcome prospect, so both sides try to avoid it. But customers can live with this because other sources of goods and services usually exists in the market place where they can purchase what the negotiating parties offer.

When one turns to public employment, however, the situation is markedly different. That's because customers are not free to refrain from purchasing the goods and services public institutions offer. So, for example, if the teachers at the California State Universities, who are threatening to strike if their terms are not met by the university system, walk of their job, those who pay their salaries and for the schools operations must keep paying. The paying customers, namely, California taxpayers, aren't legally free to walk, whereas teachers are. And this is unjust.

The entire notion of striking is at home only in a free market system where all parties have alternatives. In a public service industry, however, those who pay for the service lack the freedom to seek other ways to spend their funds. Their funds are confiscated, no matter what.

Now if it is OK, which it isn't, of course, to force customers (mostly the parents of the students in the case of CSU) of public services to pay, it could be argued that it is OK to have providers put out the work for which these customers are legally required to pay. There is clearly an imbalance afoot-teachers may refuse to work but those who pay them are not free to refuse to pay.

The lesson, of course, is that there should be no public employment other than those required for the maintenance of justice-the courts, military, and so forth. And those should not be able to go on strike since their pay is secured by means of coercion and cannot be withheld.

In a free market of education, colleges and universities would be just like shoe stores or recreation facilities or weight loss centers-their provisions would be obtained with the full consent of all the parties involved in the exchange relationship. No one would be privileged, favored by government as against others involved in the provision of the service (in CSU's case, education). Because no one's resources could be obtained against his or her will, there would have to be serious, honest negotiations, with no one in the position to act like an extortionist.

With public service institutions, however, not all the parties are free to deal on their own terms. Taxpayers are stuck having to pay taxes, while teachers can refuse to teach. They can even shut down a university or the entire system while those who pay them will go to jail if they attempt to withhold payment of their taxes that go to the maintenance and administration of the system.

So, perhaps all this is moot since we do have a massive public service sector in this country, which is far from a free one the rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. What is the right approach given this plain enough fact?

Striking would have to be banned, just as refusing to pay taxes is banned. This is not a welcome option, of course, to anyone who believes that the flow of goods and services ought to be free. But when it isn't free for customers, maybe it shouldn't be free for employees either.

In some public service industries strikes are banned precisely for this reason. If a monopoly or near-monopoly has been established for the delivery of certain goods or services, so that it is nearly impossible to go elsewhere to gain what one wants (since resources for this are conscripted and one could go to jail if one failed to provide them), then no one ought to make it seem this is a free market in which all parties are free agents.

Source




Income diversity does not desegregate

When San Francisco started trying to promote socioeconomic diversity in its public schools, officials hoped racial diversity would result as well. It has not worked out that way. Abraham Lincoln High School, for example, with its stellar reputation and Advanced Placement courses, has drawn a mix of rich and poor students. More than 50 percent of those students are of Chinese descent. "If you look at diversity based on race, the school hasn't been as integrated," Lincoln's principal, Ronald J. K. Pang, said. "If you don't look at race, the school has become much more diverse."

San Francisco began considering factors like family income, instead of race, in school assignments when it modified a court-ordered desegregation plan in response to a lawsuit. But school officials have found that the 55,000-student city school district, with Chinese the dominant ethnic group followed by Hispanics, blacks and whites, is resegregrating.

The number of schools where students of a single racial or ethnic group make up 60 percent or more of the population in at least one grade is increasing sharply. In 2005-06, about 50 schools were segregated using that standard as measured by a court-appointed monitor. That was up from 30 schools in the 2001-02 school year, the year before the change, according to court filings.

The San Francisco experience is telling because after the recent United States Supreme Court decision restricting the use of race-based school assignment plans, many districts are expected to switch to economic integration plans like San Francisco's as a legal way to seek diversity. As many as 40 districts around the country are already experimenting with such plans, according to an analysis by Richard D. Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy research group.

Many of these experiments are modest, involve small districts or have been in place only a few years. But the experiences of these districts show how difficult it can be to balance socioeconomic diversity, racial integration and academic success.

Only a few plans appear to have achieved all three goals. Others promote income diversity but not racial integration while still other plans are limited and their results inconclusive. Those who have studied them say a key to that outcome is how aggressively a plan shifts students around and whether there are many schools that can lure middle-class students from their neighborhoods into poor ones. "Systemwide programs are more effective than piecemeal programs," said Mr. Kahlenberg, who has studied plans like these.

The purpose of such programs is twofold. Since income levels often correlate with race they can be an alternate and legal way to produce racial integration. They also promote achievement gains by putting poorer students in schools that are more likely to have experienced teachers and students with high aspirations, as well as a parent body that can afford to be more involved. "There is a large body of evidence going back several years," Mr. Kahlenberg said, "that probably the most important thing you can do to raise the achievement of low-income students is to provide them with middle-class schools."

Economic integration initiatives differ from each other, and from many traditional integration efforts that relied on mandatory transfer of students among schools. Some of the new initiatives involve busing but some do not; some rely on student choice, while some also use a lottery. And so it is difficult to measure how far students travel or how many students switch schools.

The most ambitious effort and the example most often cited as a success is in the city of Raleigh, N.C., and its suburbs. For seven years the district has sought to cap the proportion of low-income students in each of the county's 143 schools at 40 percent. [Discrimination against the poor?? Would that would survice a 14th Amendment challenge?] To achieve a balance of low- and middle-income children, the district encourages and sometimes requires students to attend schools far from home. Suburban students are attracted to magnet schools in the city; children from the inner city are sometimes bused to middle-class schools at the outer edges of Raleigh and in the suburbs.

The achievement gains have been sharp, and school officials said economic integration was largely responsible. Only 40 percent of black students in grades three through eight in Wake County, where Raleigh is located, scored at grade level on state reading tests in 1995. By the spring of 2006, 82 percent did. "The plan works well," said John H. Gilbert, a professor emeritus at North Carolina State University in Raleigh who served for 16 years on the county school board and voted for the plan. "It's based on sound assumptions about the environment in which children learn."

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, North Carolina's largest, has also tried an economic integration plan, but with less success. Students were once assigned to schools in Charlotte and its suburbs based in part on achieving racial balance, but that system was struck down in federal appeals court in 2001.

The school board then created an assignment plan based on income and choice; a low-income student could transfer to a middle-class school if he came from a high-poverty, low-performing school. But such transfers could occur only if there was room, and there seldom was. "There are not a whole lot of seats available and so there is not a lot of choice available," said Scott McCully, the district's executive director of planning and student placement. Within several years, said Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, "the schools became markedly more segregated."

In the smaller school system in Cambridge, Mass., children apply to the city's 12 elementary schools and socioeconomic status is an important factor in ultimate assignments. The system has been phased in gradually since the fall of 2002. Last year, 75.8 percent of Cambridge's low-income third graders were judged to be progressing toward reading proficiency. That was higher than the statewide average for low-income students, 71.3 percent, and better than the rate in more than a dozen other cities in the state.

Other districts have not seen such results. One district in San Jose, Calif., switched to using family and neighborhood income instead of race for assignments two years ago, giving a preference to students in low-income areas who try to transfer to schools in higher income areas, and vice versa. But in the first year, the number of students switching schools declined significantly and has only begun to recover in the last year.

San Francisco had been under a court order to desegregate for more than 20 years, with no school allowed to have a majority of students from one racial or ethnic group. But after Chinese-American parents whose children were kept out of certain elite schools sued, the district switched in 2002-03 to a plan that sought socioeconomic diversity.

Students apply to the schools they want to attend, and the district uses a "diversity index" for assignments when a school is oversubscribed. The index considers the language spoken at home, whether a child qualifies for free lunch or is in public housing, a child's academic performance and the quality of a child's prior schools. But it has not resulted in racial integration. "We were hopeful that the diversity index would work," said Stuart Biegel, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was the district's court-appointed monitor. "No one was rooting against it. But it didn't work."

Officials say one problem is that many students apply to neighborhood schools, which do not recruit enough students from outside their area. Another problem is demographics. Mr. Biegel said public school students in San Francisco were relatively low income over all, whatever their race or ethnicity, so the diversity index produced less mixing than hoped.

The wide ethnic diversity in San Francisco's schools, which are about one-third Chinese, also introduces calculations among parents that make it easier to get income diversity without racial or ethnic diversity.

At Willie L. Brown Jr. College Preparatory Academy, a fourth- through sixth-grade school in the predominantly black neighborhood of Bayview, 75 percent of the students are black. Most are poor. Tareyton D. Russ, the principal, said students from other neighborhoods did not seek to go there so the diversity index did not even apply. "Poor Chinese kids don't want to go to school with poor black kids," Mr. Russ said flatly.

Conversely, one white parent interviewed as she dropped her child off at summer school said some white parents avoided schools with a heavy Chinese concentration, like Lincoln, believing they would be too high-pressure for their children. She declined to be quoted by name.

David Campos, the general counsel to the school district, said the resegregation was so disappointing that the school board might try to test whether Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's opinion in the recent Supreme Court case left open the possibility of using race if other methods of integration fail. "We stopped using race at some point," Mr. Campos said. "And then for a number of years we have tried to use a number of race-neutral factors to achieve racial diversity, which methods haven't worked. Should the board decide to use race, and they may or may not, we are a very good test case."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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17 July, 2007

Leftist hostility to reform of educational standards

Leftists were once supposed to be in favour of reform and change. Ever since Ronald Reagan's changes, we have seen what hypocrtisy that was. They only want change that benefits them. Post below lifted from Mitchell Langbert

I have been saddened at the indifference to standards, ethics and competence in higher education. Make-believe academic freedom that cloaks suppression; the commercialization of education that masquerades as student-centeredness but fails to educate; the self-indulgent politicization of the curriculum; and lack of interest in liberal education---all of this saddened me when I first began to teach and still saddens me 16 years later. One would hope that most academics would fight to improve higher education, but most do not. The few insiders who do are often ostracized, harassed and sometimes fired. In part, the task of demanding that universities renew their sacred duty to students, alumni, donors and the general public has fallen to Anne Neal and the organization that she leads, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

For instance, in 1997 ACTA found that:

"two-thirds of the top 70 colleges and universities in the nation no longer require even their English majors to take Shakespeare."

In 2000 ACTA found that:

"81% of seniors from the top 55 U.S. colleges and universities failed a high school level history exam, and none of the institutions surveyed requires a course in American history. Three-quarters require no history at all."

More recently, ACTA has made suggestions to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to address low levels of student learning and problems in accreditation.

It is difficult for me to understand then the hate, yes hate, that many academics feel toward Ms. Neal. In a profession such as teaching, which aims to broaden students' minds, consideration of criticism from outsiders would seem to be what might be called academic social responsibility. When environmental groups or advocates of fair working conditions criticize corporations, we expect them to investigate those criticisms, as many corporations have.

However, when Anne Neal criticizes academics, the academics respond just as General Motors did decades ago toward Ralph Nader--with intolerance not only toward the reformer, but toward the reformer's goals, which ought to be fundamental institutional goals or quality targets. Just as General Motors attacked Ralph Nader for saying that its cars were unsafe at any speed, so do academics attack Anne Neal for telling us that university graduates are too often innumerate, illiterate, unable to write and lacking in interpersonal skills.

An example of the intolerant reaction toward Ms. Neal and ACTA appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in an article with the title "A Not So Professional Watchdog". How would we react if an automobile industry publication wrote an article about Michael Moore or Ralph Nader with this title? Are only auto engineers or race car drivers permitted to criticize the safety of cars? And if universities graduate students who cannot write; cannot do basic arithmetic; and do not know the rudiments of history should criticism of these quality gaps be restricted to academics whose "professionalism" has generated the performance shortfalls in the first place?

The Chronicle article attributes the following hate-filled remarks to Stanley N. Katz, president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies:

"Katz said he considered Ms. Neal's group to be a 'hostile organization.' He went on: 'We have to be prepared to know who our enemies are.' He even questioned why Ms. Neal was part of the higher-education debate. 'She represents only a couple of hundred people,' he said. (ACTA says it has supporters — including alumni and trustees — from more than 695 colleges.) But that Ms. Neal was a topic of discussion at all seemed to prove that she has become a force to be reckoned with."

Sharad Karkhanis just forwarded an e-mail concerning a call by Professor Sandi Cooper of the College of Staten Island to "organize" against Anne Neal in response to her appointment to the National Accreditation Review Panel:

"Now is the time for all CU* faculty who value liberal education to stand up and organize, starting with opposition to the fraudulent persecution and pending dismissal of Ward Churchill."

Ward Churchill was the Colorado professor who called 9/11 terrorism victims "little Eichmanns". Rather than protest on behalf of an unqualified bigot like Ward Churchill, perhaps the "CU" faculty should cheer the appointment of Neal, who is eminently qualified, honest, competent and brilliant.

*I believe that "CU" refers to "City University", of which the College of Staten Island is a part.




Australia: "Soft" educational options booming

The next generation of the state's skilled workers is abandoning the critical subjects needed to equip them for lucrative jobs in mining and defence. The number of students completing key Year 12 courses - including physics and maths - is dramatically declining, according to latest figures from the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia. In physics alone, completions last year sank below 2000 - 600 fewer than a decade ago - during a period when the number of students completing their high school certificate increased from 9000 to 12,000.

Fewer students undertook mathematical studies - completions were down by 500 in just three years - while student numbers in chemistry, information technology, specialist mathematics and geology have also dropped. The decline has extended to Flinders University, which has axed five maths staff because of a lack of interest in the subject.

The alarming downturn has prompted federal Finance Minister Nick Minchin to consider encouraging the study of science and maths by lowering university fees for these subjects.

SA Chamber of Mines and Energy chief executive Jason Kuchel said the state's mining industry alone would need an extra 14,000 people in the next seven years. "What really disappoints us is that schools do not reinforce to students that, if they want to keep their options open, they need to do maths and science in school - particularly in years 11 and 12," Mr Kuchel said.

The State Government wants to boost defence jobs from 16,000 to 28,000 within a decade.

Outer Harbor-based shipbuilder ASC, which will build three air warfare destroyers for the navy, last year launched a long-term recruiting campaign in schools for 1000 shipbuilding jobs. The SA Chamber of Mines and Energy also is campaigning in schools.

The state strategic plan targets a $2 billion defence industry by 2013, and $4 billion worth of mining and processing by 2014. But declines in subject enrolments almost exactly mirror the courses required to equip students for these sectors. Geology completions fell to just 60 last year, compared with 243 in 1996, and Information Technology numbers went from 815 to 155. Specialist Maths completions dropped from 1552 in 1999 to 1121, while Chemistry numbers were at 2217, compared with 2704 in 1998.

Flinders University vice-chancellor Anne Edwards said the university had previously announced it might not be able to continue an engineering faculty, saying "you can't make students study what they don't want to study". "It's a national emergency - we all recognise that - it's a national problem," she said.

University of Adelaide senior physics lecturer Dr Rodney Crewther blamed the decline on low numbers of qualified science teachers. The State Government in January announced targets committing the Education Department to increasing the number of students achieving a Tertiary Entrance Rank in maths, physics or chemistry by 15 per cent within three years.

Senator Minchin, a former science minister, said government intervention was needed. "Some have suggested changing HECS fee levels but there's no evidence that it is the cost of the courses that is the determinant of whether someone does or doesn't do a course," he said. In February, Labor leader Kevin Rudd announced a plan to halve fees in maths and science courses

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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16 July, 2007

Churchill dropped from England's history syllabus

Britain's World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says. The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the Government said.

But although Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin and Martin Luther King have also been dropped from the detailed guidance accompanying the curriculum, Sir Winston's exclusion is likely to leave traditionalists aghast.

A spokesman for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said the new curriculum, to be taught from September 2008, does not prescribe to teachers what they must include. But he added: "Teachers know that they need to mention these pivotal figures. They don't need to be instructed by law to mention them in every history class. "Of course, good teachers will be teaching the history of Churchill as part of the history of Britain. The two are indivisible."

Sir Winston's grandson Nicholas Soames, also a Conservative Member of Parliament, described the move as "madness." "It is absurd. I expect he wasn't New Labour enough for them ... this is a Government that is very careless of British history and always has been. "The teaching of history is incredibly important," he added. "If you're surprised that people do not seem to care that much about the country in which they live, the reason is that they don't know much about it."

The History Curriculum Association said it was "appalled" by the move, saying the new curriculum would "promote ignorance" and was pandering to a politically-correct agenda. The Conservatives' schools spokesman Michael Gove added: "Winston Churchill is the towering figure of 20th century British history. "His fight against fascism was Britain's finest hour. Our national story can't be told without Churchill at the centre."

Schools Secretary Ed Balls defended the move, saying a slimmed-down curriculum was overdue and traditional elements in all subjects had been protected. Among the few named figures that stay in the new history curriculum are William Wilberforce, the British law maker who was instrumental in efforts to abolish the slave trade.

Sir Winston, who was British prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955, was famous for his defiance to the Nazis, stirring oratory and trademark cigar and "V for victory" sign. In 2002, a BBC poll with more than one million votes saw him voted the Greatest Briton of all time.

Source




Making a Balls-up of British education

As schools minister Ed Balls calls for lessons in emotional and economic wellbeing, it's clear the Brown government is as philistine as the Blairites

Over the past 10 years, New Labour's ministers for education and schools have been remarkably consistent. That is, they have consistently screwed up the school curriculum.

Those who thought that Estelle Morris (UK secretary of state for education and skills from 2001 to 2002) was as bad as it gets must now realise that dumbing down education is part of the job description for school ministers under New Labour. And it looks like Ed Balls, who has been appointed secretary of state for children, schools and families by new PM Gordon Brown, possesses a formidable skill for generating dumb ideas.

Balls' first major initiative, announced last week, was to introduce the teaching of social and emotional skills to schoolchildren. Schools in England will get œ13.7million in government funds to teach pupils manners, respect and good behaviour. So at a time when many children can barely spell `respect', Balls reveals that lessons in emotional intelligence will be the driver of his education revolution.

Last week it was respect - this week it's money-management. Balls has announced that, as part of an overhaul of the Key Stage 3 curriculum for older pupils, 11- to 16-year-olds will be introduced to a new subject: `economic wellbeing and financial capability'. Apparently Balls wants children to learn how to manage their money, since `money plays a crucial part in all our lives'; the aim is to `help youngsters to prepare for financial pressures after leaving school' (1).

Tomorrow, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority will unveil these reforms to the curriculum in full, as more and more worthy issues are recycled as academic subjects. For example, it is likely that there will be further tampering with the geography curriculum, to give it an even `greener interpretation' and an `additional focus on climate change and recycling' (2).

New Labour's pick'n'mix approach to the curriculum is underpinned by a belief that education is far too important to be left to educators, their pupils and families. The government seems to believe that if only schools would teach children enough about sex education, emotional intelligence and respect, then problems like teenage pregnancy, crime and community corrosion might disappear. They simply don't understand that the best way to turn children into inspired and socially responsible citizens is to challenge them through real academic subjects.

You don't need a degree from Harvard to know that a pupil who has grasped basic maths is likely to be better at handling money than a kid who got an A in `economic wellbeing and financial capability'. Decades of experience also show that citizenship classes do not produce brilliant citizens, that sex education does not reduce teenage sexual activity, and that emotional education has not given rise to a cohort of self-aware and confident young people. All that has happened as education has been instrumentalised by New Labour is that teachers and children have been distracted from engaging with the academic subjects that could take their classrooms forward and really prepare children for the future.

New Labour's philistinism towards education can seem contradictory. Both the Blairites and now the Brownites have appeared to have `too little' and `too much' interest in education. They are not very interested in the content of basic subjects like maths, English and science - but they are excessively interested in constantly changing the curriculum to make it reflect the government's policy agenda.

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on there being a further erosion of the important dividing line between education and the promotion of political values.

Source




Student lenders get shafted -- not before time

Anything that keeps kids way from sharks like Sallie Mae is welcome

The House on Wednesday approved far-reaching changes in student aid programs, voting to cut $19 billion in federal subsidies to student lenders over five years, while increasing grants for needy students and halving interest rates on federally backed loans with the savings. The bill passed 273 to 149 in a sometimes raucous debate, with 47 Republicans joining Democrats, who took control of Congress this year on promises to help the middle class with the escalating costs of higher education.

The bill marks a stark reversal of fortune for the student loan industry, which for over 10 years had largely enjoyed unflagging support under the Republican majority. Investigations by Congress, the news media and the New York attorney general bruised the standing of lenders, exposing systems of paying colleges commissions to win business, offering college officials free trips and other perks.

While President Bush opposes some elements of the bill, it is widely expected that a broad overhaul of student aid will become law this year. Mr. Bush himself has proposed cutting government subsidies to lenders by $16 billion. And the Senate is expected to pass legislation later this month that would reduce these subsidies by $18.3 billion, while increasing the maximum Pell grant, the nation's major assistance program for low- and middle-income students, more swiftly than the House bill does.

Pointing to increases in college costs that have outpaced inflation by nearly 40 percent over the last five years, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the Education Committee, likened the legislation to the G.I. Bill, which began government financing of higher education in exchange for military service in 1944. "That took us to the first place in the world, and we've been there for 50 years," Mr. Miller said. "This is about a new investment for the next generation."

House Republicans criticized the bill as creating a panoply of nine entitlement programs, which they branded "welfare programs." They offered a substitute that would have largely focused on increasing Pell grants, without cutting interest rates. The substitute was defeated 231 to 189, in a largely party-line vote.

Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, the ranking Republican on the Education Committee, said the bill approved on Wednesday "overreaches by creating new entitlement spending for every conceivable constituency in higher education." Mr. McKeon also criticized it as "extracting too much blood" out of the federally backed student loan program, which he called "a success by all measures."

But Representative Tom Petri, Republican of Wisconsin, who voted for the bill, called the federal loan program "fundamentally and structurally flawed." "Congress has no business setting lender returns," Mr. Petri said. Student lenders, who had lobbied heavily against the bill, predicted that it would drive some lenders out of business, and reduce services and discounts offered to borrowers. A group of private bidders planning to buy Sallie Mae, a publicly traded company that is the nation's largest student lender, warned the loan company that both the House and Senate bills might cause the $25 billion deal to fall through, according to a press release from Sallie Mae. The release also said that Sallie Mae "strongly disagrees with this assertion" and would move to close the deal as rapidly as possible.

But a report by the Congressional Research Service found that small and medium-sized lenders would probably be hardest hit, and would face difficulties competing with industry giants like Sallie Mae. The report said Sallie Mae would likely be able to handle the cuts unscathed.

As well as cutting lender subsidies, the bill reduces the share the government would guarantee in the event of student default. It halves the interest rate on federally backed loans gradually over the next five years, to 3.4 percent from 6.8 percent, and would limit monthly payments to 15 percent of the borrower's discretionary income.

The bill raises the maximum Pell grants by $500 over the next four years, to a total of $5,200 by 2011. It also grants $5,000 in loan forgiveness for police, firefighters, prosecutors and other public servants, and a complete release from student loans for public servants after 10 years. It would also provide for complete forgiveness of federal student loans after 20 years for economic hardship.

Mr. Bush has threatened a veto over the loan-forgiveness provisions as creating new entitlement programs, and said more of the savings from the cuts in lender subsidies should go to increasing the size of Pell grants.

The Senate version of the legislation is similar to the House bill, but includes more generous increases in Pell grants. Senate aides on both sides of the aisle said they doubted that Mr. Bush would follow through with a veto after the two bills have been reconciled. Both measures also require the federal Education Department to set up a pilot program to auction off the right to make student loans, giving the business to the lender that would charge the least.

Advocacy groups for student borrowers praised the legislation. Michael Dannenberg, director of the New America Foundation's education policy program, called Wednesday's bill "an important first step toward getting politicians out of the business of writing subsidized lender profit rates into law." The group was the first to pitch auctions as a way to set lender subsidy rates.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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15 July, 2007

New way to fight campus antisemitism

At the University of California, Irvine, a Muslim student group is permitted every year to hold a week-long event on campus. Sometimes the event is titled "Israel Awareness Week," sometimes "Zionist Awareness Week," or sometimes "Anti-Zionist Week." This past year the event was titled "Israel Apartheid Resurrected," and the university allowed the group to extend the program for an extra week.

This event has nothing to do with educating the community about Israel or Zionism, said Susan Tuchman, director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Law and Justice (CLJ). Instead, she said, "it is a week-long opportunity to bash Jews." Tuchman, whose work for the CLJ led to landmark findings and recommendations protecting Jewish college students from bigotry on campus, addressed the Pittsburgh chapter of the ZOA at its annual meeting on Wednesday evening, June 27. She cited the annual UC Irvine event as just one example of the type of anti-Semitism facing Jewish college students in the 21st century.

"Campus anti-Semitism is a serious problem," Tuchman said, "but the good news is there is a legal tool to address it." That legal tool is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thanks in part to the efforts of Tuchman, anti-Semitism can now be challenged under Title VI.

Typically, she said, campus anti-Semitism is expressed as hateful rhetoric against Israel and Zionism. The perpetrators claim they are just engaging in First Amendment-protected political discourse. Tuchman stressed that she would "never suggest that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. It's not. It is perfectly appropriate to engage in heated debate about what's going on in the Middle East."

The problem, she said, is that "Israel is being singled out and vilified." The offenders are not just speaking in distortions, she said, but often in "outright falsehoods." It is this brand of speech that is equivalent to anti-Semitism. This type of anti-Semitic rhetoric happens at all varieties of colleges and universities, from small private schools, to large state universities, to community colleges. And it happens in and out of the classroom.

At San Francisco State University, the Muslim Student Union was permitted to circulate a flier with a blood libel cartoon. The cartoon depicted a baby with the caption, "Palestinian Children Meat - Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License," patently implying that Jews kill Palestinian children for ritualistic purposes.

At UC Irvine, which, according to Tuchman, has had frequent incidences of anti-Semitism, posters have been displayed on campus equating the Star of David to a swastika, or depicting the Star of David dripping with blood. During its recent "Israel Apartheid Resurrected Week," a member of the Muslim group sponsoring the event was permitted to stand in the center of campus, and through amplified speakers, pronounce: "You [the Jews] are the new Nazis.... Your days are numbered. We will fight you until we are martyred or victorious." University officials did nothing in response to this demonstration, nor in response to the destruction of a Holocaust memorial, which followed the speech.

In a letter to the chancellor a UC Irvine student wrote, "I am terrified for anyone to find out [that I am Jewish.]. Today I felt threatened that if students knew that I am Jewish and that I support a Jewish state, I would be attacked physically." The chancellor never responded to the student's letter. Another administrator, however, did respond. He suggested that the student visit the counseling center on campus to help her work through her feelings. [What nasty condescension!]

Many schools take the official attitude that it's not their problem, said Tuchman. Rather, the schools react as if "it's the Jewish students who have the problem, and they need to learn how to deal with it."

Tuchman also cited a few examples of the anti-Semitism students face within the classroom. A Jewish student at Columbia University was told by her professor in a Middle Eastern Studies class that she had no claim to the land of Israel because she had green eyes and therefore could not be a Semite. Another professor, at UC Santa Cruz, left his health advocacy course to the charge of a guest lecturer one day. The guest lecturer presented slides purportedly showing Israeli soldiers brutalizing Palestinians. "How did this relate to the subject of the class?" asked Tuchman. "It didn't." In another classroom, a professor refused to answer any questions posed by a student who was a former IDF soldier until the student told the class how many Palestinians he had killed.

Tuchman explained that Title VI provides a legal recourse with which to battle campus anti-Semitism. Title VI requires that recipients of federal funding must ensure that their programs are free from harassment, intimidation and discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin, or risk losing that funding. Historically, anti-Semitism did not fall within Title VI because it was viewed to be discrimination based on religion, which was not protected by the Act.

In the fall of 2004, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) clarified how it would interpret the law, and said that because Jews shared a common ethnicity, they would be protected under Title VI. In October 2004, the ZOA filed a complaint with the OCR under Title VI on behalf of the Jewish students at UC Irvine. The complaint alleged that, despite the university's awareness that its campus environment was hostile to Jewish students, the administration had done nothing to remedy the problem. A few weeks later, the OCR agreed to investigate. Tuchman said that this was the first case of anti-Semitism to be investigated by the OCR. That investigation is still ongoing.

The good news, Tuchman said, is that the inclusion of Jews as a protected class under Title VI was recently endorsed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bi-partisan agency that investigates and studies discrimination, reporting its findings to Congress and the president. In 2006, the Commission recognized that anti-Semitism encompasses more than name calling and threats, and that sometimes it is expressed as "anti-Israelism" or anti-Zionism.

The Commission accordingly recommended that colleges and universities come out and condemn anti-Semitism, Tuchman explained. The Commission rejected the argument that universities could remain silent because of the perpetrators' right to free speech; instead, the Commission said, the schools had a moral obligation to take a stand against anti-Semitic speech.

The Commission's findings have sent "a powerful message to colleges and universities," Tuchman said. She advised college students experiencing anti-Semitism to file an appropriate complaint within the university system. If nothing productive comes from that, then they should pursue the legal remedies that are now available.

Source




Dumb and dumber -- and that's the teachers

Graduates from Richmond's Binford Middle School [Virginia] get a diplomalike certificate, signed by the teacher and principal. It is ringed by six graphic marks, including icons of a notebook, an apple, the school mascot and such. Then there is a picture of a man. And who is this icon of American education? Not John Dewey or Horace Mann, both of whom were called fathers of American education. It's not Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or George Washington, either. Nor is it even James H. Binford, the first superintendent of Richmond Public Schools, for whom the school was named when it opened in 1915. This picture looks a little like Albert Einstein, perhaps. Or maybe Frederick Douglass. Or the Smith Brothers cough syrup guy. . . .

Wait a minute. . . . It's Karl Marx! Not exactly the father of education. This is the father of socialism. The father of communism. Author of "The Communist Manifesto." Any Google image search confirms it. The specific Marx image on the Binford certificate, artistically embellished with books in the background, can be found online.

There's nothing odd with teaching Karl Marx. Any well-rounded education ought to include his ideas. But Marx as the sole human symbol of Binford Middle School? In fact, if you were to rank anyone in the world who might appear on a graduation certificate in Richmond what number would Marx be? Would he even make the top million? Karl Marx would rank below Groucho Marx.

Binford Principal Juanita Nicholson said yesterday that she had not known the photo was of Marx or the reason for its use. She agreed it was an odd choice. Nicholson said one of the teachers on a committee apparently had done it. "I'm not sure . . . she even knew who it was."

Turns out she didn't. Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby called last night to explain: "She really thought she was capturing clip art representing Frederick Douglass. She did a search to pull up Frederick Douglass and this is what came up . . . with the beard and the hair." Hold on. Wait a minute.

One was a German philosopher, the other an African-American slave who became a leading abolitionist. They can't be distinguished?

The teacher, the school and the school system "apologize profusely if this image offended parents and children alike," Cosby said. "But it was not intentional to put an image of Karl Marx up." It will be taken off in the future, she said. Fair enough. But in the future, let's make sure this committee isn't teaching history. [or anything else!]

Source




Dumb gets yet dumber in Britain

Britain's Leftist government will not be happy until British education is totally destroyed -- in aid of making everyone "equal" of course

Pupils taking GCSE [Middle school] exams will be asked multiple choice questions for the first time and be allowed to take unlimited resits. It has also emerged that, under a planned overhaul of the system, up to half of GCSE English marks would be awarded for basic skills such as punctuation. The planned reform of the exam system has fuelled accusations that testing standards are being lowered. Bethan Marshall, a senior lecturer in English education at King's College London, told the Times Educational Supplement: "If you make 50 per cent of the GCSE about doing the basics, you are dumbing down. "The subject is about so much more than being able to communicate accurately. And if you're still doing basic skills at GCSE level, Heaven help you. It's pretty boring."

Ministers said last night that the overhaul was an attempt to ensure all school-leavers gain basic numeracy and literacy skills. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, denied reducing GCSE English to "primary school level" and insisted that the changes would ensure that pupils who passed were ready for the workplace. He added that students would still be required to have "deep and broad subject knowledge".

Under the revamped exam system, maths and information and communication technology students would potentially be awarded up to 50 per cent of the total marks for under standing the basics, known as "functional skills". One suggested question for an English test reportedly asks pupils which word is spelt incorrectly in the sentence: "Be careful, the kettel is hot."

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children's Minister, said: "The idea that 16-year-olds should be tested on how to spell "kettle" and the principle that this exam should be based on tick-box multiple choice tests undermine any claim to higher standards. "Ministers need to get a grip if these exams are to be genuinely testing." The Department for Children, Schools and Families said that no decision had been made on the 50 per cent figure, and emphasised that the reforms were subject to pilot tests.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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14 July, 2007

Blissfully Uneducated

Colleges lost their way in the 1960s, contends VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, a classics professor. Students now get a `therapeutic curriculum' instead of learning hard facts and inductive inquiry. The result: we can't answer the questions of our time

Is "ho"-the rapper slang for the slur "whore"-a bad word? Always, sometimes, or just when an obnoxious white male like Don Imus says it? But not when the equally obnoxious Snoop Dogg serially employs it? Is the Iraq war, as we are often told, the "greatest mistake" in our nation's history? Because Israel and the United States have a bomb, is it then O.K. for theocratic Iran to have one too?

Americans increasingly cannot seem to answer questions like these adequately because they are blissfully uneducated. They have not acquired a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy, and history. Instead, our youth for a generation have been fed a "Studies" curriculum. Fill in the blanks: Women's Studies, Gay Studies, Environmental Studies, Peace Studies, Chicano Studies, Film Studies, and so on. These courses aim to indoctrinate students about perceived pathologies in contemporary American culture-specifically, race, class, gender, and environmental oppression.

Such courses are by design deductive. The student is expected to arrive at the instructor's own preconceived conclusions. The courses are also captives of the present-hostages of the contemporary media and popular culture from which they draw their information and earn their relevance. The theme of all such therapeutic curricula is relativism. There are no eternal truths, only passing assertions that gain credence through power and authority. Once students understand how gender, race, and class distinctions are used to oppress others, they are then free to ignore absolute "truth," since it is only a reflection of one's own privilege.

By contrast, the aim of traditional education was to prepare a student in two very different ways. First, classes offered information drawn from the ages-the significance of Gettysburg, the characters in a Shakespeare play, or the nature of the subjunctive mood. Integral to this acquisition were key dates, facts, names, and terms by which students, in a focused manner in conversation and speech, could refer to the broad knowledge that they had gathered.

Second, traditional education taught a method of inductive inquiry. Vocabulary, grammar, syntax, logic, and rhetoric were tools to be used by a student, drawing on an accumulated storehouse of information, to present well-reasoned opinions-the ideology of which was largely irrelevant to professors and the university.

Sometime in the 1960s-perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age-the university jettisoned the classical approach and adopted the therapeutic. Many educators and students believed that America was hopelessly corrupt and incorrigible. The church, government, military, schools, and family stifled the individual and perpetuated a capitalist, male hierarchy that had warped Western society. So if, for a mere four years, the university could educate students to counter these much larger sinister forces, the nation itself could be changed for the better. Colleges could serve as a counterweight to the insidious prejudices embedded in the core of America.

Unfortunately, education is a zero-sum game in which a student has only 120 units of classroom instruction. Not all classes are equal in the quality of knowledge they impart. For each course on rap music or black feminism, one on King Lear or Latin is lost.

Presentism and relativism are always two-edged swords: today's Asian victims of racism are tomorrow's Silicon Valley engineers of privilege. Last year's "brilliant" movie of meaning now goes unrented at Blockbuster. Hypocrisy runs rampant: many of those assuring students that America is hopelessly oppressive do so on an atoll of guaranteed lifelong employment, summers off, high salaries, and few audits of their own job performance.

Once we understand this tragedy, we can provide prescribed answers to the three questions with which I started. "Ho," like any element of vocabulary in capitalist society, is a relative term, not an absolute slur against women. "Ho" is racist and sexist when spoken by white men of influence and power, jocular or even meaningful when uttered by victims from the African-American male underclass.

If few Americans know of prior abject disasters during the winter of 1776, the summer of 1864, or January 1942, then why wouldn't Iraq really be the worst mistake in our history?

If there are no intrinsic differences-only relative degrees of "power" that construct our "reality"-between a Western democracy that is subject to continual audit by a watchdog press, an active political opposition, and a freely voting citizenry, and an Iranian theocracy that bans free speech to rule by religious edict, then it will matter little which entity has nuclear weapons.

In the end, education is the ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the prism of the absolute and eternal truths of the ages. But if there are no prisms-no absolutes, no eternals, no truths, no ages past-then the present will appear only as nonsense.

Source




Pittsburgh schools drop 'public' from name to boost image

Leftist belief in verbal magic again. Reality does not suit them so they do all they can to conceal it

The Pittsburgh Public Schools will drop "public" from its name and adopt a new, standardized way of referring to its schools as part of a campaign to brighten and strengthen the district's image. For example, Schenley High School will be called Pittsburgh Schenley. Superintendent Mark Roosevelt's staff unveiled the policy at a school board Education Committee meeting last night. Under the policy, the district simply will call itself the "Pittsburgh Schools." The district's logo -- a pattern of circles, triangles and squares -- will still be used. But the district also will begin using "Excellence for All," the name of its sweeping academic-improvement plan, on all stationery and other written materials. "Excellence for All" has its own logo with a gold swirl and star.

Lisa Fischetti, chief of staff, said the district isn't changing its legal name or the legal names of its 65 schools, it's just introducing a new way of referring to them. She said the new policy complements Mr. Roosevelt's efforts to remake the district academically and boost its image. Under the new policy, Sterrett Classical Academy will be called Pittsburgh Sterrett. But the school's traditional name still will be used -- albeit in smaller print -- on stationery and other printed materials.

School board members offered little reaction to the policy, which does not require board approval. By dropping "public" from its name, Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools. Ms. Fischetti noted that suburban districts don't have "public" in their names, and a marketing consultant who helped develop the policy, Meade Johnson, said the district is less interested in the "public" tag than in linking its identity to the "Excellence for All" agenda.

By adding Pittsburgh to the identity of each school, Ms. Fischetti hopes the public will come to associate a level of quality with every school in the district. Ms. Fischetti said the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has developed that sort of customer respect by attaching its acronym, "UPMC," to its member hospitals throughout the region. Ms. Fischetti said she had no timetable for implementing the name changes.

Also, the district last night announced plans to upgrade its parent hotline into a "customer service center," another initiative aimed at boosting the district's image. The plan includes better training for operators, the ability to send out thousands of phone messages or e-mails at once and a standard turnaround time for responding to parent complaints.

The district also said it was forming a committee to revise its curriculum on human reproduction. Mr. Roosevelt said the group will study the possibility of adding contraception to the curriculum. Currently, that subject is raised only in presentations by outside agencies. Students must have their parents' consent to attend those sessions.

Source




Australia: Safety 'sanitises' science



STUDENTS have been robbed of the fun of Bunsen burners and the whiff of sulphuric acid as fears of litigation rule out classroom experiments. A federal inquiry into Academic Standards heard yesterday Australia will regret the day it sanitised science. Megan Motto, from the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, said science and maths were being left behind in the prevailing shift to humanities studies. Engineering students often spent the first year of their degree doing remedial work in maths and science, she said. Ms Motto suggested parents be invited into classrooms to help oversee science experiments. "This could make a great difference to the way science teachers teach."

The inquiry also heard from the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, which said literacy levels in Australians schools were not as bad as portrayed in some sections of the media. Vice-president Mark Howie said Australian standards were considered quite high from an international perspective. But he said Australia could learn from Finland where literacy standards were more consistently high across demographic areas. Mr Howie said one area of concern for all teachers was computer skills, with school kids often better skilled and better equipped in the technical area. Teachers seldom had the luxury of picking up the phone and calling the Information Technology department when computers crashed, he said. "We ring some poor colleague who might not be able to get to your problem for the next few days."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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13 July, 2007

Most American academics are believers

Contrary to popular opinion, the majority of professors - even at elite schools - are religious believers, a new study shows. Accounting professors are the most religious among the top 20 bachelor's degree-granting disciplines, with 63% saying they believe in God. Overall, American professors are less religious than the general public, but a majority of academics do believe in God, the survey of about 1,500 professors found. A professor at Harvard University, Neil Gross, and a professor at George Mason University, Solon Simmons, conducted the survey.

A professor of religion at Barnard College, Randall Balmer, said the study helps to refute the notion that academics are almost universally atheist or agnostic. A research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media, Jeff Sharlet, likewise said the idea that the ivory tower is detached from the main currents of religious life is as sound as believing that "The Beverly Hillbillies" is a fair representation of rural poverty. About accountants being so religious, Mr. Sharlet quipped, "The god is in the details."

The new research shows that mechanical engineers are those whom one is least likely to be seated next to at a church, mosque, or synagogue. Nearly 71% attended religious services once or twice a year or less. Psychology, communications, marketing, biology, and sociology professors follow, although the authors caution that some differences might reflect differing institutional locations of various disciplinary fields.

Mr. Balmer said he was surprised that biologists were among the disciplines that were most atheist and agnostic. Between 20% and 30% of professors overall termed themselves atheists or agnostics.

The survey also showed that faculty members at elite institutions are more secular than their counterparts at community colleges. Mr. Balmer said the apparently smaller number of religiously identified professors at elite institutions could possibly be explained by the abundance of religiously affiliated colleges throughout the country, many of which require some sort of religious affirmation.

Mr. Gross said the study shows that professors who are more oriented toward research tend to be less religious. "At elite doctoral-granting universities, nearly all professors are oriented first and foremost toward research," he said via e-mail. He said also the study showed that professors whose parents completed college tend to be somewhat less religious.

Mr. Gross said the only consistent disciplinary predictor of being less religious was being a social scientist. Mr. Gross said some sociologists have hypothesized that social scientists are less religious than other professors because they are more inclined to think of religion as a social phenomenon to be explained. Others believe, he said, that it is because social scientists want to establish themselves as "scientists" and therefore distance themselves from anything appearing unscientific.

In general, professors in applied fields tend to be more religious and answer most like members of the general population in terms of their social and political attitudes and characteristics, he said. After accounting professors, those most likely to profess belief in God are professors of elementary education, finance, marketing, art, and criminal justice.

Mr. Gross found that the closer to the research core of the university one gets, the less religious professors become, although, again, the majority still are religious believers. Mr. Sharlet said liberal arts professors are more likely than many others to be immersed in "Enlightenment assumptions."

Regarding researchers, Mr. Sharlet said a person would want his or her neurologist, for example, to be obsessed with scientific medical data. He said that the engagement of a neurologist or a political science professor to their work at a top college could tend to crowd out other concerns, such as spiritual ones.

Nevertheless, many elite institutions once originally served quasi-religious purposes such as training and educating clergy. But Mr. Balmer, who has a forthcoming book on how faith has shaped the presidency starting with President Kennedy, said places such as Harvard are never going to be the "nurseries of piety" that they were in the 17th century. At the same time, he said, there is a growing recognition that religion needs to be taken seriously as a cultural force as well as a source of motivation for human activity.

Source




Lagging US science education and science competitions

Last year, in his State of the Union speech, President Bush promised $5.9 billion this year for an American Competitiveness Initiative addressing, among other issues, the lack of trained scientists and researchers. Science fairs offer a rare flash of American technical brilliance. What can these kids, and the research programs that produce them, tell us about how to save American science? Perhaps if more teens could do their own scientific research, more would get interested in science and we might not lose our innovation edge.

The problem is how to get more kids involved. Science fair kids and their teachers point to the rock-star factor to explain why students stop competing in fairs after they leave middle school, where participation is often mandatory. Because science isn't seen as sexy, students don't always realize how cool research can be.

"We're very comfortable saying some kids are the best in sports, but we're not as comfortable singling out the kids who are really exceptional in academics," says science fair alumna Lisa Randall, a Harvard theoretical-physics professor who won the Westinghouse competition as a senior. Over the last 65 years, winners of that contest, including six Nobel laureates, have gone into science or medicine at a 70% rate.

But they're the exception. Hard-science degrees (biology, physics, the tough stuff) have been stuck at 12% of college degrees over the last 20 years, with engineering currently representing 5% of degrees, down from 11%. From 1980 to 2000, advanced degrees in science and engineering grew at 1.5% annually, not coming close to filling the 4.2% growth in science jobs during the same period. As we fall behind in science, other countries are happy to send their scientists to the U.S. for training.

Our kids are not taking those places in part because they're increasingly not being pushed to do proto-research in school. Educators finger the No Child Left Behind law and the move toward state science exams, which reward memorization, says Gerald Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. "All the standardized testing leads schools away from encouraging the time and energy it takes to do independent research," says Michelle Glidden, director of science education at Science Service, which runs the three big international fairs. She surveys fairs with participation levels too low for their winners to qualify for ISEF and has found that teachers are too worn out by the demands of testing, and the challenges of understanding high-level student projects, to herd students into the fairs.

The enticements are there. ISEF hands out $4 million in cash and scholarships. The top finisher in Intel's (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) Science Talent Search, the vaunted research-paper competition formerly sponsored by Westinghouse, gets a $100,000 scholarship; of 1,700 entrants, the 300 semifinalists win $1,000 apiece. At regional and state science fairs, winners get money from universities, companies and the military, as well as medals, trophies and ribbons for Mom's mantelpiece. While winners have traditionally come from New York and its Northeast neighbors, other states are gaining. Florida, Texas and Missouri all sent strong contingents to the big fairs in recent years, as did California and Oregon, where Intel's presence is helping spread the word since the tech giant began sponsoring ISEF and the Talent Search a few years ago.

Jose Manuel Otero realized that science was his goal in 1996, when he went to ISEF with a project on filtering diesel from water using charcoal that he made from leaves and grass. Otero, the son of Spanish immigrants who never finished high school, took first place in the Connecticut state fair and went on to the internationals, winning third place in his division. "I didn't know I wanted to be a scientist until I got to ISEF," he says.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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12 July, 2007

Widespread concern about bias problems in American colleges

As legislation is introduced in more than a dozen states across the country to counter political pressure and proselytizing on students in college classrooms, a majority of Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a serious problem, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows. Nearly six in 10 - 58 percent - said they see it as a serious problem, with 39 percent saying it was a "very serious" problem. The online survey of 9,464 adult respondents nationwide was conducted July 5-9, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1 percentage point.

Predictably, whether political bias is a problem depends greatly on the philosophy of the respondents. While 91 percent of very conservative adults said the bias is a "serious problem," just 3 percent of liberals agreed. Conservatives have long held that college campuses are a haven for liberal professors. The activist group Students for Academic Freedom, founded by David Horowitz, has promoted state legislation invoking a "Students Bill of Rights" on campuses to protect conservative students from academic reprisals by professors who hold contradictory beliefs.

Men were much more likely than women to see the bias of professors as a problem - 64 percent of men agreed, while 53 percent of women said the same. Whites were twice as likely to call it a "serious problem" as African-Americans, the survey showed. The survey also showed that an overwhelming majority also believe that job security for college professors leaves them less motivated to do a good job than those professors who do not enjoy a tenured status - 65 percent said they believe non-tenured professors are more motivated to do a good job in the classroom.

Asked whether they think the quality of a college education today is better or worse than it was 25 years ago, 46 percent said they think it is worse, while 29 percent said it is better. Another 16 percent said the quality now is about the same as it was a generation ago.

Source




Phonics wiped out illiteracy where it was tried in Scotland

But with plenty of window-dressing to prevent critics from saying it was phonics only



It is mid-morning at St Mary's primary school in Alexandria, a bleak, post-industrial town north-west of Glasgow that often features on Scotland's list of areas of multiple deprivation. In Margaret Mooney's primary 1 class, 20 five-year-olds have gathered on the floor at the teacher's feet, pretending to be trains. "Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch," they intone, small arms circling wildly like the wheels of a locomotive. Mooney turns the page of a giant, colourful book. "This is the one where you are allowed to be cheeky to the teacher," she says, pointing to the letters "th". "What sound do they make?" The children stick out their tongues and blow through their teeth, before dissolving into giggles. "Cheeky, cheeky children," says Mooney. "Let me see how cheeky you can be."

They are too young to know it, but the children in Mooney's class are part of a remarkable experiment, one that has proved so successful that it is being held up as a model for education authorities across the world and has caught the eye of Britain's new prime minister. Gordon Brown has been taking a keen interest in events in West Dunbartonshire, and has held talks with Dr Tommy MacKay, the educational psychologist who pioneered the scheme.

Back in 1997, MacKay persuaded West Dunbartonshire council to commit itself to eradicating pupil illiteracy in its schools within a decade. This year, it is on track to reach its target, becoming what is thought to be the first local authority in the world to do so. When the project was launched, West Dunbartonshire had one of the poorest literacy rates in the UK, with 28% of children leaving primary school at 12 functionally illiterate - that is, with a reading age of less than nine years and six months. Last year, that figure had dropped to 6% and, by the end of this year, it is expected to be 0%. In all, 60,000 children have been assessed, and evaluations show that children now entering primary 3 have an average reading age almost six months higher than previous groups. In 1997, 5% of primary school children had "very high" scores on word reading; today the figure is 45%.

Across the UK, it is estimated that 100,000 pupils a year leave school functionally illiterate. Synthetic phonics, where children learn to sound out the single and combined sounds of letters, has been at the core of the scheme but it has not been the only factor. A 10-strand intervention was set up, featuring a team of specially trained teachers, focused assessment, extra time for reading in the curriculum, home support for parents and carers, and the fostering of a "literacy environment" in the community. "The results we have now are phenomenal," says MacKay.

When he approached the council with his proposal, he was not sure what response he would get. "I sent a letter to the director of education. It was one of these things you expect to find they are interested in, but will put in the bin. What I was saying was: why not try doing something that has not been done anywhere before in the world? You could eradicate illiteracy."

His letter coincided with a decision by the Scottish executive to offer funding packages for early intervention in literacy and numeracy. What made West Dunbartonshire different from other authorities launching literacy projects at the time was that it wanted a cradle-to-grave system that involved the entire community. "What we were looking at doing had never been done in the world before, bringing about inter-generational change in a whole population," says MacKay. "We deliberately built in things other people weren't doing: vision, profile, commitment, ownership and dedication."

The approach was two-pronged. First, a robust early intervention programme from nursery onwards reduced the number of children experiencing reading failure. Then, those who did fall through the net were caught in the later years of primary school and given the intensive, one-on-one Toe by Toe programme. "You pick up every one of them, and you blooter them with individual help," says MacKay.

Lynn Townsend, head of service for education at West Dunbartonshire council, says the project would not have succeeded if they had not focused on the few falling through the cracks. "If we were to achieve our goals, we really needed to be doing something with them," she says. "There used to be a sense that if kids had not got reading by secondary, there was no point in teaching them. That is no longer appropriate. Nobody gets left behind. "We have seen dramatic results. Kids in primary 7 who could not read at all now can, and it opens the world to them. It means secondary school is going to be meaningful. It really does change lives."

As new research has been done, new strands have been incorporated. "We started very much with the emphasis on synthetic phonics. That's one strand now. We have a West Dunbartonshire approach now," says Townsend.

Headteacher Charles Kennedy noticed the difference the scheme was making when he took up his post at St Mary's school after working in another area. "I was struck by the level the children were at, the pace and the impact," he says. "And also the way they were enjoying it. It's vibrant and it's alive."

A key component has been parental involvement. "Research shows that middle-class kids have had thousands of hours of reading practice before they get to school," says Townsend. "A lot of our homes just can't or don't do that." A home support system was set up and regular parents' evenings held to introduce them to phonics. Nursery children are given a startpack with reading materials to practise at home.

Officials say that often during the parents' meetings, one or two will approach staff and admit that they can't read. They are advised about where they can find help and support. MacKay hopes the project's success will have far-reaching implications for West Dunbartonshire as a community. "We believe that, ultimately, we are looking at a stronger economy, lower crime rates and a lower prison population."

Townsend believes the scheme has worked because there was a collective determination to see it through. "We stuck to our principles. When the funding was reduced and stopped by the executive, we maintained it," she says. [Stopping funding for a successful project? Sounds right -- or predictable anyway. It's failure that bureaucracies throw money at]

Interest has been immense. MacKay has spoken about the project in countries as far away as South Africa, and a delegation from Dublin was in West Dunbartonshire at Easter. The Centre for Public Policy Research held it up as a model for other education authorities last year. The new prime minister has been aware of it for some time.

A spokeswoman for Brown confirmed that he had met MacKay and was "very interested" in the project. It is understood that they had several discussions while Brown was chancellor and that he was keen to know how the scheme might be rolled out across the UK. "Many of our primary schools are in some of the most deprived areas of Scotland, yet they perform above the national average," Townsend points out. "That is staggering. If you say from the outset, we are going to eradicate illiteracy in 10 years, which politician does not want to be part of that soundbite?"

Source




Australian students taught to sing an apology for a politically correct myth

Judicial enquiries have found that the "stolen generation" never happened but Leftists prefer a good myth to the truth any day. It's just another part of the anti-white Leftist lies about Australian history

CHILDREN as young as eight are being taught to sing sorry to Aborigines, sparking concerns that NSW students are being "politically indoctrinated". A widely distributed song book, which has been used in NSW for 40 years, has included Sorry Song about the Stolen Generation in its recent editions. Kiama Public School students were taught the song for Naidoc Week. When one eight-year-old boy arrived home confused about the issue, his father labelled the song's inclusion a "political stunt".

Hamish East, of Kiama, said he had to explain the meaning of the song to his son Brian when he believed he had done something wrong. "(He) arrived home from school and asked 'How come I have to say sorry for stealing the Aborigines' children?'," he said. "I have raised each of my children to apologise for their actions ... central to this is an understanding of the nexus between poor behaviour and an apology."

The song by West Australian composer Kerry Fletcher was written in 1998 for Sorry Day festivities and included in the ABC Song Book, distributed to NSW primary schools by Scholastic. It is used by teachers in addition to the official curriculum. The song features the words: "If we can say sorry to the people from this land, sing, sing loud, break through the silence, sing sorry across this land. We cry, we cry, their children were stolen, now no one knows why."

Mr East, a Kiama councillor, said he was not against reconciliation but "these are all emotive, controversial political issues and matters in which personal views should not be forced down the throats of our children". School principal Jenny Maude told Mr East children didn't listen to the words and since Mr East made a complaint they have stopped singing the song.

Australian Council of State School Organisations said teachers needed to be sensitive when it came to teaching values. "When schools get into values they need to talk through with the community what they are proposing to do," projects manager Rupert Macgregor said.

Song author Ms Fletcher, 38, who is not Aboriginal, said she was disappointed people had misread the song. "I believe children under eight could understand how other children their age would feel to be separated from their parents," she said. "I think if more people had first-hand experience of personal friends who were taken away as children we might see this for the personal tragedy that it is."

Teachers Federation deputy president Angelo Gavrielatos defended the song, saying exploitation of Aboriginal culture needed to be recognised. "We have to take some responsibility for our past," he said. [OUR past?? I am responsible for what I do, not what others do]

Opposition education spokesman Andrew Stoner said: "Any discussion of Australia's history must include the indigenous perspective but controversial political issues should be left to parents." Education Minister John Della Bosca defended the school's actions and said although he did not subscribe to the "black armband version" of history he thought it was important to be frank about Australia's history.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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11 July, 2007

Arizona: Teachers' political bias issue heats up

Bill would stop educators from taking sides in class

Troy Hyde's ears perked up in a college class when his professor called President Bush an idiot, and he said he was stunned when another professor said suicide bombers are reasonable people. "I thought, 'Holy cow. I can't believe this guy just said that,' " Hyde recalled.

To muzzle instructors who champion political views in classrooms, a Republican state legislator has proposed a law that would punish public school teachers and professors for not being impartial in the classroom. If the idea were to become law, teachers said they might shy away from teaching controversial issues out of fear of being misunderstood and punished.

Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor, R-Gilbert, wrote the bill that has drawn a stream of criticism and support since it received preliminary approval in a Senate committee this month. "In theory, it wouldn't affect me at all," said Joe Thomas, a high school government teacher. "But . . . what could a student take from my room and take what I say out of context? He-said/she-said becomes a teacher on a soapbox."

Verschoor said his bill would protect students who are afraid to clash with instructors. "This is absolutely about academic freedom. It allows students to practice their First Amendment right without fear of a poor grade because of it or any retaliation because they disagree with the instructor," Verschoor said during a recent Senate committee hearing.

Hyde, a junior business administration major at Arizona State University, said that if students want good grades, they have to absorb what their professors teach, which can include professors' opinions. Hyde said Verschoor's bill is important. "You might have your own opinions, but don't use a public university where people and taxpayers are paying you to teach," said Hyde, chairman of the Arizona College Republicans. "Don't use (the classroom) as your soapbox and think you're put there to teach me why you think the president is an idiot. That's not your job."

Teachers said that if the bill became law, they would think twice about controversial lessons because they would not want to risk being misunderstood. For example:

Thomas, who teaches history and government at Skyline High School in Mesa, wondered how the proposed law would affect his lesson about President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Thomas said some students could argue he does not talk enough about business-oriented aspects of the plan. Others might think he should talk more about the job-oriented aspects.

Rep. Jackie Thrasher, D-Glendale, who is a music teacher at Lookout Mountain Elementary School in Phoenix, said she might second-guess herself before playing Tchaikovsky's music in class. The composer was gay, and a student who knows that might not want to hear his music, she said.

A teacher who assigns a high school history class to write a persuasive essay about why the U.S. military should or should not be in Iraq could be seen as promoting one view or another because Verschoor's bill is so broad, said John Wright, president of the Arizona Education Association.

Verschoor said his bill would target a teacher who said, for example, that Bush is the best president ever and former President Clinton was the worst. "If a teacher in a class . . . wants to talk about the war in Iraq, they are more than welcome, but they can not advocate their opinions," Verschoor said during the hearing.

Over the past few years, activist David Horowitz, president of Students for Academic Freedom, has led a movement to stop indoctrination in classrooms. He said teachers and professors should not use their positions to impress opinions onto students.

Hyde said Arizona College Republicans support that "equal playing field" on campus. "Inside the classroom, it's a place for learning and not partisan politics," Hyde said. "That goes for either side. . . . We see the indoctrination on either side."

Verschoor told those who attended the hearing that his bill is about "allowing more freedom in the classroom and more free discussion back and forth."

Teachers said they do not see indoctrination in classrooms. "If this is going on, we would've addressed it years ago," said Thomas, who also is on the Arizona Education Association board of directors. "This is a case where you have a solution in search of a problem." All teachers come to the classroom with their own set of experiences, Thrasher said, and politicians cannot and should not take those away.

One of Thrasher's former students, Vaughn Hillyard, a 15-year-old sophomore at Thunderbird High School in Phoenix, said he and his classmates like to ask their teachers about their political beliefs. Most of his teachers will not say what they think, he added, but some do. "It's nice to know where they're coming from, so we have it in the back of our heads" when the class is discussing controversial issues, such as the Iraq war, he said. Hillyard said that he does not like the idea of Verschoor's bill but said that teachers who talk about their opinions too often are out of line. The proposed law would highlight a "new era of censorship," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. Politicians are not censoring education by pulling books off shelves, she said; instead, they are stifling classroom discussion about controversial topics. "It certainly does raise significant free-speech concerns for teachers," she said.

Verschoor said that his bill does not stifle free speech and that teachers still would be allowed to discuss their political beliefs outside the classroom.

Source




Britain: Do primary schools let boys down?

By the age of seven more than a quarter of boys need special help with their education, the latest figures show. Is there something inherently wrong with a large chunk of one of the sexes - or are primary schools simply letting boys down?

It has long been known [to everyone except the feminists -- who are influential in education] that male and female brains are different - that they mature at different rates and develop in different ways. You only need to look at the way very young boys and girls play to see that often they like different things and approach things in different ways. Experts say girls' brains are more wired up for communicating and reading emotions, while boys like moving, doing and solving practical problems.

Principal of the School of Emotional Literacy Dr Elizabeth Morris says: "Boys like doing things for a purpose and having things that are concrete and relevant to deal with. "Girls will be happier with discussion, relationship building, team activities and reading." She adds: "The teaching profession in primaries is dominated by women who, with the best will in the world, will tend to deliver a larger proportion of the curriculum in teaching styles that make most sense to them - and therefore favour the girls."

Girls tend to be auditory and visual learners whereas boys are more kinaesthetic learners. This means that while girls like to listen and watch, boys like to learn by doing and taking part in discussions in small groups. So teachers need to be aware of the ways in which their pupils find it most natural to learn, says head teacher at the Churchill School in Folkestone, Jennie Carter. "If someone's picking at the carpet when the TV's on - they are not likely to be a visual learner."

To ensure that all pupils are being given an equal chance to learn, teachers at the school ask pupils to rate how clearly they understand what has just been taught to them. If the pupils who say they have not quite grasped things are the ones she knows to be visual learners - then she might show them a picture to help them grasp what's being taught, for example. As a result of this and other measures, of the 43% of children who get extra help at the school, 93% reach the required level in national tests.

Good school behaviour in the early years is often about sitting still, not fidgeting and waiting your turn to answer the teacher's question. "Given that boys in particular need to rough and tumble play as part of their development - and that this is happening less with parents now because they are not around so much - we may be seeing boys trying unconsciously to do what is right for their bodies by being physical," says Dr Morris. "But they have it misunderstood and classified as an emotional behaviour disorder because it doesn't conform to school needs."

Some experts suggest that teachers are deliberately getting pupils labelled as having special needs with reading, for example, because it is an easy way of getting a difficult child out of the classroom for a while. Mrs Carter says if there is a lack of support for members of staff this misuse of SEN labels is likely to happen. She recalls one bright pupil with Asperger's syndrome (ASD). "Some days he would not want to be with people so we would let him lie on the floor under the white board and let him get on with his work. "He did really well and got into a grammar school but they couldn't cope when he got there." Thankfully, the grammar school sent a teacher back to the primary school to draw up a provision map to deal with the different situations he was likely to encounter....

Maybe schools' obsession with conformity is the root of the problem - perhaps our teachers are unconsciously trying to make boys behave more like girls? Dr Morris: "Boys are great - they are full of fun and life. I hate how we take that energy and try to contain it rather than finding channels and opportunities to work with them in ways that fit for them." She says that boys often end up being stereotyped which just creates a self-fulfilling cycle, but she adds that once those working with children are able to see what is going on developmentally or neurologically they see the children quite differently.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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10 July, 2007

British pupils to be taught about the Olympic games - instead of geography

The dumbing down never stops. Propaganda is more and more being substituted for knowledge. Knowledge might enable kids to think for themselves -- and the Left can't afford that! Kids must be TOLD what to think

Traditional geography teaching is to be sidelined in favour of studying global warming, Third-World trade and the 2012 Olympics. A major shake-up of the secondary school curriculum aims to make subjects "more relevant" by introducing "modern day issues". Lessons in capital cities, rivers and continental drift will make way for "themed" teaching on issues such as the causes of climate change, the impact of buying clothes on poorer nations and the effects of the South-East Asian tsunami.

Other key subjects such as history and science will also be affected by the changes, which mark the biggest upheaval in secondary education since the national curriculum was introduced in 1988. The measures, which come into force in September next year, will be unveiled by Schools Secretary Ed Balls next week. Ministers hope they will encourage more pupils to stay on at school after the age of 16. But many teachers remain unconvinced.

A convention of history, English and science teachers on Thursday issued a plea for traditional subject disciplines to be protected. The new curriculum will be followed by 11 to 14-year-olds. Other new subjects include "emerging" languages such as Mandarin ["Emerging"? It's thousands of years old!] and Urdu, as well as personal finance and practical cookery. In cookery, pupils will be taught how to analyse a diet to ensure balance and variety, how to keep food safe at home and prepare contemporary healthy recipes.

The previous Education Secretary Alan Johnson insisted certain "untouchables" would remain in the curriculum, including the two World Wars. But swathes of other material will be relegated to optional status. Mr Balls will announce that "sustainable development" [Greenie propaganda] will become a compulsory part of the geography curriculum. Pupils will learn to understand relationships between people and the environment by studying the impact of the tsunami.

They will also conduct fieldwork projects such as "the regeneration of East London as part of the 2012 Olympics". And they will explore globalisation by looking at the impact of their choices as consumers, including buying clothes and trainers. Schools minister Lord Adonis said: "We want geography to excite pupils so that they continue studying the subject when they leave school."

Source




Nursery rhymes no longer taught in many British families

There was a time when every child could tell you who cut off the tails of three blind mice, why a sneeze might signify death from the plague and which sadistic child pushed the poor pussycat down a well. But now the traditional nursery rhyme, in all its gruesome, bloody detail, is in danger of dropping out of modern culture. A survey suggests that 40 per cent of parents with young children cannot recite a single popular rhyme all the way through.

It is not that parents have stopped singing to their children entirely. Three quarters of parents surveyed agreed that singing to young children was a good way to help them to learn to read. But rather than sing nursery rhymes whose origins and meanings are lost to them, 44 per cent of parents said that they were singing pop songs and television theme tunes instead. These, they said, had much more relevance in their daily lives.

Ian Davidson, of the pollster MyVoice, which questioned 1,200 parents for the survey, said that the nursery rhyme was falling victim to market forces. "It all seems to be to do with choice and relevance. Twenty years ago there were 100 different breakfast cereals to choose from, now there are 300. The old brands such as Kellogg's Cornflakes remain, but there will also be many other options. "It's the same with nursery rhymes. They will never die out among a core of people, but they are facing more competition in popular culture and they no longer have a clear field any more," he added.

But Janine Spencer, a developmental psychologist at Brunel University, lamented the decline of the nursery rhyme, which she said was of enormous educational value. "Not only are nursery rhymes an important historical part of our culture, but by singing them to young children you can help speed up the development of their communication, memory, language and reading skills. "Singing nursery rhymes is also an entertaining and fun way to interact with your baby or toddler, and is crucial for recognising and learning phonic sounds," Dr Spencer said.

The survey, commissioned by the children's television channel Car-toonito, found the knowledge of nursery rhymes increased with age. Survey participants were given the first line of 15 common nursery rhymes and asked to complete it. Four out of ten (40 per cent) younger parents (aged 30 years and under) could not recall a single nursery rhyme in full, whereas only 27 per cent of those aged between 55 and 64 and 13 per cent of those aged 65 or more are unable to recall one in full. Overall, 27 per cent of adults were unable to complete a single rhyme. Of the rhymes people did know, the most popular were Jack and Jill (19 per cent), Humpty Dumpty (17 per cent) and Ring a Ring o'Roses (12 per cent). But 71 per cent of parents had no clear idea of their origins or possible historical meaning.

The survey follows the introduction by the Government of a new phonics teaching programme in English primary schools called Letters and Sounds, which emphasises the importance of preparing preschool children for phonics through songs and nursery rhymes.

Notes:

Jack and Jill has several possible origins. It may mark King Charles l's unsuccessful attempts to reform the taxes on liquid measures, Jack being half a pint and Jill being a quarter of a pint, or gill. Although the King's measures were blocked, he subsequently ordered the volume standard measures to be reduced, while the tax remained the same

Humpty Dumpty was originally posed as a riddle, as "humpty dumpty" was 18th-century slang for a short, clumsy person, who might well be the kind to fall off a wall Similar riddles have been recorded in other languages, such as Boule Boule in French, or Lille Trille in Swedish

Ring a Ring o'Roses was usually accompanied by a playground skipping game that ended with children falling down and is said have originated with the Great Plague in 1665. Some experts dispute this, pointing out that European and 19th-century versions suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy

Source




Britain: Those who can't, teach

Less than half of primary school teachers have two good A levels [High school qualification], while only 41 per cent of secondary teachers have a degree in the subject they teach, according to a report claiming that the profession is in crisis.

There has been a big increase in teacher numbers in recent years, after a shortage in the mid1990s. But the report from the think-tank Politeia says government policies focus too much on increasing numbers with too little regard for quality. It notes there there are two nonteaching members of staff for every three teachers. There are now 150,000 teaching assistants, while the number of unqualified teachers working in schools has increased significantly in the past decade.

Bob Moon, Professor of Education at the Open University and co-author of the report, said: "The assessment system allows even the weakest candidates through". The Training and Development Agency for Schools, the Government's teacher training agency, rejected many of the findings, insisting that standards had never been higher. [That doesn't say much]

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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9 July, 2007

Texas bills seek to decriminalize childhood

SOME good may yet come out of the case of Casey "The Kid" Harmeier, the 12-year-old desperado from Tomball who faces criminal charges for accepting a dare to remove the cover from a school fire alarm.

Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) says he may call The Kid to testify regarding legislation intended to turn "zero tolerance" into "common sense" at the state's schools. Dutton chairs the House Committee on Juvenile Justice & Family Issues, and was appalled to learn that The Kid was still facing criminal charges even after school officials learned they were mistaken in thinking he had actually pulled the fire alarm.

Neither the students, the teacher, who was nearby, nor school administrators were aware that removing the cover set off a local horn but did not activate the fire alarm and send a signal to emergency dispatch. (This seems dangerous to me since in the case of a real fire a person under pressure could set off the horn and think the fire alarm had been activated.) The principal had a district police officer, who is also a Tomball policeman, take The Kid in for booking. He was charged with a felony before his parents were notified he was in trouble. (The charge has been reduced to a misdemeanor.)

Dutton said it is hardly uncommon for students to be turned over to police, even for less serious offenses than what The Kid was thought to have committed. A common technique these days is to have school district police issue Class C misdemeanor tickets not for crimes but for violations of school rules. These tickets require trips before a municipal court judge or a justice of the peace. "They've issued tickets for chewing gum," Dutton said.

As Billy Jacobs, a former Texas Education Agency school safety official, has said: "We hold children to higher standards than we hold adults. We don't leave any room for children to make mistakes."

Dutton said he's heard from school district police who are appalled that they are being used to enforce school rules rather than providing security and enforcing the law. "One officer said he thinks this breeds disrespect for the law," Dutton said. If district officials do turn over students to police, Dutton said, "they ought to notify the parents before they do it, especially if there is no threat of life or injury. They should talk to the parent and the kid before referral."

Dutton isn't alone among Houston-area legislators working on the problem. Rep. Rob Eissler (R-The Woodlands), who chairs the House Education Committee, tried to pass legislation two years ago that would have required school officials to take into consideration such factors as the child's intention in the matter and his or her disciplinary history.

The bill was watered down after school officials promised they would cut back on "zero tolerance" idiocy. I'm sure many have, and many others didn't need to. But enough administrators are still engaging in "zero tolerance" foolishness to make further legislation necessary, and Eissler had indicated he intends to work for some.

Rep. Dora Olivo (D-Missouri City) is pushing a bill that would allow a student who discovers he inadvertently left a Boy Scout knife in his pocket, or a hunting gun in his truck, to tell a school official and turn the knife or gun over without reprisal. As it is now, students who inadvertently bring a pocket knife or prescription drugs are sometimes treated the same as would-be thugs and pushers.

The problem of criminalizing childish behavior is not a bleeding-heart liberal issue. Some of the most thoughtful suggestions have been developed by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. Testifying at a Senate committee hearing last year, TPPF's Marc Levin noted that there has been a sharp rise in the sentencing of students to district alternative centers, which may be related to the fact that TAKS scores of students at these centers don't count against their home schools. The most recent statistics indicate that 80 percent of the referrals are discretionary, suggesting that many are relatively minor infractions. Levin recommends that schools be required to involve parents in the case of noncriminal and nonviolent behavior, giving parents the opportunity to work with the school to change the child's behavior before he or she is removed for weeks or months from the regular classroom.

Noting that about 500 kindergartners and more than 2,000 first-graders are sent to district alternative centers every year, he also suggested that guidelines be developed regarding such young children. These are only a few of the proposals that will be considered in Austin over the next few months. Teachers and well-behaved students need safe and controlled classrooms for learning to take place. But allowing school officials to hide behind "zero tolerance" and to criminalize childish mistakes is intolerable.

Source




British pupils pass key English test with 30pc mark

A mark of 30 per cent was enough for 14-year-olds to pass national tests in English A mark of 30 per cent was enough for 14-year-olds to pass national tests in English this year, it has been revealed. In maths, they could achieve the required level with a score of only 39 per cent. The news prompted claims that pupils are being let down by an education system which allows them to be seen as successful despite poor performance in exams.

The pass marks in this year's tests were revealed by the National Assessment Agency. Eleven-year-olds needed 43 per cent to pass English by gaining the expected level four, 46 per cent for maths, and 51 per cent for science. These pass marks are either the same or slightly higher than last year's, suggesting the papers were judged to be marginally simpler. National curriculum levels run from one to seven in English and science and one to eight in maths. The Government expects 11-year-olds to reach level four. At 14 - Key Stage 3 - pupils are expected to reach level five at least, which this year required a minimum 30 per cent mark in English.

Parents' leaders voiced concern over the low level of the pass marks. Margaret Morrissey of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said: "We are not doing children any favours with these low pass marks. It may look good for schools to have many pupils clearing these hurdles, and maybe it makes parents feel happy for their children. "But when they go out to work, it is going to be picked up by employers. In anyone's book, if you have got 30 per cent of something, you have not succeeded."

A spokesman for the National Assessment Agency defended the marks, saying it used "a range of evidence in order to maintain standards".

Source




Shaky British universities

A swath of universities were in financial crisis even after the introduction of tuition fees, according to a secret government list made public last night. More than 40 institutions feature on the list, which classifies them as at risk of financial failure after 1998, when means-tested tuition fees were introduced. Those on the list include South Bank University in London, Liverpool John Moores University and Queen Mary, University of London.

Another three institutions were deemed to be so at risk that their names were kept off the list, which was revealed after a Freedom of Information request by The Guardian newspaper. The Higher Education Funding Council for England published the list only after pressure from the Information Commissioner, who ruled that students applying to certain institutions had a right to know their financial buoyancy.

The disclosures highlight the problems institutions face, despite the introduction of fees, after decades of under-investment and the explosion in undergraduate numbers. In the academic year 1998-99 students started paying up to 1,025 pounds a year each to attend university, putting an end to free higher education. The move started generating thousands of pounds of extra income. But many of the universities and colleges named have been struggling to recruit sufficient numbers of students and keep their spending under control. Many have been forced to combine their strengths through mergers with other universities

A spokesman for the funding council said: "We work with these institutions to ensure that they develop a robust recovery plan, and this normally results in their restoration to financial health. "The information is historical in the sense that it refers to situations in existence more than three years ago. Much has changed since then." The Guardian, however, named one of the three endangered universities whose identity was not disclosed as Thames Valley University.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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8 July, 2007

Pro-Lifers Make Impact at NEA Teacher Convention - Some Delegates 'Shocked'

Seventy-five pro-life teachers, parents/taxpayers and children/students successfully picketed the NEA convention in Philadelphia on Sunday, July 1. Aged eight to eighty, they took positions on all four corners of Arch & 11th Streets, displaying high-visibility signs and posters easily seen by thousands of NEA Delegates disembarking from shuttle buses or entering and leaving the Convention Center's doorways. Pro-lifers and delegates were interviewed by reporters and photojournalists from FOX, Philadelphia Bulletin, Washington Times, Catholic Standard & Times, etc.

Many delegates openly expressed disbelief, skepticism, and even shock, at the revelation that NEA was involved in abortion at all - much less in an advocacy role - much less pro-abortion. They were totally unaware of NEA's long-standing "Family Planning Resolution" supporting "reproductive freedom" and "all methods of family planning" - including abortion. Some refused to accept the well-documented fact that NEA is one of Planned Parenthood's primary advocates and actually co-sponsored huge pro-abortion rallies in Washington in April 2004, April 1992, and November 1989.

A few belligerent delegates verbally berated the pro-lifers, accusing them of "lying". Others thanked pro-lifers for bringing NEA's abortion activism into sharp focus. Some said they would raise the issue on the Convention Floor and attempt to have NEA totally abandon its pro-abortion agenda and activism.

Bob Pawson, National Coordinator of PLEAS and NJEA member, said, "We joined NEA for collective bargaining representation; not to be misrepresented on socio-political or moral issues like abortion, homosexuality, or who to vote for. Respect the diversity of 3.2 million members. Totally disengage NEA from the abortion issue. Become truly neutral and completely non-involved."

"The NEA leadership's pro-abortion agenda is a perverse way of supposedly protecting our jobs. Babies are our business; our only business. For NEA to condone, much less promote, killing babies in their wombs is not only a moral outrage; it's economic suicide. Abortion costs us our jobs." NEA wants us unified for contract negotiations every few years, yet simultaneously divides us with radical, far left, extremist positions on issues like abortion. News flash: We don't feel unified. We feel betrayed. We resent having our dues monies used to subvert our personal moral values, and then being offered "thirty pieces of silver." "I urge pro-life NEA members across America to run for union offices at all levels, including Convention Delegate. Take back our union. Join the NEA Reform Revolution."

Source




Raise British educational standards through increase in grammar schools, thinktank urges

More grammar schools [i.e. academically-oriented schools that select on the basis of scholastic ability] and low-cost private schools are needed to raise the "dire" standards of the education system, a report by one of the most respected economic think-tanks says today. Millions of people cannot read, write or count and millions more can barely do so because of the "socialist" state-directed system and comprehensive education, the Economic Research Council says.

Better off parents have escaped the worst aspects of comprehensive education by paying private fees, buying tuition or moving home to be close to the best schools, says the report. It is families on the lowest incomes that have suffered from the progressive theories and dumbing down of standards.

The Economic Research Council, Britain's oldest economic think-tank, says it is "rotten schooling" and not grammar schools that has harmed social mobility. Prof Dennis O'Keeffe, the report's author, says leading Tories who claim grammar schools no longer offer a ladder of opportunity for poor, bright children fail to understand the importance of selection. "Unlike David Cameron's parents who sent him to Eton, certain members of the modern Conservative Party appear not to understand the dramatically effective way competitive education encourages, identifies and rewards talent and consequently increases social mobility," he says.

"Comprehensive schools with soft and easy access for all have not served the community well. They have served only to eradicate upward mobility, and done so, perversely, in the name of eradicating privilege," adds Prof O'Keeffe, the professor of social science at Buckingham University.

Mr Cameron has pledged to preserve the existing 164 grammars but backed David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, when he blamed the schools for entrenching social advantage. In a speech last month that led to a rebellion in the Tory ranks, Mr Willetts said that changes in society since the 1950s meant that the middle classes now monopolised grammar school places.

Prof O'Keeffe wants the law to be changed so that education authorities can choose to re-introduce the 11-plus or provide more academically selective schools. "Today's comprehensive schools claim to eradicate privilege, but in reality they have only eradicated upward mobility," he says. An education elite in the Civil Service, universities and teacher training colleges had pushed ideas of "children thinking for themselves and owning the curriculum" as part of "socialist control" of the state system.

To help break down the monopoly system, there should be more cheap, private schools and tax relief on the fees.

Mr Willetts said last night: "One of the reasons for shockingly low social mobility is that it is very hard for someone from a modest background to get into our academically most successful schools. That is why we are proposing real reforms so that there are more good schools with more streaming and setting and tough discipline."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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7 July, 2007

EDUCATIONAL RACISTS STILL WRIGGLING

A Leftist critique of the recent SCOTUS decision below. They may well be right in saying that the decision leaves it open for education authorities to use proxies for race rather than race itself in manipulating the composition of their student bodies but they fail to acknowledge that many of the possible proxies would not only fall foul of the 14th Amendment too but also have hilarious results. The best proxies for negritude are income and IQ and a school that kept out most students from high income and high IQ families would be shooting itself in the foot anyway. They might be thanked by the families concerned, though! And making a good school take in a quota of students from poor backgrounds would be more likely to draw in grateful poor whites than blacks. Far-Left school administrations will probably just lie about what they are doing but the threat of exposure should keep most administrations pretty close to the strait and narrow

But despite appearances, the school integration decisions represent something of an exception to that trend. In those cases, the Court invalidated the Seattle and Louisville plans, which used race as one factor in promoting inclusive and diverse schools. The outcome of these cases was disappointing, to be sure. But much of the news reporting on the cases has gotten it wrong, describing the outcome as a 5-to-4 decision by Chief Justice John Roberts against voluntary school integration. In fact, the outcome of these cases was a 4-to-1-to-4 decision in which Justice Anthony Kennedy (the "1") controlled the outcome and wrote a careful opinion with both positive and negative implications for the future of educational opportunity and our Constitution.

Justice Kennedy voted with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas to strike down the specific policies used by the Louisville and Seattle school districts. But he agreed with Justices Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer that educational diversity and combating segregation are compelling governmental interests that governments may pursue through careful efforts that consider race. Unlike the Roberts group, Justice Kennedy made clear that his disagreement was with the specifics of the plans at issue, and not with their motives or the limited consideration of race to accomplish them. Kennedy concluded, for example, that

[i]f school authorities are concerned that the student-body compositions of certain schools interfere with the objective of offering an equal educational opportunity to all of their students, they are free to devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way and without treating each student in different fashion solely on the basis of a systematic, individual typing by race.

More clearly than in any of his past decisions, Justice Kennedy (and therefore a majority of the Court) firmly rejected Chief Justice Roberts' position (typically articulated in past cases by Justices Scalia and Thomas) that considering race in a careful way to promote inclusion inflicts the same constitutional harm as the hateful segregation laws that Brown v. Board of Education legally overturned. While Chief Justice Roberts' opinion quips that "the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Justice Kennedy's careful opinion explains that

[t]he enduring hope is that race should not matter; the reality is that it too often does," and notes that "as an aspiration, Justice Harlan's axiom [that our Constitution is "colorblind"] must command our assent. In the real world, it is regrettable to say, it cannot be a universal constitutional principle.

What Justice Kennedy says is unconstitutional is considering the race of individual students in determining their school assignment. That element, and the ambiguous nature of the Seattle and Louisville plans, Kennedy said, made those programs insufficiently narrow in their tailoring to meet constitutional muster.

Justice Kennedy's ruling misapprehends how difficult it is to overcome residential segregation, disparate school resources, and other barriers to inclusion without modest mechanisms like the "tie breakers" used in these cases. In other words, he is wrong to conclude that the Louisville and Seattle plans were not "narrowly tailored" to achieve the compelling goal of a diverse and equal education. But while the Court's ruling will make it harder to bring our kids together across lines of difference, it's important to acknowledge the victory for the principles of integration, inclusion and diversity that Justice Kennedy's opinion represents. Justice Kennedy's opinion also makes clear that numerous options for promoting inclusion remain, many of which include explicit consideration of race. His opinion says:

School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race.

School districts and their allies are already hard at work crafting innovative approaches within the Court's parameters that work on the ground. Congress, too, has an important role to play in promoting inclusion and combating segregation in the wake of last week's decision. For example, Congress should allocate significant resources for communities that want to pursue diversity efforts in line with the Court's ruling. Federal support for school construction and expansion should be allocated, in part, based on whether school locations and attendance zones will foster or stymie integration.

And the U.S. Senate must give far greater scrutiny of judicial nominees than it has done to date. It's deeply disturbing that four members of the Court would have outlawed almost all effective efforts to promote inclusion in our nation's schools. And their view that the modest voluntary integration efforts at issue in these cases are constitutionally tantamount to Jim Crow-era segregation is nothing short of outrageous.

While a majority of the Court correctly rejected that extreme position, the Chief Justice's opinion-joined by Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas-fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of our Constitution and highlights the importance of exacting questioning of the President's judicial nominations by the U.S. Senate.

Source




Official graduation rate to get a bit more honest

The official 2006 graduation rate for Montgomery County public schools is 92 percent. But that number and the formula by which it was calculated are falling out of use in public education. For years, public educators in Maryland, Virginia and the District have measured graduation rates based on the number of students known to have dropped out, and many dropouts are never counted. Education leaders long defended the method, but increasingly they are agreeing with researchers that it yields inflated graduation rates. Now, educators are taking a closer look at attrition, the winnowing-down of a high school population over time, as the basis for a new and more accurate -- and less flattering -- way of calculating the graduation rate.

All 50 governors have agreed to a new method for calculating the graduation rate. Their proposal, which will be adopted in Virginia by 2008, in the District by 2010 and in Maryland by 2011, is fairly simple: Divide the number of freshman in one year by the number of graduates four years later, adjusting for students who transfer in or out or repeat grades. Applying the new math depends on an accurate count of transfers and students who repeat grades. State education officials say they are working on that and intend to go even further by applying a unique identifier to each student.

To illustrate the extent of student attrition at different county high schools, The Washington Post analyzed attrition data for the class of 2006 using a method similar to the formula embraced by the governors. The analysis of head counts from 23 schools, provided by the state education department, found that the class shrank from 11,589 students to 9,743 between freshman year and graduation day. That suggests a graduation rate of about 84 percent, eight points lower than the 92 percent reported by the Maryland State Department of Education.

The Post estimated graduation rates by comparing the number of freshmen enrolled in fall 2002 with the number of diplomas awarded in spring 2006, the latest count available. The result is only an estimate -- it doesn't account for the comings and goings of students, those who repeat grades or the growth and decline in school populations over time. But it may give a more accurate picture of student attrition than the state can provide at present. Parents seeking out such data from the state education department at http://www.mdreportcard.org will find the old rates, based on dropouts.

In contrast, the graduation formula adopted by the National Governors Association should yield a more accurate count. The Post's findings are similar to those of a report released last month by Editorial Projects in Education, publisher of Education Week. That study, embraced by the Bush administration, estimated attrition rates for school districts nationwide and painted a bleak picture: Just over two-thirds of students graduate.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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6 July, 2007

Do Away With Public Schools

Here's a good question for you: Why have public schools at all? OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.

The problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run nearly all of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run the vast majority of the schools - particularly when it gets terrible results?

Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil ($12,979) but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar go to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.

In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's teenage kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days ... for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.

A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.

Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.

As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? The results of the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams showed that two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.

Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance - just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance - and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.

There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating. Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?

Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services - that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" - but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?

What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.

Source




No easy higher educational choices in Britain

I suspect that the circumstances described below may generalize well beyond Britain. I must say that I always dreaded the thought that my son might want to follow me into the social sciences -- so I was quite delighted when he decided to become a mathematician

The news that one in four lawyers wants to leave the profession because of the stress and long hours reminded me of the (rather grand) party I attended recently where the partner of a law firm confided earnestly that his biggest fear was that his children would decide to follow him into his career. The very important media person I was with said he was rather worried because his son was toying with the idea of going into journalism. The MP who had joined our conversation said that he certainly intended to discourage his own children from entering politics. And my husband, a doctor, said he was grateful every day for our daughter's stated intention never to go into medicine. So there we had it. Four successful professionals, hard-working, well-educated, all of whom thought so little of their own careers that they were determined their own children should not go into them.

We pointed out to the lawyer, not without spite, that he lived in a vast house and enjoyed fabulously expensive holidays. Ah yes, he said glumly, but the hours are relentless, the people dismal and the work very dull. Besides, he added, money isn’t everything. His gloom is echoed by the survey this week of 2,500 lawyers, who say that despite record levels of pay (coincidentally, another survey this week revealed that top lawyers in big City law firms now charge £1,000 an hour), there is widespread unhappiness at their poor work-life balance.

There is no doubt that journalism has its drawbacks, and so, obviously, has politics. Both professions madly envy the lawyers their oodles of dosh, and while we would never go so far as to agree that money isn’t everything (it tends to be people who already have plenty of money who agree with that proposition; you won’t hear it from someone whose stomach is acid with the fear of not paying the mortgage or the electricity bill), we can comfort ourselves that at least our careers have their moments of fun and occasional glamour.

The professionals with real grounds for grievance are doctors. The current jobs fiasco, presided over by the newly resigned Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, means that with less than a month to go before new training posts start on August 1, 11,000 junior doctors don’t know whether they have a job. The term junior doctor refers to anyone not yet a consultant. Of those who do have posts, hundreds will have to relocate to take them, moving homes, uprooting children from schools and forcing spouses to change jobs – all for a position guaranteed at most for one year and often only six months before the merry-go-round begins again.

These are people who were the brightest and hardest working at school; you don’t get to study medicine with much less than three A* these days. They then endured six years of medical school before taking their first bottom-rung jobs, working relentless hours with little sleep. They are now embarking on their chosen speciality, for which they will have to pass two or three stages of gruelling and demanding exams, and for which they must study while also working long and antisocial hours.

Those who survive will then be told by the chattering classes and the media that they should be grateful to have a “job for life” (until they make one mistake and kill someone, that is) and that they earn ludicrously “good” money (although not by lawyers’ standards, obviously). In most other countries in the world, a child’s ambition to become a doctor is greeted with pleasure and, frequently, proud rejoicing. The fact that the same cannot be said of Britain owes much to our increasingly cynical attitude.

How many of us can imagine a normal working day that might include, as my husband’s did not long ago, treating two horrifically burnt children who die despite your best, most sustained, efforts? Which ends with your having to tell their mother, who is incoherent with grief, that her children are dead? Where the purpose of showering, when you eventually get home, is to rid yourself of the lingering smell of burnt flesh? I happen to think that’s worth the £70,000 a year a new consultant earns.

But back to our unhappy lawyers. Of the one in four who wished they had other jobs, the majority wanted to be journalists or writers (only 2 per cent fancied working for the NHS). The most popular reason for not switching careers? “The possible drop in salary.” Not daft, these lawyers, are they? Meanwhile, journalism continues, against all the doomsayers’ odds, to be one of the most popular career choices for teenagers, while in politics Gordon Brown and David Cameron have just assembled teams of unprecedented youth.

And my 11-year-old daughter has been giving the matter of her future career some thought. She arrived home yesterday to tell us: “I still want to be a guitarist in a rock band, but only while I’m at secondary school. After that, I’ve decided to become a doctor.” I assumed that she’d come up with this plan solely to annoy her father (she succeeded, brilliantly), but it turned out she’d been inspired by watching Scrubs, the US TV medical sitcom.

Which all goes to prove the point: the more you obsess about your children, the more they will confound you. Which is just as it should be. Those of us lucky enough to have careers and families should be doubly grateful: first, that we have them at all; and secondly, that the next generation take such little notice of us

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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5 July, 2007

Competition or Monopoly?

Are consumers better off with a competitive or monopolistic provision of goods and services? Let's apply that question to a few areas of our lives. Prior to deregulation, when there was a monopoly and restricted entry in the provision of telephone services, were consumers better off or worse off than they are with today's ruthless competition to get our business? Anyone over 40 will recognize the differences. Competition has provided consumers with a vast array of choices, lower and lower prices and more courteous customer care than when government had its heavy hand on the provision of telephone services.

What about supermarkets? Would consumers be better off or worse off if one or two supermarkets were granted an exclusive monopoly in the provision of grocery services? The average well-stocked supermarket carries over 50,000 different items, has sales, prizes and pursues many strategies to win customers and retain their loyalty. Would they have the same incentives if they were granted a monopoly?

The government gives poor people food stamps. Would poor people be better off or worse off if, instead of being able to use their food stamps at any supermarket, they were forced to use them at a government store?

There's abundant evidence that suggests consumers are better off when providers of goods and services are driven by the profit motive where survival requires a constant effort to get and keep customers. Under what conditions can businesses survive, providing shoddy services, fewer choices, at higher and higher costs, without pleasing customers? If you said, "Where there's restricted competition and a government-sanctioned monopoly," go to the head of the class. There's no better example of this than in the case of government education.

ABC News anchor John Stossel produced a documentary aptly titled "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids" that gives a visual depiction of what's often no less than educational fraud. During the documentary, an international test is given to average high school students in Belgium and above-average New Jersey high school students. Belgian kids cleaned the New Jersey students' clocks and called them "stupid." It's not just in Belgium where high school students run circles around their American counterparts; it's the same for students in Poland, Czech Republic, South Korea and 17 other countries.

The documentary leaves no question about the poor education received by white students, but that received by many black students is truly disgusting and darn near criminal. Stossel interviewed an 18-year-old black student who struggled to read a first-grade book. ABC's "20/20" sent him to Sylvan Learning Center. Within 72 hours, his reading level was two grades higher.

"Stupid in America" included one story where a teacher sent sexually oriented e-mails to "Cutie 101," a 16-year-old student. Only after six years of litigation was the New York City Department of Education able to fire the teacher, during which time the teacher collected more than $300,000 in salary.

The solution to America's education problems is not more money, despite the claims of the education establishment. Instead, it's the introduction of competition that could be achieved through school choice. Most people agree there should be public financing of education, but there is absolutely no case to be made for public production of education. We agree there should be public financing of F-22 fighters, but that doesn't mean a case can be made for setting up a government F-22 factory.

A school choice system, in the form of school vouchers or tuition tax credits, would go a long way toward providing the competition necessary to introduce accountability and quality into American education. What's wrong with parents having the right, along with the means, to enroll their children in schools of their choice?

Source




Religious Education by Parents is "Child Abuse": Center for Inquiry Proposal

Religious education is a form of child abuse and violates the rights of children, contends a thesis to be considered by secular humanists at the Center for Inquiry's congress in Beijing this October. The Center for Inquiry, an organisation recently awarded special consultative status as an NGO at the United Nations (UN) will consider the proposals of Innaiah Narisetti, the chairman of the Center for Inquiry's India chapter, that portend the next stage in the assault on the rights of parents to educate their children.

Nasiretti called the influence of religion a "severe shortcoming in the global campaign to protect children" and a contributor to child abuse saying, "In one form or another, all religions violate the rights of children." "Such abuse begins with the involuntary involvement of children in religious practices from the time they are born," says Narisetti. "All religions, through ritual, preaching, and religious texts, seek to bring children into day-to-day religious practice." "This gives holy books and scriptures, as well as those who teach them, an early grip on the developing minds of young people, leaving an indelible impression on them," said Narisetti, calling Sunday schools, madrassas, or Jewish or Hindu temples, centers of indoctrination for children.

Nasiretti's proposal would reject the long-recognized inherent rights of parents to educate and provide for their children's religious instruction in favor of regulating children's exposure to religious influence by world governments abiding by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. "The time has come to debate the participation of children in religious institutions," continues Narisetti. "While some might see it as a matter better left to parents, the negative influence of religion and its subsequent contribution to child abuse from religious beliefs and practices requires us to ask whether organized religion is an institution that needs limits set on how early it should have access to children."

The UN forum proposed by Narisetti would debate the "pros and cons" of religion on children and determine whether religion contributes to global child abuse. "The UN must then take a clear stand on the issue of the forced involvement of children in religious practices; it must speak up for the rights of children and not the automatic right of parents and societies to pass on religious beliefs, and it must reexamine whether an organization like the Vatican should belong to the UN," stated Narisetti. "Until this happens, millions of children worldwide will continue to be abused in the name of religion, and the efforts made by the UN will continue to address the symptoms but not the disease."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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4 July, 2007

The dysfunctional University of California system

They think they are little tin gods with no accountability to the taxpayers who fund them

At last count, California had slightly more than 200,000 practicing lawyers and a slightly higher number of registered nurses. The California Postsecondary Education Commission, in a critical report on the University of California's plans to establish a new law school at its Irvine campus, found that the state has no shortage of qualified attorneys. The CPEC staff declared that "the current growth in the number of Bar-certified lawyers will keep pace with or exceed legal demand between now and 2014," and California's "knowledge needs in the domain of legal education can be met by existing public and independent law schools." Heeding that conclusion, the CPEC voted in March to oppose the UC Irvine law school.

Nursing is another story. Even though there's been a significant increase in training programs in recent years, the state has an estimated 17,000 qualified nursing applicants on schools' waiting lists. The Legislature's budget analyst, Elizabeth Hill, issued a report on the state's looming shortage of nurses in May, noting that the University of California, in a study by its San Francisco medical school, forecast a demand for registered nurses in 2014 that's 40,000 higher than the current forecast of supply, given retirement and other factors. Demand will continue to outpace supply, at least from in-state sources, as baby-boom generation nurses retire and they and other members of that immense cohort require more nursing care.

Hill recommended several steps, including supplemental funding to expand nursing education programs and removal of artificial barriers to expansion. The issuance of her report was virtually simultaneous with another event -- a vote by UC regents to authorize UC Irvine to hire a founding dean for its proposed law school at an annual salary of $233,200 to $364,300. It was the regents' figurative thumb of the nose to CPEC and its position.

Why is UC stubbornly plowing ahead with the new law school at Irvine? UC Provost Rory Hume provided one rather arrogant answer. "CPEC's view is there are enough lawyers in California," Hume told the regents. "Our view is there are not enough good lawyers in California."

So here's the situation in a nutshell, as if the events cited above were not self-evident: California has more than enough lawyers now and plenty of public and private law schools to supply whatever we may need in the way of legal beagles in the future, but UC wants to spend many millions of dollars to build a new law school at Irvine. Meanwhile, we have a large and growing shortage of nurses and desperately need more investment in nursing education to alleviate the shortfall. CPEC member Evonne Schultze captured the anomaly perfectly as she voted with the majority to oppose the UC Irvine law school. "If you were going to build a nursing school, I would come and help you lay the bricks, because we need nurses desperately," she said.

It's another illustration of the fundamental dysfunctionality of California's government, its chronic inability to relate to real-world issues and prioritize its limited resources. UC's regents and administrators want to establish a new law school at Irvine because it would, in their view, enhance the school's prestige and, by extension, their own, not to meet any true educational or societal need. It's the same syndrome that drives the state Senate to, as it did a few weeks ago, dump another $5.5 million in precious transportation funds down a bottomless pit called the North Coast Railroad Authority.

As those in political office waste our money on unneeded law schools and inoperable railroads, thousands of would-be nurses are being turned away and vital transportation projects are going unfunded. Go figure.

Source




Muslim prayers at school OK?

A San Diego public school has become part of a national debate over religion in schools ever since a substitute teacher publicly condemned an Arabic language program that gives Muslim students time for prayer during school hours. Carver Elementary in Oak Park added Arabic to its curriculum in September when it suddenly absorbed more than 100 students from a defunct charter school that had served mostly Somali Muslims. After subbing at Carver, the teacher claimed that religious indoctrination was taking place and said that a school aide had led Muslim students in prayer.

An investigation by the San Diego Unified School District failed to substantiate the allegations. But critics continue to assail Carver for providing a 15-minute break in the classroom each afternoon to accommodate Muslim students who wish to pray. (Those who don't pray can read or write during that non-instructional time.) Some say the arrangement at Carver constitutes special treatment for a specific religion that is not extended to other faiths. Others believe it crosses the line into endorsement of religion.

Supporters of Carver say such an accommodation is legal, if not mandatory, under the law. They note the district and others have been sued for not accommodating religious needs on the same level as non-religious needs, such as a medical appointment. Islam requires its adherents to pray at prescribed times, one of which falls during the school day.

While some parents say they care more about their children's education than a debate about religious freedom, the allegations - made at a school board meeting in April - have made Carver the subject of heated discussions on conservative talk radio. District officials have been besieged by letters and phone calls, some laced with invective. The issue has drawn the attention of national groups concerned about civil rights and religious liberty. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Anti-Defamation League, American Civil Liberties Union and the Pacific Justice Institute are some of the groups monitoring developments in California's second-largest school district.

Among the critics is Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel with the nonprofit, Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center devoted to "defending the religious freedom of Christians." He said he's "against double standards being used," such as when there is a specific period for Muslim students to pray and not a similar arrangement for Christians. Carver's supporters noted that Christianity and other religions, unlike Islam, do not require their followers to pray at specific times that fall within school hours, when children by law must be in school.

Amid the controversy, the district is studying alternatives to the break to accommodate student prayer. Capitalizing on what it considers a precedent-setting opportunity created by the Carver situation, the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute has offered to help craft a districtwide "Daily Prayer Time Policy." In a letter, the religious-rights organization urged the district to broaden its accommodations to Christians and Jews by setting aside separate classrooms for daily prayer and to permit rabbis, priests and other religious figures to lead children in worship on campuses.

A lawyer representing the district said those ideas would violate the Constitution's prohibition against government establishment of religion.

The uproar over Carver comes as schools across the country grapple with how to accommodate growing Muslim populations. In recent weeks, the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus has been divided over using student fees to install foot-washing stations on campus to make it easier for Muslim students to cleanse themselves before prayer. "These things are surfacing more and more in many places where large communities of Muslims are coming in and trying to say this is our right," said Antoine Mefleh, a non-Muslim who is an Arabic language instructor with the Minneapolis public schools. His school allows Muslim students to organize an hour of prayer on Fridays - Muslims typically have Friday congregational prayers - and make up class work they miss as a result. During the rest of the week, students pray during lunch or recess.

The San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations supports the Carver program. "Our country is transforming demographically, religiously," said Edgar Hopida, the chapter's public relations director. "Our country has to now accommodate things that are not traditionally accounted for before."

Carol Clipper, who is the guardian of two grandchildren enrolled in the school's Arabic program, said she believes students should be "given the freedom" to pray. Clipper is Christian, and her grandchildren are being raised in both Islam and Christianity. "I take them to the mosque and they go to church with me," she said. Another parent, Tony Peregrino, whose son is not in the Arabic program, said he's OK with the Muslim students praying. What he cares about, he said, is that teachers are doing their job, and his son's education is not affected.

Courts have ruled on a series of school prayer cases over the past half-century, but legal scholars say a lack of clarity remains. "This is an area where the law is notoriously erratic," said Steven Smith, a constitutional law professor at the University of San Diego. Voluntary prayers by students are protected private speech, the courts have said. That means students can say grace before a meal and have Bible study clubs on campus, and several San Diego schools do. Public school employees, however, cannot lead children in prayer on campus. Students also can be excused for religious holidays, such as Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, and Good Friday during Holy Week. The federal Equal Access Act requires that extracurricular school clubs, religious and non-religious, be treated equally.

San Diego Unified was sued in 1993 when it denied a University City High School student's request to hold lunchtime Bible fellowship. The court found the district discriminated against religion, because it allowed secular clubs to meet during lunch. Brent North, a lawyer retained by the district to address concerns related to the Carver program, said the district learned from the University City High case to be "careful about restricting students' right to their own private religious expression, including when it's on campus."

The district cites Department of Education guidelines on prayer: "Where school officials have a practice of excusing students from class on the basis of parents' requests for accommodation of non-religious needs, religiously motivated requests for excusal may not be accorded less favorable treatment."

The midday prayer for Muslims here generally falls between 1 and 2 p.m., North said, and that is before the school day ends. "What is unique about this request is the specificity of the religious requirement that a prayer be offered at a certain time on the clock," he said. North went on to say, "The district's legal obligation in response to a request that a prayer must be performed at a particular time is to treat that request the same as it would treat a student's request to receive an insulin shot at a particular time."

Mefleh, the Minneapolis Arabic instructor, said he allows his Muslim students to pray at the end of class during the monthlong observance of Ramadan, Islam's holiest period. "Some accommodation has to come from both sides," he said. "I just tell them prayer is good. Class is good, too. Your time is precious. You have to come to an agreement with them without making a big fuss. If you want to pray, I understand, but I don't want to interrupt the class too much."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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3 July, 2007

NYT Attacks Anti-PC Documentary, Defends College Censorship of Conservatives

Joseph Berger's column on education doubled as a film review. "Film Portrays Stifling of Speech, but One College's Struggle Reflects a Nuanced Reality" criticized an anti-PC documentary, "Indoctrinate U," by bringing in an incident that occurred at Vassar college that was not even featured in the movie. Berger actually defended Vassar punishing a conservative campus publication by defunding it and shutting it down for a year.

"A new documentary is making the rounds that argues, with vivid examples, that the nation's colleges are squelching freedom of expression and are no longer free marketplaces of ideas. "The film carries the striking title 'Indoctrinate U,' and was made by Evan Coyne Maloney, who describes himself as a libertarian and is looking for a national distributor. "The film borrows the technique of ambush interviews from an ideological opposite, Michael Moore, and tells how at California Polytechnic State University, a student underwent a daylong disciplinary hearing for posting a flier publicizing a black speaker whose talk was titled, 'It’s O.K. to Leave the Plantation.' "

The Times certainly likes Moore's films more than they do Maloney's.

"Does the film offer a fair picture of campus life in 2007, or is it just a pastiche of notorious events? One answer might be found here at Vassar, which faced its own dispute over what some called hate speech and others 'political correctness,' and emerged with its integrity more or less intact."

Why is "political correctness" in quote marks and "hate speech" not?

"The Imperialist, a publication of the school’s Moderate, Independent and Conservative Student Alliance, published a contributor's article in 2005 that criticized social centers for minority and gay students. The article called such centers 'ghettos' and said they turned Vassar into a 'zoological preserve.' "Students complained that the language was insulting and called for banning The Imperialist. For weeks, the issue was debated by the student association, which finances the publication. Ultimately, the group withheld its money for one year and publication was suspended."

Berger ludicrously defended the college's censorship.

"What was notable was that Vassar, a college of 2,360 students founded in the 19th century on progressive ideals -- and a place where conservatives remain a distinct minority -- hashed out the matter without violence and did not trash or burn newspapers as has happened at other campuses. "The Imperialist is publishing once again. Vassar seems to have made a distinction between forbidding publication of an idea and not allowing gratuitous racial insults to be hurled while examining that idea. 'Ultimately, free speech was respected,' said Mark Goreczny, 20, a student. 'There was a dialogue, polarized as it may have been.'"

Filmmaker Maloney doesn't understand the Times' treatment of his movie.

"Most of the article was spent addressing cases that weren’t in the film, rather than addressing what was in the film. The author also claims that 'professors, administrators and students say the national picture is far more complicated than that pictured in "Indoctrinate U,"' although I don't know how they could know that, because none of those people actually saw the film.

"One of the examples cited in the article (but not the film) was the case of a student paper published by Vassar's Moderate, Independent and Conservative Student Alliance. It was an odd selection of cases if the point was to argue that there's more 'nuance' to reality than what is shown in Indoctrinate U, because a close inspection of this case shows that it actually backs up the thesis of my film.

"The paper was de-funded and shut down for a year after publishing a piece criticizing the school’s funding of special 'social centers' for minority and gay students. But because the paper was eventually allowed to start publishing again -- the following year -- the Vassar case is presented as one in which '[u]ltimately, free speech was respected.' Sorry, but shutting down a paper for a year is not a benign event, and it is certainly not one in which we can say ;free speech was respected.' If Homeland Security shut down the Times for a year after exposing ways that we track terrorist financing, I'm sure they’d understand my position on this."

Heh! Maloney continued:

"Rather than address the multiple cases in the film where people were told to see school psychologists because they had the wrong set of views, rather than address the fact that people's academic careers were put in jeopardy for things like being registered in the 'wrong' political party, this piece ignores the evidence presented in the film to set up an alternative straw man to knock down. "And when the author finally gets around to discussing cases that are actually in the film, he minimizes them by leaving out the most vital information.”

Back to Berger's criticism of "Indoctrinate U":

"A spectrum of professors, administrators and students say the national picture is far more complicated than that pictured in 'Indoctrinate U,' a point the dust-up at Vassar illustrates. Yes, periodically there are embarrassing incidents, like the disruption of speakers at Columbia last October who opposed illegal immigration. But most colleges are still places where unorthodox ideas are explored and debated."

Many conservatives would settle for a place where "orthodox ideas" are debated -- opposition to illegal immigration is quite mainstream and popular, as shown by today's defeat of Bush's immigration bill.

Source




British school admission policies severely handicap younger children

Babies born in the summer are at least 20 per cent less likely than those born in winter to go to university, research suggests. An analysis of university admission by month of birth indicates that 10,000 young people each year fail to go to university because they were born late in the school year. Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said that although it had long been known that summer babies, who were the youngest in their class, tended to perform less well at school than winter babies it had long been assumed that the summer babies “caught up” with their peers by their teens.

Figures from the Higher Education Funding Council for England suggest that this is not the case. Boys born in August are 25 per cent less likely to go to university than those born in September. Girls born in August are 20 per cent less likely to attend than those born in September. Mr Bekhradnia said: “There can be a 20 per cent age difference between a five-year-old and a six-year-old in the same class at school. The younger child may be far behind in developmental terms and may simply not know what is going on. This can have the effect of turning them off.”

When the disadvantages of birth month are combined with the performance of students by gender, the results are more startling. Girls born in September are 50 per cent more likely to attend university than boys born in August.

Mr Bekhradnia said that disadvantage caused by birth month was easily avoidable because it was the direct result of the “administrative convenience” demanded by local authorities and schools when admitting children into reception classes at age 5. The solution, he suggested, would be to make it easier for summer-born children to be held back a year if they were struggling to keep up with older children in their class — a practice used successfully in other countries.

Chris Saleh, of the Institute for Education, said that whereas summer babies of high ability tended to catch up with their peers, less able children often failed to gain parity. “Summer babies who are less able are often less mature and, as the years go by, they do less of the curriculum than other, older children in their class. That makes it harder and harder for them to catch up,” Ms Saleh said. But she rejected the suggestion of allowing children to repeat a year of school. A better solution, she suggested, may be to give schools, families and local authorities more flexibility over when to admit children.

Source




Western Australia clinging grimly to its "postmodern" school assessment system

Thus giving teachers a useless extra workload

The State School Teachers Union says teachers are struggling to meet the conflicting demands of a federally-imposed marking system which requires students to be graded from A to E. The union's President Mike Keely says teachers are being forced to combine conflicting directives from the Federal and State Governments which are simply incompatible. Under the Federal system teachers are forced to award students traditional A to E grades, while the State Government requires levels-based assessment through grading charts.

Mr Keely says in many cases politicians are enforcing systems without any idea of their implications. "We are now coping with the Federal Minister's A-B-C and D system and E system, even for students in year one which is absurd, and we are also coping with a levels system which for many teachers in the state is still problematic," he said.

He says the two systems are simply incompatible and the union is doing all it can to change them, but teachers are working hard to overcome the challenges within the marking system. "I have a great deal of trust in teachers. Teachers have always been able to say to students look you will do well if you pick up this course, this course and this course, in year 11 and on to year 12, we are very good at that, we have been doing it for a long time, we will tell students and parents if necessary that grade doesn't give a good indication."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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2 July, 2007

American kids being robbed of their history

Tens of millions of Americans are about to celebrate our nation’s Founding. The worrisome question is, will future generations take to this celebration the way we have for the past 231 years if they do not know the first, second, or third thing about their country?

Two years ago, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough told the U.S. Senate that American History was our nation’s worst subject in school. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (a.k.a., “our Nation’s Report Card”), released last month, bears that out again. Our children do worse in American history than they do in reading or math. McCullough testified we were facing the prospect of national amnesia, saying, “Amnesia of society is just as detrimental as amnesia for the individual. We are running a terrible risk. Our very freedom depends on education, and we are failing our children in not providing that education.” McCullough is right, and it is a double tragedy: a) our children no longer know their country’s history and b) the story they do not know is the greatest political story ever told.

It is not our children’s fault. Our country’s adults are expected to instill a love of country in its children, but the greatness and purpose of that country are mocked by the chattering classes: Newspaper columns and television reports drip with a constant cynicism about America while doubts about her motives on the world stage are the coin of the realm. Too many commentators are too ready to believe the worst about our leaders and our country, and our children’s history books — and even some of the teachers — close off any remaining possibility of helping children learn about their country.

Many of our history books are either too tendentious — disseminating a one-sided, politically correct view of the history of the greatest nation that ever existed; or, worse, they are boring — providing a watered down, anemic version of a people who have fought wars at home and abroad for the purposes of liberty and equality, conquered deadly diseases, and placed men on the moon.

Today, we have textbooks that give several chapters to Bill Clinton’s “reinventing government” theme but dismiss Dwight Eisenhower’s support of the Interstate Highway Act in 1956 with a single sentence. Young Americans are likely to learn more about Eisenhower’s impact on the country by actually driving with their parents on an Interstate and seeing the signs by the roadside than by reading biased textbooks.

The National History Standards team completely missed the moon. They called for standards which emphasized Soviet gains in space in the 1960s and the American Challenger disaster in 1986, but they completely omitted any reference to the U.S. landing on the moon.

Historians of greater standing, like the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., pointed to the moon landing as the greatest event of the 20th century. It happens also to have been JFK’s greatest success. Schlesinger is right and the standards are wrong. Yet none of the drama of the race to the moon is captured in textbooks today. Students are more likely to know about the failed Apollo XIII mission from the truly excellent Hollywood movie than they are to know that Astronaut Jim Lovell was also on the very successful Apollo 8 mission of 1968. President Johnson, alerted that the Soviets might try a loop-around the Moon and claim to have beaten us, ordered Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders to make the hazardous journey. NASA told the astronaut wives their husbands’ chances of a safe return were only 50-50. Our astronauts circled the moon that year and read from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve! The Soviets had bragged that their earlier victories in space proved that atheist Marxism was true. Isn’t John F. Kennedy’s legacy worth a more dramatic and compelling treatment than students are given today?

At least when a textbook is one-sided, however, it could give a student something to argue about; but boredom in our curriculum promises only the death of the subject matter as well as any interest in it. What a shame that great men and women like George Washington, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Jesse Owens, Martin Luther King Jr, and so many others should be consigned to brief mentions only, and then to the sighs of uninterested study. Their stories are just not told.

The textbooks are not the only indicators of the growing national amnesia that begins in childhood. Almost every young citizen’s first introduction to George Washington is a boring, snaffle-mouthed picture on our main currency, the dollar bill. Is this the appropriate depiction of the man once known as the “the fiercest chieftain in the forest?” Who would know he was in his early forties during the Revolution he led, and not guess that he was destined for a convalescent home?

Who knows that America’s war against Islamist terror did not begin on September 11, 2001, but that Thomas Jefferson fought our first war on terror, against Muslim slave traders in North Africa who had enslaved some 1.25 million Europeans some 200 years earlier? Children are not taught this.

Not so long ago, we knew our history as the inscription atop the National Archives in Washington declaring what is contained beneath: “The Glory and Romance of Our History.” How to preserve, how to recapture and re-teach, that glory and romance when over one-third of our eighth graders and over fifty percent of our twelfth graders perform below even “a partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work” at their given grades according to the Nation’s Report Card in History?

Let us call for a renewal. Begin with the texts. Let us have a national contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Department of Education for better history textbooks, and grant the winners emoluments and recognition. Judges should be award-winning teachers, tour guides, National Park Rangers, and parents — all of whom are known to love their subject. There really is no good reason for a dulled down history. As McCullough put it, to take what was once “a source of infinite pleasure” and make it “boring,” “is a crime.”

While speaking of money, let us start with a child’s first introduction to George Washington — the dollar bill. We should replace the picture of him now, which represents nothing and nobody anyone would want to study, much less respect, with an engraving based on Jean-Antoine Houdon’s magnificent 1785 sculpture of Washington. It is the most accurate depiction of Washington in life that we have, depicting a virile man at the height of his physical and mental powers. In this sculpture Washington is the man old men respected and young men wanted to ride with. He is also the gallant hero all the young ladies wanted to dance with. But he is more, much more.

As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Washington in 1775 firmly ordered his soldiers not to celebrate Pope’s Day. It had been a New England tradition for 150 years to set afire effigies of the pope. These straw men were filled with live cats whose screams were said to be those of the popes in Hell. Washington knew that the Continental Army “swarmed with Roman Catholic soldiers” and he wisely put an end to such bigotry. He not only ended Pope’s Day in the Army, he ended it in America.

King George III in 1783 said that if General Washington resigned his commission to Congress, then meeting in Annapolis, he really would be “the greatest man on earth.” Washington did that. What does it take to get that kind of praise from your enemy? Go to Annapolis today, and you are likely to be told that “someone told Washington he had to resign.” Similarly, several popular history textbooks simply edit down George Washington (and other greats like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt) to less than greatness; or, they insist on giving equal time to presidents like John Tyler and other figures like Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani.

There’s little sense that textbook writers have taken to heart the criticisms of the rejected National History Standards of 1994. These Standards totally neglected Washington’s role as the first president. For example, Professor Harry Jaffa notes that Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, written in 1790, was the first time in history that any national leader addressed the Jews as equal fellow citizens. Isn’t that remarkable fact worth favorable attention?

These stories about our greats like Washington are accessible in excellent biographies by writers such as Walter Isaacson, David McCullough, and Joseph Ellis. Why don’t high schoolers get them in their texts?

Frederick Douglass is almost forgotten in history, or, as Howard Zinn treats him in his A People’s History of the United States, he is a bitter and harsh critic of the U.S., not the hopeful, humorous, full-blooded reformer crying out for justice. Douglass — a one time slave — was once so popular (and supportive of our leaders) that he turned down a run for president of the United States on a third party ticket in order to campaign for the now historically maligned Ulysses S. Grant. History has been unkind to Grant as well, but Douglass knew him as “the great chieftain whose sword cleft the hydra-head of treasons,” who helped give the black man the vote with his “true heart and good right arm.”

Young Fred knocked down the slave-breaker Edward Covey when his owners on Maryland’s Eastern Shore wanted him beaten into submission. Frederick later wrote the fight was his “resurrection as a man.” Later, he held onto the seat in the first class section of a Massachusetts train. The white conductor enlisted several toughs to beat up Frederick and throw him out of the whites-only section. Frederick protested that he’d purchased his ticket. He wound up on the train platform, bruised and rumpled, but still clutching the seat he’d paid for. Riveting details like these show Frederick Douglass as a man with a passion for justice, a man of courage and combativeness. He was not a potted plant nor was he just another bitter critic of America and her ideals.

While speaking of Douglass, let us re-teach who this man was. He and Lincoln were the greatest political thinkers of their day. Douglass was the greatest Marylander of all time. We should put up a great statue of him in front of Maryland’s Historic Old State House. We can make room for Douglass by moving the statue of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to the front of the State Archives Building in Annapolis, where he belongs.

While speaking of moving, parents are our children’s first teachers and constitute the single-best Department of Education. While looking for summer vacations and road trips, consider taking your children to some of our great historical sites and monuments where the magic of “once-upon-a-time” can be touched and seen with children’s own two hands and own two eyes: Antietam; Gettysburg; Mt. Rushmore; the Lincoln, FDR, and Jefferson Memorials; the Alamo; Pikes Peak — these are all great vacation destinations, and children will love and know what happened there, what is taught there, the stories there.

In his farewell address to the nation, the large-minded amateur historian President Ronald Reagan warned of what we see in our nation’s report card today, saying “If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.” How much more dangerous is this now, as we fight a war for our very existence and expect young Americans to sign up and fight for a country and way of life worthy of their own lives? In the long run, why will future Americans want to stand up and fight for a country they do not even know — a country in which they are born aliens? How do we ask them to fight, and perhaps die, for a country they do not know?

Our history is full of controversy, suffering, struggling, overcoming, and winning. There is no reason to elevate its failings at the expense of its successes, nor is there reason to ignore its failings or, worse, turn it into a snooze-fest. The task is to tell the truth — but can we not do so in an interesting, lively, and glorious way — the way I know and have seen some teachers do?

The great adventurer Bernard DeVoto once wrote to Catherine Drinker Bowen about why her task as a historian was so important:

If the mad, impossible voyage of Columbus or Cartier or La Salle or Coronado or John Ledyard is not romantic, if the stars did not dance in the sky when our Constitutional Convention met, if Atlantis has any landscape stranger or the other side of the moon any lights or colors or shapes more unearthly than the customary homespun of Lincoln and the morning coat of Jackson, well, I don’t know what romance is.

Indeed. Our history is all that and more, much more. America was, is, and — we hope — will continue to be the place where, more than anyplace else, dreams actually do come true. It is, as Abraham Lincoln described it, “the last best hope of earth.” But to live that dream, to know what hope we convey, and to teach it from generation to generation, we must describe it, appreciate it, and learn to fall in love with it all over again. Thankfully, historical amnesia still has a cure. Let us begin the regimen now.

Source




British boycott call expanded

Delegates of UNISON, UK's largest trade union decided on Wednesday to declare "an economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott" on Israel. UNISON said it supported "a campaign of sustained pressure to end Israel's occupation of Palestine." However, Wednesday's decision was only a watered down version of the original proposal. Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini said the current boycott was "less harsh but still problematic."

The sanctions that were not approved include a call to boycott products of Israeli companies as well as those produced by UK firms that trade with Israel. Another measure that was dropped was a call to cease investments in Israel.

Meanwhile, UK Minister of State for Higher Education Bill Rammell said this week that the British government was opposed to any academic boycott of Israel. At a meeting with MP Louise Ellman (Labor) and members of the Jewish Labor Movement (JLM), he pledged to help develop relations with Israeli and Palestinian academics.

There was "no justification for singling out Israel" with a campaign of boycotts, Rammell said, adding that such a campaign was inherently discriminatory and threatened to undermine social cohesion. "Education is a tool for increasing awareness and drawing people together," he said. "An academic boycott would drive people further apart and would not assist the peace process." Rammell said his department was prepared to host a seminar of Israeli, Palestinian and British academics. He invited the input of the JLM.

Universities UK (UUK), the executive of all UK university institutions and some colleges of higher education, had clearly opposed a boycott, Rammell said. UUK president Drummond Bone had made that clear on a recent visit to Israel, he said. Rammell said his department would continue to build better community cohesion through antiracist and multi-faith education and by working with other government departments.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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1 July, 2007

Colleges Score Perfect Grade In Liberal Bias

I was cautiously optimistic that my quest to move from a community college to a four-year school might succeed this time. The gatekeepers at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, where thousands are interviewed but few are chosen, had seen fit to let me pass, and I was now on the campus of a large state university for round two. Everything had gone well: my 75-minute PowerPoint lecture to a class studying early Islamic history, subsequent interviews with the department chair and dean - I was on a roll.

Then I was outed. During a meeting with the search committee, a professor produced irrefutable evidence that I "appeared to be more conservative than others in my field." Worse, the evidence gave him the weapon he needed to deliver the coup de grace: "You sounded like Daniel Pipes!" Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, a think tank that seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East, and a widely published scholar on Middle East issues.

The professor had in hand a two-year-old article, titled "7 Myths about Islam," that I wrote for the History News Network, a Web site run by George Mason University at which professional historians and history buffs read, write and debate myriad topics. In the article, I argued against seven pious falsehoods about Islam that the mainstream media treat as historical facts: Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion; Islam was spread only through peaceful means; poverty produces Muslim terrorists; jihad does not mean holy war.

The committee member took particular offense at another myth I described as "a politically correct mendacity," namely Tony Blair's statement that on 9/11 Islam had been "hijacked by terrorists." He even delivered a brief lecture on the definition of "mendacity" for my edification.

I pointed out the Quranic roots of violence and jihad and insisted that jihadists have firm Islamic roots for their lionization of violence. And I stated plainly (as I had in my lecture earlier that day) that the vast majority of Muslims don't support a seventh-century interpretation of jihad.

In response to the offended academic's demand that I fess up and call Christianity violent, I answered that Christians had indeed practiced violence throughout their history, but that to do so they had to contradict their founder, whereas Muslims had only to emulate theirs. Further, I adduced my Middle East Quarterly article, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," which traces the Quranic, Hadith and historical precedents for jihadist decapitations of non-Muslims.

Challenged by me to refute my work, the objecting professor sidestepped academic evidence - further indication that he lacked the ability to disprove my research. He did, however, betray his political agenda when he said, "Most of our students are conservative Christians who already hold a view of Islam and Muslims similar to yours." Was he suggesting that the role of the history professor is to disabuse his students of their religious beliefs - to transform them into reliable fellow travelers - rather than to engage them with solid research and teaching? If so, he needn't look far for allies.

For another committee member objected that my research into Mahdist (Islamic messianic) movements presented Muslims as imperialists - never mind that the Ottomans were seen as such by co-religionists in Africa and Arabia. Her worldview, shaped by Edward Said's notorious book "Orientalism," would admit of only one kind of imperialism: Western.

No one involved in the selection process objected to the accusations that I was too conservative - too much like Daniel Pipes - to join their faculty. At this university, as at so many others, such charges are seen as rational objections to professional weaknesses, not as politicized protests against candidates who fail to pay proper obeisance to reigning pieties.

Before heading home I met again with the search chair, who tried in vain to assure me that the ideological litmus test I'd just failed in fact had never occurred. I asked her if she had ever heard a committee member accuse a candidate of being "more liberal than others in the field." Of course she answered "never." When the rejection letter arrived, it was hardly a shock.

I now have a personal story that backs up all the empirical studies documenting the bias against conservatives in the academy. If getting a Middle East or Islamic history job at a college or university means converting from following Bernard Lewis to the false messiah Edward Said, I won't be changing jobs anytime soon. I only wish search committees would stop pretending that the diversity they seek is anything other than skin-deep.

Source




Study: Black students lag in success on AP tests

Big surprise!

Participation in the Advanced Placement program has more than doubled in 10 years, but this surge in college-preparatory testing has not reached most black students, according to an analysis of 2006 exam results in 30 school systems with 5,000 or more black high school students.

The Washington Post reviewed AP data from nine of the 10 school systems in the nation with the largest black populations -- from New York City, with 115,963 black students in grades 9 through 12, to Baltimore City, with 22,225. The analysis considered 20 other school systems, all among the 80 largest for black high school populations, that are known for their rigor. The analysis considered the number of passing exams by black students and weighed it against black student enrollment .

Participation among black students has tripled in 10 years. But the numbers were so low 10 years ago that by 2006, none of the largest school systems could meet the goal of having 1,000 passing tests from black students.

The College Board, which administers the AP program, has repeatedly noted a dearth of black students in the courses. Many are reluctant to enroll in AP courses, particularly if it means being the only minority student , said Trevor Packer, AP program director

Source




Failure is an essential part of learning

The denial of failure in classrooms leads to lower expectations among teachers and reduces the intellectual challenge to students: A comment from Australia

In a submission to the Senate inquiry into academic standards of school education, the Council of Professional Teachers of Victoria argues that failure is part of the learning process, and claims it is missing in the 21st-century classroom. The council defends teachers against charges that the profession is the cause of any perceived decline in standards, saying the constant change in curriculum and pedagogies compromises the quality of teaching.

"Teach, from an early age, that some failure can be formative," the submission says. "Failure can help to develop resilience. Do not endorse inadequate effort. Encourage self-knowledge for the most effective teaching and learning strategies. This must be the very essence of community teaching."

The council is the peak body representing more than 40 professional teaching associations with more than 30,000 members in Victoria. After appearing before the Senate inquiry this week, the council's executive officer Olwyn Gray said students were being let down by the lack of intellectual challenge in their classrooms, and that the notion of intellectual risk was increasingly foreign to parents and students.

Ms Gray said students had an expectation they would always succeed, which was not how the real world worked. "Life isn't a level playing field. I don't want to condemn children to an underclass of underachievers but they need to strive, to say I did well this time and this is the next hurdle," she said. "If teachers work successfully with students who fail a particular task, you're helping these children develop resilience. "When a child fails, they go back and say, 'OK, I'll try another tack', and find they learn better a certain way. With a stronger degree of self-knowledge brought about by failure, you're not so depressed when you can't do something; you go back with resilience and it helps you take further intellectual risks."

Ms Gray said Australian students performed well on international assessments of competence in different subjects, but did less well in tests placing greater emphasis on rote learning, particularly compared with their counterparts in Asia.

So many reforms were imposed on teachers, she said, and these were often viewed as being change for change's sake and left no time for teachers to contemplate and refine what they did: "Teachers are just reeling from it -- you get used to the vocabulary and methodology of one thing and then you're on to the next. People get cynical."

Ms Gray said her belief was that the problem started in teacher training courses, which were too theoretical, emphasising different theories of learning rather than providing a range of strategies for different students. "Teachers need to learn a variety of methods for a variety of students because students learn in different ways," she said. "Rote learning is one way -- you need to learn phonic combinations of letters and sounds that way, and the times tables. "But they're the basics, just building blocks."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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