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31 July, 2010

Obama defends education policies to critics

Challenging civil rights organizations and teachers' unions that have criticized his education policies, President Barack Obama said Thursday that minority students have the most to gain from overhauling the nation's schools.

"We have an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind," Obama told the centennial convention of the National Urban League.

The Urban League has been a vocal critic of Obama's education policies, most notably the $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" program that awards grants to states based on their plans for innovative education reforms. A report released earlier this week by eight civil rights groups, including the Urban League, says federal data shows that just 3 percent of the nation's black students and less than 1 percent of Latino students are affected by the first round of the administration's "Race to the Top" competition.

Obama pushed back Thursday, arguing that minority students are the ones who have been hurt the most by the status quo.

Obama's reforms have also drawn criticism from education advocates, including prominent teachers' unions like the American Federation of Teachers, who have argued that the reforms set unfair standards for teacher performance.

Obama said the goal isn't to fire or admonish teachers, but to create a culture of accountability. He pinned some of the criticism on a resistance to change.

"We get comfortable with the status quo even when the status quo isn't good," he said. "When you try to shake things up, sometimes people aren't happy."

Seeking to ease his strained relationship with the powerful teacher's unions, Obama hailed teachers as "the single most important factor in a classroom," calling for higher pay, better training and additional resources to help teachers succeed.

"Instead of a culture where we're always idolizing sports stars or celebrities, I want us to build a culture where we idolize the people who shape our children's future," Obama said.

The president laid the groundwork for what he called "an honest conversation" about education with comments on several recent developments that were designed as sweeteners for his mostly minority audience.

For instance, he said his goal with his domestic agenda, including the economy, health care and other priorities, is to create "an economy that lifts all Americans _ not just some, but all." That comment earned him significant applause and pleased murmurs in the room.

SOURCE





Why more spending doesn’t produce better schools

A new study from Pepperdine University’s Davenport Institute has exposed the fraud continually perpetuated upon the taxpaying public—and visited upon the poor families trapped in criminally failed government schools—that if the state (in this case, California) just had more money it could deliver a good education.

The study concludes that, notwithstanding all the talk of “education budget cuts,” while school spending steadily increased between the 2003-04 and 2008-09 budget years, overall, direct classroom expenditures declined.

Indeed, California spending on education has not been “cut” at all—but, rather, radically increased during the period:

During the five year period, total school spending per capita (not including capital spending) increased by 25.8 percent, which was far greater than the growth in per capita personal income or inflation. During the same period, direct classroom expenditures statewide went from 59 percent of total expenditures to 57.8 percent. These statewide totals reflect a very wide range of variance among individual school districts, whose classroom expenditure ratios ranged from more than 70 percent to less than 45 percent.

Meanwhile, the 2009 National Report Card, produced by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, shows California public school students ranking almost last in the country: the average 4th grader’s math score in California ranked 47th, higher only than those in Mississippi, Alabama and Washington D.C., while the average 8th grader’s score ranked even lower—48th—higher only than those in Mississippi and Washington D.C.

The failed Oakland school district is a case study example of the public school system’s top-loaded cost structure, with 152 students per administrator, versus a statewide average of 250. In a district with a budget of nearly $13,000 annually per student, doesn’t anyone wonder why the Oakland school board is considering placing a $195 per parcel tax on the November ballot to raise $20 million a year to raise teachers and staff salaries?

Unfortunately, it’s very rare for such ballot measures to fail. Time and again, voters are extorted for more and more taxes on themselves in the name of the children. And, time and again, every “budget crisis” is visited only upon students, with class sizes increased while the number of school hours, and arts, sports, and library programs are cut.

Meanwhile, while families across California have tightened their own belts in response to economic hard times:

Certificated supervisors and administrators enjoyed a 28% pay hike per student over the five-year span. Pay for classified supervisors and administrators shot up 44% over that time.

It’s time to learn the lesson once and for all: competitive, private enterprise results in the efficient provision of products and services for consumers—even poor, disenfranchised, politically powerless consumers. Government monopolies produce ever-worse services for which they extort ever-greater payola.

SOURCE







Some hopeless Leftist floundering over education spending in the Australian State of NSW

School maintenance canned so Kristina Keneally can pay for heaters -- but schools typically have high maintenance requirements so this just cannot be done without further public outcry. That dangerous heaters continued to be installed after many warnings is also amazing. There is no doubt about the need for a fix of them

TEACHERS are up in arms over a decision by the NSW Government to defer or drop critical public school maintenance to pay for a minister's promise to replace all unflued heaters.

Last week, education bureaucrats were told funds used to fix broken pipes and holes in fences would be put on hold to cover the new heaters.

The latest embarrassment for the Government comes with Premier Kristina Keneally calling an emergency Cabinet meeting on Tuesday where she has asked all ministers to come up with five new ideas each to fix the state.

The NSW caucus is believed to be not happy with Ms Keneally and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal's performances.

Several ministers are complaining behind the scenes about alleged abusive behaviour by Mr Roozendaal towards other ministers and concern he has too great a role in running the government.

Some senior Labor sources say the Education Minister Verity Firth should resign and concentrate on winning her seat of Balmain after she was publicly humiliated over the heaters issue by Ms Keneally and Mr Roozendaal.

Ms Firth was reprimanded by the Premier and Treasurer after saying on Tuesday the Government was going to replace 50,000 heaters at a $400 million possible cost, without Cabinet approval.

Ms Keneally's handling of the Firth issue caused anger in caucus, with some MPs considering installing John Robertson in the Lower House before the election, possibly even to become leader.

A senior federal source argued the Gillard Government could not announce a major NSW transport project during the election campaign because "no one would believe" any promise involving the State Government.

Powerbroker Graham Richardson said yesterday: "The [Keneally] Government obviously isn't doing enough, you don't get a 25 per cent swing in [the Penrith] by-election, the biggest swing in history, if you are doing enough."

Principals were told this week urgent repairs for problems like broken pipes and holes in fences would be put off.

A spokeswoman for Education Minister Verity Firth said some maintenance funding would be "reprioritised", resulting in delays of up to six months.

School asset managers were told on Wednesday afternoon the money would be redirected to pay to replace unflued "low-NOx" gas heaters in 100 schools.

SOURCE



30 July, 2010

Chicago School Refuses to Host Rove, Welcomes Obama Appointee

A private university in Chicago that refuses to host former senior Bush adviser Karl Rove, arguing that welcoming a "political" speaker ahead of the midterm elections could threaten its tax-exempt status, has added an Obama administration appointee to address the student body.

Loyola University Chicago is hosting Eboo Patel, an Obama appointee to the White House interfaith council, next month, calling into question the school's rationale for rejecting Rove's appearance.

"The news that Eboo Patel, an appointee of the Obama administration, will be allowed to speak at Loyola University Chicago, while Karl Rove was essentially barred, is further proof that the (university) administration either has zero understanding of tax law or is unabashedly biased," said Evan Gassman, a spokesman for Young America's Foundation, a conservative outreach group that was sponsoring the Rove speech.

University spokesman Steve Christensen told FoxNews.com that the topic of Patel's speech does not have a political motive, which would violate current speaker policy.

"Our university considers its on-campus speakers on a case-by-case basis, and very carefully," he said. "Dr. Patel's speech on Aug. 27 will focus on the importance of interfaith leadership and transformative education, two topics that are directly associated with the university's mission. This is a very different lecture than what was proposed by our College Republicans, who informed the university in their proposal that they are inviting Karl Rove 'to speak in October 2010 to speak about the upcoming elections and their impact on public policy.'"

The university previously argued that the timing of Rove's appearance for the upcoming school year could imperil its 501(c )(3) tax status.

"The timing of this event is problematic given the campaign cycle," Kimberly A. Moore, director of student affairs and Greek affairs, told students in an e-mail. "Loyola has to maintain impartiality in order to protect our tax-exempt status."

Adam Kissel of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education told FoxNews.com that the school appears to be applying a "double standard."

"We often see rules applied strangely as a proxy for the real issue that a particular administrator or the whole institution doesn't want the lecture to happen and a pretext is developed to keep the speaker off of campus," Kissel said. "We see that time after time."

Rove, a Fox News contributor who gained prominence as the architect of former President George W. Bush's successful campaign strategies in 2000 and 2004, is not working on any campaign this season.

The school has offered to host Rove after the midterm election on Nov. 2, but the conservative group said Rove would not be able to speak then because of his busy schedule.

Conservative students point out that the school has hosted partisan speakers on election years before. In September 2004, the school hosted Howard Dean, who ran for president that year. A couple of weeks after his speech, political activist Ralph Nader, who also ran for president that year, spoke on campus -- a speech that was advertised as a campaign event in which donations were solicited.

Patel, whom Obama appointed last year to his advisory council of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, will discuss interfaith leadership and transformative education, according to the school's provost who is sponsoring the speech. Patel was named by Harvard's Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch.

"It is very disconcerting to see Loyola not live up to the standards of academic freedom that they frequently preach about," said Sean Vera, the student who tried to bring Rove to the campus.

"I never expected Loyola would prevent the free exchange of ideas and they would do so in such a partisan manner," he said.

But the university said times have changed. "In recent years, the IRS has become increasingly more scrutinizing over not-for-profit universities and their tax-exempt status as it relates to political or potentially political speakers invited to come on campus," Christensen said. "With that in mind, our university has become more cautious in its decision-making."

Kissel, of FIRE, called that a "false argument." "It does not threaten the school's 501(c )(3) status to permit a student group to bring even a politician to campus while the politician is in office," he said.

SOURCE







Overhaul of British High School exams 'could damage maths'

Major reforms of A-levels will lead to a “collapse” in the number of children studying mathematics to a high standard, according to teachers. Coalition plans to toughen up courses could turn teenagers off the subject, it was claimed, leading to the closure of university maths departments.

The comments by the Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education, which represents teachers and academics, is the latest criticism of the Government's proposed overhaul of A-levels.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, wants to phase out AS level exams taken half-way through the traditional two year course, as well as "bite-sized" modules that students can re-sit to boost their grades. He plans to place a greater emphasis on end-of-course exams.

But ACME warned that making maths A-levels harder would “mean fewer students choose to take the qualification”.

In a letter to Mr Gove, Prof Dame Julia Higgins, ACME’s chairman, warns that toughening up maths A-level “will mean fewer students choose to take the qualification”.

The letter – revealed in the Times Education Supplement today – says: “There is a real danger in making A-level mathematics significantly harder than it is currently. It would make it impossible to retain appropriate provision for the full range of students.”

The last major overhaul of A-levels – in 2002 – led to a 19 per cent drop in the number of pupils studying maths in the sixth-form. Maths is already seen as one of the toughest subjects.

She adds: “We feel it is very important that we warn you that implementing such a policy runs a genuine risk of repeating the collapse in the numbers studying A-level mathematics witnessed in 2002.

“We believe that it is very likely that we would again see university mathematics departments closing as a result of this fall in numbers.”

Last week, Cambridge University also criticised proposed changes to A-levels, claiming it could lead to a drop in the number of students from state schools admitted to top institutions.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “It’s clear that we need to restore confidence in public exams. We’re listening carefully to universities, employers and academic subject bodies’ views to ensure A-levels are rigorous and equip young people for higher education.

“We will look in detail at exam structure, including whether schools and colleges should be able to offer traditional two-year A-levels alongside or instead of modular A-levels. We will set out detailed next steps later this year.”

SOURCE







Ancient Greek 'to be taught in British state schools'

Ancient Greek will be taught in state primary schools to boost children’s language skills, it emerged today. Some 160 pupils in three schools will be given lessons in the native tongue of Archimedes and Herodotus from September. The move follows the successful introduction of Latin to dozens of state primaries in England.

The Iris Project, a charity campaigning for the teaching of the Classics, which is leading the latest drive, said the subject had substantial knock-on benefits across the curriculum.

Lorna Robinson, charity director, who will be teaching the one-hour lessons every two weeks, told the Times Education Supplement: “People can be daunted at the idea of learning a language that has a different alphabet as it may feel like an additional challenge.

“Actually, though, we¹ve found that while it does add an extra dimension to the learning it¹s one that people take to quite quickly and really enjoy once they get going. “Ancient Greek is just a wonderful language, full of beautiful words and fascinating concepts.”

Pupils will be taught the alphabet, basic grammar and vocabulary, as well as learning about ancient Greek culture, such as the development of the Olympic Games and the comedies of Aristophanes.

Latin is currently more widely taught than ancient Greek, although it is still mainly confined to private schools. Advocates include Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who recently gave a Latin lesson to teenagers at a London secondary.

Under new plans, three Oxford primary schools will be given Greek lessons from September. A further 10 will get one-off taster sessions.

Sue Widgery, head of East Oxford primary in Cowley, where children speak 26 different languages, said: We were sufficiently enthused by Latin to give it a go with ancient Greek. It heightens children’s sense of language, they can see the connections between languages and it is fun.”

SOURCE



29 July, 2010

Employment School

Disastrous dropout rate and token qualifications leave many unemployable

If you want to know one reason why the nation's unemployment rate remains stubbornly high -- and why President Barack Obama is tackling the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers on reforming public schools -- just stop at the D.C. Department of Employment Services' dreary Naylor Road One-Stop Career Center on the District's Southeast Side.

On any given day, out-of-work residents step off buses and walk past shuttered stores into the unemployment office to attend mandatory employment counseling sessions or prepare résumés for their latest job hunt. While there are more white-collar workers -- many from the surrounding suburbs in Virginia and Maryland -- than in previous years, the vast majority used to work in old-school blue-collar work, office jobs such as executive assistants, and service sector positions such as hospital cooks and hotel maids. Many of them came through here before, looking for work before the recession began three years ago -- and will likely be back here again because they are high school unqualified for all but the most-menial of labor.

Those are just the D.C. residents actually looking for work. There are at least 38,491 residents in D.C. -- more than a tenth of the workforce -- who are either chronically underemployed (or haven't had a steady full-time job) or have gone a year or more without a job. Many of them are either high school dropouts or barely graduated from D.C.'s woeful public schools. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, their lack of education and skills would have meant nothing; they would have easily found some kind of gainful middle-class employment. But in an age in which many blue-collar jobs require an apprenticeship or tech school degree, most dropouts are shut out altogether. And no amount of federal stimulus package will do more than keep them on the dole.

For all the sparring between Capitol Hill Democrats and Republicans this past month about extending federal unemployment subsidies beyond the current allotment of 99 weeks (that's a year and eleven months, if you're counting), little has been said about the long-term jobless -- who will likely be a drain on taxpayers for decades to come -- and one of the most-persistent underlying causes of this problem: The nation's woeful public school systems. With some 1.3 million teens dropping out of high school every year (and millions more graduating with inadequate reading and math skills), even more will either land in prison, on welfare, or engaged in some less-than-legal pursuits. This will further fuel the growth of big government that is draining the nation's long-term economic prospects.

Almost none of this has been solved with the $600 billion in unemployment subsidies and federal stimulus dollars -- including subsidies for job-training programs that cannot solve the problems of illiteracy and poor math skills plaguing the permanently underemployed -- nor will it be addressed through future entitlements. The best solution in the long run is the one part of President Barack Obama's agenda that has wide bipartisan support: The array of charter school expansion and school reform efforts -- including the $4.3 billion Race to the Top initiative -- now fiercely-opposed by the NEA, the AFT, and their allies among traditional public education and old-school civil rights groups. It will take an array of school choice measures, new curricula standards, an end of the system of seniority- and degree-based benefits and pensions, and a more-entrepreneurial culture within education to stir the future growth needed to overcome a $300 billion anchor on the nation's economy.

FOURTEEN PERCENT OF HIGH SCHOOL dropouts age 25 and over are unemployed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, double the jobless rate for college graduates and four points higher than high school graduates. But that rate obscures the true level of unemployment. The employment participation rate for dropouts is a mere 45 percent versus 62 percent for high school grads and 70 percent for college grads; most dropouts aren't even working in the first place.

The problem is even worse for the newest generation of dropouts, who, unlike earlier generations, are coming into the workforce in an age in which old-school manufacturing jobs such as those in the auto industry are no longer plentiful. Fifty-five percent of high school dropouts age 16-to-24 are unemployed, according to the BLS' 2009 survey (the most-recent data available); this is double the unemployment rate for collegians and high school grads not attending college. Even worse, 52 percent of all dropouts aren't even working or seeking employment of any kind; since they aren't likely to be sitting in classrooms studying for a degree (and may not even be seeking a General Educational Development certificate), most are unlikely to be involved in any productive activity.

What kind of jobs can any of these dropouts get? Well, not many. They can't get any of the positions listed by Forbes last month as the top-paying blue-collar careers. This includes elevator installers-repairmen (average annual income of $67,950), who must spend four years gaining training for a job that combines electrical, structural and mechanical engineering skills; and electrical and electronics installers -- who work in power plants -- who earn an average income of $67,700 after earning an associate's degree and years of apprenticing with veterans. Save for commercial drivers (who must also attend technical school in order to drive big rigs), most of the jobs need the very kind of strong math and science skills required for high-tech white-collar gigs.

What else can't a dropout do? Well, there's welding in auto factories; gaining entry into an apprenticeship program requires strong knowledge of trigonometry (for bending metal into the right angles). Same for machine tool and die makers -- who craft the tools needed for every area of manufacturing -- who must also understand how to use computer-aided design software in their work. Since most dropouts struggled with basic reading and math while in school, it isn't as if they would get a handle on anything more complicated. The prospects are even dimmer outside of blue collar work.

Sixty-three percent of all jobs require some form of higher education (a wider array of learning than one traditionally thinks, since it includes colleges, technical schools, and even apprenticeship programs). This includes working in the auto industry, where 60 credit hours at a community college is the minimum requirement for gaining employment. Some will argue that the degree requirements are certainly just ways to screen out unqualified applicants (and note that they are waived for high school grads with years of experience). And that is the point. Save for the few who land in entertainment or bootstrap their way to entrepreneurial success, most dropouts are essentially out of luck.

For decades, federal and state officials have funded an array of job retraining programs to help get dropouts into gainful employment. In 1998, those programs were assembled under one roof through the Workforce Investment Act. Although this has made it easier for unemployed workers to seek out programs, it is unclear that this has helped make dropouts more employable.

The GED -- or "Good Enough Diploma," as comedian Chris Rock once called it -- was only marginally useful for dropouts of previous eras, as they earned less than either high school grads or collegians over time; it is even less-useful now. In June, a team led by Nobel Laureate James Heckman concluded that it has "minimal value of the certificate in terms of labor market outcomes." The most-recent effort at workforce retraining involves community colleges, the single-biggest destination for all college-bound students. But community colleges graduate just a fifth of freshmen in three years -- and most high school dropouts wouldn't even qualify to attend.

THE LONG-TERM PROBLEMS FOR DROPOUTS points out the single-biggest problem for the American economy -- and the single-biggest threat to the concept of small government most conservatives hold dear: A public education system that is hardly doing the job. Thirty-three percent of American third-graders -- and a quarter of all eighth-grade students -- read Below Basic proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Based on the high numbers of freshmen forced to take remedial math and English, it is clear that K-12 isn't doing much better with high school graduates either.

The fact that America's public schools were never really intended for actually providing an education, but for inculcating civic values (and to prevent the expansion of Catholic schools), is certainly part of the problem. But the other problems -- the low quality of instruction among America's teaching corps; the lack of high-quality school options for all but the wealthiest parents; and English and math curricula that would hardly match up to (often low) 19th-century standards -- can and should be fixed before more dropouts add stress to taxpayer's pockets.

Oddly enough, education reform is the one area where Obama may be on track. The $4.3 billion Race to the Top program has managed to spur states such as California and New York to eliminate (or modify) caps on charter schools -- the most-successful form of school choice -- and force efforts to bring private-sector performance management to evaluating the work of teachers (just 2.1 percent of them are ever dismissed currently). Although a clever form of unfunded mandate, it is at least one that can force education in the right direction. In D.C., for example, schools boss Michelle Rhee took a step in the right direction by sacking 241 teachers deemed unable to improve student achievement.

Some federal school reform money would be a lot better in the long run than another $750 million a week in federal spending that will only triple even if the Republicans take control of Congress next year.

SOURCE






Atheists 'could set up free schools' in Britain

Atheist state schools could be established under the Government’s education reforms, Michael Gove has said. The Education Secretary said he would be "interested" to look at proposals for non-religious schools from figures such Professor Richard Dawkins. Prof Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said last month that he approved of the idea of setting up a "free-thinking” school.

The comments follow the publication of Coalition plans to give parents' groups, teachers and charities powers to open their own schools at taxpayers' expense.

Addressing the Commons education select committee, Mr Gove said parents opposed to faith-based schools should be properly catered for in the state education system.

"One of the most striking things that I read recently was a thought from Richard Dawkins that he might want to take advantage of our education legislation to open a new school which was set up on an explicitly atheist basis,” he said. "It wouldn't be my choice of school, but the whole point about our education reforms is that they are, in the broad sense of the word, small "l", liberal. That they exist to provide that greater degree of choice."

Around a third of the 21,000 state primaries and secondaries in England are currently faith schools. The majority are Anglican or Roman Catholic, with small numbers of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools.

By law, all other schools must provide religious education and stage a compulsory Christian assembly every day, although parents have the power to withdraw children.

Last month, Prof Dawkins, a former Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, said he approved of the idea of atheist schools. “I would prefer to call it a free-thinking free school,” he said. "I would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion. “Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded."

Mr Gove, whose two children attend primary faith schools, told the cross-party group of MPs that he "recognised that there are some people who explicitly do not want their children educated in a faith-based setting".

He said: "One of the principles behind our education reforms is to give people the maximum amount of choice so that those people, and they may not themselves necessarily have a very strong religious faith, but who believe that the ethos and values of faith-based education are right for their child, have that choice but others who want a different approach can take it as well."

Speaking afterwards, Mr Gove said: "If Prof Dawkins wants to set up a school we would be very interested to look at an application."

SOURCE






Privately-educated British Conservative politician says 'rich, thick kids' do better than 'poor, clever children'

He may be a bit thick himself -- as he seems to ignore the importance of home background. Families who pay for their kid's education are probably more involved in it and make sure their kid does the hard yards

'Rich thick kids' end up overtaking 'poor clever children' at school, Michael Gove said yesterday. The Education Secretary complained that success at school is still too closely linked to children's family background. Privately educated Mr Gove said a ' yawning gap' had opened up between the attainment of poorer youngsters and their wealthier peers.

But last night head teachers' leaders protested at the use of the word 'thick' by a cabinet minister. Mick Brookes, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: 'Thick is not a word that is currently in use in schools. It is demeaning to children.'

Mr Gove cited research showing that wealthy youngsters at the bottom of the ability range pull ahead of brighter but poorer children around the age of six, and the gulf continues to widen as they move through school. His warning came as the Government launched a review of educational under-achievement in England's poorest areas.

Giving evidence to MPs yesterday, Mr Gove said he had been 'very struck' by research by the Institute of Education. 'Children from wealthy backgrounds of low cognitive ability overtake children from poor backgrounds and high cognitive ability before they even arrive at school,' he said. 'So in effect, rich thick kids do better than poor clever children, and when they arrive at school the situation as they go through gets worse.'

The Institute of Education research analysed data relating to 17,000 children born in 1970. Their educational development was tested at 22 months and at intervals during their schooling. Their qualifications at 26 were also checked.

Children from affluent families who were in the bottom 25 per cent of the ability range at 22 months went on to overtake youngsters from the poorest backgrounds who started out in the top 25 per cent. They began to overtake around age six or seven, and the gap widened as they progressed through school.

Mr Gove said the Coalition's school reforms would help close the attainment gap.

Under measures which passed into law this week, state primary and secondary schools will be able to opt out of local authority control and operate as state-funded but independent academies. The policy is intended to boost academic standards by giving schools greater freedom to decide the curriculum, teachers' pay and school year.

SOURCE



28 July, 2010

Teachers lose out in latest Obama funding bill

The House is sending to President Barack Obama a bill to fund the troop surge in Afghanistan after accepting the reality that adding money for domestic programs was unfeasible.

House Democrats reluctantly voted for the $59 billion measure Tuesday that will pay for Obama's 30,000-troop surge and other programs such as replenishing disaster funds. But the bill was stripped of money to keep teachers on the job or boost student aid. The vote comes a week after the Senate soundly rejected the larger House-favored bill.

The bill contains $33 billion to pay for the new troops in Afghanistan and other Pentagon programs.

Obama requested the war money in February, but the bill became a staging ground for a battle over adding money for domestic needs.

Mr. Obama said today there's not much new in the tens of thousands of leaked Afghanistan war documents. He made clear he's still full a committed to his troop surge strategy, reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.

In the House Tuesday, the Mr. Obama's own party was split down the middle on a crucial war funding vote. Liberal war critics used the leaked documents as a weapon. Mr. Obama found himself in the unusual position of relying on Republicans to pass his bill, reports Reid.

SOURCE






The Eunuch Horn

By Mike Adams (I don't know how Mike has the stomach to read all the trash he dissects below but I guess somebody has got to do it)

In recent years, the rise of postmodernism in our culture and in our system of education has been undeniable. That it has been accompanied by an increase in the desire of some discontented souls to “redefine” themselves along the lines of certain variables has been equally undeniable. The most prominent of these variables is gender.

When your son or daughter takes “Sociology of Gender” classes it is likely that he or (more likely) she will encounter the works of Kate Bornstein, a transgender performance artist and writer. She (?) proclaims that she (?) doesn’t “personally identify as a man or a woman” although she (?) concedes that she (?) passes for a woman in the eyes of most.

But things are more complicated than that for Kate. She (?) says that when she (?) was growing up she (?) was a boy. If you’re wondering how a person can be two different genders in a lifetime – even without the surgery – here’s a revealing quote: “I would even go so far as to say Jewish men are a different gender than Christian men, and that’s the way I see it, but it’s not a bad thing! It’s just a fact.”

It’s hard to know where to begin to dissect this kind of stupidity, which passes for scholarship in sociology classes. I’m tempted to begin with her idea that there is a multiplicity of genders, which vary by race. But there is a much more basic flaw in evidence. Notice that Bornstein believes (or pretends to believe) that something can be “the way she sees it” and “just a fact” simultaneously.

Regrettably, this is not the only time Bornstein attempts (simultaneously) to be both a postmodernist and a proponent of absolute truth. She attempts to do no less than to discard the law of non-contradiction, which says that something cannot be both “A” and “not A” simultaneously. This is all just laying the groundwork for saying that one can be both man and woman simultaneously.

Of course, according to Bornstein, one can find some comfortable middle ground along an endlessly nuanced gender continuum: “What I’m thinking is that different kinds of men might as well be tagged as different genders, different ways of expressing oneself within some sort of male middle range, none of which measures up to the cultural ideal.”

What bothers Bornstein is that gender is “a hierarchical dynamic masquerading behind and playing itself out through each of only two socially privileged mono-gendered identities.” She goes on to say that “the power of this kind of gender perfection would be in direct proportion to the power of those who can stake legitimate claims to those identities.”

It is not at all surprising that Bornstein employs Marxist terminology in her (?) “scholarly” analysis of gender. Her (?) assertion that there is a gender pyramid, the height of which “measures the amount of power a person wields in the world,” is old hat. Nor is there anything novel in her enumeration of the factors that help one climb to the top of the hierarchy. Among those factors are:

Being white, being a citizen of the USA, being a Protestant-defined Christian, being heterosexual, being monogamous, being politically conservative, being a capitalist, being physically healthy with access to health care, possessing all rights available under the law, being logical, possessing a well-formed, above-average-length penis, a pair of reasonably-matched testicles, and at least an average sperm count …

Bornstein concludes that all of these factors, which make for a “perfect identity,” are an oppressive force against which there must be some sort of rebellion. Feminists must rebel against “man” as a perfect classification. African-Americans must rebel against “white” as a perfect classification. Jews must rebel against “gentile” as a perfect classification. Bisexuals, lesbians, and gays must rebel against “straight” as a perfect classification.

Finally, transgendered folks must rebel against “gendered” as a perfect classification. In a world without classifications, there can be no contradictions.

Sociology students who read Kate Bornstein are urged to resist moving selfishly upward in the so-called gender pyramid. Instead, they are asked to simply dismantle the pyramid altogether. But before they are asked to rebel against the gender pyramid, Bornstein asks students this pointed question: “What does simply being the gender you were assigned at birth give you?”

It’s not at all surprising that Bornstein’s readers are asked to contemplate what their God-given gender assignment does for them. In higher education, the focus is always on them. It is certainly never on God.

In the past, I have offended some transgendered persons by asking these two questions: 1) Does the act of removing a man’s penis make him into a woman? 2) If your answer to #1 is “yes,” does re-attaching it to his forehead make him a unicorn?

Those two questions are my little way of asking the transgendered community whether there is any limit to their delusional belief that they can simply be whatever they perceive themselves to be. Their “reassignment” of mental illness – saying that others who oppose them suffer from “trans-phobia” – supplies the answer.

Clearly, today’s “intellectual” is unwilling to admit that a man who thinks he is a woman is mentally ill. But what about the man who thinks he is God?

Before long, “intellectuals” will side-step the issue. There will be no contradiction between being human and not-human. We will have rebelled against “God” as a perfect classification.

SOURCE






"Special needs" is a fad that harms British children

Pupils are being subjected to all manner of crank treatments in the name of helping them, says Francis Gilbert

Twenty years ago, when I started teaching in a tough, inner-city comprehensive, only three of my pupils were labelled as having "special educational needs". All three were extreme cases: one girl liked to throw chairs at her teachers, another had severe hearing problems, and another didn't have a working stomach.

Today, things have swung to the other extreme: classrooms are swamped by pupils classified as "SEN", or having learning difficulties. All told, one in three of those aged between six and 16, or more than two million children, are identified as having some sort of learning difficulty. And it's getting worse: in the past two years, the number of under-fives with learning difficulties has risen by almost 20 per cent, and the number of teenagers being diagnosed has also increased exponentially.

Why is this? Is it that our children have got a lot thicker? Are teachers getting better at identifying problems? Or is some kind of chronic "SEN" inflation going on?

Partly, the explanation is medical. A recent survey by Glasgow University showed that babies born even a week early have a greater propensity to develop special needs. Overall, eight out of 10 severely premature babies go on to have learning difficulties, with two out of 10 having a severe disability. Even a decade ago, many such children would have died; with today's improved survival rates, they will grow up to enter the education system.

At the same time, teachers are undoubtedly getting better at spotting SEN. There are, of course, huge variations from school to school, with some, particularly in more deprived areas, identifying as many as 70 per cent of their pupils as such. To my mind, they are justified in doing so, because there is a clear link between social deprivation and what we call SEN: poverty breeds students who really struggle to read and write. In that inner-city classroom I mentioned, alongside the three children labelled as having special needs there were many others who struggled to read even simple picture books. Nowadays, most would be diagnosed as having SEN. And with good reason – they needed a lot of extra help.

It's a moot point, however, as to whether they have genuine difficulties, or are just the victims of parents who don't value education. These parents usually hate their child being labelled in this way, and cause more problems by making their children feel ashamed of their diagnosis. At the other end of the social scale, I've found that many middle-class parents are chomping at the bit to have their child dubbed SEN. In fact, increasing numbers of pupils don't seem to have any learning difficulties whatsoever. What they do have are pushy parents who know that a SEN diagnosis means that their kids will get preferential treatment: extra time in exams, more attention from teachers, and even special equipment like laptops and MP3 players.

That said, many teachers, myself included, like to "work the system", too. We realise that having a child diagnosed as SEN is greatly to our benefit because it means that we get extra resources – and it also lets us off the hook if they fail their exams.

In other words, pupils categorised as having special needs have been wrongly labelled: a government survey of teenagers classed as having SEN in 2009 showed that almost half had no such diagnosis six years earlier. A particularly worrying trend is the increasing numbers of children who are being identified as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a phrase which in the teaching profession is a politically correct euphemism for "being completely out of control".

According to data released under Freedom of Information legislation, there has been a 65 per cent increase in spending on drugs to treat ADHD over the last four years. Such treatments now cost the taxpayer more than £31 million a year. In the US, the use of prescription drugs to "cure" learning difficulties has become a billion-dollar industry.

This "medicalisation" of SEN is deeply worrying; it promotes the lie that a child's learning difficulties can be solved by drugs rather than good teaching. It's meant that all sorts of self-help quacks are grabbing money from schools and gullible parents by promising to "cure" children with herbal remedies, head massages, visualisation techniques, brainwave measurement, or the chanting of mantras.

All of which makes me think that perhaps it's time to junk the term "Special Educational Needs" altogether, along with much of the jargon that goes with it. Sadly, these terms have become excuses to hide behind rather than steps towards solutions. Instead bandying around vague pseudo-scientific terms like "dyslexia" and "ADHD", we need to demand that learning difficulties are identified simply and specifically. If a pupil has a problem with reading books aimed at their age range, let's call it precisely that, rather than saying he's "dyslexic" – a notorious word that seems to mean something different every time it's used.

It's time we all realised no amount of jargon, drugs or massages can solve our children's problems. The only real solution, as it always has been, is hard graft.

SOURCE



27 July, 2010

California could adopt national English, math standards

The moves below are all well and good but the fallacy is the "one size fits all" approach. Less bright students probably need a more drill-oriented approach while others do not. The deplorable final standards achieved by many students could probably be significantly remediated by a more drill-oriented approach. It worked in the past

Think of what you've read in recent days, and the list might include a Facebook post about a friend's Grand Tetons vacation, an online review of the Droid X phone and an explanation of why your insurance isn't covering your latest doctor's visit.

Yet children in school read mostly fiction, from "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to "Macbeth."

In a few years, K-12 students' reading lists may expand to include more of that other stuff: more multimedia texts, scientific and technical articles, persuasive arguments and other nonfiction — and fewer storybooks and novels.

On Aug. 2, the state Board of Education will consider this major shift in how California's public schools teach reading when it votes on a controversial set of national Common Core Standards. If proponents prevail, California will join the majority of states in adopting the first nationwide standards for public education.

The goal in adding informational texts to the English-language standards is to prepare students for real-world reading, to use other courses such as science to teach reading, and to improve literacy and comprehension.

Although California standards currently include nonfiction — by 10th grade, for example, students are supposed to be able to analyze some workplace documents — the proposed standards progressively shift the focus.

"By grade 12, it's closer to 50-50" literature and information, said Gregory Geeting, a Sacramento County school board member and chairman of the state's 21-member California State Academic Content Standards Commission that this month recommended the standards.

If the state Board of Education approves the Common Core Standards, it likely will be several years before new curriculum will appear in classrooms and on state tests.

But particularly at a time of budget distress, why would California rewrite its 1997 standards and embark on an expensive venture to redo curriculum? For one, meeting next month's deadline will strengthen the state's résumé to compete for federal stimulus funds known as Race to the Top.

Still, some say California's current standards are just fine. A new study by the Thomas Fordham Institute said California standards already deserve an "A," ranking among the most rigorous in the nation.

But those stellar standards have failed to produce stellar students. California pupils languish near the bottom on national comparison tests.

One theory is that "California standards seem to be a mile wide and an inch deep," said Kathy Harris, a Santa Rosa teacher and member of the state commission that reviewed them.

California children are adept at learning grade-by-grade skills but don't master them, she said. In reading, for example, they focus on phonics, word recognition and other discrete skills, but not on comprehension. "They start to falter pretty much as soon as comprehension is addressed" in higher grades, she said.

And it's the same in math, as kids power through fractions and then decimals, but too often arrive in middle school without a solid footing in either. The Common Core Standards simplify standards and deepen learning at each grade level so students have more time to nail and to apply other new concepts.

Studies have shown that teaching reading through subjects such as science or social studies can be more effective partly because they reinforce words.

"In a book about electricity, you're going to see the word 'electricity' 15 times. Informational texts are a terrific way for kids to learn reading and vocabulary," said Jacqueline Barber, associate director of the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley and codirector of a science-literacy project.

The Common Core Standards will likely involve science and social studies teachers at all levels in teaching literacy rather than just content. Experts believe this will help address a problem reflected in another dismal statistic: about 60 percent of California State University freshmen last year needed either remedial English or math or both. As Harris put it, "They know what mitosis is, but they get into college and can't read the text."

While perhaps the most visible shift in the curriculum will come in English, the most heated debate on the commission focused on math. The commission ended up tacking on California's requirement for eighth-grade algebra to the Common Core's regimen that allows students to take the course in the ninth grade.

That means that the K-7 curriculum will prepare students for eighth-grade algebra, but those students who still aren't ready may take some pre-algebra in eighth grade. In effect, the state will no longer insist that every California student take algebra by eighth grade.

Williamson Evers, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a commission member, voted against the math standards. "This will have the effect of destroying the algebra in eighth grade program as we have known it," he said.

Literature advocates were less vociferous. But those concerned about the Great Books losing out to iPhone diagrams in the high school curriculum shouldn't worry, commission members said.

The standards still are more focused on preparation for college rather than the workplace, said Kenji Hakuta, a member of the national committee reviewing the proposal. "There's a very thin representation of auto-repair manuals in the Common Core."

SOURCE





More private universities for Britain

The pronouncement by David Willetts, the Universities Minister, that the UK should have more private universities is very welcome.

He has also confirmed that BPP, the business and law college, has been granted ‘university college’ status, the first such award for 34 years. Of course, BPP is very different from a conventional redbrick university but it shows that new thinking is afoot in higher education.

Currently, the UK’s only private university is at Buckingham, which first admitted a small student body – less than 70 – in 1976. Ironically, given today’s severe financial constrains, it was also set up during a period of real economic stringency – 1976 was the year of Britain’s infamous loan from the IMF. Moreover, at that time, there was genuine hostility, especially within the higher education system, towards a new private university.

In the subsequent 34 years, the University of Buckingham has prospered, with a student base almost 1,000 strong, recruited mostly from overseas.

The Buckingham experience provides three crucial lessons for any putative investor in a new public university.

First, Buckingham has specialised in offering the cheaper undergraduate courses – law, economics, politics, history, languages etc. Until relatively recently, there were few courses in the more expensive science-based subjects.

Secondly, the attraction of two-year courses is compelling. Most university courses elsewhere are longer, albeit with extended holidays – hence, a major cost for taxpayers.

Thirdly, the availability of substantial rental accommodation is key to boosting financial returns, since it markedly reduces the marginal cost per student. New universities generally need either expensive on-site accommodation or rely on rental properties in nearby suburbs.

Willetts is hoping interested parties will come forward. But will they?

SOURCE







One in five British grade-school exam results is incorrect, say exam watchdogs

Exam results could soon come with warnings that the grades may not be accurate. The move is being considered after exam watchdogs said as many as one in five children is given incorrect SATs marks.

A report from Ofqual revealed that 17.4 per cent of grades awarded in English reading tests could be wrong because of inconsistencies in marking and flaws in the test design.

But the findings will shake confidence in SATs in the week before national results are issued. Pupils received their grades this month. Ofqual is considering issuing cigarette packet-style health warnings alongside results in SATs, GCSEs and A-levels to serve as a reminder that grades cannot be totally accurate.

Meanwhile, teaching unions called on ministers to consign SATs ‘to the dustbin of history’ because it was ‘highly dangerous’ to rely on the results. The findings will strengthen their resolve to stage a repeat of the testing boycott that saw 25 per cent fewer pupils take SATs this summer. The tests are supposed to be taken by all 11-year-olds in maths and English.

According to a report issued yesterday, 1,387 pupils who sat a sample reading test in 2007 had only an 82.6 per cent chance of being graded correctly.

The accuracy of the grading was measured by analysing the given result using a series of statistical formulae.

The chances of receiving an incorrect grade were substantially higher for pupils on the borderline between grades.

Pupils on the line between levels two and three, for example, had only a 37 per cent chance of being given the right level, it emerged. If these pupils were to have taken another similar but completely reliable test, 63 per cent would have been given a higher level.

Further analysis showed that only 70 per cent of the 1,387 pupils who took the English reading test achieved the same grade when they took a separate but similar test. Reading test results are combined with writing to give an overall English mark.

Teachers fear that the results for writing are even more variable than reading. Maths is less vulnerable to marker error.

Ofqual suggested that, in future, grades in public exams could be accompanied by figures giving an idea of the likely inaccuracies involved.

This practice was already widespread in the U.S, it said. The watchdog is looking at grade accuracy in GCSEs and A-levels as part of an ongoing study into the robustness of exams.

Martin Johnson, deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: ‘The Government would be incredibly foolish to continue to keep its head in the sand and ignore this.’

SOURCE



26 July, 2010

Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools

Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks.

Their support has surprised many in education circles, given states’ long tradition of insisting on retaining local control over curriculum.

The quick adoption of common standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school is attributable in part to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education. “This has been the third rail of education, and the fact that you’re now seeing half the nation decide that it’s the right thing to do is a game-changer.”

Even Massachusetts, which many regard as having the nation’s best education system — and where the proposed standards have been a subject of bitter debate — is expected to adopt the standards on Wednesday morning. New York signed up on Monday, joining Connecticut, New Jersey and other states that have adopted the standards, though the timetable for actual implementation is uncertain.

Some supporters of the standards, like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, worry that the rush of states to sign up — what Ms. Weingarten calls the “Race to Adopt” — could backfire if states do not have the money to put the standards in effect.

“I’m already watching the ravages of the recession cutting the muscle out of efforts to implement standards,” she said. “If states adopt these thoughtful new standards and don’t implement them, teachers won’t know how to meet them, yet they will be the basis on which kids are judged.”

The effort has been helped by financial backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to most of the organizations involved in drafting, evaluating and winning support for the standards. The common core standards, two years in the making and first released in draft form in March, are an effort to replace the current hodgepodge of state policies.

They lay out detailed expectations of skills that students should have at each grade level. Second graders, for example, should be able to read two-syllable words with long vowels, while fifth graders should be able to add and subtract fractions with different denominators.

Adoption of the standards does not bring immediate change in the classroom. Implementation will be a long-term process, as states rethink their teacher training, textbooks and testing.

Those states that are not winners in the Race to the Top competition may also have less incentive to follow through in carrying out the standards.

“The heavy lifting is still ahead, and the cynic in me says that when 20 states don’t get Race to the Top money, we’ll see how sincere they are,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of an education research group in Washington, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a longtime advocate of national standards. “They could just sit on their hands, chill out and say, ‘Well, we don’t really have the money right now to retrain our teachers.’ ”

Yet even promises of support for national standards are a noteworthy shift. Many previous efforts to set national standards have made little headway. In 1995, for example, the Senate rejected proposed history standards by a vote of 99 to 1.

The problem of wide variations in state standards has become more serious in recent years, as some states weakened their standards to avoid being penalized under the federal No Child Left Behind law. This time, the standards were developed by the states themselves, not the federal government. Last year, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers convened English and math experts to put together benchmarks for each grade.

Texas and Alaska said they did not want to participate in developing the standards. And Virginia has made it known that it does not plan to adopt the standards.

Increasingly, national standards are seen as a way to ensure that children in all states will have access to a similar education — and that financially strapped state governments do not have to spend limited resources on developing their own standards and tests. “We’ll have states working together for the first time on curriculum, textbooks, assessment,” said Mr. Duncan. “This will save the country billions of dollars.”

An analysis by Mr. Finn’s institute, to be released Wednesday, determined that the new common core standards are stronger than the English standards in 37 states and the math standards in 39 states.

In most others, the report found that the existing standards are similar enough to the proposed common core standards that it was impossible to say which were better.

States that adopt the standards are allowed to have additional standards, as long as the common core represents at least 85 percent of their English and mathematics standards.

In closely watched Massachusetts, even those who see the common core standards as a comedown for a state whose students score highly on national assessment tests say they have lost the battle. “They’re definitely going to be adopted,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization.

Mr. Stergios’ group found the common standards less rigorous than Massachusetts’ existing ones. “Vocabulary-building in the common core is slower,” he said, citing one example. “And on the math side, they don’t prepare eighth-grade students for algebra one, which is the gateway to higher math.”

Others analyzing the two sets of standards disagreed. Achieve Inc., a Washington-based education reform group, found the common core standards “more rigorous and coherent.” WestEd, a research group that evaluated the standards for the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, found them comparable. And Mr. Finn’s group said the Massachusetts standards and the common core standards were “too close to call.”

But Mr. Stergios pointed out that the other groups had either funding from the Gates Foundation or connections to those who developed the standards. “We’re really the only ones who had no dog in this fight,” he said.

SOURCE







Just When You Thought New Orleans Schools Were Improving…

…you see something like this piece in the Huffington Post and you lose all your optimism.

It’s an article about a group of left-wing propagandists hard at work in the public schools in Orleans Parish who are using the middle-schoolers in their charge as fodder to spread sheer insanity. And of course, the adults responsible for managing those schools think it’s actually a good idea.

But when these 12- to 14-year-old judges delivered their verdict, the party they held chiefly responsible was the American people. And as members of a student-based school reform group called the Rethinkers, these young people now have a recommendation for New Orleans schools: Move toward becoming oil-free by 2015, the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

“If we want to prevent another oil spill, we need to start weaning ourselves off this product and begin searching for new ideas,” says ninth-grader Danny Do, whose father is a shrimper. “Now is the perfect time to get moving, and schools are a great place to start!”

This may sound about as plausible as “the dog ate my homework,” and the Rethinkers acknowledge that their vision is an ambitious one. But they have both the track record and the supporters to suggest that they are not a bunch of naďve kids who can be easily dismissed.

The press conference they held last week to announce this and other recommendations for school reform in New Orleans attracted The Times-Picayune, ABC News, and other media outlets as well as community and education leaders–notably, Paul Vallas, whose work as CEO of Chicago Public Schools was praised by President Clinton and is now superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District, which is focused on transforming underperforming schools into successful ones.

“Paul is obsessed with the Rethinkers and wants Rethinkers clubs in all schools,” says Siona LaFrance, Vallas’s chief of staff. “He likes that the kids are thinking and challenging authority, and that all of their suggestions are based on a lot of consideration. And he likes that this is a continuing effort.”

The article goes on to describe a withering array of psychobabble and lunacy being foisted on Orleans school kids by these “Rethinkers,” including a campaign to do away with sporks in school cafeterias, replacing metal detectors with “mood detectors,” namely, student hall monitors who assess kids as they come to school to see if they’re dangerous and getting more toilet paper into schools (as though kids can’t come up with all kinds of uses for toilet paper beyond what schools buy it for).

There’s even a quote from the founder of this movement which might cause an aneurism among our more susceptible readers…

“I say to the kids, ‘You live in a country where people don’t respect kids. If we’re trying to give dignity to your voice, we have to give you something to talk about where you are the stone-cold expert. There is no one on Earth who can say you’re not an expert on schools.’”

So it’s hardly a surprise when one of these child abusers, who learned her craft at Middlebury College in Vermont and describes herself as a “community organizer,” decides to leverage the oil spill into an assault on the industry in South Louisiana which offers perhaps the most lucrative employment opportunities available to kids in Orleans schools. Meet Mallory Falk…

“We know “oil-free schools” sounds easy to dismiss because it’s such a big vision,” notes Mallory Falk, a recent Middlebury College graduate and community organizer who came to New Orleans to work with the Rethinkers. “That is why our focus over the coming year is to come up with realistic, practical ways for schools to move toward being oil-free.”

This year, for example, they have offered four simple suggestions: Start measuring energy waste (including air conditioners set too high and lights left on unnecessarily), form student green teams to identify ways to reduce waste and convince other kids to get with the program, eliminate the use of incandescent light bulbs, and recycle.

A simple beginning, but stay tuned. The Rethinkers plan to meet throughout the new school year to develop more specifics. And they have already received a grant from the U.S. Green Building Council to film a documentary about their experience.

It’s bad enough that these people are sinking their hooks into school kids in the first place. What’s worse – unforgiveably so – is that the brains they’re poisoning with the ridiculous and poisonous ideas they’re pushing are Orleans public school kids. These are overwhelmingly at-risk students; Orleans is beginning to see a renaissance in education thanks to the advent of school choice and competition since Katrina, but dropout rates are still high and test scores are still low. And Orleans public school kids are still very economically disadvantaged, still in desperate need of marketable skills and still disproportionately lacking in strong parental guidance.

In other words, while it would be bad enough if kids in Montgomery County, Maryland or Beverly Hills were subjected to left-wing pablum like the Rethinkers push, they’re doing this to some of the most vulnerable children in America.

These kids are 12, 13 and 14 years old. Before attempting to turn them into environmentalist freaks, has this cabal insured that they read at grade level? Can they certify their charges in basic math? Can these kids find Omaha on a map? Do they know the difference between a federalist and an anti-federalist?

Didn’t think so.

SOURCE






Many British school buildings not fit for purpose, say teachers

More than one in four teachers says their school buildings are not fit for learning, according to a new survey. A quarter of teachers said the design of their classrooms was "poor" and did not provide an environment suitable for lessons, with bad ventilation, lighting and layout.

More than nine in ten agreed that pupils' behaviour is influenced by the school environment, according to the poll of 503 teachers, with more than half saying their surroundings had a negative impact.

The poll came days after hundreds of teachers, parents and pupils staged a protest at Parliament against the government's decision to axe a £55 billion school rebuilding programme.

The decision has infuriated schools, with more than 700 told they will be denied funding for building projects promised by the previous government.

Teachers surveyed by the Teachers Support Network and the British Council for School Environments (BCSE), with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said many school buildings lacked space for students to relax and criticised classrooms for being too small and uninspiring.

One teacher told researchers: "We currently have 250 more students in our school than we were designed to accommodate."

Others raised concerns about lavatory facilities, with one teacher commenting: "Students are very vocal about inadequate toilet facilities, which makes them feel unrespected."

BCSE chief executive Ty Goddard said: "The survey shows school environments matter. Money invested in school buildings is an investment in teachers and children, not a wasted luxury. We need professional environments which support our teachers to do their jobs."

Julian Stanley, chief executive of the Teacher Support Network, added: "Continued long-term investment to improve many of the dilapidated school premises that still exist across the UK must surely be a wise use of tax payers' money, benefiting communities for generations to come."

SOURCE



25 July, 2010

Federal attack on for-profit colleges lighter than expected

Somebody has to cater for the generally low-income students who have few other options. New rule: Programs would lose their eligibility if more than 65 percent of former students failed to pay the principal on federal loans, and if their graduates' debt was more than 30 percent of discretionary income and 12 percent of total income. Investors think that most for-profit schools can live with that

For-profit colleges are booming as the unemployed turn to education, but some members of Congress and Obama administration officials say they are growing at the expense of taxpayers and that students are often exploited.

The average profit among such publicly traded higher education companies soared to $229 million in 2009, up from $150 million the year before, with the lion's share of their revenue coming from federal student aid. For example, federal dollars accounted for 86% of revenue at the University of Phoenix, which has more than 458,000 students.

But according to a recent report issued by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the public's money is often not well spent on the schools. The colleges cater to low-income and minority students often working online with little supervision, yet they charge on average twice as much as public universities charge in-state students.

Investigators believe a high proportion of students drop out, and those who do graduate find their money wasted because their programs are not accredited. Students at for-profit colleges borrow more and are more likely to default on their loans, furthering taxpayer losses.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 30% of students who borrowed from the federal government to attend four-year for-profit institutions have defaulted since 1995. Roughly 15% of students at public four-year colleges and 13.6% at private nonprofit four-year colleges have defaulted since then, the Chronicle reported.

The Department of Education on Friday moved to rein in some for-profit firms with a proposal that would cut off federal student aid to individual programs within colleges that have a high proportion of students who cannot repay their loans after leaving.

"Some proprietary schools have profited and prospered, but their students haven't," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. "These schools — and their investors — benefit from billions of dollars in subsidies from taxpayers, and in return taxpayers have a right to know that these programs are providing solid preparation for a job."

The proposed regulation, less stringent than originally expected, could put out of business 5% of for-profit programs, a number that critics of the colleges said was not high enough.

"At first glance, the regulation appears to set a low bar," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate panel that issued the report, said in a statement Friday. "I will be looking closely at this rule to ensure that it goes far enough to protect the $23 billion in federal aid to for-profit schools each year."

Harkin and a chorus of Senate Democrats are leading the call for government to step up regulation of for-profit colleges, saying it must ensure that tax dollars are not wasted and students are not cheated.

But Harris Miller, president of the Career College Assn., which represents for-profit schools, said the schools have a special challenge. "We have millions of students who are not even in the educational system who have been told, 'You're not college material,' " Miller said. "Somebody has to reach out to those people."

Corinthian Colleges spokesman Kent Jenkins said the disproportionate default rate was a consequence of the large number of low-income students in the programs. Reaching low-income students requires the schools to run high advertising budgets, he added. The Senate panel report noted that the schools devote about a third of their budgets to advertising.

The report acknowledges that President Obama's goal of doubling the number of U.S. college graduates by 2020 may hinge on for-profit colleges, which are able to expand faster than public colleges and universities. After a series of painful cuts to the University of California and California State University systems last summer, enrollment at for-profit colleges in California shot up 20%.

Stephen Burd, an education policy expert at the New America Foundation, said the scrutiny is long overdue, but lawmakers will have to contend with the industry's "Teflon lobby." Many concerns have been raised about for-profit colleges, but nothing has stuck, he said. "For-profit college lobbyists are accustomed to flexing their muscles on Capitol Hill and getting their way — no matter how much controversy is swirling around their schools," he said.

Although for-profit colleges were once mom-and-pop operations, the 14 publicly traded institutions enroll 1.4 million students, up from fewer than 200,000 in 1998, according to the Senate committee report. Kathleen Tighe, inspector general for the Department of Education, testified at the panel's June 24 hearing that 70% of the department's investigations involve for-profit colleges, many of which have been found guilty of falsifying student information to obtain more federal funds.

Tighe also testified that she is concerned about the rapid expansion of online programs in recent years because students are eligible for the same amount of federal aid but it is more difficult to track their progress — a potential recipe for fraud.

SOURCE






Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees

The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.

“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”

While access to college has been the major concern in recent decades, over the last year, college completion, too, has become a leading item on the national agenda. Last July, President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative, calling for five million more college graduates by 2020, to help the United States again lead the world in educational attainment.

This month, on becoming chairman of the National Governors Association, Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia announced that he would lead a college-completion initiative.

In May, Grantmakers for Education, an organization for those who make gifts to educational programs, convened a group of philanthropists and policy experts to talk about how to bolster college-completion rates.

“We spend a fortune recruiting freshmen but forget to recruit sophomores,” Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation, said at the meeting.

In April, Melinda Gates gave a speech at the American Association of Community Colleges convention, urging community college officials to lead the way on college completion and pledging that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would contribute up to $110 million to improve remedial programs, in an effort to increase graduation rates.

“The stars are aligning in a way that gives me some hope,” said William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, who hosted the Washington discussion along with Mr. Caperton. “This is a problem that’s been around for too long. But now there’s beginning to emerge a focus of attention and activity that quite frankly we haven’t had till now.”

Mr. Kirwan said that the United States had fallen behind other countries over several decades.

“We led the world in the 1980s, but we didn’t build from there,” he said. “If you look at people 60 and over, about 39-40 percent have college degrees, and if you look at young people, too, about 39-40 percent have college degrees. Meanwhile, other countries have passed us by.”

Canada now leads the world in educational attainment, with about 56 percent of its young adults having earned at least associate’s degrees in 2007, compared with only 40 percent of those in the United States. (The United States’ rate has since risen slightly.)

While almost 70 percent of high school graduates in the United States enroll in college within two years of graduating, only about 57 percent of students who enroll in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six years, and fewer than 25 percent of students who begin at a community college graduate with an associate’s degree within three years.

The problem is even worse for low-income students and minorities: only 30 percent of African-Americans ages 25-34, and less than 20 percent of Latinos in that age group, have an associate’s degree or higher. And students from the highest income families are almost eight times as likely as those from the lowest income families to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24.

The problem begins long before college, according to the report released Thursday.

“You can’t address college completion if you don’t do something about K-12 education,” Mr. Kirwan said.

The group’s first five recommendations all concern K-12 education, calling for more state-financed preschool programs, better high school and middle school college counseling, dropout prevention programs, an alignment with international curricular standards and improved teacher quality. College costs were also implicated, with recommendations for more need-based financial aid, and further efforts to keep college affordable.

SOURCE




Cutting British education quangos 'could save £500m'

Cutting funding to education quangos could save the government more than £500 million a year, a report has claimed. Many quangos – quasi non-governmental organisations – waste taxpayers' money because their services are widely available in the private sector while others spend millions on programmes of questionable value, the study said.

Savings of £520 million could be made by cutting funding for the government-funded bodies, which are designed to support the education system, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

The report comes after 700 schools were told that building projects promised to them by the previous government would have to be scrapped due to a lack of funding.

Among the potential savings identified by the CIPD was the £146 million annual budget for the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), a body offering free consultancy to course providers such as colleges.

Analysts said the spending of £6.5 million on delivering awards for "outstanding providers and practitioners" and £1 million on promoting healthy life styles within further education "bring into doubt how effectively their resources are being used."

The LSIS was also guilty of "crowding out" private companies which could offer the same service, and was "merely using public funds to boost the performance of colleges", the report added.

Other annual savings included: £51 million from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), which the government has pledged to close down; £19 million from Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK), a representative body for the skills sector; £7 million from the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), which promotes adult learning; and £89 million from Regional Development Agencies, which are to be scrapped and replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships under government proposals.

The report concluded: "Even though they are responsible for substantial budgets, the quangos have seldom, if ever, been asked to justify their budgets or outline their contribution to the economy and society as a whole.

"This absence of an accountability mechanism appears to have allowed many quangos to continue their work without being expected to justify their existence and performance."

Tom Richmond, Policy Adviser on Skills, CIPD, said: "With so much money at stake and with imminent spending reductions across many government departments, the role, purpose and operations of each individual quango must therefore be revisited as a matter of urgency."

SOURCE



24 July, 2010

Christian beliefs forbidden at Augusta State University?

Late yesterday afternoon, the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed a lawsuit on behalf of Augusta State University counseling student Jennifer Keeton. Her tale has to be read to be believed. Essentially, the facts are as follows.

Jennifer is a devout Christian and holds biblically orthodox views regarding sexual morality. In the context of classroom discussions of homosexual behavior, she expressed her Christian views, and has also shared those views with her classmates outside of class. She has stated, for example, that she believes that sexual behavior is the result of personal choice rather than an inevitability arising from deterministic forces.

These thoughts have displeased the counseling department, and it has expressed that displeasure in writing:

Another equally important question that has arisen over the last two semesters is Jen’s ability to be a multiculturally competent counselor, particularly with regard to working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (GLBTQ) populations. Jen has voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian “lifestyle.” She stated in one paper that she believes GLBTQ “lifestyles” to be identity confusion. This was during her enrollment in the Diversity Sensitivity course and after the presentation on GLBTQ populations....

Faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Miss Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations, and she has tried to convince other students to support and believe her views.

To alter Jennifer’s views, the faculty imposed a “remediation plan,” that included “diversity sensitivity training,” required Jennifer to read at least ten articles in peer-reviewed journals that “pertain to improving counseling effectiveness with GLBTQ populations,” and (my personal favorite) required that she “increase exposure and interaction with gay populations,” including a suggestion that she attend the “Gay Pride Parade in Augusta.”

As she did all these things, Jennifer was required to submit a monthly two-page “reflection paper” to describe how “her study has influenced her beliefs.” Counseling faculty would then decide, based on these “reflections” and two in-person meetings, whether she should continue in the program.
Her “remediation plan” ends with the ominous warning: “Please note that failure to complete all elements of the remediation plan will result in dismissal from the Counselor Education Program.”

It’s simply stunning that state officials mandate that students change their religious beliefs. It’s egregious enough that out-of-class speech can be punished with a “remediation plan,” but to reach into a student’s very heart and soul to determine whether they’re — in essence — a good enough person to graduate? The state hasn’t just stepped over the line, it’s jumped across with both feet.

Unfortunately, as numerous other cases from the fields of education, social work, and counseling demonstrate, our public universities often see themselves high priests of the helping professions, where there is only one way to view key moral issues regarding sexuality, behavior, and identity. Yet there is room for disagreement. There is room for a Christian voice in the counseling profession.

SOURCE







Official British schools body warns sex lessons are leaving out marriage

Schools are teaching pupils all they need to know about the biology of sex but place little emphasis on the importance of marriage and loving relationships, Ofsted inspectors warn today.

Sex education lessons are marred by teachers’ embarrassment and a failure to discuss the possibility that you can ‘say no’ to intercourse.

One in three secondary schools is failing to provide good quality teaching in personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) which includes lessons on sex, drugs and alcohol, Ofsted warns in a report.

Inspectors criticise a failure in many schools to consult parents about the content and timing of lessons despite their sensitive nature.

Some lessons used ‘inappropriate resources’ and failed to match work to pupils’ maturity, suggesting some are exposed to materials too advanced for their age.

Ofsted suggests that schools use storylines from popular TV dramas as a starting point for some lessons. Pupils may need help to ‘make sense of ’ sensitive scenes they have seen, it is claimed.

ONE IN FIVE 'PREGNANT BY THE AGE OF 18'

One in five sexually-active teenage girls has been pregnant by the age of 18, shocking figures revealed yesterday.

The first survey of its kind found that 83 per cent of girls have lost their virginity by this age and 18 per cent of these youngsters have been pregnant at least once.

About half chose to keep their babies and more than a third had an abortion, according to the Government survey. A further 18 per cent reported having had a miscarriage.

Incredibly, more than 1,300 18-year-old girls have been pregnant three times.

Previous research has shown that girls feel they are under increasing pressure to have sex before they are ready, partly because of sexy images projected in marketing and teen magazines.

The statistics from this latest study show more than a quarter of girls said they had not waited until the age of consent and 27 per cent of 4,298 girls questioned for the study had lost their virginity by the time they turned 16.

The data once again reignites the controversy over Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Western Europe, and Labour’s decade of failure to tackle the problem. Figures released earlier this year revealed there were more pregnancies among girls under 18 in England in 2008 than there were in 2001.

Family values campaigners have long warned that easy access to contraception and poor quality sex education which fails to encourage teenagers to say ‘no’ are fuelling the problem.

The survey shows how education plays an important role for youngsters as they are significantly less likely to have been pregnant by 18 if they did well at school and their parents have degrees. Children who live with both parents are half as likely to engage in underage sex according to the study, published by the Department for Education.

The research relied on girls answering truthfully and there is no way of verifying their responses.

More HERE






Australia's Leftist government wants to bring back compulsory unionism for students

And from long experience we know that a lot of the money raised will be spent on far-Left causes that few students agree with

THE Education Minister, Simon Crean, has promised a re-elected Labor government would try again to change the law to allow universities to charge students compulsory fees to pay for sporting facilities, health clinics and other non-academic amenities.

Labor introduced legislation last year to allow universities to charge students up to $250 a year to fund services such as childcare, counselling and career guidance, but it was blocked in the Senate by the Coalition and the Family First senator, Steve Fielding.

Mr Crean told the Herald such services were ''integral to giving people the opportunity to undertake a university education'' and he called upon the Coalition to reconsider its position.

''The opposition has an ideological bent against this concept. They're called student union fees. They see union, they go ballistic,'' he said.

The proposals were aimed at restoring services lost from campuses after the Howard government outlawed compulsory student union fees in 2005, stripping an estimated $170 million a year from student services budgets.

The opposition education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, said it would continue to oppose Labor's plans.

But the Coalition may not be able to block the legislation if, as is widely tipped, the Greens win the balance of power in the Senate. The Greens education spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, said it must be a priority in the new parliament.

The president of the National Union of Students, Carla Drakeford, said after waiting for Labor to fulfil its 2007 promise, students would expect a re-elected Labor government to make the change within six months. She said the NUS would lobby the Greens to amend the legislation, to require universities to pass on some of the money to student unions.

SOURCE



23 July, 2010

Bright lights, bad teaching

Teachers’ unions on the big-screen

Facing thousands of worried members at the annual convention of the National Education Association on July 3, the head of the nation’s largest teachers’ union sounded a little whiny.

“Today, our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment that I have ever experienced,” said Dennis Van Roekel, the NEA’s president.

Leaving aside the bizarre suggestion that there is burgeoning anti-student sentiment in America, Roekel’s concerns are well-founded: For the first time in living memory, poor-performing teachers and the unions that protect them are under real scrutiny. So much so that even documentarians—the most liberal enclave of the most liberal institution (the entertainment-industrial complex) in American society— are now taking aim at union excesses.

Theaters across the country have seen an explosion of films that cast a critical eye on public schools and the reasons for their failures. First up was The Cartel, a look at the impact teachers’ unions have had on schools in New Jersey. Bob Bowdon’s documentary betrays its limited budget​—it’s the roughest-looking of the new releases​— but successfully drives home the fact that throwing money at the problem of our public schools will solve nothing: New Jersey has one of the highest per capita rates of spending on education in the country. Governor Chris Christie has taken this lesson to heart; he is waging a fierce battle to improve New Jersey’s failing public schools while also tamping down runaway costs.

Currently in theaters is The Lottery, an alternately heartbreaking and infuriating work. Madeleine Sackler follows a quartet of students as they enter a lottery to attend a charter school in New York City. Heartbreaking are the scenes of parents who want little more than the chance for their kids to get a decent education; infuriating are the scenes of union-organized protests against charter schools (including a guest appearance from ACORN rabble-rousers), local politicians firmly in the pocket of the city’s unions railing against charter schools, and statistics underscoring how hard it is to fire terrible teachers.

Union leaders have said they are just as frustrated by lousy teachers as parents are and just as committed to getting underperforming educators out of the classroom. This would inspire laughter if it weren’t so maddening: Citing Department of Education statistics, The Lottery reports that in the 2006-07 school year only 10 of 55,000 tenured teachers were fired from New York City’s public schools at a cost of $250,000 per removal. It’s a problem we see across the nation: Whereas one in 57 doctors loses their license and one in 97 lawyers, only one in 2,500 tenured teachers is ever removed from the classroom.

That last statistic comes from Waiting for “Superman,” arguably the most important of the new releases. Directed by Davis Guggenheim—the Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth—it was the Centerpiece Screening at Silverdocs, an important film festival for documentarians. Guggenheim unloads on teachers’ unions with both barrels in his film, lambasting them for protecting terrible teachers at the expense of students and for stymying efforts to improve the schoolhouses they have captured.

Like The Lottery, Waiting for “Superman” follows a group of schoolchildren vying for spots in charter schools. But Guggenheim’s work is broader and more ambitious; he tackles school districts across the country, in both urban and suburban areas.

Time and again, Guggenheim and the reformers he interviews come back to the troubling aspects of teacher tenure. Like its cousin in higher education, tenure is a guarantee of employment for life. Unlike in higher education, however, tenure is handed out to virtually every public school teacher after a short wait, typically two to three years. When layoffs occur, school districts are forced to operate on a “last hired, first fired” basis instead of deciding who to keep based on merit. The one-two combo of tenure and seniority has made it almost impossible to fire poor teachers.

More HERE





Score 47% for an A: Watchdog says standards are still too low in British high school science exams

Teenagers have gained A grades in GCSE science despite scoring less than 50 per cent, the exams watchdog revealed yesterday. In a damning report, Ofqual said standards were still 'too low' in the subject and questions not difficult enough despite a warning to exam boards to toughen up their papers.

The watchdog found evidence of over-reliance on multiple choice and questions that pointed candidates towards the answer instead of testing scientific knowledge.

On some papers, 'grade boundaries were too low to ensure candidates showed a satisfactory range of knowledge and understanding'. One exam board gave a pupil a C grade GCSE despite scoring only 20 per cent and another an A after getting 47 per cent in a paper.

Too many questions placed 'low demands' on pupils and failed to provide a 'sufficient challenge' for the most able.

Ofqual reserved its harshest criticism for exams set by two boards: OCR and Edexcel. They awarded significantly higher proportions of A and C grades than other boards and statistical indicators would warrant.

But it declined to name the boards which had allowed marks of 47 per cent for an A grade and 20 per cent for a C grade.

Ofqual first warned about standards in GCSE science in March last year, stating that the courses gave 'serious cause for concern'. Boards were ordered to make changes and more challenging papers were prepared for use in September this year. But these were rejected for still being too easy, forcing exam boards to try again.

Today's report, carried out in collaboration with DCELLS, the Welsh watchdog, said: 'The findings of this investigation did not differ significantly from those found in previous investigations, thus adding further evidence that standards are currentlytoo low in GCSE science and additional science qualifications.'
Enlarge Questions.jpg

Ofqual chief executive Isabel Nisbet said: 'There is still some way to go to ensure that these important qualifications meet the high standards that Ofqual requires.'

An OCR spokesman said: ' Following Ofqual's 2008 scrutiny, like all boards, OCR made some changes to science examination papers but these did not affect the papers for the 2009 series, which were the subject of this report. 'The first series in which examination papers were issued with a revised structure was January 2010.'

An Edexcel spokesman said: 'We are committed to ensuring GCSE science remains a credible, highly recognised qualification.'

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: 'It is worrying Ofqual has found that such weaknesses remained in GCSE sciences last year. 'We want all qualifications to be as rigorous as possible and as good as any in the world.'

SOURCE





Australia: Young should get research grants priority

I can see some point in this. Scientists are at their most original and open-minded in their youth. After about 30 they tend to ossify mentally

AFFIRMATIVE action for young research-grant applicants is among the recommendations of a report on ways to drive international collaborative research. The report, Australia's International Research Collaboration, also calls for action to streamline the processing of visa applications from overseas academics sponsored to work here.

The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation, which wrote the report, was told that it could take up to a year for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to process visa applications, and some applications had been rejected. But the department defended its performance.

The report comes as Australia, which produces less than 3 per cent of the world's knowledge, moves to embed itself more deeply in the international scientific community in an increasingly globalised world.

The committee considered written submissions and evidence given in public hearings by government, academe, industry and embassies. The report identified problems facing early career scientists as some of the biggest obstacles to international collaboration.

Young scientists, up against researchers with proven track records, had trouble getting their projects funded. "Research funding has been found to have the tendency to invite further funding," the report says. "As research continues, and publication and citations increase, researchers are more likely to be successful in funding rounds, but many younger early-career researchers have found it difficult to break into the funding regime."

The report recommends allocating 10 per cent of Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council grants to early-career researchers who are first-time award winners.

Meanwhile, some "non-scientists viewed overseas travel . . . as an indulgence", the committee heard. Many scientists, especially those at the start of their careers, could not fund travel to forge links with colleagues overseas and use offshore facilities. The committee called for a small-grants scheme to support the travel expenses of early-career scientists who had won time on foreign instruments.

It also expressed concern about delays in the processing of visa applications. "The witnesses were upset that . . . dependable academics, who were coming to Australia only to work on research projects and were no risk of overstaying, had their applications rejected," the report says. Some eminent researchers and academics have refused to come back to Australia after experiencing difficulties in getting to the country in the first instance, it found.

But the Department of Immigration and Citizenship told the inquiry that cases of long delays were rare and many universities had been using the wrong visa sub-class.

The report also expresses concern about uncertainty surrounding the international science linkages program. The program, which supports scientists who have joined forces with colleagues overseas on projects, is under review, and due to wind up at the end of the financial year, the report says.

The committee recommended that the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research announce a successor program as soon as possible.

The Australian Academy of Science, which spearheaded a campaign on international collaboration, welcomed the report. The government is due to respond to the report in September.

SOURCE



22 July, 2010

Bias and Bigotry in America's Academia

Pat Buchanan

A decade ago, activist Ron Unz conducted a study of the ethnic and religious composition of the student body at Harvard. Blacks and Hispanics, Unz found, were then being admitted to his alma mater in numbers approaching their share of the population.

And who were the most underrepresented Americans at Harvard? White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-thirds of the U.S. population then, they had dropped to one-fourth of the student body.

Comes now a more scientific study from Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford to confirm that a deep bias against the white conservative and Christian young of America is pervasive at America's elite colleges and Ivy League schools.

The Espenshade-Radford study "draws from ... the National Study of College Experience ... gathered from eight highly competitive private colleges and universities (entering freshman SAT scores: 1360)," writes Princeton Professor Russell K. Nieli, who has summarized the findings:

Elite college admissions officers may prattle about "diversity," but what they mean is the African-American contingent on campus should be 5 percent to 7 percent, with Hispanics about as numerous. However, "an estimated 40-50 of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants," who never suffered segregation or Jim Crow.

To achieve even these percentages, however, the discrimination against white and Asian applicants, because of the color of their skin and where their ancestors came from, is astonishing.

As Nieli puts it, "Being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white ... equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1,600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310-point SAT advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points."

"To have the same chance of gaining admission as a black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550."

Was this what the civil rights revolution was all about -- requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive?

What are the historic and moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents came from Poland and Vietnam?

There is yet another form of bigotry prevalent among our academic elite that is a throwback to the snobbery of the WASPs of yesterday. While Ivy League recruiters prefer working-class to middle-class black kids with the same test scores, the reverse is true with white kids.

White kids from poor families who score as well as white kids from wealthy families -- think George W. Bush -- not only get no break, they seem to be the most undesirable and unwanted of all students.

Though elite schools give points to applicants for extracurricular activities, especially for leadership roles and honors, writes Nieli, if you played a lead role in Future Farmers of America, the 4-H Clubs or junior ROTC, leave it off your resume or you may just be blackballed. "Excelling in these activities is 'associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds on admissions.'"

Writes Nieli, there seems an unwritten admissions rule at America's elite schools: "Poor Whites Need Not Apply."

For admissions officers at our top private and public schools, diversity is "a code word" for particular prejudices.

For these schools are not interested in a diversity that would include "born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower- and middle-class Catholics, working class 'white ethnics,' social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children or older students just starting into college and raising children."

"Students in these categories," writes Nieli, "are often very rare at the most competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League."

"Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers" at the elite schools. They are rarely accepted. Lower-class Hispanics and blacks are eight to 10 times more likely to get in with the same scores.

That such bigotry is pervasive in 2010 at institutions that preen about how progressive they are is disgusting. That a GOP which purports to represents Middle America, whose young are bearing the brunt of this bigotry, has remained largely silent is shameful.

Many of these elite public and private colleges and universities benefit from U.S. tax dollars through student loans and direct grants. The future flow of those tax dollars should be made contingent on Harvard and Yale ending racial practices that went out at Little Rock Central High in 1957.

SOURCE







Slipped standards in NY

New York State education officials acknowledged on Monday that their standardized exams had become easier to pass over the last four years and said they would recalibrate the scoring for tests taken this spring, which is almost certain to mean thousands more students will fail.

While scores spiked significantly across the state at every grade level, there were no similar gains on other measurements, including national exams, they said.

“The only possible conclusion is that something strange has happened to our test,” David M. Steiner, the education commissioner, said during a Board of Regents meeting in Albany. “The word ‘proficient’ should tell you something, and right now that is not the case on our state tests.”

Large jumps in the passing rates, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg trumpeted in his re-election campaign last year, led to criticism that the tests had become too easy.

The state agreed to have researchers at Harvard University analyze the scores and compare them with results on national exams and Regents tests, the subject exams that high school students are required to take for graduation. Those researchers found that students who received a passing grade on the state eighth-grade math exam, for example, had a one-in-three chance of scoring highly enough on the math Regents test in high school to be considered prepared for college math.

State math and English exams, which are given to all third through eighth graders, have historically been easier to pass than national math and English exams, which are given to a sampling of fourth and eighth graders around the United States.

But according to the Harvard researchers, the New York state exams have become even easier in comparison with the national exams: students who received the minimum score to pass the state math tests in 2007 were in the 36th percentile of all students nationally, but in 2009 they had dropped to the 19th percentile.

“That is a huge, massive difference,” Dr. Steiner said.

The tests are developed by CTB/McGraw-Hill and overseen by the State Education Department and its volunteer technical advisory group, which is made up of several testing experts.

Dr. Steiner, who became education commissioner a year ago, said that the exams had tested a narrow part of the curriculum, particularly in math, and that questions were often repeated year to year, with a few details changed, so that a student who had taken a practice test — as many teachers have their students do — were likely to do well.

“It is very likely that some of the state’s progress was illusory,” said Daniel Koretz, the Harvard testing expert who led the research. “You can have exaggerated progress over all that creates very high pass rates. It doesn’t seem logical to call those kids proficient.”

The state said it had begun to include a broader range of topics on its tests, making the questions less predictable. Dr. Steiner refused to say what the passing scores would be for the tests this year but said the numbers would be a “major shift.” Last year, 77 percent of students statewide were deemed proficient in English, up from 62 percent in 2006; 86 percent passed the math test, compared with 66 percent three years earlier. The scores this year are expected to be released at the end of the month.

The changes are likely to lower the passing rates significantly all over the state, particularly in districts and schools in large urban cities. Superintendents in Buffalo and Syracuse are criticizing the changes, saying that the move to raise the passing scores is akin to moving goalposts.

“We’ve lost sight of the purpose of the test — it’s supposed to show you’ve mastered a certain skill at a certain time,” said Daniel G. Lowengard, the superintendent in Syracuse.

“I think it’s unfair to teachers to say thank you very much, you’ve been doing this work for the last three or four years, and now that your kids are passing, all of sudden we’re going to call a B a C and call a C a D.”

But in New York City, where the scores are used for things like letter grades assigned to schools and teacher and principal bonus pay, Chancellor Joel I. Klein said he supported the changes.

“We’ve said a million times we support higher standards,” he said. “It will make all of us raise the bar.”

SOURCE






Australia: Now some want to dumb down doctorates

All other educational qualifications have been dumbed down so I suppose this was inevitable

THE Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies has voiced opposition to plans by the universities of Melbourne and WA to tag as doctorates their new masters-level degrees in health disciplines.

Council convenor Helene Marsh, dean of graduate research at James Cook University, said the universities' plans to badge professional masters qualifications as doctorates would "demean" the PhD.

She warned that the market for masters degree programs already suffers from wide variations in what constitutes a masters, and that the sector shouldn't let the same problem hit doctorates.

Professor Marsh said the council's opposition was in line with its guidelines that all its members had agreed to, including members from Melbourne and UWA.

The council's intervention comes just ahead of an August 2 roundtable in Sydney of vice-chancellors organised by Universities Australia to try to agree on a unified sectoral position on doctorates. It follows the Australian Qualifications Framework's decision to reject Melbourne's plans.

"The council doesn't support plans by any Australian university to give degrees which do not include the equivalent of at least two years of original research the status of a doctorate," Professor Marsh said in a letter to the HES.

"We certainly don't consider it appropriate for masters-level degrees to be badged as doctorates, irrespective of whether the degree entitles the graduate to the honorific title of Dr," she said.

The Australian Technology Network of universities has signalled its primary concern will be to protect the standing of doctorate qualifications.

"The ATN believes it is paramount for Australia to protect the stature of the doctorate to maintain our international standing of the qualifications so many people have worked hard to get," ATN chairman Ross Milbourne said in a statement to the HES.

La Trobe University vice-chancellor Paul Johnson said he is "agnostic" on the issue, but he noted that while the Melbourne and UWA plans are supported by US practice, they are out of step with the Bologna process in Europe.

Professor Johnson said the key problem in the debate over different masters-level qualifications was that the sector lacked agreed exit capabilities against which to measure qualifications.

"If we could all agree clear indications of exit capabilities we wouldn't be having this current stoush," he said.

Professor Marsh said original and significant research is the "fundamental defining characteristic" of doctoral degrees.

"The council doesn't accept that a doctorate can be earned solely or substantially on the basis of coursework. "Indeed, the council believes that coursework within a doctorate should be for research education, whether this is directed towards making a significant contribution to knowledge for the discipline or to professional practice."

SOURCE



21 July, 2010

Small-minded and ineffectual Wisconsin school

Police called to arrest kid over free lunch disagreement

Milwaukee police have dropped a theft citation against a 15-year-old accused of stealing a chicken nugget meal from his school cafeteria.

Police Chief David Banaszynski said the case against Adam Hernandez, who was handcuffed, photographed and fingerprinted after Shorewood High School officials accused him of stealing the lunch, was dropped with the agreement of the school principal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Tuesday.

"It shouldn't have gone this far. There are other means and methods to handle this kind of situation," Banaszynski said.

Hernandez, who had been scheduled to go to trial Tuesday, said he did not steal the food, but it was given to him by a friend enrolled in the free lunch program.

SOURCE




The celebrity tattoos that have sparked a Latin craze among British schoolchildren

Celebrity Latin tattoos may be fuelling a revival of the ancient language in schools, it emerged today. Pupils are increasingly demanding to study the subject, according to an exam board, as tattooed celebrities such as David Beckham and Angelina Jolie enhance Latin's profile.

The OCR exam board today launched a new Latin qualification aimed at teenagers as secondary schools increasingly offer the subject, either during the curriculum or after-hours.

But examiners urged pupils not to emulate model Danielle Lloyd, whose Latin tattoo is riddled with errors. While Beckham and Jolie's Latin inscriptions are grammatically correct, Lloyd's is meaningless, they said. Her tattoo, 'Quis attero mihi tantum planto mihi validus', which is etched on to her shoulder, is intended to translate as 'To diminish me will only make me stronger'. But experts say the words in fact translate into something more akin to 'Who I wear away for me only for me strong'.

Beckham, on the other hand, gets full marks for his two Latin tattoos. The footballer has 'Ut Amem Et Foveam' (meaning 'So that I love and cherish') inscribed on his left forearm and 'Perfectio In Spiritu' (meaning 'Perfection in spirit') on his right.

Meanwhile Jolie chose 'Quod me nutrit me destruit', which means 'What nourishes me also destroys me'.

Other celebrities embracing the trend include actor Colin Farrell, who has 'Carpe Diem' or 'Seize the day' inscribed on his left forearm.

The OCR exam board said schools and youngsters were aware of the continuing influence of Latin and had expressed an interest in a qualification to recognise basic achievement in the subject.

The new 'Entry Level Certificate in Latin' is a qualification in its own right or could be taken as a precursor to a GCSE or A-level in Latin. It is likely to be taken by 13 to 17-year-olds.

It follows a surge in the number of secondary schools offering Latin over the past decade. Surveys suggest that one in five secondaries now teaches the subject, including several hundred comprehensives. A computer-based Latin course backed by Cambridge University is said to have made it easier for schools to offer Latin. The team behind the project say schools are held back by a lack of access to Latin, rather than a lack of interest in it.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London and a long-standing advocate of Latin, said: 'I'm delighted that OCR are introducing the first ever Entry Level Qualification in Latin. 'It proves how much demand there is for this great subject and will provide the perfect platform for the next generation of classicists.'

Students will be introduced to the Latin language, including a list of 100 Latin words. They will also study aspects of Roman culture.

OCR said the continuing influence of Latin in day-to-day life could be seen in baby naming. It said three of the four top girls' names have Latin origins - Olivia (from Latin 'Oliva' meaning Olive), Emily (from the Latin 'Aemilianus', a Latin family name) and the Grace (from Latin 'Gratia', meaning goodwill or kindness).

Paul Dodd, qualifications manager for languages and literature at OCR, said: 'Latin vocabulary has had a rich and lasting influence on English, as well as being the foundation for modern day Spanish, French and Italian. 'Latin language and culture have played a major part in shaping our own intellectual, literary, artistic and political traditions.

'Many schools already teach Latin alongside other subjects but have no way of formally recognising their learners' achievements below GCSE. 'Our new Entry Level qualification provides a good bridge to further attainment as well as providing a way of recognising the skills learned.'

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Australia: ALL schoolchildren "require opportunities to engage in developmentally appropriate sex and sexuality exploration"??

We all know by now that early-age sex education has coincided with an increase in juvenile sexual activity but this would seem to positively encourage it

QUEENSLAND teachers have been told that all children "require opportunities to engage in developmentally appropriate sex and sexuality exploration".

A professional development series run by Education Queensland and Queensland Health, designed to help teachers cope with the growing problem, also questioned whether parents should be told about some incidents because of the distress it caused.

Child welfare group Bravehearts and the State Opposition claimed the information was "frightening" and "concerning" and came at a time of exponential growth in young children acting sexually towards their peers.

Former Education Queensland student services executive director Leith Sterling acknowledged some sexualised behaviour policies had been unclear and said Education Queensland was considering "embedding" protective behaviours in the curriculum.

Teachers were told experimental sexual play was normal but if a child could not be easily diverted, or had used aggression, it was a problem.

Prep children masturbating in class was considered to be developmentally appropriate given there was no concerning context. An example of two Prep children mutually taking part in the act prompted one health professional to ask teachers whether it was worth telling parents, if the children could be diverted from the activity.

The session was run last year with Education Queensland initially refusing to provide public access to it. Information was released only after a Right to Information application.

The department's policies have since come under question after it was revealed year one and two boys had allegedly performed sex acts on young girls at one state school which had 18 allegations of sexualised behaviour among pupils last year – 11 of them reported to police last year.

Education Queensland director-general Lyn McKenzie said there were systems in place to help staff deal with the issue and engage with parents on any incident where student welfare was a concern.

An Education Queensland spokesman said the claim that "all children require opportunities to engage in developmentally appropriate sex and sexuality exploration" was not the department's policy and "expert" opinion only.

But Bravehearts executive director Hetty Johnston said she found the statement frightening as the number of reported incidents was "growing exponentially".

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20 July, 2010

MUSLIM country Bans Full Face Veils in Universities

Syria's education minister has issued a decree banning women on university campuses from wearing veils that cover their faces. The decision appears to be drawing fire from some quarters and praise from others.

Syrian Minister of Higher Education Ghaith Barakat says the decision to ban women wearing the "niqab" from entering university campuses was taken "at the request of a number of parents." Those parents, he said, do not want their children to be educated in an "environment of extremism."

The minister's decree follows a decision last month to dismiss 1200 Syrian school teachers who wear the face veil in class. Education officials, at the time, stressed that Syria was a "secular society," and that extremism is "unacceptable."

Al-Arabiya TV quoted an education ministry official, who argued the niqab was "against academic principles" as well as "campus regulations." He also called the practice an "ideological invasion." Syria's ruling Ba'ath Party denounced niqab-wearing at a recent conference.

A decision in Egypt last year to forbid women government employees from wearing the niqab created a storm of protest. The late head of al-Azhar University, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Tantawi caused a controversy when he urged students at a girls' school to remove their niqabs.

Analyst Peter Harling of the Crisis Group in Damascus says Syria is caught in a bind between its own secular tradition and the Islamic fundamentalism of some of its allies:

"I think there is a fundamental contradiction in Syria's posture," Harling said. "Syria on one side is a secular country, or at least the regime at the helm is deeply structurally secular, and very attached to that particular identity. I think it is the last secular bulwark in the region, so to speak, on the one side. On the other, Syria is very much part of regional trends, which it tends to foster, through its support for militant groups, which most often embrace an Islamist outlook."

He also said there is a deeply felt feeling in Syria that it is time to act against the more extreme forms of Islam in the country, before it is too late."

Syria's minority Alawite sect, which loosely governs the country, is more Western-oriented and less traditionally Islamic than the dominant Sunni sect. But many of Syria's regional allies, including Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah or the Palestinian Hamas movement have militant Islamic tendencies.

Maral Haidostian, who is Armenian and was brought up in Syria, points out the country's many minorities probably support the ban the niqab, while conservative Muslims might object to the measure:

"For women, maybe it is positive in my point of view," Haidostian said. "But, according to Muslim women, I do not know. I think for liberal women it is positive, but for the (conservative Muslim) community, maybe this is going to be difficult to accept. I do not know if (their) parents are going to allow the ladies-the women-to go to universities without covering themselves. This might backfire for the ladies."

The number of Syrian women wearing Islamic attire has grown dramatically in recent decades. Many observers argue the practice has spread due to the many Syrians who have lived and worked in conservative Islamic Gulf States

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MA: Towns turn to school mergers

Under growing pressure from state officials, small public school systems across Massachusetts are discussing potential mergers, defying the state’s staunch tradition of local schools and hometown identity in a quest for greater financial stability.

For the first time in nearly a decade, several towns recently joined ranks to create new regional districts, linking Ayer and Shirley, Berkley and Somerset, and three vocational schools north of Boston.

From a host of small Berkshire towns to Chatham and Harwich on Cape Cod, another three dozen districts are considering teaming up with their neighbors or expanding existing unions. Even Hull and Cohasset, Thanksgiving Day rivals with a decided class divide, are courting.

“It can work,’’ said Marianne Harte, a school board member in Hull, which has also made overtures to Hingham about merging schools amid financial troubles. “And this is where things are headed.’’

But many towns are deeply conflicted over the idea, uneasy with the prospect of relinquishing local control, particularly on tax and budget issues, and fond of their schools the way they are. Many parents blanch at the idea of sending their children out of town for school, while older residents feel nostalgia for their alma maters.

“People don’t want to lose their identity,’’ said Susan Palmer-Howes, chairwoman of the school board in Hopedale, which amid financial woes has begun formal discussions on joining the Mendon-Upton public schools. “Hopedale is the old-fashioned utopian society, where everybody knows everybody. People worry that will change.’’

Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has pushed small districts to consolidate or regionalize over the past two years, believing that larger districts are decidedly more cost-efficient. More than one-third of the state’s school districts have fewer than 1,500 students, and sharing costs could save tens of millions while offering students a wider range of classes and programs, educators say.

“Educationally, you get a better product for the money you’re spending,’’ said John McCarthy, superintendent of the Freetown-Lakeville public schools, which are exploring whether to regionalize at the elementary school level. “Right now, we have a Grade 5-only school that’s half empty and other classes with 30 kids. It doesn’t make much sense.’’

Statewide, just over 1 in 4 communities belong to a regional school district.

Some districts are looking into regionalization on their own accord, hoping it will provide long-term stability. But most are bending to pressure from the state, which since 2008 has more generously reimbursed districts that merge for school construction and renovation costs, like a dowry for an arranged marriage.

“That’s absolutely been the motivation,’’ said Loxi Calmes, the superintendent in Lunenburg, which is exploring a potential merger with the North Middlesex Regional School District after dropping out of lengthy discussions with Ayer and Shirley. “We were told in very specific terms we needed to investigate this.’’Continued...

Even in budget crunches, financial incentives don’t easily wash away longstanding traditions. In the mergers approved this spring, negotiations were often tense and painstaking, delayed by myriad complexities and reluctance to change.

In a state divided into 351 communities and even more school districts, with a fervent belief in local governance and distrust of centralized control, regional districts are often a tough sell.

“It’s not easy to get past the local autonomy issue,’’ said George Frost, superintendent of schools in Ayer, a small town 35 miles northwest of Boston. “It’s an ingrained concept. But the state has been very clear in pushing us in this direction.’’

Supporters point to extremely small districts as the most cost-inefficient, as well as the simplest to combine. But residents usually like the smaller schools, and note that regional school districts often wage divisive budget fights.

This spring, for example, voters in tiny Wales, with just 150 students, rejected a proposed merger with Holland, about 5 miles away.

“Local control is still the way,’’ said Daniel Durgin, superintendent of the Tantasqua Regional School District, a five-town, grade 7-12 system that includes Holland and Wales. While he favors extending the regional approach to elementary schools as well, he doesn’t see much support for it.

In Somerset and Berkley, residents waged an intense back-and-forth over officially regionalizing the high school to land more generous state reimbursement, even though Berkley students have attended Somerset schools for a generation on an informal basis.

“It’s the same arrangement we’ve had for 25 years,’’ said Kim Forbes, a leading proponent. “We thought it was a no-brainer. I never expected to be booed and called names.’’

There has been talk of fully merging the districts, Forbes said, and combining the high school seemed like a sensible first step, a route followed by a number of districts.

Patricia Haddad, a state representative from Somerset and the assistant majority whip, said Massachusetts has almost 400 superintendents, counting charter and vocational schools. Maryland, by contrast, has just 32 districts statewide.

“That’s crazy,’’ she said of the Massachusetts figure. Consolidating schools would sharply reduce administration and school building costs, Haddad said.

But many communities worry they will wind up paying more than their share for regional schools, particularly when merging with less affluent towns.

Others question the premise that combining small schools saves money at all. Nicholas Young, the superintendent in Hadley and an outspoken critic of regionalization, said smaller schools are often highly efficient and are better off sharing some services with other schools, such as transportation and supplies, while maintaining their overall independence.

“We have this business mindset that bigger is better, but it costs far less to build small schools,’’ Young said. “There’s not a stitch of evidence you save money through consolidation. It sounds good politically, but it has been proven not to work.’’

A study last year from the state Education Department found that districts with fewer than 1,500 students spent about $1,000 more per student than districts with between 1,500 and 3,000 students, a range that educators call a sweet spot. Larger districts spend more per student, researchers found.

Declining revenues and enrollments, the study found, could destabilize some small districts.

Supporters say collaborative programs among school systems show the benefits of regionalization, and suggest that schools are increasingly willing to trade autonomy for savings.

“Everything has to be put on the table, because we have no money, and none’s coming in,’’ said Marianne Harte, the school board member from Hull. “The state is just dangling a carrot to get a stubborn mule moving.’’

Supporters and opponents alike acknowledge that the logistics involved in merging school systems are daunting and costs can be prohibitive. From building leases to employee contracts to administrative functions, school leaders say they have to build new systems almost from scratch.

“You have to start from the ground floor,’’ Frost said. “It’s incredibly complex.’’

In contrast, residents often want to keep things simple. Even communities with regional high schools are hesitant to do so in the younger grades. In fast-changing times, the idea of losing the neighborhood elementary school, or have it be subject to the whim of voters in the next town, is disquieting.

“It’s something that many people feel uneasy about,’’ Calmes, the Lunenburg superintendent, said. “We’re used to having this town center. When we built a new primary school that was a mile away, that was unsettling to folks.’’

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British charter schools (Academies) 'failing to teach traditional subjects'

Academies are shunning traditional subjects such as English and History in favour of less challenging qualifications in an effort to drive up results, a think tank has claimed.

Figures disclosed in parliament revealed that the proportion of academy students taking GCSEs in courses including English Literature, history and individual sciences are outstripped by those at maintained schools.

In foreign languages and geography, entries from academies were more than a third lower than the average for maintained schools.

Opponents said the figures showed academies had abandoned non-compulsory academic subjects in favour of less challenging GCSEs and equivalent qualifications to boost their performance in league tables.

Academies, which are not subject to freedom of information laws, have faced calls to be more open over the curriculum they offer and the pay of staff.

The figures, based on exams taken last summer, came to light following a question in Parliament by Tristram Hunt, MP for Stoke-on-Trent central, and research by Civitas.

It follows data showing that academy pupils are awarded twice as many A* to C grades in non-GCSE qualifications as maintained schools, but two thirds as many of the equivalent GCSE grades.

Anastasia de Waal, Director of Education at Civitas, said: "Academies are supposed to be improving not impoverishing education, so to find that the proportion of academy students doing core academic subjects is much lower than average makes a mockery out of the notion that academies are exemplary.

"Withdrawing academic GCSEs and replacing them with weak substitutes has been great for academies’ league table position but hugely detrimental to the already often limited opportunities available to the young people they serve."

In academies, just 21 per cent of pupils took a GCSE exam in history and 17 per cent in geography last year, compared with 30 per cent and 26 per cent respectively in maintained schools.

Academies entered just eight per cent of pupils for individual exams in physics and nine per cent in chemistry and biology, compared with 12 per cent for each of the three subjects in maintained schools.

The biggest difference was in foreign languages, where just 26 per cent of academy pupils were entered for a GCSE compared with 41 per cent in all maintained schools.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union, said: "There is nothing wrong with academies devising a curriculum which will get the children to school and get them wanting to learn.

"But the difficulty is when the qualifications are a spurious equivalent to a GCSE, which are widely used to push up the GCSE results of academies to show that they are getting much better results than state schools."

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: "The fact is that Academies are working - academies have been over three times more likely to be rated outstanding by Ofsted than other state schools, since their new tougher inspection regime was introduced, while half as many Academies are judged inadequate.

“Ministers are clear that young people should be entered for the qualifications that are in their best interests rather than being entered for exams simply to boost the league table position of the school."

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19 July, 2010

TX: Daycare took six-year-olds to R film

I would suffer no regret if some Leftist teachers were shot

A Texas day care center is facing a state probe over allegations that it took a group of 6-year-olds to see a raunchy R-rated movie in Waco in July.

Young Expressions Childcare in the Waco suburb of Bellmead, Texas, is under investigation by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a spokesman for the agency confirmed to Fox News Radio. "We will investigate it thoroughly," said spokesman Patrick Crimmins.

The children were allegedly taken by day care workers to Waco's Starplex Cinema last week to see "Death at a Funeral," a bawdy 2010 comedy that was far too gross even for most movie critics.

The Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an R rating for foul language and foul humor — and that barely scratches the surface of a movie that features corpse wrestling, psychedelic drug use, explosive diarrhea and a man's homosexual affair with a midget.

"Too much profanity, too much," said one woman walking out of the movie who told Waco's News 10 the film was inappropriate for children.

The children were originally supposed to see the film "Marmaduke," but the show was sold out. A spokesman for the movie theater told Fox News Radio they were shocked and couldn't understand why the kids were brought to the R-rated film instead.

A man purporting to be the co-owner of the business said that the employee involved in the incident has been "reprimanded," but refused to answer any questions.

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The best way to teach reading and writing must be settled once and for all

The imimitable Boris Johnson is being surprisingly diplomatic about the desirability of phonics. Does Mayoralty do that to you?

His Greek below is of course impeccable but I have corrected his German

Lurking in the childhood of anyone ambitious there is always the memory of some humiliation that sets them on the path of self-improvement. Show me a billionaire, and I will show you someone who was beaten up for his lunch money. Many is the megalomaniac who first had to overcome a case of acne or puppy fat or being forced by his mother to wear a flowery tie to a friend's birthday party. You want to know my moment of childhood shame? Shall I tell you when I decided that I was going to have to sharpen up my act to survive?

I must have been about six, and my younger sister must have been about four or five, and we were sitting on a sunny river bank being taught to read by my grandmother. We were reading alternate sentences aloud when my grandmother announced – as my sister Rachel has never ceased to remind me – that the girl was reading better than the boy. Yes, in spite of the 15-month gap between us, she was somehow deciphering the words more easily than I was. I cannot tell you how much it costs me, even now, to report this buried shame. I blushed. I fumed. Beaten! By my kid sister!

As the antelope wakes every morning and knows that he must outrun the lion, so I wake every day and know that I must somehow scamper to keep ahead of Rachel, all-powerful editor of The Lady and authoress of what is currently the number two best-seller in France. I remember the pain and horror at being left behind in the reading stakes, because it is an emotion that is all too common in children in our schools today. Unlike the village schools of Somerset 40 years ago, it seems that our methods of dealing with the problem are painfully inadequate. Over a third of London primary school children reach the age of 11 without being able properly to read and write, and 20 per cent are still having serious difficulties by the time they leave secondary school.

This is a source of huge economic inefficiency, but in every case of illiteracy we are also talking of a grievous personal handicap. If you cannot read properly, you are more likely to suffer from low self-confidence – and if you suffer from low self-confidence, you are far more likely to turn to crime.

That is why I commend an excellent pamphlet by Miriam Gross, published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, in which she examines some of the difficulties with improving literacy in London. She takes aim at some familiar targets of conservative wrath: child-centred learning, by which children are invited to "discover" the meaning of the printed page before them, rather than being taught; the hostility to academic selection that has bedevilled the teaching establishment; the lack of discipline in some schools; the time wasted in considering the "emotional well-being" of the child, rather than good old instruction in reading and writing.

Some of these complaints will no doubt infuriate many hard-working teachers, and some educationalists will be outraged at what they will present as a traditionalist and downright reactionary approach. At the heart of Miriam Gross's argument is the story of one of the greatest Kulturkaempfe of the last century. It is like the dispute between the Big-Enders and the Little-Enders, or the war that raged between those who thought Christ was homoiousios and those who thought he was homoousios in his relation with God the Father – except that this argument matters. [That argument mattered too -- in Byzantine times -- JR]

Ask yourself what happens when your powerful Daily Telegraph-reader eye skitters effortlessly through this article. What cognitive processes are going on in your head? With incredible speed you are decoding clutches of letters into sounds, in order to identify the words; and those words are being virtually simultaneously converted into sense; and the reason you can do this so fast is that hard-wired into your reading brain is an understanding of how the alphabet generates the 44 sounds of the English language; and the best way to reach that instinctive understanding of how letters make sounds is a system known as synthetic phonics.

That is the system that rescued me after the appalling verdict of my grandmother. I remember going to primary school and sitting cross-legged as the class learned C-A-T, and how each sound helped to make up a word, and after a while I had cracked it; and I find it unbelievable that so many children are not given the opportunity to learn by this simple and effective means.

It was about 100 years ago that the split began, and some educationalists began to argue that phonics was too dogmatic, too authoritarian. It was demoralising for children who couldn't spell out every word in their heads, they said. Perhaps they should be encouraged just to recognise the words – and so was born the system of "whole word recognition", intended partly to bolster those who found phonics a strain.

And yet the result, say the phonics proponents, is that children are not being given the basic all-purpose deciphering tools they need. That is why literacy has declined in the past 50 years, they claim, and that is why we face a skills shortage caused very largely by the inability of one million working Londoners to read and write.

Are they right? It is time to end this culture war, and to try to settle once and for all, in the minds of the teachers, whether synthetic phonics is the complete answer or not? We have in Nick Gibb, the admirable new schools minister, one of the world's great militants for synthetic phonics. Indeed, you can have a meeting with Nick on almost any subject, and I can guarantee he will have mentioned it within five minutes. I am almost 100 per cent sure he is right.

And yet I have also met London kids on Reading Recovery programmes who are obviously benefiting hugely from a mixture of phonics and word recognition. It is surely time for the Government to organise a competition, a shoot-out between the two methods, to see which is the most effective for children of all abilities.

And don't tell me children are averse to competition. Look at me and my sister.

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One in five British school leavers can't read: Trendy teaching is 'still harming pupils' learning'

One in five school-leavers struggles to read and write because teachers are shunning traditional classroom methods in favour of trendy 'child-led' lessons, a report warns today.

Discredited teaching techniques that encourage children to just find things out for themselves rather than being taught are 'alive and kicking' in primary schools, the research claims.

Teachers are encouraged to avoid pointing out mistakes for fear of 'crushing creativity' or 'undermining confidence', and to give pupils a choice of tasks to undertake in class.

But the approach, typical of the 1960s and 1970s, is 'neither stimulating nor challenging' and is continuing to damage children's reading skills despite attempts by successive governments to introduce more structured teaching methods, according to the Centre for Policy Studies.

The report by Miriam Gross, a literary editor and volunteer teacher, warns that large sections of the education establishment have ignored attempts to put traditional 'synthetic phonics' at the heart of reading lessons.

The technique involves children learning the 44 sounds of the English language and how they can be blended together to form words.

But many teachers condemn it as 'prescriptive' and 'boring'. Instead schools continue to use other, more 'fun', techniques, including encouraging children simply to memorise whole words and guess at harder ones.

The report, commissioned by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, highlights that more than a third of children who leave the capital's state primaries at 11 still have difficulties with reading, while one in five teenagers leave secondary school unable to read or write with confidence.

A separate study, by experts at Sheffield University, has found that 17 per cent of 16 to 19-year-olds across the country are functionally illiterate, meaning they can understand only the simplest text.

'This is less than the functional literacy needed to partake fully in employment, family life and citizenship and to enjoy reading for its own sake,' the authors said.

Today's report warns that 'progressive' education theories still persist in many schools, damaging the prospects of thousands of children. Teaching of mixed ability classes is widespread, competition discouraged and mistakes of grammar, punctuation and spelling are too often left uncorrected.

Teachers are encouraged not to interrupt-children while they are speaking or to pressure them into learning topics they don't like. Unlike in other European countries, children are allowed to write in 'street' slang - and teachers fail to point out how it differs from correct English usage for fear of stifling 'self-expression'.

'The child-led approach is frequently neither stimulating nor challenging. Very young children simply haven't got the tools or the knowledge to benefit from it or to make sensible choices,' the report said.

At the same time, too much attention in primary schools is devoted to 'circle time', where children sit in a circle discussing emotions and family relationships.

The report said: 'The great majority of children, at any rate under the age of eight or nine, are neither ready for nor interested in discussions about emotions, backgrounds and relationships.'

The study highlights examples of schools which have achieved outstanding results by shunning the 'do it yourself' approach and embracing more structured and rigorous teaching regimes.

The low literacy levels cannot be attributed to immigration, the report said, adding that children who don't speak English at home are often the most keen to learn.

The report recommends a new Booker prize-style literacy competition for primary schools to drive up standards. Schools would be independently assessed for their reading teaching and the best given a cash award.

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18 July, 2010

Harvard Wimps Out on Testing

To oppose “results-based accountability” in education is close to a taboo nowadays, a position so antithetical to the spirit of the age that few dare mention it. Let us, therefore, declare ourselves shocked and saddened that Harvard University, in so many ways a pacesetter in education, is embracing that very position.

Starting in September, courses in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) will no longer routinely require final exams. For most of Harvard’s existence, any professor wishing to forgo the practice of final exams required formal approval by the entire faculty. At least since the 1940s, professors have been required to submit a form to opt out of giving a final exam. But in fall 2010, professors will need to file a specific request to opt in. The dean of undergraduate education, Jay M. Harris, is already predicting that Harvard will reduce the academic calendar by a day or two in response to the eased testing burden.

Moreover, general exams — requiring seniors to demonstrate mastery of the fundamental knowledge of their major — are given in fewer and fewer departments. Even Harvard’s new General Education courses will abjure finals. We are left wondering: Without exams to prove it, how can students be sure that they are “generally educated” when they graduate? How can the institution itself be sure? Or doesn’t it care?

Some will say that other student work products — term papers, especially, but increasingly multimedia projects, too — are better gauges of learning than cumulative exams. Associate Dean Stephanie H. Kenen recently stated: “The literature on learning shows that hands-on activities can help some students learn and integrate the material better.”

In reality, however, the decline of testing at Harvard has little to do with any “literature on learning.” When we attended college there, four decades apart, some of our most fruitful learning experiences occurred in preparing for, and actually taking, final exams. They forced us to sharpen our thoughts and solidify our knowledge, whether it was by connecting the dots between Andy Warhol and Joseph Stalin for Louis Menand in 2006, or making sense of a year’s worth of American social history per Oscar Handlin in 1964. Term papers were essential, too — let us make no mistake. But they were easier to fudge with obscure research, borrowed insights, and artful prose. It was finals that forced us to think, to synthesize, to study, and to learn.

What’s really happening, we sense, is that Harvard is yielding to education’s most primitive temptation: lowering standards and waiving measurements for the sake of convenience. It certainly isn’t the only university to succumb, but given Harvard’s reputation as a trendsetter, we should expect better. Just imagine: Students will be delighted to forgo finals, and instructors will be thrilled not to have to create or grade them. Everybody finishes the semester earlier. (The last few weeks of class don’t really count when that material won’t be tested!) Yet Harvard’s leaders may eventually have to acknowledge that, with fewer test results, they will know less and less about what students are or are not learning within their hallowed gates.

Not so long ago, Harvard was striding toward transparency and accountability. In 2006, under the leadership of interim president Derek Bok (no slouch himself as an education reformer and critic), the university participated in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). The CLA is intended to measure the kinds of skills and thinking at the core of an arts-and-sciences curriculum and, by comparing the scores of seniors and freshmen, to gauge a university’s “value added.” One of us, a senior at the time, even volunteered to participate. It was a rare chance to put the old joke to the test: “Why is Harvard such a great repository of knowledge? Because students enter with so much and leave with so little.”

Sadly, Harvard’s CLA results were never shared with participants, as had been promised, much less with the outside world. The flickering light of results-based accountability at Harvard was thus dimmed — by whom and why, we can only guess. (The authors contacted the office of the president last Friday to corroborate this account of the CLA at Harvard. As of Wednesday, July 14, officials were not able to either confirm or deny it.)

Granted, testing is complicated. How to assess a semester’s worth of learning in 180 minutes? How to probe what one has learned during three years as a history major? How, simultaneously, to measure the accumulation of knowledge and the development of analytical skills and effective expression? How to distill course themes into challenging essay questions or problem sets, and how to grade them fairly?

But avoiding tough methodological challenges isn’t in Harvard’s mission statement. In matters of education policy — including many earlier rounds of assessment, such as the SAT and Advanced Placement exams — Harvard has long been a pioneer. Other universities look to it for guidance. Why not with end-of-course assessments, too? Harvard’s Graduate School of Education is full of testing experts, and its psychology department is stacked with heavyweights. Its mathematicians, computer scientists, and statisticians are competent to sample the populations, crunch the numbers, etc. Couldn’t they help the university develop suitable guidelines, templates, and prototypes for measuring what its students learn? Would it be too much to ask them to actually develop better tests? Maybe even to share them with the world?

Harvard might fruitfully take a cue from K–12 education. Here we’re seeing slow but steady progress toward intelligent assessment and fair accountability. The primary/secondary-education community is approaching consensus on content standards for math and English language arts. Consortia of states are undertaking the development of “next-generation” assessment systems. The Obama administration has taken stock of No Child Left Behind and offered a new blueprint for giving schools and districts more flexibility to reach higher performance standards. None of this has been easy, and countless political headaches would have been avoided by simply jettisoning results-based accountability. Plenty of teachers would have been pleased, too. But most K–12 policymakers know better: Were it not for the dreaded tests, we would not be able to learn from our educational successes, or to direct attention to our most persistent failures.

Harvard doubtless assumes that no formal measures of learning are needed to demonstrate its educational value to students. Just peek inside Lamont Library late on a weeknight and behold the heaps of books, index cards, and coffee mugs. Listen to the keyboard clatter of great term papers in the making. Well, we studied in Lamont — one of us quite recently — and we have a secret to share: There is a difference between effort and learning, between putting in the time and coming out with something worthwhile. For every undergraduate writing the next Great American Novel, another student is frustrated, confused, and stressed by ambiguous expectations from instructors. Harvard would be greatly aided in its struggles with mediocre instruction by better tests aligned with clearer expectations — not by giving up on exams altogether.

Harvard is blessed with talented students — it can pick and choose among America’s finest — and that doubtless encourages it to pay scant attention to how much they actually learn during their undergraduate years in Cambridge. University leaders also understand that public accountability can be humbling. Arrogance and pandering are more convenient. They just don’t get us any closer to veritas.

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Maryland planning mandatory "environmental" indoctrination in High Schools

Top state officials in Maryland are promoting a plan that would make the study of environmental education a requirement for all students to graduate from the state’s public high schools.

The proposal, which will be made available for public comment beginning today, is set for final consideration by the state board of education in the fall. If adopted, it would represent the first time a state has added a high school graduation requirement focused on environmental literacy, according to Donald R. Baugh, the vice president for education at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Annapolis, Md., that has been a strong champion of the measure.

“This is one step toward what we hope will be a stronger, more comprehensive effort in Maryland” to provide environmental education, said Mr. Baugh. “What we really like about the high school graduation [requirement is that] it’s for all students, it is a systemic solution.”

Nancy S. Grasmick, the state superintendent of schools, said the proposal—which still is subject to change before being taken up by the state board—enjoys widespread support among local superintendents in Maryland, and also is backed by Gov. Martin O’Malley.

She emphasized that the proposal would not mandate that students take a particular course, but instead would call on school districts to ensure that environmental literacy is “threaded through” the curriculum. “I think it has much more importance because it isn’t just, ‘Take one course, and that’s all you have to do,’” Ms. Grasmick said in an interview.

The Maryland initiative comes as advocates for environmental education are continuing a push to enact new federal legislation to advance the issue. Their goal is for companion bills introduced in the U.S. House and Senate, which would authorize $500 million over five years for environmental education, to be included in the overdue reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Mr. Baugh said.
Districts Have Leeway

The new Maryland proposal stems from the work of a task force created by Gov. O’Malley, a Democrat. The task force, called the Maryland Partnership for Children in Nature, was co-chaired by Ms. Grasmick and John R. Griffin, the secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources. In April 2009, the panel issued a final report and recommendations to the governor, including the call for a new graduation requirement on environmental literacy.

However, the task force had actually recommended requiring that all high school students take a specific course on environmental literacy, while the proposal moving forward calls for the topic to be “infused” into current curricular offerings.

To be sure, observers say, environmental education is nothing new in Maryland, and many schools have long included environmental literacy in the curriculum.

In fact, this would not be the state’s first mandate pegged to environmental education. The Maryland education code in 1989 was first amended to require a “comprehensive, multi-disciplinary program of environmental education within current curricular offerings at least once in the early, middle, and high school learning years.”

But Mr. Baugh, from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said that implementation has never reached all schools, especially following the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the ESEA, with its emphasis on improving student achievement in reading and mathematics.

He also argues that the earlier measure required local systems simply to include environmental education within their instructional programs, but did not stipulate that all students must participate.

“A requirement tied to the ability for students to graduate high school will apply to all Maryland students, and carries greater weight and significance,” he said.

He added that the proposed new requirement also “provides much greater guidance regarding appropriate high school instruction and requires school systems to provide professional development for teachers to assist them in meeting the requirement.”

At the same time, Mr. Baugh said the proposal gives districts considerable leeway in how they choose to bring environmental education into classrooms.

Kevin M. Maxwell, the superintendent of the 75,500-student Anne Arundel County Public Schools, said he welcomes the proposed requirement. “We have an obligation to make sure that we equip our next generation with the tools they’re going to need ... to, quite frankly, clean up the messes that we’ve made,” he said, “and to make sure the Earth is a sustainable home for the people who inhabit it.”

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Teacher conduct hearings to triple after complaints about British teachers rise 800 per cent

Complaints about teachers rose 800 per cent last year, with record numbers being charged. Regulators will have to triple the number of hearings they hold in order to deal with the rising volume of misconduct cases they have to examine.

The number of Initial Conduct Referrals (ICRS) made against teachers by parents, other teachers and members of the public rose to 151 in the year to April, following just 16 in the previous 12 months.

The increase last year was put down to the publicity surrounding child protection issues following the death of Baby Peter. In the three months since April there have been a further 35 ICRs.

The General Teaching Council for England (GTC) – which Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has pledged to shut down – currently has a record 136 cases waiting to be heard.

Alan Meyrick, GTC registrar, told the Times Educational Supplement: "In the past there have been 170 hearings every year, now we want to hold three times that volume. There's a need for us to run something closer to 500 a year."

SOURCE



17 July, 2010

The True Face of Campus Progress

A Report from the Conference

This last week, Youth for Western Civilization dropped by the left-wing "Campus Progress" conference here in Washington D.C. It was held in the Omni Shoreham hotel, with the main portion of the conference taking place in an ornate ballroom filled with a massive stereo system and two giant projection screens. The conference was headlined by big name speakers like Samantha Powers, John Podesta, Van Jones, and dozens of other presenters and panelists flown in with all expenses paid for the weekend. At least George Soros isn’t lacking for money in the Obama Recession.

All our favorite leftist archetypes were in attendance:

The advocates for the re-distribution of wealth – You know the type. The angry scowlers of the Al Sharpton strain who demand affirmative action and blame white people for black and Hispanic economic disparities, directing a constant barrage of eye-daggers at anyone who appeared to represent "the man".

Illegal aliens and their apologists – They were there in force. Their main objective is the so-called DREAM Act which would give illegal alien minors the ability to become permanent residents if they go to college. According to these law breakers, borders and sovereignty are a thing of the past... for Western countries. It's of course essential that Mexico, Honduras, Vietnam and all the other places these illegals hail from maintain their sovereignty, culture, and identity, while the United States is transformed from a “melting pot” into a “tossed salad” in the never ending pursuit for diversity and inclusion.

The LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender advocate) legions – These were the most prominent groups there. We were unable to guess the gender of many of them. A number of them were wearing shirts advocating a "marriage boycott" until all states begin issuing "gay marriages". Good luck with that.

Even the restrooms were not safe from social engineering. Each men's restroom was designated as a "multigender restroom." However, for the women’s restrooms, there was no transgender symbol. Only females were allowed in female restrooms. The irony of this "discrimination" seemed to escape them entirely.

David Cho, the winner of one of the organization’s awards, took to the stage to proclaim that he was an illegal alien. His speech consisted of complaints that even though he had gone through the California educational system (no doubt at significant taxpayer expense) he had difficulties finding jobs due to his "status," which he felt was "discriminatory."

"We now have SB 1070 brewing in Arizona, a state that’s sweltering under the heat of oppression, and we now live in a society which restricts young children and students solely on the basis of their status," he proclaimed. This is the Arizona that recently decided to dismantle the speed cameras in the state, hardly a move consistent with "a state that’s sweltering under the heat of oppression." Left unmentioned was the nefarious discrimination against convicted felons, drunk drivers, and sex offenders "solely on the basis of their status."

Although he was proud to announce that he was "undocumented", and list the jobs he and his family illegally work (many of which are the type in which one is commonly paid under the table), no federal agents showed up to arrest him, nor is there any sign that any legal or law enforcement action will be taken in the future to restrain him from continuing to break the law. One can easily imagine this would not be the case had an American citizen proclaimed "I don’t pay my taxes," "I drive without a license," "I sell marijuana for a living," or any other proud announcement of ongoing and purposeful law violation. Rather than living "in the shadows," criminals like Cho can flaunt their illegal status confidently because they know they have the American Establishment on their side.

David Cho has high ambitions for someone who isn’t even an American citizen: "I ultimately want to become a U.S. Senator, because I want to make changes in this country," he announced. Of course, we want to make changes too, though probably something far removed from the kind of "Change" we’ve been suffering through the last two years. Cho concluded, "Let us rededicate ourselves to the commitment and the involvement in the common effort to create a new society, and a new nation." One wonders who this "us" is, what "new nation" he wants to create, and why he has to do it here. As Americans, we generally like the nation we have now and don’t want it to be replaced.

The various sessions on specific issues were predictable. Granting amnesty to illegal aliens was the subject of one of the morning sessions, entitled "Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets." The main argument put forth by this panel was that with millions of illegal aliens leeching off the institutions and taxpayers of our republic, "it only makes sense" to give them citizenship. As stated above, their foremost goal is the ludicrously named DREAM Act, which would give young adults illegally residing in the United States the opportunity for permanent residency. Americans who do not have access to a college education or law abiding immigrants who are trying to obtain permanent residency would be ignored. One of the requirements for the law would be "good moral character." Voluntary deportation and legal entry into the immigration process would be a good test of that, but we are pretty sure that’s not what the panel meant.

The mantra of "multiculturalism" was everywhere at the event, even in areas seemingly entirely unrelated. For example, another morning panel we attended on "The Force of Food" was ostensibly organized to discuss organic and sustainable food movements. A number of YWC members and supporters have recently become intrigued with ideas about backyard gardens and getting away from corporate-produced, processed food (which often relies on huge numbers of illegal workers to produce). Therefore, we actually expected some practical help from this panel. Instead, rather than advice on how to build and organize such movements, the focus was on "getting minorities involved."

The panel centered on complaining that there was a "lack of access" to organic and healthy foods in "minority areas," without addressing the underlying culture of this demographic that creates the market forces that generate this pattern. A self-described "Native American tribal activist," Terrol Dew Johnson, complained that there was only one grocery store on his Tohono O'odham reservation, and that "the largest aisle is soda pop and junk food." Another panelist lamented that the supermarkets have departed Los Angeles, and the new tenants in these buildings are liquor stores.

The federal "Superfund" law which mandates clean-ups of polluted "brownfields" even drew a part of the blame, as one of the panelists said that McDonalds was the only company able to pay for such cleanups before building on certain urban sites. However, one would think that large organic and health food chains such as Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s would just as easily be able to afford such cleanups, were there any demand for such stores from the people who live in these areas. Of course, since the CEO of Whole Foods publicly opposed the Obamacare bill, he might be persona non grata in the eyes of the extreme Left.

One questioner, who appeared to be a middle-to-upper class white girl, asked the panel what could be done to bring organic and healthy foods to her area in Philadelphia, which she described as predominantly black. She talked about how she saw no interest whatsoever from the black community in organic or healthy foods. The panel was unable to come up with any answers, saying that the process would be "slow" and could "take a decade or more" to come up with any noticeable shift. One panelist said that he would be speaking at Swarthmore within a few months, but the questioner replied that "unfortunately" she would be on a month-long vacation in France during that time. It’s doubtful that the Eurotripping activist Left will actually be making changes in inner city dieting anytime soon.

One of the afternoon panels we was called "Race and the Recession." The general theme of this panel was that regardless of the ebb and flow of our global economy, white people are responsible for black and Latino disparities in wealth and income. The most recent evidence was President Obama's stimulus bill which was supposedly intended for minorities. However, some of the money ended up going to whites. This, of course, is "stealing the money from people of color," and "as a country of color, we need more programs to elevate the rainbow coalition."

(We should note that because this was a left-wing event and we are quoting Leftists, the following paragraphs contain vairous expletives and racial slurs.)

Ironically, the other afternoon session which we attended, on the topic of "Promoting Progress Through Comedy," was mechanical and boring. The one exception was a "joke" by Baratunde Thurston of The Onion that Mel Gibson’s black friends must be a "pack of raping niggers," which Thurston said he could "only say… because I’m black."

Van Jones seems to have learned his lesson from last year, and like most of the major speakers took care to sound as mundane as possible. One who didn’t get the memo was an individual of indeterminate gender named Andrea Gibson. She went on a few long rants, saying such things as "Our sky is so perfectly blue, it’s repulsive – somebody tell me where God lives, because if God is truth, God doesn’t live here." Her view on supporting the troops was "fuck your yellow ribbon."

Although her time was expired, she decided to stay for one more rant, since, as she put it, "I can’t get off the stage without being gay." She ranted about "the patriarchy," recounted a fit of rage from her lesbian girlfriend when she commented that she’d "like to eat that checkout clerk," and expressed her anger at people who do not want to redefine marriage to enable her to marry her girlfriend "but the fuckers say we can’t because you’re a girl and I’m a girl!" One of the best moments of her life was "the time we saw two boys kissing on the street in Kansas, and we both broke down crying, because it was Kansas…we were born again that day!"

Another interesting speaker was Beau Sia, who opened up with "I don’t need a gong to make my entrance, I’m Asian-American!" and recounted a series of racial achievements and his pride in them, statements which would have been described as "racist" and "supremacist"if they had come from a white person. He then proceeded into another tirade in which he described himself as "a developed nation jerk-off," and rambled wildly about "saving the world" from some sort of apocalypse.

What do we take away from this? Campus Progress seemingly has little to do with generating solutions, even in theory, for issues like the economy, job creation, national security, health care, trade, or education. Instead, it is a collection of tribes united only by their hostility to Middle America and everything that it stands for. It's simply George Soros backing the next generation of Jesse Jackson-style shakedown artists and freakish exhibitionists. They have no solutions for America's future – more than that, they're not even trying.

The next event being hosted by Campus Progress here in D.C. is "Drag Bingo," featuring "the biting commentary of DC’s best drag queen, Shi-Quita-Lee." I think we’ll pass.

SOURCE







Angry parents accuse British school of 'dumbing down' English by showing The Simpsons in class

A father has started a petition against 'dumbing down' after his daughter's school ditched literary classics in favour of The Simpsons. Joseph Reynolds was horrified when his 13-year-old daughter spent six weeks studying the popular US cartoon in English lessons. Homework assignments included watching episodes of the TV series.

His petition calling for Shakespeare to replace The Simpsons has now gained more than 300 signatures.

But the school, Kingsmead Community School in Somerset, has defended its curriculum, claiming the programme helps students 'to become critical readers and analysts of complex media texts'. It insisted it was merely following the National Curriculum, which requires that students study 'moving image' texts. And it said 'many other schools' used The Simpsons to teach English.

But Mr Reynolds, 44, a marine engineer from Wiveliscombe near Taunton, branded the programme the 'Turkey Twizzler' of the curriculum and called on Education Secretary Michael Gove to act to remove it.

'When I asked my daughter what she had done today in her English class, and she said The Simpsons, I thought it was a hook to get the kids interested in something more intellectual,' he said. 'But six weeks later she was still doing The Simpsons.

'I'm not some moral crusader against The Simpsons. I find it witty and clever and watch it at home. But it's a TV sitcom and it doesn't belong in the classroom. 'I do think we should raise the level a little for our children. Children should be studying text of the highest quality and I don't believe this fits the bill.'

Mr Reynolds wife, Denise, 39, said: 'Someone said to my husband that Homer was the modern day Hamlet but how can these kids make a connection like that if they are not learning about Shakespeare?'

Mr Reynolds wrote to the school to raise his concerns but both the head and governors defended the use of the programme.

In a letter, the school claimed that analysing the opening sequences of the Simpsons was similar to analysing the opening of Dickens' Great Expectations.

Mr Reynolds added: 'Most of the parents I have met have been unaware that their children are studying The Simpsons and they were shocked when I told them. 'All I can do is try to change it. The Simpsons has dominated English lessons for six weeks. My daughter will never get that time back. I don't think it's good enough. It's dumbing down.'

There are suggestions The Teletubbies was used in lessons for 11-year-olds, while Mr Reynolds' daughter will next year study the Hollywood romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. It is a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew.

Mr Reynolds said he no longer 'trusted' Ofsted inspections after the school was rated 'outstanding'.

But headmaster Geoff Tinker said: 'The National Curriculum requires that students study a range of texts including moving image texts. 'We, along with many other schools, use The Simpsons to develop analytical essay writing and thinking.

'The Simpsons is excellent for analysing the use of satire, parody, irony and humour - enabling students to become critical readers and analysts of complex media texts.'

He said students also studied Shakespeare, classics such as Jane Eyre and Great Expectations and poets including Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke.

'Mr Reynolds has his own view about the merits of The Simpsons, which we do not hold,' he said. 'Our GCSE results in English Language and English Literature stand up to scrutiny and do not support Mr Reynolds assertions about "dumbing down".'

SOURCE






Australia: School computer scheme probed

THE Auditor-General is probing the Gillard government's $2.4 billion school computers program. This comes on the heels of multiple inquiries into Building the Education Revolution bungling. The outcome - due to be reported to parliament in the spring session - has the potential to damage Julia Gillard in a knife-edge election campaign.

"The objective of this audit is to assess how effectively (the federal Education Department) implements and manages the Digital Education Revolution initiative, with particular focus on payment arrangements, monitoring and reporting on the fund, and on-costs," the Australian National Audit Office stated in its latest work program, published yesterday.

News of the audit came a day after the Prime Minister admitted in a nationally televised speech that the delivery of the BER program was flawed, because it was designed in haste amid the global financial crisis.

The DER scheme, to cost taxpayers $2.4bn over seven years, aims to give high schools at least one computer for every student in Years 9 to 12 by the end of 2011.

The Auditor-General also revealed his office was investigating a $2.5bn scheme to set up trade training centres in schools, and flagged "potential audits" of the My School website, which compares school performances nationally.

The auditor also plans to probe the administration of $2bn a year in childcare subsidies to families, as well as the Council of Australian Governments agreement to provide a preschool place for every Australian child by 2013.

All the audits implicate the sweeping portfolio of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, which Ms Gillard managed before she wrested the prime minister's job from Kevin Rudd last month.

Queensland's Audit Office yesterday revealed it was conducting an inquiry into how the state was spending its $2.1bn slice of the $16.2bn BER scheme.

The auditor refused to comment on his secret investigation, but The Australian understands it will include the first comparison of BER construction costs between public and Catholic schools.

Queensland opposition education spokesman Bruce Flegg yesterday lodged a complaint with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, asking it to investigate possible collusion in the BER scheme.

The Australian revealed in April that Queensland's Master Builders Association had negotiated the fee with the government, on behalf of eight construction giants, to manage $840 million of BER work without going to tender.

SOURCE



16 July, 2010

75 percent of America's school districts expect to cut teaching jobs in the 2010-11 year

School districts have used federal economic-stimulus money to help ameliorate the effects of the economic recession and keep their teaching staffs employed, even as their overall budgets decreased. But the looming end of that funding means 75 percent of the nation’s school districts expect to cut teaching jobs in the 2010-11 school year, according to a report published today by the Center on Education Policy.

The Washington-based center took at look at how school districts have spent money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic-stimulus law passed by Congress last year. The law is sending about $100 billion to education over two years.

“Education was buffered to a degree [by the stimulus], but even being buffered, school districts were reporting they had to lay off teachers and cut back on spending for textbooks and professional development,” Jack Jennings, CEP's president, said in an interview.

The report is the second installment in a three-year research project the nonprofit research and policy group is conducting on the impact of the stimulus law. The first, released in December, found states were struggling to improve teaching quality and low-performing schools, and that their capacity to implement significant education reform was a serious problem. ("Stimulus Aid’s State-Level Impact Seen Mixed," December 3, 2009.)

The latest report finds districts used much of the funding from the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and the supplemental boost to Title I and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to pay for having and creating teacher and administrator jobs in the past school year.

Even with the billions in economic-stimulus dollars flowing to states and school districts, the districts reported their budgets in the 2009-10 school year were lower than in 2008-09. Districts are worried about the upcoming “funding cliff” when the stimulus funds run out; 60 percent reported when surveyed this spring that their districts had spent or expected to have spent all of the funds received by the end of the 2009-10 school year.

And the stimulus wasn’t enough to stop layoffs—45 percent of school districts reported cutting teaching jobs in the 2009-10 school year.

“The stimulus money certainly was a blessing to school districts because, without it, the situation would have been worse,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based American Association of School Administrators, whose group has released several reports on the stimulus’ effect on education.

However, he said, “We are not over the recession. There is still no turnaround in real estate taxes or in state sales and income taxes. There is still a shortage of money to support schools at the state and local level.” “That financial cliff is very much a reality.”

Focus on Reform

While districts spent the majority of the money on saving jobs, they also spent some of the money on making educational improvements favored by the Obama administration that were embedded in the economic-stimulus law.

SOURCE






Graduate tax and private colleges at heart of new British higher education blueprint

Private universities will flourish and struggling institutions will be allowed to fail, if the coalition has its way with the future of higher education

Vince Cable Vince Cable warned that the Labour government's target of extending higher education to 50% of the population is likely to be scrapped. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

The government signalled the biggest shakeup of Britain's universities in a generation today, with a blueprint for higher education in which the highest-earning graduates would pay extra taxes to fund degrees, private universities would flourish and struggling institutions would be allowed to fail.

Vince Cable, the cabinet minister responsible for higher education, also raised the prospect of quotas to ensure state school pupils were guaranteed places at Britain's best universities, breaking the private school stranglehold on Oxbridge.

Comparing the existing system of tuition fees to a "poll tax" that graduates paid regardless of their income, the skills secretary argued it was fairer for people to pay according to their earning power.

He said: "It surely can't be right that a teacher or care worker or research scientist is expected to pay the same graduate contribution as a top commercial lawyer or surgeon or City analyst whose graduate premium is so much bigger."

Graduates earned on average £100,000 more than non-graduates in their life-time, Cable said, and there are significant premiums for degrees such as medicine.

Cable said he had asked Lord Browne, the businessman conducting a review of student finance, to look at a variable graduate tax tied to earnings. Low earners may end up paying less than they currently do for their degrees while those with high incomes pay more. A spokesman for the inquiry said Browne was not unhappy about the apparent pre-empting of his report.

The graduate tax would replace the current system, under which the government lends money to students to cover the cost of their degree courses and graduates pay this back once they start earning more than £15,000.

Phasing out tuition fees is a crucial part of Liberal Democrat education policy. Any moves by the coalition to raise fees – or even keep the status quo – could prove divisive. Lib Dem MPs will be allowed to abstain from any vote on fees under the coalition agreement.

Cable warned that the Labour government's target of extending higher education to 50% of the population was likely to be scrapped, questioning whether it was sensible or affordable. Figures from the university admissions service, Ucas, underlined the pressure on university places: universities have received more than 660,000 applications and a record 170,000 students are thought likely to be denied a place this autumn.

Cable told an audience of vice- chancellors at South Bank University in London: "What we have is an urgent problem. Universities are going to have to ask how they can do more for less. There will probably be less public funding per student … quite possibly fewer students coming straight from school to do three-year degrees." Universities had to be prepared for a period of contraction. "Britain is a poorer country than two years ago and future spending had to be adjusted accordingly."

He stunned the vice-chancellors by announcing that struggling universities would be left to go bankrupt. But he said students would still be protected. "It would be similar to banks," he said. "They can fail, but their depositors are still protected."

The government wants to increase the number of private companies offering higher education that is not subsidised by the state. This increased competition would mean some publicly funded universities could struggle to recruit enough students and be forced to close. Experts said at least 20 universities could close in the next few years if this were allowed to happen. At least five universities are known to be on an "at risk" list because they are heavily indebted.

Cable's proposals mark a departure from the current regime and the biggest change to universities since the early 1990s, when at least 40 polytechnics became universities and higher education was expanded.

He suggested that universities reserve places for pupils "from each of a wide range of schools" to ensure the brightest children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds were not denied the chance of going on to higher education. But he did not want to repeat Gordon Brown's mistake of "trying to dictate Oxbridge admissions". In 2000 Brown, who was chancellor at the time, labelled Oxford's decision to reject Laura Spence, a state school pupil, "an absolute scandal".

The Russell Group of leading research universities said Cable's graduate tax would not work. Wendy Piatt, its director general, said: "It would lead to many years before revenue from the tax became available so until then there would be a requirement for a very major upfront investment in universities by government – a very costly solution."

Million+, a lobby group for former polytechnics, questioned whether graduates paying more for their degrees squared with the government's commitment to social mobility.

However, students welcomed a graduate tax. The National Union of Students argued for a tax in its submission to Browne. Aaron Porter, NUS president, said: "The fair solution is to abolish tuition fees and ensure that graduate contributions are based on actual earnings in the real world."

The shadow universities minister, David Lammy, said: "This a PR exercise from a man whose party have just completed the biggest U-turn in their history."

SOURCE





Up to a quarter of a million British students could miss out on university places

Almost a quarter of a million students will miss out on a university place after worries about the economy helped to produce a sharp rise in applications. More than 660,000 people applied for a university place this autumn, up almost 12 per cent on last year’s record-breaking figures.

There were 68,000 more applications this year compared with 2009 after growing numbers opted for education instead of trying to find a job. There was also a significant increase in applications from would-be mature students and those who missed out on places last year.

Applications from foreign candidates were also up by 15 per cent, with 100,000 overseas students seeking places, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service said.

School leavers who would traditionally take the places could be disappointed and the University and College Union, the main lecturers’ union, warned of a “lost generation” who would miss out on higher education.

The number of places for British and European Union students is capped and vice-chancellors face fines if they exceed their limits, which will be set later this year.

Last year, 373,793 British and European students were awarded places on undergraduate courses at English universities when 592,312 had applied for places. This year 660,953 have applied, including 54,254 from outside the EU, meaning around 225,000 students, a record number, will miss out.

So far the Coalition has promised that just 8,000 extra full-time and 2,000 part-time undergraduate places will be available, mostly on maths and science courses. The overall budget for higher education is being cut by £200 million and David Willetts, the universities minister, admitted there was not the “capacity to meet such a surge in demand”.

Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “Today’s figures make frightening reading.

“Other countries are increasing the number of graduates to compete in a high-skill knowledge economy, yet our government seems intent on doing the opposite. “It is not scaremongering to talk about a lost generation of learners. “It is disgraceful that thousands of applicants will be denied the chance to fulfil their potential at university. The decision not to fund student places properly and to make savage cuts to higher education will come back and haunt this country and will lead to a huge skills deficit.”

The rise in applications occurred despite warnings that the number of places available during clearing, where candidates are matched to spare places, could be cut by half.

Applications from older people were up more than 20 per cent on the previous year, continuing a recent growth in those wanting to become mature students.

There were around 90,000 applications from people aged 25 and over. There was also a 24 per cent rise in those who had applied in previous years, after an unprecedented squeeze on places last year.

Some subjects leading to public sector jobs proved particularly popular, despite imminent cuts in state spending. Nursing was the biggest area of growth, with a 62 per cent increase in applications, followed by design studies (34 per cent) and social work (27 per cent).

Some rejected candidates will seek places through clearing, but university chiefs have warned that the places available through that method could be half the 22,000 offered last year.

“Funding restrictions from government mean that universities will not be able to take on extra students to meet this demand,” Nicola Dandridge, the chief executive of Universities UK, said. “It is quite likely, therefore, that more qualified applicants will fail to secure places this year. Applicants may have to be more flexible in their choices.”

Prof Les Ebdon, the chairman of the university think tank million+ and vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, said: “It will be a tragic waste of talent if highly qualified students miss out on a university place in 2010. Instead of fining universities if they recruit more students than they have been allocated, the Government should now fund additional university places in 2010 if they want to be serious about their commitment to social mobility.”

The Department for Business, which oversees higher education, accepted that some candidates will miss out. A spokesman said: “The Government recognises the important role graduates play in our economy and society, which is why, in these tough times, we provided funding for a further 10,000 students to begin their studies this year. But university is not always the right option for young people.

“Demand from employers for skilled workers is rising so we are investing in further education and we are funding 50,000 new high-quality apprenticeships.”

SOURCE



15 July, 2010

Politicians are the problem for higher ed

n a recent hearing — the first in a promised series — members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee began an inquisition into for-profit higher education, suggesting the sector exploits vulnerable Americans.

"Congress has a responsibility to ensure that ... opportunity is real, and not just false hopes pedaled on a billboard or pop-up ad," declared HELP Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, in his opening statement, setting the hearing's tone.

So what's wrong with federal politicians calling for-profits to the carpet? What's wrong is the entire higher education system — not just the proprietary part — is broken, and it's the politicians' fault.

There certainly are shady for-profits. One, the Drake College of Business, recently received significant attention for recruiting students in homeless shelters, likely just to bring in federal financial aid attached to warm bodies.

Then there's the lingering problem of diploma mills — institutions that dole out sheepskins for a fair amount of money ... and very little scholarship.

While such outrages are anecdotal, there is also troubling systemic evidence about problems in the for-profit higher education sector. According to federal data, only 27% of for-profit students who started four-year programs in 2000 finished at the same institutions within four years, and only 38% within eight years. For two-year programs, only 42% of students who started programs in 2004 completed on time.

Those are some rotten results, and they don't come cheap. According to the College Board, among for-profit students who received bachelor's degrees in the 2007-08 academic year and borrowed money, the median debt level was $32,650.

Unsurprisingly, there are loan defaults, which cost federal taxpayers who back most student loans. Among federal loans for which repayment was supposed to begin in fiscal 2007, 11% belonging to for-profit students were in default as of September 2009.

So for-profit schools produce lots of trouble. But they're not much worse than the rest of the higher education, no matter what senators' rhetoric might suggest.

Consider costs. Estimating federal, state and local appropriations to public institutions — direct funding that for-profits don't get — reveals outlays of $7,452 per pupil for four-year programs, $3,660 for two-year and $5,881 for less than two-year programs.

Adding those subsidies to government student aid reveals total taxpayer burdens, and suddenly for-profits don't look so singularly terrible. The annual burden per undergraduate at a four-year public school is around $15,794 vs. just $10,272 at a for-profit. For a two-year program, the for-profit is just somewhat costlier: $10,960 vs. $8,489.

How about graduation rates? Again, it all stinks. Look at bachelor's programs. While only 27% of for-profit students finished on time at the institution where they started, only 29% of public-school students did. That's hardly a major difference. The gulf widens as one moves to six- and eight-year rates, but even the best rate — 66% of students at private, nonprofit schools graduated within eight years — is underwhelming.

So the for-profit sector isn't much worse than anyone else. Why, then, are our honorable senators focusing their fire on it?

Scapegoating, that's why. Higher education is awash in government cash, with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars going to schools and students annually. But all that money, coupled with nonstop political rhetoric about everyone needing to go to college, has led millions of unprepared people to futilely pursue degrees at all kinds of institutions.

It's also fueled stratospheric price inflation. Between the 1989-90 and 2009-10 academic years, inflation-adjusted prices rose 75% at four-year private schools, 139% at four-year public institutions and 75% at two-year public colleges.

Blame that on Washington, which has kept upping student aid and driving Americans to consume far more higher education than they need or can handle. It's also let colleges raise prices with impunity.

Higher education has bad actors, and some are at for-profit institutions. Ultimately the worst are the politicians, who fuel profligacy for political gain, then shamelessly blame others for the trouble they've wrought.

SOURCE





Computers won't close the educational divide

One of these days, someone is going to conduct some scientific research and discover that billions of dollars could be saved by not doing so much scientific research.

For example, the New York Times last week carried an interesting story by Randall Stross titled, "Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality," in which the author previews an upcoming scientific paper on the effects of home computers on the educational outcomes of low-income students.

The study's authors — professors from the University of Chicago and Columbia University — used fieldwork from a Romanian computer voucher program to prove that low-income students who received home computers actually achieved lower test scores than students who applied for, but did not receive, the vouchers.

Here's the part where we could pocket some research grant money: Mr. Stross quotes researcher Ofer Malamud as saying, "We found a negative effect on academic achievement. I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they weren’t surprised, given their experiences with their school-aged children."

Who needs stark regression discontinuity to establish something that any competent, responsible parent can tell you over a cup of Starbucks? If you're trying to raise a well-educated, well-rounded child, you need to limit — not increase — the time he spends on a home computer.

Of course, now that there's scientific research to prove the point, will educators and government bureaucrats take notice?

After all, much is being made of the "digital divide" between the haves and the have-nots, especially between children of middle- and upper-income families with at-home Internet versus low-income families who do not own home computers. Such students are condemned to use school computer labs or (gasp!) access the Internet on free computers at the public library. Improving access for all students is assumed to be necessary in order to level the playing field of educational opportunity.

In fact, assumptions on the part of educational experts about the need for greater Internet access are behind the Obama administration's push to provide free high speed broadband to low-income rural homes. (Dial-up is simply insufficient if a poor child is to keep up in a 21st-century global economy).

Yet this study contradicts the knee-jerk solution of resolving an inequity with government dollars. In fact, it's just one more example of a cure that makes the disease even worse.

The research showed that low-income students who received home computers didn't use them to enhance their schooling, but rather, used them to play games. (Act surprised). Their scores in three academic subjects actually declined, but at least their proficiency in computers was measurably higher, so I guess the experiment wasn't a total loss if what you're looking for is a generation of low-income computer gamers.

The unvarnished truth is that the digital divide isn't what's holding back America's underprivileged children. The real problem is a discipline divide. Regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity or religion, where there are strong, skilled, supervising parents, you will find successful students. And where there aren't, you'll find gamers.

It's time to stop throwing money, technology and excuses at poor children and calling it education. The only way to close any sort of gap is to stop selling kids short on competent teachers who are committed to imparting knowledge and skills rather than using the classroom to affect "social justice," and to hold their parents accountable for the privilege of a free public education.

A well-educated person — no matter what his economic background — will figure out how to get a computer in his home and use it to his advantage.

On the other hand, an uneducated child who gets a computer will use it to find www.freegamesonline.com and while away the hours that most certainly would be better spent turning the pages of a book.

Maybe I should start applying for research grants.

SOURCE






More than half of British students fear unemployment

More than half of university students fear they will face unemployment when they graduate after racking up record levels of debt, a new survey has warned. According to research, 55 per cent of students are worried they will be unable to find work after leaving university due to the effects of the recession.

A shortage of money could lead to graduates abandoning their career goals, the survey suggested, with one in three students saying they would look for a higher paid job rather than their career vocation in order to pay off their debt.

Graduates are poised to leave university burdened by record levels of debt, with those leaving university in 2011 forecast to owe an average of £21,198, according to university guide push.co.uk.

In 2009 the average debt of graduates was £15,812, while for those starting university courses in September – most of whom will graduate in 2013 – the figure is likely to rise to £23,500.

This projection could increase further if the government lifts the current cap on tuition fees following an ongoing review into university funding being led by Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive.

The new survey, carried out by the Association of Investment Companies (AIC), an investment trade organisation, showed that half of students expect to take more than 10 years to pay off their debts incurred at university.

Results also indicated the recession has been a burden on parents, with 82 per cent saying it has increased the financial strain of supporting their children through university.

The AIC said: "Many young people go to university to enjoy some of the best years of their life but the reality on graduation is a huge financial burden which will take years to pay off."

SOURCE



14 July, 2010

John Taylor Gatto wants to demolish the existing education system and return power to the people

And he tells why

The new economy is awash in contradictions, but few are more troubling than this one: At the very moment that brainpower is more important than ever, education seems more backward than ever. We have a new economy but outdated schools.

Out of this disconnect has emerged a quiet grassroots rebellion aimed at reinventing both the form and the function of American education. Charter schools – publicly funded startup schools that operate mostly free of regulation – have boomed. In 1992, there was one charter school in the United States. Today, there are more than 2,000. The fastest-growing education movement is homeschooling. Today, roughly 1.5 million children learn at home. Just as Internet startups and free agents rattled big business, charter schools and homeschooling are shaking up "big schoolhouse."

Leading them is John Taylor Gatto, education's most original (and perhaps most controversial) thinker. Gatto earned his reformer's credentials the hard way. For 30 years, he taught English in some of New York City's toughest schools – and became the East Coast's answer to Jaime Escalante, the East Los Angeles teacher immortalized in the film Stand and Deliver. Gatto was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime teacher who changed lives (hundreds of former students remain in touch with him), even as he outraged administrators. In 1991, he was New York State's Teacher of the Year. Then he quit.

"When I left school teaching, I was blind with rage. I didn't know whose throat to grab first," growls Gatto, whose round face, white hair, and bearish build make him look like the tough brother of TV's Captain Kangaroo. "After a while, I could see that responsibility for education had to be revested in ordinary people."

He began writing essays and articles that recommended a systematic overhaul of learning in America and soon attracted a nearly cultish following among homeschoolers, charter-school advocates, and other education reformers. To many members of that incipient movement, Gatto has become their philosopher king. But Gatto, 65, gives himself a different job title. "I'm a saboteur," he says. "I'm sabotaging the idea that you know best what my family needs."

Schools, he says, are irremediably broken. Built to supply a mass-production economy with a docile workforce, they ask too little of children, and thereby drain youngsters of curiosity and autonomy. Tougher discipline, more standardized tests, longer days, and most other conventional solutions are laughably short of the mark. "We need to kill the poison plant we created," Gatto has written. "School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged." His alternative: to get rid of institutional mass-production schools, allow every imaginable experiment to blossom, make free public libraries universal, and expand hands-on apprenticeships.

Earlier this year, Gatto published a book, The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling (Oxford Village Press). Nearly a decade in the making, the enormous volume is a sprawling work of history, political philosophy, and citizen activism. Two major publishers liked the book enough to offer Gatto sizable advances – on the condition that he trim the pages and mute the language. He refused. So he produced and distributed the book himself, selling 5,000 copies the first week.

"This is the Blair Witch Project of books," says Roland Legiardi-Laura, 47, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a former eighth-grade student of Gatto's. "It's been under the radar, but not for long." Legiardi-Laura and his former teacher are now adapting the book into a documentary that aims to do for education what Ken Burns's series on the Civil War did for the War Between the States.

The Underground History of American Education is pointed and provocative. It's hard to agree with everything Gatto has to say, but it's even harder to come away from his searing critique unchanged. A single reading of a single essay inevitably makes you start to question the purpose and the premise of American education. "I had no intention of being an author," says Gatto, who lives with his wife on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "I hate being a product. But I feel that I have a responsibility to bear witness to what I've seen." Fast Company met with Gatto in Legiardi-Laura's loft apartment across from Tompkins Square Park in New York City.

Q. How did you get started in teaching?

A. I never thought I would be a teacher. The prevailing Ivy League ethic when I left college in the late 1950s was that you would be a man in a gray flannel suit. And if you had blood flowing through your veins, you didn't want to be a banker or a businessman. You wanted to be an ad man. So I became a copywriter at an ad agency. At first, it was very exciting. But after a while, you say, "Is the rest of my life going to be writing 50 words a month, holding my drink the correct way, and knowing when people shift from martinis to Gibsons?"

My roommate in New York City at the time was a guy named Dick Boehm. He was a waiter at the Waldorf-Astoria, but he also had a teaching license. He'd taught for one day and said, "You have to be crazy to do this for a living." And he threw his teaching license in a drawer. His license didn't have a picture on it, so I took a few days off from the ad agency, used Dick's license, and went around the city substitute teaching.

I was bored, I guess. And I was tweaking the city's nose by teaching school as Dick Boehm. But I ran into some genuinely horrifying experiences in which kids were obviously being denied basic intellectual tools. And the reason, at least the surface reason, that they were being denied those tools was the belief that there were some things that these kids couldn't do. People would tell me, "It would embarrass the kids to try to do more." It's real easy, when you're a young man, to buy that crap.

Q. When did you stop buying it?

A. There were two experiences that changed my life. One took place in a school in Harlem on 120th Street. I tended to favor subbing in Harlem because they were so desperate just to get bodies in there that I was pretty sure that they wouldn't check the records. I was assigned to teach a Spanish course. I knew a couple-hundred words of Spanish, so I figured that I could fake it pretty well. I got in there and asked the kids if they knew how to tell time. I assumed that they did, and I thought we could review it. But they said no, they didn't know how to tell time. I said, "I can teach you how to tell time in this one class period, and you'll know it forever." So I did that.

You get five classes a day as a sub, and by the third class, I got summoned to the principal's office. Some assistant principal began to scream at me. Her face turned a deep purple red. "How dare you do this! You have destroyed the entire curriculum for the month of June. I have no idea how I will explain to the teacher when she comes back," she said. "But I'll tell you this: You will never be hired at this school again!" At first, I thought I was locked up with a lunatic. Then, the more I reflected on this odd situation, the more I realized that this was the attitude in all subject areas. They expected so little of these kids that it was easy to communicate the whole curriculum for the month of June in 15 minutes.

The second life-changing experience came at a school on 103rd or 104th Street and Columbus Avenue. I was assigned as a sub in a third-grade remedial reading class – an easy assignment. You could write stuff on the board, pass out worksheets, and then sit there and read the Daily News. A little girl named Milagros Maldonado came up to the desk and said, "I don't need to do this. I already know how to read." All I wanted to do was finish the day, but I said to her, "Well, you know, these things are done by people older than you who are looking out for your own best interest, and they think you're better off here." And she said, "No, I can read anything."

There was a reader on the teacher's desk, and she grabbed the reader and said, "Ask me to read anything." I cracked it open to a story called "The Devil and Daniel Webster," which is an extremely difficult piece of American Victorian prose. And she read it without batting an eyelash. I said to her, "You know, sometimes, Milagros, mistakes are made. I'll speak to the principal." I walked into the principal's office and the woman began shrieking at me, saying, "I'm not in the habit of taking instruction from a substitute teacher." I said, "I'm not telling you what to do. It's just that this little girl can read."

And she said something to me that, at my dying moment, I'll still remember. She said, "Mr. Gatto, you have no idea how clever these low-achieving children are. They will memorize a story so that it looks as if they know how to read it." Talk about an Alice in Wonderland world! If that little girl had memorized "The Devil and Daniel Webster," then we want her in national politics! The principal said, "I will come in and show you." After school, she came in and put Milagros through her paces. The little girl did well. Then she told Milagros, "We will transfer you." And when Milagros left, the principal said to me, "You will never be hired at this school again."

Q. That made you want to teach?

A. Yes. The attitude toward these children in liberal New York City wasn't remotely like the attitude toward children in western Pennsylvania, where I grew up. There the assumption was that if somebody couldn't do the work, it was because they were lazy or defiant. In these schools, the assumption was that some kids were permanently disabled, and everyone had to settle into their assigned place.

So I told the people at the ad agency that I was going to leave to teach full time. I thought I'd be right back. I said to myself, I'm going to do this for a year or two and I'm going to demonstrate, to my own satisfaction, that these rules of classification are nonsense. Thirty years later, I still hadn't found out how far it was possible to push human beings to become big, self-directing, independent, and able to write their own script. The trouble is, especially with poor kids, they have such an indoctrinated belief that they can't do it, and that belief is reflected in antagonism and anger that they carry with them throughout life. But the truth is that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.

More HERE






Something Rotten in the State of Montana?

Montana is seeking to impose an unscientific, Kinseyan ideological model of pathological sexual instruction on the undeveloped, immature brains of vulnerable children. I would argue that the exposure of children to the kinds of sexual stimuli proposed by Montana’s education mavens reflects unmitigated ignorance, malevolence or both

Michael F. Shaughnessy interviews Judith A. Reisman

1. Dr. Reisman , first of all could you tell us a little bit about your background and experience?

Well, below is my short summary but based on YOUR knowledge and interests, let me say I worked for years for CBSTV, Captain Kangaroo, writing songs, and producing musical stories, sort of the original MTV, for children. I also produced “Great Works of Art” for children for various museums, Cleveland Museum of Art, and for Scholastics Magazine. My interests were in using great art to educate children.

My university education involved the effects of television on children’s attitudes and behavior and from that I moved (long story) into the effects of pornography, as a form of trauma really, on adult and child attitudes and behavior. I focused on visual versus text reception by the brain, mind, memory.

{Judith A. Reisman, PhD has focused on fraudulent sex science-education and on pornography as an Erototoxic pandemic, addicting children and society. Dr. Reisman is a news analyst and commentator for several press outlets, and was principal investigator/author of the pioneering U.S. Department of Justice, Juvenile Justice study, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler (1989). She also authored Kinsey, Sex and Fraud (Reisman, et al., 1990), Soft Porn Plays Hardball (1991), Partner Solicitation Language as a Reflection of Male Sexual Orientation (w/Johnson, 1995), and Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences (1998, 2000) and the forthcoming Sexual Sabotage (2010).

Dr. Reisman was scientific consultant to four U.S. Department of Justice administrations, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is listed in Who’s Who in Science & Engineering, International Who’s Who in Sexology, International Who’s Who in Education, Who’s Who of American Women, The World’s Who’s Who of Women, etc. Her scholarly findings have had international legislative and scientific impact in the United States, Israel, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. Tim Tate, UNESCO award-winning Producer-Director of “Kinsey’s Paedophiles,” (Yorkshire Television, UK, 1998) stated: “every substantive allegation Reisman made was not only true but thoroughly sourced with documentary evidence—despite the Kinsey Institute’s reluctance to open its files.”

Based on her work, The German Medical Tribune and the British medical journal, The Lancet demanded that the Kinsey Institute be investigated for deliberately covering up massive sex crimes against children and fraudulent science. Website, drjudithreisman.com}

2. Now, what seems to be happening in the state of Montana?

Montana is seeking to impose an unscientific, Kinseyan ideological model of pathological sexual instruction on the undeveloped, immature brains of vulnerable children. I would argue that the exposure of children to the kinds of sexual stimuli proposed by Montana’s education mavens reflects unmitigated ignorance, malevolence or both. Their imposition of sexplicit and indeed deviant forms of sexual conduct on captive schoolchildren is institutional child sexual abuse. Were a man or woman to stop a child on the street and whisper the same information teachers will force on these school children, he or she could be arrested for child molestation. Thus yes, the sexual stimuli “education” planned is unmonitored, untested, not validated and on the evidence provably traumatic for normal child development. Moreover, the assault on parents as the single responsible caretakers and instructors in sexuality for their own children is deliberately repudiated by the sexuality curriculum starting in kindergarten and continues conditioning, confusing and hijacking these children until they are free should they graduate….

3. Who seems to be, for lack of a better word, behind, these curricular changes or modifications?

Certainly those who planned this pathological program perceive themselves as better than, more knowledgeable than, the parents of these children, and for that reason these elitists would override all of the moral values of parents and society. Thus such persons qualify as radicals by definition, as subversive of the historic morality and the belief system of this nation. That their plans for children are in concert with that of the organized pedophile movement is ignored to the detriment of these really, experimental, children.

4. According to the Constitution , are schools supposed to be teaching about “ alternative life styles “ or even doing sex education?

Of course not, there is nothing in the US Constitution to justify such “instruction.” Indeed all such “education” is child experiment and would be completely illegal were a proper legal force to argue this historically and scientifically in a court of law. All the data finds that since the beginning of “human sexuality education” we have massively increased, not decreased our sexual dysfunctions, diseases, crimes, and such. There is ZERO proof of any success for even the less invasive sex ed courses must less this one.

5. When is this “illustrious “ instruction supposed to begin and are the schools going to make sure that no child gets left behind…?

As far as I understand it this “instruction,” really propaganda assault, is under debate at this time. If the faction passionately desiring this assault on children succeed, it will doubtless begin as soon as they can get clearance. Indeed, as in Massachusetts, it is becoming common for the pedagogical elitists to mandate that “no child gets left behind,” no matter what their parents wish or know to be right for their children.

6. Does the average parent know about what is going on in Montana?

I doubt that most parents realize what is planned and even if they are aware, the real story tends not to become accessible to parents until much too late.

7. Is the legislature behind this? Or are they ignoring it?

I am not an expert in the legislative situation, the private or public machinations. In 1998 Montana legislature did not require such “education.” Obviously there has been a great deal of political activity in the last decade to reverse that conservative posture. NARAL Pro Choice Montana” has been very active in campaigning for this “education” seeing it as the only way to attain their mission of abortion on demand and similar political desires.

8. Tough question, but at what age or grade should kids be taught about emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy, and even friendships?

Not really tough at all. These are parental decisions that are inappropriate for an academic setting. They involve myriad personal unknowns that are not part of “education.” In class and in the playground and lunchrooms teachers should enforce rules about bullying, taking terns, being polite and so on.

Children need to focus their attention on learning their basic academic tasks. They can do that quite well when teachers establish an orderly, respectful, and safe environment. Within such a respectful environment, children will automatically be learning about friendships. It would be nice if emotional and sexual intimacy could be “taught” but the evidence finds some teachers will transmit damaging information based on their own emotional and sexual intimacy problems, and some will abuse such opportunities to attain dominance, control and even blackmail of children. This means such issues must be off limits to school personnel.

9. What have I neglected to ask?

Well, just what makes these sexperts sexperts? How do they get their training, where? Since sex education only existed as “hygiene” before 1950, (cleanliness habits and instruction to wait until marriage for sex unless one wanted to get VD) all sex ed had to come from some “expert.” That “expert” was Alfred Kinsey and his books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) launched the “field” and the sex ed curricula the Montana folks would like to bring to classrooms today. Since all of the Kinsey data were lies, based on sex abuse of hundreds, even thousands of children (young as 2 months) the entire “field” is based on lies and crimes against children. And the field denies it—so ask where they were trained, by whom—their sexperts will all come down to being Kinseyans. This is the biggest con job on American education in history.

Source







British government to encourage two-year degrees to help cut deficit

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, will propose more two-year university degrees, part-time courses and students living at home in a speech on Thursday. As part of attempts to cut the £155bn deficit, Mr Cable will say that the current degree system, in which some students are taught for just six hours a week, ought to be adapted to make it more efficient.

Two-year degrees with shorter summer holidays would enable graduates to compress their learning into a shorter space of time, meaning tuition fees and debts would be reduced, he will argue.

Mr Cable will also suggest that more students ought to be able to live at home and study at their local university for a degree awarded by another institution.

In his speech he will say that changing to the system of providing higher education, rather than "salami slicing", is the best approach to making cuts, The Independent reported.

This could pave the way for an increase in the number of private universities, which could offer local teaching for students on degree courses which are further from home.

Mr Cable will reopen the debate on government targets for the number of students in higher education, indicating that Labour's 50 per cent target could be scrapped.

The Business Secretary has been asked by George Osborne, the Chancellor, to deliver cuts of 25 per cent in the next four years.

Supporters believe two-year degrees would be more cost-effective and would suit some students better than three-year courses, but leading universities argue the long holidays enjoyed by students on traditional courses are necessary for staff to be able to carry out their research.

His proposals could also include a raising of the cap on tuition fees – currently £3,225 a year – while other areas, such as research funding, will be protected.

The head of University College London said before Mr Cable's speech that places for students at lower-ranking universities could be cut to protect funding for research at top-level institutions.

Source



13 July, 2010

Gates Foundation puts its stamp on education

Across the country, public education is in the midst of a quiet revolution. States are embracing voluntary national standards for English and math, while schools are paying teachers based on student performance.

It's an agenda propelled, in part, by a flood of money from a Seattle billionaire prep-school graduate best known for his software empire: Bill Gates.

In the past 2 1/2 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $650 million to schools, public agencies and other groups that buy into its main education priorities. The largest awards are powering experiments in teacher evaluation and performance pay.

The Pittsburgh, Pa., school district landed $40 million; Los Angeles charter schools, $60 million; and Memphis, Tenn., schools, $90 million.

The Hillsborough County district, which includes Tampa, won the biggest grant: $100 million. That has set the nation's eighth-largest school system on a quest to reshape its 15,000-member teaching corps by rewarding student achievement instead of seniority.

Shift in strategy

The focus on teaching marks a significant shift for the foundation. In the past decade, it spent $2 billion to improve high schools, with a major emphasis on creating smaller schools.

But Bill Gates said Saturday that new approaches are needed because the pace of improvement has been too slow. In many cities, a third or more of students fail to graduate from high school on time. Those who earn a diploma are often ill equipped for college.

"It's disappointing to everyone who looks at the facts," Gates told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. He said he is willing to do whatever it takes to help raise achievement. "There's a risk that we might not succeed," Gates said, "but I can tell you we'll keep trying."

It is unclear whether philanthropy — even a charity led by one of the world's richest men — can find large-scale solutions to problems that have beset schools for generations. But what is certain is that Gates grants have become a leading currency for a particular kind of education change.

That agenda has won praise from the Obama administration and others, while prompting questions from some about the foundation's pervasive presence and its emphasis on performance measures.

More HERE






British Prime Minister doubts that he can find a good State school for his children in London

David Cameron has admitted that he is "terrified" by the prospect of trying to find a good state secondary school for his children in London. Mr Cameron said that, living in central London, he sympathised with parents in areas across Britain where there was no choice of decent schools.

"I've got a six-year-old and a four-year-old and I'm terrified living in central London,” he said in an interview with a Sunday newspaper. "Am I going to find a good secondary school for my children? I feel it as a parent, let alone as a politician."

Mr Cameron, who was educated at Eton, said he remained determined to send his children to state schools despite rejecting 15 primary schools for his six-year-old daughter Nancy, before sending her to St Mary Abbots, Church of England primary in Kensington.

Good schools in central London are hugely over subscribed, with six parents chasing every place in one near Downing Street, and Mr Cameron said the dilemma has strengthened his resolve to drive up standards so there are “really good state schools available for all”.

People are forced to “break the bank” to send their children to private school because “in some parts of the country, there isn’t a choice of good state schools”.

Mr Cameron and his wife, Samantha, also have a four-year-old son, Elwen, and are expecting another child in September.

He said the coalition Government was trying to ensure there were more good schools with their plans for "free" schools set up by parents and others.

In their general election manifesto, the Conservative pledged to restore discipline and raise standards in the classroom, vowing to bridge the gap between rich and poor by giving “every child the kind of education that is currently available only to the well-off”.

One method they are studying is addressing the financial shortfall in the education budget by allowing private firms to fund and run state schools in London.

One school, Turin Grove, in Edmonton, already has private company involvement. Edison Learning won a £300,000-a-year contract from Enfield council to provide a headteacher and two deputies. A Swedish schools group, Kunskapsskolan, is to open two non-profit making, state-funded academies in Richmond in September.

According to London Councils, a lobbying group for the capital’s 33 local authorities, around 50,000 extra school places need to be created between now and 2016 to cope with demand, costing approximately £880 million.

Westminster City Council, Mr Cameron's local education authority, insisted its schools were providing "first-rate education".

It invited him to send his children to one of its primaries. St Mary Abbots is in the neighbouring borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where he lived before becoming PM.

Nickie Aiken, Westminster's cabinet member for children and young people, said: "We welcome the Prime Minister's interest in improving central London education. We can assure him that our schools are delivering first-rate education every day.

"We are proud that several of our secondary schools are considered outstanding by Ofsted and that our nearest primary schools to Downing Street are also both rated outstanding. "We acknowledge that there is still room for improvement and will continue to strive to build on our success to date.

"We would be delighted if the current Prime Minister followed in the footsteps of his two immediate predecessors and sent his children to Westminster state primaries. We would welcome the opportunity to show the Prime Minister our schools in action."

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Australia: Why schoolyard bullies should be stopped in their tracks

SCHOOL bullies are three times more likely to engage in anti-social behaviour in their early 20s, while victims experience higher levels of depression and anxiety, according to a study revealed in The Sunday Telegraph.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has uncovered, for the first time, the damaging and ongoing effects bullying can have on children in their adult life.

Researchers tracked 1000 Australian children over three different stages of their lives - when they were 12 years old, 13 and again at 23 - and discovered tragic results.

Children who were bullied showed signs of depression when they grew older. "What we found with the victims is that once they were established in this role, abuse was likely to continue," Dr. Jodie Lodge said.

Dr Lodge found that one in four children were bullied at schools - and that 95 percent of students were bullied more than once. “They also experienced a number of social adjustment problems during adolescence and by their early 20s, were more likely to have higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress.”

Dr. Lodge, who presented the ground- breaking findings at a conference last week, said bullies tended to perform poorly academically and were more likely to drop-out of school.

They were also more likely to use drugs, be involved in physical fights and engage in other criminal activity in adult life. “Those who bullied in adolescence were three to four times more likely to be involved in anti-social behavior and physical violence by their early 20s," Dr. Lodge said. “It seems that once they're on this trajectory or pathway, it's something that stays with them into adulthood."

Verbal abuse and insults were the most common forms of bullying reported by both boys and girls. Physical violence was more prevalent among boys, while girls tended to bully by socially excluding others.

Dr Lodge said children who were both bullies and victims were particularly at risk as they suffered greater degrees of social and academic problems, were generally unpopular and had fewer friends.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said the results showed we needed to act urgently. “We know bullying has been linked with self-harm and attempts at suicide so it's a very, very serious issue and we need to address it," he said.

SOURCE



12 July, 2010

Every school should have a bad teacher: British schools chief in extraordinary outburst

This is the sort of nitwit the Labour party put in charge of British institutions

Every school should have a 'useless teacher', according to the chairman of Ofsted. Zenna Atkins prompted fury among heads by claiming that a bad teacher helped children learn how to 'manage' people who are not good at their jobs.

She said: 'It can be crushing for pupils to have a truly awful teacher. I have watched kids who learn an awful lot by having them though. They learn to manage those dreadful teachers, while keeping their confidence.'

Her foul-mouthed outburst also includes comments that the education system's credibility is 'shot to shreds' and that violent computer games like Call Of Duty should be used to teach children in class, according to The Sunday Times.

Atkins,44, emphasised that the opinions were her own, rather than those of Ofsted, but they will nonetheless cause huge embarrassment to the regulatory body.

She said: 'It's about learning to identify good role models. 'One good thing about primary school is that every kid learns how to deal with a really s*** teacher. 'In the private sector, as a rule, you need to performance manage 10 per cent of people out of the business. But I don't think that should be the case in schools.

'I would not remove every single useless teacher because every grown up in a workplace needs to learn to cope with the moron who sits four desks down without lamping them and to deal with authority that's useless. 'I'd like to keep the number low, but if every primary school has one pretty naff teacher, this helps kids realise that even if you know the quality of authority is not good, you have to learn how to play it.'

Atkins's comments are at odds with the opinion of Christine Gilbert, Ofsted's chief inspector of schools, who has previously attacked a 'stubborn core' of bad teachers in the British system.

The comments also follow a report last week which said that, although the General Teaching Council estimated two years ago that there could be as many as 17,000 sub-standard teachers circulating in Britain, just 18 had been struck off in the last ten years.

Ofsfted distanced itself from Atkins' comments. 'Ms Atkins was being interviewed in a personal capacity about the private sector role she is taking up in a few weeks," said a spokesperson. 'Ofsted has an unshakeable commitment to ensuring children benefit from good teachers in every lesson.'

Atkins's views were described as 'appalling' by Rod MacKinnon, a former Ofsted inspector and headmaster of the independent Bristol Grammar School. 'I am amazed and horrified,' said Mr MacKinnon. 'We should be seeking to give children the best education possible.'

Atkins has always cut an incongruous figure in the world of education, having been a self-confessed failure at school. She revealed in an interview with The Times in 2007 that she was illiterate at the age of 11, was expelled from school and failed her English O level - with an unclassified U grade - three times.

Atkins has already announced that she will step-down from her position as Chairman of Ofsted as of August 31, 2010. She is set to take over as chief executive of the UK arm of Gems, a private education company, where she plans to launch state-funded 'free schools' under government reforms.

Her approach will be highly scrutinised as the government seeks to introduce more private sector control into state schooling, but Atkins sees her approach as revolutionary and reforming.

SOURCE





British city forces schools to rearrange exams and cancel lessons to avoid offending Muslims during Ramadan

Schools are being urged to rearrange tests, cancel swimming lessons and stop sex education to avoid offending Muslims during Ramadan. Head teachers in Stoke-on-Trent have been issued with the guidance for treatment of Muslim pupils who may still be fasting when the new term starts in September.

But critics dismissed the advice as ‘over-zealous’ bureaucracy and said all pupils would be forced to miss out on activities as a result.

During Ramadan, all Muslims who have reached puberty avoid eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset to encourage discipline and self-restraint. To help them with this, Stoke council advises schools not to schedule exams or hold parents’ meetings and social events after school.

They should also avoid swimming lessons because some parents and pupils consider the risk of swallowing water too great. It even advises schools to cancel sex education because Muslims are expected to avoid sexual thoughts while fasting.

Although the guidance was specifically drawn up to help Muslims, it will affect every pupil in the 89 schools in the Potteries. According to the last census in 2001, 3.2 per cent of the population of the city is Muslim.

The co-founder of the the Campaign Against Political Correctness, John Midgley, said: ‘Instead of meddling in this politically correct way the council should trust the judgment of pupils, parents and teachers. ‘They should be able to cater for what goes on in schools without wasting time on overly bureaucratic and politically correct guidance.’

He warned that the advice could be counter-productive and encourage disapproval of the city’s Muslims. And he added: ‘If there’s an over-zealous implementation of this guidance that may mean some pupils could miss out on activities.’

Ramadan is based on the lunar calendar, meaning it falls on a different date each year. It is between August 11 and September 9 this year. For most of the holy month, the pupils will be on holiday. They will only be at school for the last week.

Mr Midgley said the guidance was a ‘waste of time’ as pupils are rarely examined in the first week of term and parents’ evenings would be unlikely to fall at that time.

But Ruth Rosenau, a councillor, said: ‘We live in a multicultural society and already accommodate Christian celebrations. ‘So we’re just asking teachers to be more aware and more accommodating of the Muslim ones. ‘These are not rules that are going to be introduced, but guidance asking schools to be slightly more flexible in how they deal with Ramadan.’ [Backdown under publicity]

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Australian schools fleeced as red tape leads to waste

MANY public schools are overpaying when buying goods through government-endorsed delivery channels. The overpayments run to hundreds of dollars - and in some cases thousands - each year.

An investigation by The Australian has found wastage in education departments is not isolated to the $16.2 billion schools stimulus building program. Public schools are being overcharged for products from projectors and calculators to refrigerators. The problem appears worst in NSW, where the state government collects a fee of up to 2.5 per cent on all items purchased by government departments - and public schools - through its Smartbuy procurement program.

A survey by The Australian has found many products offered through Smartbuy can be bought on the open market for less than those prices offered through the government scheme.

Government supplier Corporate Express is quoting $1708 for a 564-litre, LG refrigerator. An identical item is advertised online for $1276, including delivery. Another Smartbuy supplier is quoting the Bison AMP-1715 wireless projector to schools at $2905. The same product is advertised at $2499, including delivery. All prices and quotes include GST.

NSW public school principals must purchase all items through Smartbuy - regardless of their value - unless they provide the Education Department with details of the product, and the department approves each request.

NSW Education Department spokesman Liam Thorpe said: "We ask schools to notify us of cheaper products they have found so we can check they're the same size, same warranty and that there are no additional costs. If the product is the same, the school can purchase it."

The Public Schools Principals Forum, which is calling for centralised procurement to be scrapped, said the additional red tape meant schools rarely opted to purchase outside the program. "The (NSW) Education Department is saying it doesn't trust principals to do the right thing, that the department knows better than principals do when it comes to school requirements," said forum chairwoman Cheryl McBride.

The federal opposition said last week a Coalition government would give school principals more autonomy, including more financial independence from state bureaucracy.

Mr Thorpe said NSW government schools purchased goods worth $12.5 million through Smartbuy in the first 11 months of last financial year.

A major supplier to NSW public schools is OfficeMax Australia, which sends schools a catalogue. The Australian has found many of the items in its catalogue can be bought for substantially less elsewhere. The Canon Tx-220TS calculator quoted at $29.98 can be found online for $24.33. The Raffles medium-back executive chair offered for $371.81 is $315 at Allgood Office Furniture. Both prices include GST and a three-year warranty.

OfficeMax has repeatedly refused to comment when contacted by The Australian in recent weeks.

When asked about the widespread cost differences, the NSW Department of Services Technology and Administration, which operates Smartbuy for all state government departments, said it was unable to comment on "commercial decisions made by individual suppliers".

"The prices for goods and services in state contracts are based on those included in competitive tender offers, and they factor in considerations such as delivery, warranty and compliance with government policy," a spokesman said. "The majority of state contracts have a clause that provides for NSW procurement to request suppliers to vary their prices if there is evidence that external market pricing is consistently more competitive."

He said an independent review for the 2008-09 financial year had estimated that $360m in "cost avoidance savings" were delivered across all NSW government departments from the use of state contracts. It was unclear how that figure was derived.

Ms McBride said such studies failed to account for the suitability of products delivered to schools and rewarded under funding of public schools. "The lack of choice means schools often end up with products that are not suited to their requirements, leading to even more waste."

The centralised procurement model was of particular concern to country schools, she said. "The local businesses are seeing all the goods for the public schools coming in on the train from Sydney, so when it comes to those schools attempting to fundraise the local businesses want nothing to do with it," she said.

SOURCE



11 July, 2010

Bloated colleges spending more and more on peripheral activities

Pity the poor schmucks who are paying for this but just want to give their kid a good education

American colleges are spending a declining share of their budgets on instruction and more on administration and recreational facilities for students, according to a study of college costs released Friday.

The report, based on government data, documents a growing stratification of wealth across America’s system of higher education.

At the top of the pyramid are private colleges and universities, which educate a small portion of the nation’s students, while public universities and community colleges, where tuitions are rising most rapidly, serve greater numbers and have fewer resources.

The study of revenues and spending trends of American institutions of higher education from 1998 through 2008 traces how the patterns at elite private institutions like Harvard and Amherst differed from sprawling public universities like Ohio State and community colleges like Alabama Southern.

The United States is reputed to have the world’s wealthiest postsecondary education system, with average spending of around $19,000 per student compared with $8,400 across other developed countries, said the report, “Trends in College Spending 1998-2008,” by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit group in Washington that promotes greater scrutiny of college costs to keep tuitions affordable.

“Our analysis shows that these comparisons are misleading,” Jane Wellman, the group’s executive director, said in an e-mail statement. “While the United States has some of the wealthiest institutions in the world, it also has a ‘system’ of postsecondary education with far more economic stratification than is true of any other country.”

Community colleges, which enroll about a third of students, spend close to $10,000 per student per year, Ms. Wellman said, while private research institutions, which enroll far fewer students, spend an average of $35,000 a year for each one.

Undergraduate and graduate enrollments nationwide grew to 18.6 million students overall in 2008 from 14.8 million in 1998, an increase of 26 percent, the report said. Among all the sectors that make up American postsecondary education, public community colleges added the most students over the decade, growing to 6.3 million from 5 million.

By comparison, enrollment at private colleges and universities grew to 2 million students from 1.8 million in the 10 years.

Tuition, on average, increased more rapidly over the decade at public institutions than it did at private ones. Average tuition rose 45 percent at public research universities and 36 percent at community colleges from 1998 to 2008, compared with about 21 percent at private research universities.

But the trend toward increased spending on nonacademic areas prevailed across the higher education spectrum, with public and private, elite and community colleges increasing expenditures more for student services than for instruction, the report said.

The student services category can include spending on career counseling and financial aid offices, but also on intramural athletics and student centers.

“This is the country-clubization of the American university,” said Richard K. Vedder, a professor at Ohio University who studies the economics of higher education. “A lot of it is for great athletic centers and spectacular student union buildings. In the zeal to get students, they are going after them on the basis of recreational amenities.”

On average, spending on instruction increased 22 percent over the decade at private research universities, about the same as tuition, but 36 percent for student services and 36 percent for institutional support, a category that includes general administration, legal services and public relations, the study said.

At public research universities, spending for student services rose 20 percent over the decade, compared with 10 percent for instruction.

Even at community colleges, with their far smaller budgets, spending on students services increased 9.5 percent, compared with 3.4 percent for instruction.

The study also said that the recession that began in the last months of 2008 had dramatically changed the economics of higher education, probably forever.

“The funding models we’ve created in higher ed are not sustainable,” Ms. Wellman said. “We ran up spending in the ’90s and early 2000s to levels we can’t maintain, and this is true not only in the elite privates, but in many of the public institutions, too.”

Now, with private-college endowments battered and state legislatures slashing university budgets coast to coast, “policy makers as well as university presidents and boards must learn to be better stewards of tuition and taxpayer dollars,” she said.

The Delta Cost Project, founded in 2007, is governed by a three-member board and financed in part by the Lumina Foundation. The project says it “focuses on the spending side of the college cost problem, how institutional spending relates to access and success, and ways that costs can be controlled without compromising quality.”

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Expand Educational Opportunity, Don't Restrict It

Remember the Obama administration's promise to make higher education more accessible by expanding Pell grants and student loans to more students through the $787 billion stimulus? Apparently, the administration is having second thoughts -- at least when it comes to allowing students to pick their own schools.

New regulations being contemplated by the Education Department would place new restrictions on loans going to students who want to use them at for-profit schools. The administration's claim is that for-profit schools exploit low-income -- often minority -- students by promising them high-paying careers, on which they can't deliver, and saddling them with debt. But is that really the issue?

For-profit schools occupy an important niche in our higher-education system. They provide training in everything from traditional academic fields to information technology, health care, criminal justice, and automotive repair. According to recent estimates, enrollment at for-profit career schools has increased 20 percent during the recession, as many workers, young and older, realize that they don't have the skills to compete in an increasingly technical and demanding labor force. And with many states cutting back on community college budgets, for-profit schools are sometimes the only alternative to get the training students want and need.

Tuition at for-profit schools averages about $14,000 a year, according to the College Board -- not cheap, but midway between the range in average college tuition between private colleges ($26,273) and public ($7,020). But the difference is that many for-profit career colleges require only a one- or two-year commitment to provide practical job skills, not four. But like all educational institutions, for-profit schools can't guarantee success. It's up to the students to stick with the program, learn the skills, and be diligent in pursuing jobs after they've earned their degrees.

But the Education Department is now contemplating regulation changes that would make it more difficult for students to use federal loans to attend for-profit institutions. The new rules would limit the amount of money a student could use to repay loans to 8 percent of income -- but the way the government will calculate income is a problem. Income will be defined in a debt-to-earnings ratio dependent not on the individual's actual income but on the Bureau of Labor Statistics job code associated with the student's diploma or degree at the 25th percentile of wages in that field. But this formula assumes that after graduating, the person will remain at the lowest quartile of earnings throughout his or her working lifetime instead of assuming wages will rise over time. Under the proposed regulations, students would be ineligible to use federal loans for programs that cost more than the artificial debt-to-earnings ratio dictates.

It seems like the folks in charge of writing the regulations are prejudiced toward for-profit schools. These institutions already meet accreditation rules and must disclose graduation rates and other information to ensure that they are legitimate educational institutions, not mere moneymaking scams.

Schools that advertise on TV and radio and provide education to working-class adults are anathema to the education community elite -- who not only didn't attend such schools but don't know anyone who did. But I've seen firsthand the important role for-profit schools play in providing opportunity. One of my sons earned his Microsoft certifications in a for-profit school and has gone on to a very successful, steadily advancing career in IT in the 10 years since.

The idea that everyone must attend a four-year college in order to succeed is nonsense. Education is important -- and improving skills to compete in a more demanding work environment often makes the difference between those who keep their jobs in a recession and those who don't. But it shouldn't be the federal government's job to decide which school a student chooses. The for-profit market is growing because there is an increased demand for the kind of education it provides. Shouldn't the Education Department devote its resources to expanding opportunities for Americans to receive schooling, not restricting them?

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Britain: The bullies in the staffroom

Joanna Leapman expected criticism when she spoke on TV to attack teaching standards. What she didn’t expect was a poisonous, online attack:

I always knew that speaking about standards of teaching in Britain’s schools on national television last week was going to have its consequences. When I took the call from the producer at BBC’s Panorama, asking me, as a former parent-governor who had already aired my grievances with our education system in this newspaper, if I would be willing to contribute to an investigation into incompetent teachers, I thought twice about saying yes. Not only would I be potentially criticising the leadership of the school my children still attend, but I would be throwing myself into the ring with members of the most vitriolic profession in our country — teaching.

I weighed up the odds, and decided my views and experience had a vital role to play in fuelling any policy change in the practice of recycling incompetent teachers. I could handle the inevitable critics.

What I didn’t expect was for some teachers on a popular online teachers’ forum to sink so low as to lash out highly personal and insulting remarks about my family’s red hair, the inside of my house — and, unbelievably, make nasty judgments about my three children.

One of them, a primary teacher hiding behind the online pseudonym “lardylegs”, says: “Severely ginger people should not be allowed to become school governors. Or breed.” She also says of my five-year-old son: “Did you see the maniacal grin on the young one at the front? He is clearly a pain in the backside in class.” She also described the children of two other parents involved in the programme as “a sandwich short of a picnic”. Others joined in the debate, agreeing wholeheartedly with Lardylegs’s attack.

Such hurtful remarks are made worse by the knowledge that they have been posted by teachers — professionals whose very job should dictate that they make no judgments about individuals in this manner. Lardylegs reveals herself on other postings to be a teacher with years of experience of teaching primary pupils, aged 7 to 11 — the same age as my two eldest children. Hiding behind a cloak of anonymity should not excuse her or the others. Is this how they discuss our kids in the staffroom? It’s shocking.

I am all in favour of open debate, and online forums only help to engage an otherwise politically apathetic public on issues. But to use them to make sniping personal attacks on people whose views you don’t share cannot be good.

The BBC investigation had uncovered new statistics that showed that only 18 teachers had ever been found to be incompetent by the General Teaching Council, despite estimates by former schools inspector Chris Woodhead that 15,000 incompetent teachers were still in the system.

In my interview with the programme’s reporter, Sam Poling, I revealed that, as the former chair of my school’s personnel committee, I knew that the headteacher was aware of the weak teachers but gave them to classes who had already had a good teacher, or vowed to give them a good one the following year.

Before the programme was even aired last Monday, the teachers’ forum, on the Times Educational Supplement (TES) website, was buzzing with angry teachers attacking reports in the newspapers of its findings. They branded it “yet another witch hunt”, accusing the programme’s makers of incompetence and hurling abuse at their long-serving arch-enemy Mr Woodhead.

The facts were there in the programme. Panorama’s own forum has been flooded with parents sharing horror stories of incompetent teachers. Most teachers surely must be aware that some of their colleagues are incompetent. Indeed one school head of department, using the name “chocolateheaven”, did acknowledge the problem on the forum, saying: “Every school I’ve worked in has had a teacher not working up to scratch, and most are not tackled… If they’re not prepared to do the necessary, then they deserve to lose their job.” But the vast majority of the 220-plus posts from teachers on the TES forum are in denial. Why?

Ask anyone else if they work with incompetent people and they will probably happily descend into a rant about some of the more useless people in their workplace. So why does everyone but teachers accept this? Why are they being so defensive? Had the programme hit a raw nerve? Had the programme hit such a raw nerve that they had to resort to getting personal?

I know the majority of teachers are hardworking professionals, and most must privately worry that some of their colleagues are not up to the job. Unfortunately, this reasonable majority all too often remain silent and allow the public voice of the teaching profession to be that of the teaching unions, whose defensiveness sounds like belligerence.

Teachers take criticism less well than any other professional body I can think of. The teaching unions line up regularly to wheel out quotes attacking their portrayal in television dramas in a way no others do. I can’t recall ever seeing quotes from pub landlords or shopkeepers saying that they are unhappy with their latest characterisation on screen.

What’s more, most teachers only ever seem to have two lines of defence when even a vague bit of criticism is levelled at them — the same two lines we’ve all been hearing for years, and the same two lines that appeared in post after post on the forum.

The first is: “Well, why don’t you try standing in front of a class of 30 all day!” and the second is: “You’re not a teacher, so what do you know about education?”

Neither of these arguments would work in any other walk of life. Imagine, complaining in a restaurant about the quality of food, to be told, “Well, you try standing in front of a hot stove all day”, and “you’re not a chef, so what do you know about food?” No. It would be totally unacceptable. Parents, like customers, have a right to expect good service. If they don’t get it, they have a right to complain. Can teachers really patronise parents by telling them that they have no understanding of what a good service actually is?

Maybe that’s why one teacher has attacked me on the forum for being “the worst kind of pushy middle class parent” and several others rushed to agree. The judgment was apparently made on the basis of me having a piano in my front room – which appeared in the background of my interview photograph. One poster, “Eureka”, an FE computer studies teacher, even started a whole new forum discussion topic about it, calling for pianos in front rooms to be banned. His remark — a joke, but a nasty, pointed one — says what I’ve suspected for a while: some teachers are uncomfortable with middle-class parents in their environment; perhaps they’re fearing their authority and their position as the “most learned one” in the room may be undermined. Or maybe, in the worst-case scenario, they’re fearing that their own inadequacies may be revealed.

Sadly, it’s become increasingly easy to enter the teaching profession and, unlike in many other countries, our teachers are not made up of our top graduates. In fact, many don’t even have A-levels. Information from the teacher recruitment body, the TDA, specifies only 3 GCSEs (at grade C) as a basic requirement. Some teacher training courses require two A-levels, but it depends on the course. Most also accept “equivalents”. Bluntly, this means that those who didn’t quite make the grade in school, those kids who struggled academically and were in the lower sets and ended up at a technical college doing BTecs, DipHEs, NVQs or CPVEs or any other lesser academic acronym, can get on a teaching course.

And judging by the teaching forum, many are lacking basic spelling and grammar skills. Some write “apparantly” and “defanately”, several confuse “its” and “it’s” and at least one posting is incomprehensible: “Who would like disciple to be enforced--end off--after that see how teachers teach…we cant get them out of school...whats been done for that?”

Teachers’ poor spelling is clearly a common problem in schools up and down the country, even among headteachers, as I know I’m not alone in becoming increasingly frustrated at poor grammar and spelling in letters sent home in book bags.

Perhaps some headteachers are scared that people like me will send the letters back with corrections in red ink! Or perhaps they really do feel happier talking down to not-very-literate parents, safe in the knowledge that their incomprehensible jargon and target-setting is unlikely to be challenged if teachers don’t quite meet the standard that year.

But teachers’ own fears, resentment and prejudice towards middle-class parents is bringing our state system down. I know of several state primary headteachers who believe their own, middle-class children are better served in private schools. But without a true balance of class, ability and aspirations in the school, the system is doomed to failure.

Schools need supportive — pushy — parents to ensure that they truly thrive. You’d have thought teachers would welcome parents who want to help their child progress with reading, support the school, help out with the PTA cake stalls, drum up support for the school fete, and so forth. Maybe some teachers do, but I suspect that staffroom mutterings paint them as “interfering busybodies”.

Parents feel very strongly about incompetent teachers. They know when their child’s unhappy; they know when their child is bored, or is being bullied and the teacher is doing nothing. They know when their work isn’t marked or a reading book isn’t changed. They don’t need a BA in education to know that.

Several parents in my children’s school, who I didn’t even know, came up to me the day after the television programme aired, to thank me for speaking out. Parents are angry and feel helpless.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has already scrapped the General Teaching Council, which handled teacher incompetency cases. He now has two big jobs to do — adopt a business-like attitude to the teaching profession to hack out the incompetent teachers that are undermining our children’s education. And secondly, to increase the standard of teachers entering the profession.

SOURCE



10 July, 2010

Showdown at the Texas corral

Criss Cloudt understandably grew defensive last week as she tried to explain to a group of legislators how a student who got absolutely every question wrong on a TAKS writing test could be scored as passing it.

Cloudt was in the hot seat because she is the Texas Education Agency's associate commissioner in charge of the "accountability system" that administers the TAKS test and ranks schools and school districts on a four-tier scale from "unacceptable" to "exemplary."

She was also in the hot seat because the man presumably most responsible for instituting the controversial new "Texas Projection Measure" that is producing such absurd results, Education Commissioner Robert Scott, failed to show up. But that's another story. Today we look at the ways that Cloudt appeared to try to mislead Houston state Rep. Scott Hochberg and his Appropriations Subcommittee on Education, and how Hochberg repeatedly called her on it.

It began with Hochberg asking what accounted for a huge jump last year in the number of schools and school districts rated as "recognized" and "exemplary." "Performance," said Cloudt.

But Hochberg got her to admit that 73 of the 74 additional "exemplary districts" that took us from 43 in 2008 to 117 in 2009 received that distinction only because the new Texas Projection Measure miraculously allowed nearly half the 1 million TAKS tests that had been failed to count as passing for the purpose of rating schools and districts.

Cloudt said the Texas Projection Measure is a "growth measure." To most of us, that would imply that it looked at how a child did this year compared to last.

Hochberg brought out that it doesn't. It looked only at last year's scores and, based on a formula devised from thousands of prior results, projected that children who pass reading or math were likely to pass other tests in future years.

Deciphering analysis

Cloudt claimed that based on analysis looking backward, the formulas used in the projections are "quite good, actually."

"Really?" said Hochberg. "What would you consider quite good?"

"They're on average in the 90s (percent) in terms of projection accurate," Cloudt said.

I assumed that she was referring to the cases in which failing children were counted as passing.

But Hochberg was on to her. He got her to admit that the predictions that were accurate more than 90 percent of the time included all children — those who did very well on all the TAKS tests (who can safely be predicted to pass) and those who did terribly an all the tests (who can safely be predicted to fail).

Hochberg revealed that TEA's own analysis showed that the accuracy rate for those whose performance was actually upgraded using the "projection measure" was in the range of 50 percent.

Failed projections

Cloudt continued to defend the projections, saying repeatedly that when a failing child was counted as passing it was because "hundreds and hundreds" of other children whose test scores fit the exact same pattern later passed.

But again, Hochberg was ready. He called as a witness an expert from Pearson, the national testing company that devised the Texas Projection Measure.

She explained that the formula used to "project" future success was not made by looking at the records of earlier kids with identical scoring patterns. It was based, again, on aggregate numbers that included the highest and lowest performing students as well as those in the middle.

Hochberg asked Cloudt if that was right. "That's different than what I said before," she admitted. "It's a better explanation."

The question is, was Cloudt deliberately trying to mislead Hochberg and the public throughout the hearing, or did she really not understand the bizarre system that can turn a test score of zero to a passing score? And which would be more disturbing?

SOURCE





Montana School Proposes Controversial Sex Education Program

A proposed plan to teach kindergartners sex education has come under fire in Helena, Montana.

The Helena Public School system is considering a comprehensive plan for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It includes teaching first graders that people can be attracted to the same gender. In second grade students are instructed to avoid gay slurs and by the time students turn 10 years old they are taught about various types of intercourse.

According to the draft proposal obtained by FOX News Radio, fifth graders should “understand that sexual intercourse includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration.”

Jeff Laszloffy, of the Montana Family Foundation, is among those outraged that educators want to teach sex education to kindergarteners. “It’s absolutely insane,” Laszloffy told FOX News Radio. “This is not education. This has crossed the line and has gone from education to indoctrination and that’s the problem parents have.”

SOURCE






23,000 British university jobs 'threatened by cuts'

The class-size bugaboo again. I've stood in a university auditorium with 1,000 students in front of me and I saw no evidence in their essays that they learned any less well -- JR

British students face the largest university class sizes in the developed world as thousands of lecturers’ jobs are threatened by public sector cuts, ministers have been waned. Almost 23,000 posts could be lost in coming years because of a dramatic reduction in university budgets, it was claimed.

The University and College Union said the job losses would lead to a sharp increase in the size of lectures and tutorial groups, coupled with a loss of “contact time” with academics.

Ministers should reconsider the size of cuts earmarked for universities to prevent British higher education being “left behind” by other countries, said the union.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, warned last month that most Government departments would face average spending cuts of 25 per cent. This included the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is responsible for universities. An analysis by the UCU found that a cut of this size would lead to the loss of 22,584 jobs.

The union insisted its figures were “conservative” and the impact of funding cuts could be even worse.

Britain is currently the second most popular destination in the world for foreign students – after the United States – but larger class sizes and less tuition would make it a “far less attractive place to study”, it was claimed.

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said: "The scale of the cuts that we are facing is unprecedented and will have an undeniable impact on the student experience. Student to staff ratios, which are already high, will become some of the highest in the developed world.

"Lecturers who survive the cull will have less time to give individual students as they pick up the workloads of former colleagues and there will be fewer support services for students.

"The Government will effectively be asking students to pay more for less at a time when our international competitors are investing in higher education.

"Do we really want to be left behind and risk being shunned by foreign students who will go to study elsewhere? We have a proud international reputation, but we realistically cannot expect to remain a major force in the global knowledge economy in the face of these cuts."

According to latest figures, there are already almost 18 students to every academic at British universities. This compares with 15 in the United States, 12 in Germany and 11 in Japan. It is feared that class sizes could rise further with the loss of more lecturers’ jobs.

The UCU claim 6,000 positions are already under threat at universities following cuts imposed earlier this year.

SOURCE



9 July, 2010

Student fluency woes rising in Boston. New testing finds 28% in Hub need help in English

Policies based on wrong theories will continue to get bad results

The number of Boston school students identified as lacking fluency in English surged dramatically over the past school year, presenting further challenges for a school district already under federal investigation for failing to provide adequate programs for students trying to learn the language.

Such students now number nearly 16,000, about 28 percent of the district’s total enrollment, according to new data released by the district. Last fall, the group consisted of more than 11,000 students.

Much of the increase emerged after school officials complied with a federal directive to retest thousands of students who were improperly evaluated over the last seven years for English fluency, causing them not to be identified for services. Those students were tested only on how well they speak and listen in English, but not their ability to read and write in the language.

The retesting effort, carried out over the past six months, identified 4,269 additional students in need of specialized instruction. The students, who have low MCAS scores, run the gamut: Some barely grasp English, while others are almost fluent.

“It’s a substantial increase, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime situation’’ said Eileen de los Reyes, Boston’s assistant superintendent for English-language learners. “One thing that is very clear to us is that students in this group need an academic intervention.’’

The failure of Boston schools to properly identify and provide services to the students could play a big factor in their poor academic performance. Students lacking fluency in English have among the lowest MCAS scores and graduation rates in Boston and statewide, potentially limiting their job options later in life.

School officials have begun meeting with parents of the newly identified students to explain educational options to them. They have created a special summer school program to serve approximately 3,300 of the newly identified students, who will require additional help when the school year begins.

The rapid increase is adding urgency to the district’s efforts to bring programs that serve English-language learners into compliance with state and federal civil rights laws.

A state review two years ago revealed numerous problems, such as school employees encouraging parents to decline services because programs were full or not properly testing students for English fluency. The district revealed that more than 4,000 students already identified as English-language learners were not receiving any services, but state education officials suspected the number was much higher because of inadequate testing and identification.

The US departments of education and justice, dissatisfied with Boston’s pace in fixing the problems, subsequently launched their own investigation, which has brought federal investigators into school district offices this week, their third such visit.

Boston’s retesting of students is a big step forward in bolstering the quality of education for English-language learners and for accepting the failures of the past, said Miren Uriarte, coauthor of a report that called attention to the problems in Boston schools.

“To me, it’s an indicator of a changing environment,’’ said Uriarte, who coauthored the report for the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Center for Collaborative Education. “The federal review has highlighted for a lot of people how serious the problem is and has made movement in an areas where people thought movement was not possible.’’

The growth in the number of English-language learners has challenged school districts statewide. Many programs were thrown into disarray, specialists say, after voters in 2002 abolished widespread use of bilingual education, which allows students to learn subjects in their native tongue until they master English.

The new law stresses teaching all subjects in English for nonnative speakers, using a student’s native language only sparingly. Instruction generally takes place in a separate setting or in a regular classroom amid native English-speaking students.

In making the switch, many districts, such as Boston, failed to provide appropriate staffing, training, and programs, either because of funding shortages or misunderstanding of the legal requirements, specialists say.

Over the last year, Boston has invested millions of dollars to revamp programs, hire dozens of additional teachers to work directly with English-language learners, and train traditional classroom teachers to work with the students. It is planning to spend another $10 million on such efforts this year.

Some advocates for English-language learners question Boston’s ability to properly serve all such students, especially in lean budget times.

“Clearly, it’s a significant number of kids, and our concern is now that they have identified these kids, what are they going to do with them?’’ said Roger Rice, executive director of Multicultural Education, Training & Advocacy, a national organization that represents linguistic minorities and has an office in Somerville. “Are they going to design programs to meet their needs. . . . We are talking about kids who missed two, three, four, and five years of English-language learning programs.’’

De los Reyes said the district aims to ensure all English-language learners are receiving extra support this coming school year. She said the district and the federal investigators are working toward an agreement on what changes will be made to programs that serve the students.

“Now the question in the years to come is how do we make sure we keep the momentum and English-language learners front and center in the district,’’ de los Reyes said.

SOURCE




Success in New Orleans?

Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. Sixty percent of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.

The key attributes are competition, parental choice, investment, and an end to the union deathgrip on New Orleans schools that kept children locked into failing schools and failing classrooms. Parents in New Orleans have hope now that their children will get educated rather than baby-sat, and that will provide a renaissance of its own to a city struggling to get back on its feet.

Otherwise, we’ll end up with this, courtesy of Bob Ewing at the Daily Caller:

Everyone knew OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] would be a bargain. DC has among the highest spending per pupil in the nation. At a conservative estimate of $17,542, the public schools spend over $10,000 more per child than the $7,500 spent through the scholarship program.

But would OSP achieve measureable results? The answer is a resounding yes. Previous studies by Wolf showed an improvement in academic performance, to the point that a student participating in OSP from kindergarten through high school would likely be 2 ½ years ahead in reading. The key finding in this final round of research, Wolf told us, was the graduation rates. OSP dramatically increases prospects of high-school graduation.

Wolf pointed to research showing that high-school diplomas significantly improve the chance of getting a job. And dropouts that do find employment earn about $8,500 less per year than their counterpoints with diplomas. Further, each graduate reduces the cost of crime by a stunning $112,000. Cecelia Rouse, an economic advisor to President Obama, found that each additional high school graduate saves the country $260,000.

Simply put, OSP has a profoundly positive effect not just on students, but on the city and the country as a whole.

So when it came time for Congress to reauthorize OSP, it would seem to be a no-brainer: Expand the program. Instead, they killed it.

Of course. They haven’t had a Katrina to refocus Congress on what ails education; instead, they’re acting in thrall to the teachers union. Be sure to read it all; it’s as depressing as the Reason TV video is uplifting.

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English spelling 'too difficult for children'

Odd that kids have been mastering it routinely for a couple of hundred years, then. This is just an excuse for lazy and wrongheaded teaching methods. I have seen Grade 1 kids producing legible words when taught via phonics. Vowel sounds in English are certainly erratic but if a kid knows how the consonants generally sound, he/she can usually interpret a word despite the erratic vowel spelling

The complexity of the English spelling system is to blame for soaring levels of illiteracy among teenagers, according to a researcher. A high number of “inconsistencies” in the way basic words are spelt makes it much harder for children to read and write at a young age, it is claimed.

Masha Bell, author and literacy researcher, will tell a conference of English teachers on Friday that sweeping reforms are needed to the spelling system to improve children’s linguistic skills.

She will say that English employs 185 “unreliable” spellings for just 44 speech sounds. Words such as too, true, who, flew, shoe and you all employ different letters to represent the same sound, she will say.

According to academics, children in Britain normally take three years to read to a decent standard. But in Finland – where words are more likely to be pronounced as they look – children can read fluently within three months.

Her comments will be made to the annual conference of the National Association for Teachers of English in Leicestershire.

Speaking before the conference, Mrs Bell, author of the books Learning to Read and Rules and Exceptions of English Spelling, said English was unique in the way in which “identical letters make different sounds”.

“It is difficult to learn any subject, or even to train for a trade nowadays, without learning to read and write first, but roughly 20 per cent of all speakers of English leave school with very poor literacy skills,” she said.

“The antique, inconsistent spelling system of English is probably the main reason why the UK has a far longer tail of educational underachievement than any other European country, why more of our young people are Neets (Not in Education Employment or Training), why many end up in jail, and why improving their chances of re-offending while in prison is much more difficult too.”

Mrs Bell’s views have been criticised in the past for advocating “dumbing down” of a spelling system that has naturally evolved over centuries.

She has previously claimed that children face 800 words by the age of 11 that hinder their reading ability because of the way they are spelt.

Words such as orange, foreign, rhinoceros, handkerchief, soldiers and stomach all contain letter combinations that are more commonly pronounced in a different way, she claimed.

SOURCE



8 July, 2010

Conservative teachers challenge NEA on moral issues

There was drama at this year’s National Education Association meeting because of the courage and commitment of a relatively small group of Christian and conservative teachers who introduced amendments to overturn the union's liberal policies on several key issues.

The amendments were defeated in secret ballots by the 9,000-strong delegation.

First, teacher Christine Nowak from New York introduced an amendment to the by-laws that would prohibit the NEA from taking any position on the issue of abortion. This would include lobbying, filing amicus curiae briefs in support of pro-abortion court cases, and would mean revision of the NEA Resolution I-16 (Family Planning) to clarify that NEA's support for family planning does not include support for abortion.

The reason for the “no position” is the sentiment of many teachers that involvement in these issues is simply not appropriate use of teacher union dues. And many of the taxpayers who fund local teachers’ salaries agree.

The amendment vote by secret ballot was defeated with 30 percent in favor, 70 percent against. A similar measure at the 2009 meeting was also defeated.

Another amendment called for a similar stance by the NEA on the issue of homosexuality. This amendment, introduced by Ohio teacher Ruth Boyatt, would require that the NEA take no position on the issue of same-gender marriage. It too failed by a vote of 30 percent to 70 percent.

The influence of homosexual and “transgender” teachers was quite visible. Not only was there a booth by the NEA’s “GLBT” Caucus, but one sign announced a “Drag Queen” Caucus. A transvestite beauty contest is rumored to be on the schedule for next year’s meeting.

The Ohio delegation includes many homosexual activists, according to reports from a teacher who attended the Ohio caucus meeting. One teacher rose at the meeting to praise the high number of Ohio teacher delegates who voted against the measure seeking “no position” on same sex marriage, despite its having been introduced by one of the Ohio delegation. Plans are in the works for a separate Ohio “GLBT” caucus as well.

The state affiliate, the Ohio Education Association, threw its support in 2009 behind House Bill 176, a measure to add homosexuality and cross-gender behavior to Ohio’s civil rights laws, a so-called “non-discrimination” measure. The bill, which passed the Ohio House but has not been considered by the Ohio Senate, would apply to employment practices in schools. The OEA also opposed the statewide ballot measure affirming traditional marriage in 2004. The constitutional amendment was approved by Ohio voters.

SOURCE






Study: Later schoolday aids teens

Odd teen sleeping habits are certainly a fact

Giving teens 30 extra minutes to start their school day leads to more alertness in class, better moods, less tardiness, and healthier breakfasts, a small study found.

“The results were stunning. There’s no other word to use,’’ said Patricia Moss, academic dean at the Rhode Island boarding school where the study was done. “We didn’t think we’d get that much bang for the buck.’’

The results appear in July’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The results mirror those at a few schools that have delayed starting times more than half an hour.

Researchers say there’s a reason why even 30 minutes can make a big difference. Teens tend to be in their deepest sleep around dawn — when they typically need to rise for school. Interrupting that sleep can leave them groggy.

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British private schools forced to offer more free places

Private schools have been forced to provide more free places for children from poor homes for the first time amid fears they could face state intervention. In an unprecedented move, two independent schools have become the first in England and Wales to increase the amount of money set aside for bursaries under pressure from the official charities regulator.

The move could have serious implications for a number of other fee-paying schools as they battle the threat of falling income in the economic downturn. Last night, private school leaders warned that the rules could “jeopardise the future” of some schools.

The Independent Schools Council is now seeking a judicial review of guidelines issued by the Charity Commission amid claims it is acting “illegally”. Under Labour's 2006 Charities Act, fee-paying schools are no longer automatically entitled to charitable status. They must prove they provide "public benefit" to remain in business and retain tax breaks worth around £100m a year.

The commission has warned that it could intervene at schools struggling to meet the requirement to find "ways to fund free or subsidised access".

Last year, five schools were assessed by the commission as part of a test case before rules are extended to more than 2,000 across England. Two of the schools – St Anselm's in Derbyshire and Highfield Priory in Lancashire – failed the assessment. They are both small preparatory schools educating around 230 pupils each.

Commissioners praised them for staging events such as sports tournaments for nearby state schools, graded music exams for local children, public speaking events and leasing out school facilities. But both schools were effectively told they failed to provide enough free or subsidised places. Highfield provided no bursaries but used funds to keep fees low for all parents. St Anselm's gave 90 per cent subsides to two pupils.

Both schools have since increased – or pledged to increase – the size of bursary pots and have now passed the commission’s test. Formal reports on the two schools will be published on Thursday.

Simon Northcott, St Anselm's headmaster, insisted the school was planning to increase he amount of money set aside for bursaries before it was assessed. He added: “We are, of course, delighted that the commission has recognised the changes made since the assessment last year and considers that they are sufficient to meet the public benefit criteria.

“Given many of the particular issues that affect St Anselm's, including its rural location, child protection as a result of the age of young boarders, and it has no endowments, we feel that in the current economic climate it would make life difficult should we be required to do substantially more.”

Under plans, the maximum value of its bursary will rise from 90 per cent to 100 per cent of fees, the number of children benefiting will increase from one to three and it has pledged to advertise future awards more widely. It is now spending £33,000 on bursaries – around 1.1 per cent of gross fee income.

Other independent schools are supposed to meet the public benefit requirements in this year.

The ISC will petition the High Court later this month for a judicial review of the commission’s guidance. It claims that the commission’s focus on free places represents a “gross” misinterpretation of the rules, adding that it has ignored other public benefits, such as sharing facilities with local state schools.

Some schools fear they will be forced to raise fees for existing parents or cut building programmes to find more cash for means-tested bursaries.

David Lyscom, ISC chief executive, welcomed the latest ruling, but said it did “little to lift the uncertainty for charitable schools about what they need to do to meet the commission’s public benefit test”. He added: “Nor does it resolve our concern all along that the commission’s interpretation of public benefit is too narrow and deeply flawed.

“This is not just about individual schools. The entire sector is at the whim of the commission’s prevailing and subjective view as to what is ‘sufficient’ for a school to get the all-clear. “This is an appalling situation for schools to be in, and jeopardises the future of beacons of educational excellence educating almost half a million children annually.”

Sue Fieldman, regional editor of the Good Schools Guide, said: “The vast majority of schools have already upped their game on bursaries and will pass the test. The problems arise with the very small schools that have not got the money for bursaries.”

The Charity Commission refused to comment yesterday.

SOURCE



7 July, 2010

Survey: 26% flub question on US independence

A new poll gauging American knowledge on a basic question about the nation’s history — “From which country did the United States win its independence?’’ — is either good news or bad news, depending on your expectations:

Twenty-six percent of those surveyed did not know that the United States achieved its independence from Great Britain, according to the poll, conducted by the nonprofit Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Six percent named a different country, including France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain. Twenty percent said they weren’t sure.

The pollsters broke down the numbers and found gaps in knowledge according to region: 32 percent of Southerners weren’t sure or named the wrong country; 26 percent of Midwesterners were in the same category, as were 25 percent of Westerners and 16 percent of Northeasterners.

More depressing results — depending on your expectations — were found in a 2007 poll conducted by the US Mint.

It showed that only 7 percent of those surveyed could name the first four presidents in order: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

Thirty percent knew that Jefferson was the third president, 57 percent identified Jefferson as the main author of the Declaration of Independence, and 57 percent knew that Washington led the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

SOURCE





British teachers To Get Tough On Unruly Pupils

Teachers are to get tougher powers to deal with unruly pupils as part of a bid to improve school discipline, the Government will announce. Courts will be told to heed clearer guidance that force can be used to remove youngsters from classrooms or restrain them.

Search powers are to be beefed up too, allowing kids to be checked for mobile phones, fireworks, cigarettes and legal highs, as well as weapons and drugs.

Teachers will also be granted anonymity if complaints are made about them in a bid to prevent careers being ruined by "malicious" claims.

The raft of measures will be unveiled by Schools Minister Nick Gibb in an effort to give schools "the powers and freedoms they need to maintain discipline".

Official figures show 2,230 pupils were permanently excluded last year for physical assaults on teachers or fellow pupils and tens of thousands more suspended. One in five secondary schools is rated "satisfactory" or worse by Ofsted for behaviour and two in five teachers have witnessed physical aggression - a quarter of them being the victims of it.

Anyone handling complaints about teachers will be "made aware that teachers can apply discipline in the classroom for the safety of all the pupils... and in the interests of maintaining order", the Department for Education said.

Under present search powers, authorised staff can only force pupils to be searched if they suspect them of carrying knives or other weapons, drugs or alcohol. Mr Gibb wants to extend the list to include electronic devices like mobile phones and music players, pornography, fireworks, tobacco products and so-called "legal highs". He will also say he wants to make the power even wider to cover any item which teachers believe could pose a threat to safety or order in the classroom.

The National Union of Teachers' Christine Blower said: "There are rare occasions when young people may be carrying and concealing dangerous materials. "In those situations, teachers have to make a judgment call on the spot. In doing so, they should not be subject to the potential for accusations that they are acting illegally."

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Don't bother applying for job without 2:1 degree, say British bosses as 80% admit they turn down all graduates without such a qualification

The only consolation is that many British universities hand out top degrees like salted peanuts these days

A 2:1 degree is becoming the basic qualification for a graduate job as employers are swamped by applications for a diminishing number of posts. Eight in 10 bosses now demand at least an upper second-class degree and will refuse to interview applicants with a 2:2 or lower, according to a survey of 200 graduate recruiters.

Employers are increasingly relying on the 2:1 to narrow the field of candidates following a surge in applications driven by the recession. Just 66.7 per cent insisted on an upper second-class degree last year.

Firms say that the ranks of 2010 job-hunters have been swelled by rejected candidates from the past two years. Desperate graduates are also increasingly taking a 'scattergun' approach to sending out applications.

Employers are also more likely to insist that candidates achieved degrees from elite universities, according to a survey of members of the Association of Graduate Recruiters. A total of 6.8 per cent this year are seeking graduates from specific institutions, up from just 2.5 per cent last year. [As well they might. Lots of Britiash "universies" are just jumped-up technical colleges]

Launching the survey findings today, AGR leaders admitted employers' growing reliance on 2:1 degrees to filter candidates risked unfairness to applicants.

Seventy-eight per cent of bosses now cite it as a minimum job requirement yet universities vary wildly in the criteria used to award 2:1s, with some giving them out far more readily than others.

But reforms to the 200-year-old classification system are still at trial stage. A detailed record of achievement containing a breakdown of course marks and employability skills is being piloted by 18 universities for those graduating in 2012.

AGR chief executive Carl Gilleard said: 'Recruiters are under intense pressure this year dealing with a huge number of applications from graduates for a diminishing pool of jobs. Those of our members who took part in the survey reported a total of 686,660 applications since the beginning of the 2010 recruitment campaign. 'It is hardly surprising then that the number of employers asking for a 2:1 degree has shot up by 11 percentage points.

'However, while this approach does aid the sifting process it can rule out promising candidates with the right work skills unnecessarily. 'We are encouraging our members to look beyond the degree classification when narrowing down the field of candidates to manageable proportions.'

The AGR survey finds that employers in the survey are fielding a record 69 applications per vacancy - up from 49 last year and 35 in 2000. It comes as organisations offer seven per cent fewer jobs this year than last.

Despite the overall downturn in vacancies, some industry sectors are hiring significantly more graduates than last year, including banking and financial services, insurance, consulting and business services, construction, and accountancy. However investment banking, the public sector, law, engineering, retail, telecommunications and IT and large consumer firms will all have fewer positions.

Despite the surge in applications, not all employers expect to fill all their vacancies amid concerns over the quality of some candidates and lack of appropriate qualifications. One in three respondents to the survey - conducted in May - reported likely shortfalls in graduate recruitment. Just 66.8 per cent said they would fill all vacancies.

Meanwhile starting salaries have been frozen for two years' running for the first time since the AGR's surveys began. New graduates stand to earn £25,000 on average - the same as in 2008.

A separate study last week of 100 graduate employers, by High Fliers Research, found that the most over-subscribed sectors, such as consumer goods, are attracting 270 applications per vacancy.

Meanwhile official figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency found that one in three graduates is on the dole or working in stop-gap jobs such as stacking shelves and pouring pints. Nearly 20,000 of last year's graduates - one in 10 - were unemployed six months after leaving university - up from eight per cent in 2008.

A further 50,000 failed to land graduate-level posts and resorted to roles for which they are likely to be over-qualified, such as secretaries, waiters, bar staff and factory workers. In total, 34 per cent were jobless or in non-graduate roles.

SOURCE



6 July, 2010

Subsidizing More College Students Won’t Help the U.S. Economy

By George Leef

Governments in the United States subsidize college education heavily. State universities charge students very low tuition rates, and the federal government has a host of grant and loan programs designed to make college affordable to most families. (As politicians make those programs more generous, schools have spent more and raised tuitions, thus creating an upward cost spiral—but that’s another story.)

One of the simplest of all economic lessons is that when government subsidizes something, more of it is produced than otherwise. That’s because subsidies upset the natural calculation of costs and benefits that people make. The subsidized thing becomes artificially more attractive to consumers; as they buy more of it, resources are drawn away from nonsubsidized things. Subsidies cause inefficiency.

In higher education, subsidies have led to a great surplus of young people going to college and a deterioration in academic standards. As higher education has expanded—at the end of World War II less than one high school graduate in ten enrolled in postsecondary education; now about 70 percent do—schools have increasingly drawn in weak and disengaged students. Rather than risk losing such students (and the money they bring in), many colleges have relaxed their admission standards, allowed or encouraged grade inflation, and dumbed down their curricula.

Nevertheless, some politicians and education leaders claim that the nation badly needs to “produce” still more college graduates. In a speech to Congress in February 2009 President Obama declared a national goal of having the world’s highest percentage of workers with college degrees by 2020. One of the nation’s major educational foundations, Lumina Foundation, proclaims that its mission is to get more students through college and maintains that the United States is falling behind other countries in its level of “educational attainment.”

That was the subject of a debate I participated in on February 26. Arguing for the resolution that the United States needs more college graduates to remain an economic power were former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund. Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder and I opposed it. If you care to watch the debate, which took about an hour and a half, you’ll find it here.

For those who prefer a synopsis, read on.

The affirmative debaters contended that college education:

* raises people’s incomes substantially; graduates on average earn nearly a million dollars more over their careers than nongraduates;

* provides people with the skills they need to succeed in “the knowledge economy”;

* opens up opportunities for people to advance, especially those from poor backgrounds; and

* will help America remain competitive with other nations.

Professor Vedder and I took issue with these claims.

First, we contended that the “earnings premium” argument is fallacious. Even though it’s true on average that people with college degrees earn more, that isn’t necessarily true at the margin. That people with college degrees (many of them earned decades ago when standards were higher) have high earnings on average tells us nothing about the next student who gets a degree. Since many people who obtain college degrees today wind up working in low-skill, low-paying jobs, there is no basis for the assumption that college education raises incomes.

Second, we argued that college coursework doesn’t automatically improve an individual’s skills and knowledge. Although some students benefit greatly from their studies, many others enter college with very poor capabilities and graduate with little or no improvement. Most employers aren’t looking for in-depth knowledge that only a college-educated individual could have; rather they are looking for good basic skills and trainability—and they complain that many students are lacking in that respect.

Third, we argued that having a college degree doesn’t necessarily open up any opportunities because bachelor’s degrees are so common now that having one is no distinction. Moreover, there are other and often more effective ways for people to advance than going to college. Many vocational paths are less costly and offer better long-term prospects than a college degree.

Fourth, we argued that since we already have a glut of college graduates in the labor force, adding to it does nothing to make the United States more competitive. Furthermore, there is no causal link between increasing numbers of people holding college degrees and the creation of high-skill, high-paying jobs.

Finally, we argued that putting more and more people through college exacerbates the problem of credential inflation—that is, employers’ insisting that applicants have college degrees to be considered for jobs that don’t require any academic training. Credential inflation already shuts out individuals who don’t have college degrees from many jobs they could easily do.

In response to our case against the resolution, the affirmative side said nothing.

Perhaps I should just leave the matter there, but there is more to be said against the idea of trying to increase college attendance and graduation through government action.

For one thing, the notion that the country would be better off if it put more people through college is cut from the same bolt of cloth as the notion that the country would be better off if it increased the percentage of people who own their own home. That is another noble-sounding idea that politicians tried to achieve through subsidies and manipulations. Eventually, it proved to be harmful to many individuals who were persuaded to take out mortgages they couldn’t pay off. Similarly, numerous young Americans are today struggling to make the payments on their college loan debt out of incomes far below what they were all but promised. Government planning schemes always have a lot of collateral damage.

For another, if we are serious about improving the productivity of the economy, a marginal increase in the percentage of workers with college credentials is a diversion from policies that would actually matter. Like what? Well, governments channel resources away from productive, competitively determined uses and into wasteful, politically determined uses. Governments’ innumerable laws and regulations interfere with efficiency, the minimum wage and occupational licensing being examples. And governments drive away investors and entrepreneurs with high taxes.

Many policy changes would increase the vitality of our economy. Pushing a few more young people through college is not one of them.

SOURCE





Britain's toddler curriculum may be scrapped

A controversial Leftist “nappy curriculum” that requires children to hit a series of 69 targets by the age of five could be scrapped in its current form. "Nappy" is British for "diaper"

The Coalition will launch a review of the compulsory Early Years Foundation Stage today amid concerns it is too bureaucratic. It will consider whether to make the curriculum voluntary, giving some nurseries and childminders the freedom to opt-out altogether just two years after it was introduced.

The review – led by Dame Clare Tickell, chief executive of the charity Action for Children – could also lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of targets children are expected to meet following claims they prevent toddlers from developing naturally.

Currently, the framework covers areas such as dressing independently, personal hygiene, using modern technology and understanding other cultures. This is on top of other “early learning goals” covering literacy, numeracy, communication skills and problem solving.

Last night, the review was welcomed by independent school leaders who said the curriculum – which is compulsory in the state and private sector – promoted a “tick-box” culture. David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said: “It diverts teaching time from more constructive pursuits and has spawned an industry of local authority moderators. "The curriculum does not stretch higher achievers and restricts parental choice as to how they educate their children.”

Martin Bradley, chairman of the Montessori Schools Association, said: “The early years are now more regulated than any other area of the education system. This review is long overdue.”

Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, has already described the framework as a “bureaucratic nightmare”. “We have to trust our professionals, not have these forms asking whether a child can tie its shoelaces [and] hold a rattle. Ludicrous,” he said.

The Early Years Foundation Stage has been a compulsory requirement for all nurseries, pre-schools and childminders since 2008. Currently, children must hit 69 targets before they start full-time education. This includes counting up to 10, reciting the alphabet, writing their own name and simple words and forming sentences using basic punctuation.

It also covers personal development, requiring children to “dress and undress independently and manage their own personal hygiene”, as well as understanding that “people have different needs, views cultures and beliefs that need to be treated with respect”.

The curriculum has been criticised for pushing children too far at a young age, undermining the amount of time they spend playing.

Today, Sarah Teather, the Children’s Minister, will set out a “root and branch” review of the framework. It will cover whether or not the curriculum should remain compulsory, as well as analysing the number of targets it covers.

The review will also assess whether it can be overhauled to focus more on children from the poorest backgrounds amid concerns they start school far behind those from middle-class families. Reforms are likely to lead to a reduction in paperwork surrounding the framework amid complaints that it is too bureaucratic.

It has already been blamed for fuelling a decline in the number of childminders in England. The number of registered childminders has dropped from 102,600 in the mid-90s to less than 57,000 this year.

SOURCE





Australia: Labor government trying to stop school building waste at last

Better late than never. Julia Gillard has chosen the right guy in Simon. He is a true moderate and no fool. Pity he wasn't in charge from the get-go

AFTER 240 complaints about projects in the BER program, the new Education Minister has warned that funding could be withheld. So far, $75 million has been withheld from Building the Education Revolution projects in NSW.

New minister Simon Crean told The Australian 140 complaints had been received by the taskforce set up to investigate complaints about the BER. Another 100 complaints were made directly to the department, he said. Of the complaints, 150 were about projects in NSW, and in her last days as education minister Julia Gillard announced that she was withholding $75m from that state until problems were sorted out.

Mr Crean said 55 complaints were about projects in Victoria. There were fewer than 20 complaints about projects in Queensland. Problems in other states and territories were in single digits.

After months of complaints about waste in the program, the chairman of the BER implementation taskforce, Brad Orgill, wrote to Ms Gillard last month urging her not to make the $75m payment to NSW, which would have been the next tranche of BER funding to that state.

Mr Crean said he hoped that had sent a powerful message to other states. "The $75m is important . . . leverage to drive this argument of value for money," he said. "It sends an important message but it also completely rejects the notion that (we need to) freeze the totality of funds."

Mr Crean rejected opposition calls to halt spending on the program until the Orgill investigation was complete. "What do you say to the contractors and the workers that you put on hold, quite apart from breach of contract, which would open us up, I think, to a bit of litigation," he said.

After meeting with Mr Orgill, Mr Crean said he was confident that progress had been made and he did not need more powers. He said Mr Orgill did not ask for wider powers. "I think the powers are wide enough -- there's a catch-all there," Mr Crean said. "He can initiate inquiries. He has. I'm very impressed with the way he has gone out and done site visits."

Mr Crean said the BER program had been overwhelmingly effective and had provided value for money. He said there was absolutely no reason to hold up all the projects. "Why should you deny schools their entitlement where they've done the right thing?" Mr Crean asked. "I'm not saying those problems aren't of concern. They are, and we've got to try and address those concerns."

SOURCE



5 July, 2010

Charter schools spread across Texas with goal of newer, better teaching

More than 120 charter schools in North Texas are part of a national explosion, fueled by a recent surge in political, philanthropic and parental support.

Fifteen years into the Texas charter school experiment, some charters have brought impressive innovation to public education, saved dropouts and posted enviable test scores. But on other campuses, kids have languished in poorly run classrooms and taxpayer money has been squandered on shady operations.

Despite the wildly varied results, the national charter school movement has gained serious steam over the past year. The forces include strong local political support, backing from philanthropic giants like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ambitious charter school management groups, private investors, fed-up urban parents – and even President Barack Obama.

"We're not an experiment anymore," said David Dunn, executive director of the Texas Charter Schools Association. "We're a small but crucial piece of the overall public education system in this state."

Charter schools are public schools that are privately run and free of many state laws governing traditional schools. The theory is that, freed of red tape, charter schools can forge new and creative approaches to help kids learn. Sometimes that has happened; other times it hasn't.

Take two of Texas' earliest charter schools, Renaissance Charter Academy and North Hills School. Both opened in Irving, Renaissance in 1996 and North Hills a year later.

The group that operates North Hills, Uplift Education, now runs 15 charter schools in North Texas and plans to open two more this fall. North Hills has been rated mostly "exemplary" or "recognized" each year. Renaissance, meanwhile, shut down after about five years, owing the state nearly $3 million, mostly because it inflated attendance figures, which determine state funding. The school earned average to low state ratings.

"What we know is that charter schools vary tremendously. There are some charter schools that have very good results, and some that have very poor results," said Marisa Cannata, associate director of the National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University.

Texas limits charter school districts to 215, though a single district may operate multiple campuses. The State Board of Education has granted approval for 211 charter districts – and 28 groups have applied for the four remaining spots.

Texas has the third-highest number of charter schools, after California and Arizona. Despite the cap, the number of charter campuses grows every year. Five new campuses will open in the Dallas area this school year. About a third of the local charter schools are less than 3 years old.

Most of the recent arrivals are run by groups experienced in the business, such as Uplift. The charter operation will open two more schools in Dallas this fall – Heights Preparatory in West Dallas and Laureate Preparatory downtown.

Life School, a charter group that stresses character education at its five North Texas campuses, will open a sixth this fall in Cedar Hill. A postcard promoting the new campus declares it has "no tuition," presenting itself as an alternative to traditional schools without private school costs. And Responsive Education Solutions, based in Lewisville, opened its 35th campus this spring in McKinney and plans for several more around Texas this fall.

A Dallas Morning News analysis of charter schools shows that Texas charter schools are most popular in urban areas, such as Dallas and Houston. About 10 percent of children living in the Dallas Independent School District opt for a charter school.

Charters draw larger shares from some low-rated, high-poverty suburban school districts. For example, Lancaster ISD and North Forest ISD near Houston carry the state's lowest academic rating of "unacceptable." In both cases, more than 15 percent of students living in the district attend a charter school, The News found.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin, estimates that more than 40,000 children across the state are on charter school waiting lists.

While demand is fueling the growth of charter schools, so is money. Obama has called for the expansion of good charter schools. His administration is awarding more than $4 billion in competitive grants to improve education, with priority given to states that relax or eliminate caps on the number of charter schools they allow.

Traditional school districts, which stand to lose students and money to charter schools, are following the new charter-friendly emphasis now placed on federal education dollars. DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa recently announced that the district would partner with Uplift Education and apply for a $5 million federal grant to create teacher training academies, an odd partnership that surprised many.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation have given tens of millions of dollars to support charter schools. Last year, the Gates Foundation said it would guarantee $30 million in bonds to help Houston-based charter group KIPP expand.

Private investors are also taking interest. Unlike traditional schools, charter schools don't receive public funds to build schools. They often must pay higher interest rates on their loans because they lack lengthy financial track records.

Then there's parent demand. Dallas parent Shaniqua Childs chose Life School in east Oak Cliff for her son and daughter. "This school is phenomenal," she said. "The teachers really care about the students." She also likes that the school requires parents to earn "parenting points" by attending seminars and observing classrooms.

State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said legislators should respond to parent demand and lift the "arbitrary" state cap.

"You've got 40,000 students waiting in line to go to a charter school. Tell me another school in the state of Texas that has that type of demand," said Shapiro, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.

More HERE






Poor British state schools should stop hiding behind excuses, says private school headmaster

A headmaster who left a grammar to lead a top independent school has spelled out what is wrong with state eduction


The news recently has been far from heartening for parents. Ofsted has revealed that half of state schools are struggling to provide a good education, new research has found that middle-class families are being priced out of the independent sector by fee hikes and the solution being touted by the new Government is for parents to take on the Herculean task of setting up their own schools.

But one headmaster with a unique perspective on the education landscape in England is optimistic that improvements can be made if councils are cut out of the equation and teaching and learning, not social engineering, become, once again the focus of schools.

Rod MacKinnon was the head teacher of Bexley Grammar School, in Kent, for 13 years before he made the move to the private sector. He has been at the helm of Bristol Grammar School, a £9,000 a year day school founded in 1532, since September 2008.

He knew it was the right time to make the change when the local education authority he operated under decided it needed to appoint a £60,000 a year "cluster coordinator" to help local schools work together. "I thought 'what on earth is going on here'. Just give me the money and I can get my class sizes down," said the head. "These advisors and bureaucrats - what are they doing? Local authorities watch schools flounder and fail and then get in the way of successful schools."

As well as the desire for a new challenge, it was this obvious frustration at the deadening hand of town hall officialdom that gave Mr MacKinnon the impetus to make the switch.

And the same driver is prompting hundreds of state schools to apply for the Government's extension of academy [charter] status to all outstanding secondaries and primaries. With academy status comes a more flexible curriculum, control over budgets, pay and appointments and the freedom to make decisions as and when. Mr MacKinnon thinks it just might work.

"Local authorities as a mechanism for improvement was never going to work," he said. "The academy movement is at least going in the right direction. Local authorities want you to get in your box. "Their response to good ideas is 'we don't do things that way'. They want heads who are going to do what they are told and that is disastrous, because you need leaders."

So, for outstanding schools which can make the move to academy status, the news is good. For parents with children in bog standard comprehensives, however, the path to improvement is less clear.

According to Mr MacKinnon, three elements would make a difference; the trend for ever bigger schools needs to be halted, poor schools need to stop making excuses for their failure and the Government must accept that schools can not solve the ills of society.

"The push for good schools and also some bad schools to get bigger and bigger is a serious mistake," he said. "It is militating against a sustainable quality of education. "You need a school where children are walking down the corridor and teachers are saying 'David, have you done that piece of work?'.

"A good response is not going to be forthcoming from 'Oy, you', especially from the average teenager. This is followed quickly by teachers thinking 'I won't say anything because I'll get abuse'. "Children need to belong to an identifiable community. In big schools the ethos is harder to maintain. Pupils and teachers can hide in the thicket of not being accountable."

Schools that are performing badly are often full of excuses, the headmaster claims, an attitude propagated by a Labour Government which encouraged them to focus on children's backgrounds and engage is social engineering.

"One of the biggest pitfalls in schools that are struggling is hiding behind excuses, a lack of ambition of how you can change these children's life chances," said the head. "We need to shine a light on success. I believe in prize giving. It means some children won't get prizes but I am sorry, achievement matters. We are kidding ourselves if we pretend it doesn't.

"We can educate children, help them grow in confidence, give them a sense of self-worth, reinforce moral values, teach them about Shakespeare and Boyle's law but we can't replace the family, or bring down teenage pregnancy or cut knife crime. "And the idea that we can is a hostage to fortune. It condemns schools to fail. It is disastrous.

"It might be well intentioned but if we really wanted that, we would not employ physics graduates to teach, we would employ highly skilled social workers.

"What you have to say is within these walls, we are going to focus on physics and maths and achievement and if you are successful in that, it will build your self-worth. "It may not solve all your problems, but it is something we can do that will make a difference."

He takes the change of title at the Department for Children, Schools and Families to the streamlined Department for Education - one of Michael Gove's first actions as education secretary - as a very good sign. The ambition for every head should be simple, and limited, to providing a good education.

Mr MacKinnon's forthright comments will infuriate teachers in the state sector, coming, as they do from the former head of a grammar school, which could cream off the brightest, who is now in the privileged position of leading one of the top 100 independent schools in the country.

Even more controversial is his take on the pay deal for teachers in the state sector. In 2008, the Government agreed a three year settlement which will see teachers salaries rise by 2.3 per cent this year, a deal that is unjustifiable in a recession, according to the head. "We have to look at, I'm afraid, at the 2.3 per cent pay rise for teachers," he said. "I am staggered that it was agreed two years in advance.

"We all know that teachers are not paid enough but in the current financial climate, the idea that we can set up a system that it is going to see a rise regardless, is staggering. In the commercial world, parents are losing jobs. "Pay is being cut. Yet teachers pay, in the state sector is automatically expected to go up.

"If it doesn't get changed it's a lot of money. For the country I would rather that we had some reductions in pay and keep the staff. The reality is that if schools have budget cuts they will have to lose staff."

In the light of a report published last week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies which found that private schools fees have rocketed three time faster than incomes, Mr MacKinnon's remarks might invite criticism.

He acknowledges that schools have to keep their fees down in the current climate - Bristol Grammar has held the rise at 2.5 per cent - and said that he has been surprised by the increase at some schools.

Ultimately though, independent school parents can vote with their feet. "The biggest difference moving from the state to the private sector was the genuine feeling of accountability," he said. "Parental choice is talked about a lot in the state sector but in reality there is very little choice. In the independent sector, if you don't like the service, you will walk away. That concentrates the mind."

One of the unfortunate similarities between the sectors has been the growing avalanche of regulation that has tied heads up in red tape.

Again, Mr MacKinnon is hopeful, along with other private school heads, that the Coalition Government will streamline the burdensome processes. "Inspectors now focus on legal requirements - right down to how many wash basins you should have," he said. "You don't' need a school inspector for that, you need a clerk with a clipboard. "These inspectors, with a wealth of experience, who should be focusing on what happens in the classroom, are counting the toilets. It's just nuts."

Despite this, independent schools still have the freedom to strive for success in the best way they see fit, a luxury not afforded to many state schools.

Unlike Vicky Tuck, the head of Cheltenham Ladies College, who last week decried the "hostility" she believes is directed at independent schools, Mr MacKinnon is bullish about what the sector has and can achieve.

"We don't need to adopt this defensive posture," he said. "I was proud of working in the state sector and I'm proud of working in the private sector. We don't need a siege mentality, we need to keep celebrating our success, which speaks for itself."

SOURCE




Leftists are criticizing academically selective schooling in Australia too

Bright children should be allowed to fulfil their potential without being dragged down by being placed among dummies -- but that's not how the envious Left see it. They want to drag everyone down to an "equal" low level. They don't give a damn about the individual gifted kid. It is only abstractions about groups that interest them

NSW is creating a "social and academic apartheid" in education with private and selective schools prospering at the expense of comprehensive public schools, says one of the state's top educators.

Chris Bonnor, a former president of the Secondary Principals Council and former principal of Asquith Boys High, said Australia had established a tiered education system that was segregating students by income level and academic performance.

"We are separating our schools for the academic elite," he said. "Schools which can do so are hunting out bright kids through tests, scholarships and interviews with parents and avoiding kids with learning difficulties," he said.

"There is also a worsening social class division with low-income children increasingly going to public schools and the richer kids going to private and selective schools. "There is an increasing separation of kids along academic and social lines and, to some extent, along religious and cultural lines and nobody in government departments or government wants to talk about it."

Richard Teese, a specialist in school systems at the University of Melbourne, said the expansion of selective schooling in NSW - there are now 17 fully and 28 partly selective high schools - was creating "engines of high academic success", but at a significant cost.

"It's a very inequitable policy because it takes away cultural and academic resources from many sites and concentrates them into a few," Professor Teese said. "By operating schools like these you drain talent from many other comprehensive schools, which need what the French call pilot students - that is, model students who provide a really good example.

"The aim should be high standards everywhere. It doesn't make sense to have half a system that works and half a system that doesn't," he said.

Mr Bonnor, co-author of the book The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education, said when two selective schools were established in the Hornsby area 15 years ago, surrounding schools were told this would provide more choice.

The schools made selective, Normanhurst Boys and Hornsby Girls, dramatically increased their share of high achievers, but the nine surrounding comprehensive schools and the low-fee private schools "lost out".

But the principals of those schools are in effect silenced about losing their best academic talent for fear of exacerbating the situation. "I didn't say it when I was principal at Asquith Boys High. It has the danger of increasing the loss of the remaining high achievers from the school," Mr Bonnor said.

"We also now have an outbreak of pseudo-selective schools - both private and public - each setting tests to gather a disproportionate share of the able, the engaged and the anxious. This is especially taking place across northern Sydney."

The principal of one selective high school, who did not want to be named, told the Herald that selective schools had been a disaster for comprehensive schools. "My own view is if I were to wave a wand and start again, I would not have any selective schools or independent schools or private schools or public schools. I think the model I'd like to go for is your local community school. But that's 150 years too late. We've moved on so that's no longer possible."

The government increased the number of selective school places by 600 to 4133 this year to help stem the drift from public to private schools.

The move will also increase the ranking achieved in the HSC results by the top selective high schools. James Ruse Agricultural High School has topped the Herald's HSC performance list for 14 consecutive years.

Last year, government selective high schools took out four of the top five positions. The first comprehensive government high schools to appear on the Herald's list were Killara High School in 54th position and Cherrybrook Technology High School in 59th.

Mr Bonnor said the Department of Education "pretends this problem does not exist". "The department is avoiding the issue and no one wants to know that by offering opportunities for some kids, this is reducing opportunities for others," he said.

SOURCE



4 July, 2010

School District Sued for Banning Bibles on Religious Freedom Day

No freedom for Christians

For years, the Collier County School district allowed a local Christian organization, World Changers of Florida, to distribute free Bibles to interested students during off-school hours on January 16 for Religious Freedom Day.

Now the group is filing suit after being told by the school board that it can no longer distribute the Bibles on campus because they do not provide any educational benefit to the students.

The school board and superintendent “have denied World Changers access for no other reason than the religious content and viewpoint of the literature it wishes to distribute, specifically Bibles,” the lawsuit contends. “This unequal treatment, based upon the religious nature of the literature World Changers wishes to distribute, is unconstitutional content-based discrimination, because World Changers’ materials otherwise fit within the parameters Defendants set for the forum.”

The group goes on to say that the school allowed other secular organizations to distribute literature but prevented World Changers from doing so even though it complied with all of the school’s guidelines.

“We are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools,” Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing World Changers said in a statement. “Many of our founding fathers were taught to read using the Bible.

If it had no educational value, then many of them would have been illiterate. The distribution of religious literature in a forum opened for secular literature is constitutionally protected.”

The lawsuit seeks to have the school district’s actions declared unconstitutional and requests legal fees and unspecified nominal damages.

SOURCE






Actors attack British girls' school that wanted homosexual scenes cut

Staff at a private all-girls' school asked a theatre company to cut scenes depicting homosexuality from its shows. St Margaret's School, a £10,000-a-year school in Hampstead, north London, made the request after asking the Black Cat Theatre Company to visit and put on performances as part of a sex education programme for 12- to 15-year-olds.

The first performance, on how drugs and alcohol could lead to a greater risk of being sexually attacked, culminated in one boy sexually assaulting another. During a break between shows actors were then asked to omit further references to homosexuality during the visit last month.

Barry Lillie, of Black Cat, told the Times Educational Supplement: "If you are going to broaden children's minds about sex you have got to talk to them about all different types of sex. It is no less important in a girls' school. There are girls that are gay as well as boys." Actors also described the request as "morally reprehensible".

However, Mark Webster, the head teacher of St Margaret's, said staff were merely being "cautious" because they were worried about what the actors might have planned for the remaining performances. He added: "Gay relationships and sex education are part of our school's personal, social and health education programme."

Mr Webster noted that the only homosexual character in the theatre company's storyline "was a rapist", which he said was a negative portrayal. Mr Lillie responded: "We are talking about how rape is about power and control."

SOURCE





Incompetent British teachers not fired

New concerns have been raised over the problem of incompetent teachers in British schools as official figures showed that hardly any have been dismissed. In the decade since the General Teaching Council (GTC) was created with the power to strike off those found to be incompetent, only 18 have been banned from the classroom. The figure contrasts with the estimate, made by Chris Woodhead when he was the head of Ofsted, that there are 15,000 incompetent teachers in service.

Under current rules, head teachers of state schools can identify underperforming teachers to their local authority. The individuals have their classroom competence reviewed, and they are advised on how they can improve their teaching. In cases where serious failings are identified, the teachers can be struck off by the General Teaching Council (GTC).

However, the investigation also found that as few as 300 teachers a year are entered into the first stage of this process, the competence review – equivalent to 0.07 per cent of Britain's 500,000 teachers.

Procedures vary widely between different council areas.

The programme raises concerns from anonymous head teachers who say they are aware of underperforming staff but feel unable to tackle the problem and fear it would bring unwanted attention on their school.

One of those 18 teachers, David Dobbie, who was struck off last year, was found during the investigation to be working as a classroom technician at Gedling School in Nottinghamshire where he had been given temporary employment through an agency. Anyone struck off may still work in schools in a "non-teaching role" according to GTC rules. They are also free to teach in private schools.

Michael Gove, the new education secretary, announced the abolition of the GTC last month, telling parliament that he wanted to "trust professionals" and give heads more power to improve the quality of teaching.

In a statement, the GTC said it did take action to prevent prohibited teachers from teaching and said it was concerned about "patchy" referrals by head teachers. It also admitted that it did not "seem credible" that the number of incompetent teachers was as low as the number actually struck off, but added: "We do believe that the incidence of true incompetence is low."

The Policy Exchange think-tank concluded in 2008 that it was likely that poor teachers are being 'recycled' around the system.

Susan Woodward, head teacher at Gedling School, said: "Mr Dobbie was working at the school on a part-time, temporary basis until a permanent appointment was made and was informed when he was no longer needed at the school."

SOURCE



3 July, 2010

Educational Bias In HS Advanced Placement Government Classes

Once again, we must address ‘What Our Children Are Being Taught In Our Schools.’ This time it is in our nation’s High School Advanced Placement (AP) Government curriculum. It is quite disturbing.

We start with the following practice question from this year’s Barron’s test preparation book for the Advanced Placement (AP) Exam for “U.S. Government and Politics” taken by millions of our brightest HS students. See if you can surmise the answer.

Traditionally, the Republican Party has been viewed as favoring which of the following groups? (A) Big business; (B) The poor; (C) The middle class; (D) African-Americans; (E) Hispanics

The answer, of course, is (A). Consider the effect of teaching this to our children. First, it marginalizes the Republican Party by suggesting upwards of 80% of the electorate are NOT favored by Republicans. It makes you wonder how they ever win elections. Second, it isn’t even true, especially in the last election cycle, when large financial, pharmaceutical, and health care companies backed Obama.

But more importantly, selection (A) could have been ”Economic growth,” “Entrepreneurs,” or even “Business.” But those characterizations do not demonize business or Republicans enough. Wonder if there is a similar question tying Democrats to Big Unions or Big Government? No, there isn’t. I looked.

Reagonomics, Bad; Clintonomics, Good

To continue with the previous discussion, the Barron’s test preparation book also prepares students for the Free-Response Essay portion of the AP U.S. Government and Politics exam. On pages 345-347, the test-taker is asked to: (a.) Identify and explain one key policy of Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton as it relates to economic philosophy; and (b.) Show how it was applied to economic policy.

The following are excerpts of what Barron’s illustrates as an appropriate response to the question.

It’s a lot to read and even more to swallow. (You’re lucky I’m only making you read excerpts)

Ronald Reagan’s Policies: ”Supply-siders held that an abundance of efficiently produced goods could actually stimulate demand enough to raise the entire GNP. During the 1979 campaign, Reagan construed such a theory as the solution to the lingering problem of stagflation. . . .

Yet after his election, supply-side economics did not manifest itself in a significant reduction in government expenditures, nor even an increase in government revenues. . . . [Reagan] successfully instituted a regressive income tax and lowered the capital gains tax, resulting in an expansion of the upper-income tax bracket. But an examination of the fluctuations in GNP indicated that the economy expanded decidedly unevenly, encouraging a widening distribution of personal income comparable to the 1920s. Reagan’s policies had indeed provided American firms the capital necessary to invest and develop more efficient and cost-effective goods and services. Yet unlike Japanese businesses, American firms invested little of such assets, so that the proportion of the GNP dedicated to R&D never increased.

This trend may explain precisely why a boost in incomes of the business class. . . . never increased supply and in turn failed to stimulate demand or produce massive national wealth. Firms and the wealthy used increased revenue to consume rather than to save. Productivity gradually declined, much technological innovation never hit the factory floor, and quite simply, businesses consequently did not need to hire more workers and could not afford to increase wages proportional to the amount of revenues businesses were receiving.

The decline in productivity increased the deficit and increased the wealth of the smallest portion of the economy. This wouldn’t have been quite so harmful had it not been for one other component of Reagan’s policy. . . . the systematic reduction of the government’s mechanism’s of demand. Because this reduction was not offset by an increase in demand, the middle class lost vital programs resulting in loss of wages.

The decline in prosperity of the heart of American society precipitated an electoral crisis in confidence. The middle class identified the U.S. deficit as a symbol of the manner in which government trapped them. Not only did the eight years of regressive taxation inhibit them, but they faced the prospect of having to pay back the debt at increasing levels of interest.”

Bill Clinton’s Policies: Clinton successful defined the agenda of the 1992 election. James Carville identified the principal issue. ”It’s the economy, stupid. . . . ” By the beginning of the 1990s the negative effects of Reagan’s policies manifested themselves in economic recession and massive unemployment. . . .

The Clinton camp articulated a platform that embodied a large increase in government spending. . . . He proposed an increase in education spending, a middle class tax cut (which would undoubtedly have stimulated demand but was not fiscally plausible, and was not enacted), a reduction of corporate welfare, and a general stimulus package, which the Senate never passed. Such a platform theoretically would have reduced the burden of the middle class, because [they] would not have to rely on the trickle-down generosity of the wealthy business class. And since businesses failed to invest the money that Reagan had provided them Clinton sought to stimulate innovation and productivity through labor and educational spending. . . .

Although Clinton’s fiscal policies, alongside a turn in the business cycle, succeeded in ending the recession and stimulating a new period of growth, other problems resulted in a Republican mid-term victory. But after Clinton victory on 1996, the economy remained on solid ground. The deficit was reduced by more than half. Millions of jobs were created. So James Carville’s 1992 prophecy became economic reality in 1996.

REMEMBER, the students taking this AP exam are our best and brightest, and are among those most likely to enter the fields of law and politics.

SOURCE





Stupid British schools trying to shelter kids from real life

Winning banned in two thirds of schools as teachers reward ALL students

Two out of three schools are rewarding all pupils on sports days to ensure that nobody feels left out, according to a survey. Teachers want to be 'inclusive' and give prizes to both winners and losers to stop anyone's feelings being hurt.

The findings come as the Government has pledged to reintroduce competitive sport into the country's primary and secondary schools. Ministers are launching a new 'School Olympics' programme to end the widespread culture of 'prizes for all'. The championships are intended to give every child an experience of hardfought competition and prevent schools from refusing to pit youngsters against each other.

However, a survey by School Stickers, a provider of rewards for primary and secondary schools, reveals the scale of the problem the new policy must overcome. It surveyed almost 300 primary and secondary schools and found that 69 per cent reward all participants in sports days. The figures are 54 per cent for secondary schools and 77 per cent for primaries. Nine per cent of all schools refuse to single out any winners at all. Extrapolated across the country, this would equate to more than 2,000 schools.

The survey also found that two per cent of schools miss out on competitive games as they have no sports days. This figure equates to almost 500 nationally.

The schools all blame the organisational burden as the reason for not holding one, rather than health and safety reasons.

Henry Shelford, chief executive of School Stickers, said: 'It is ironic that just days after the Government announces plans to reinvigorate competition in school sports, our survey reveals how many schools prefer a more "inclusive" approach.

'With England's footballers again failing at the World Cup, and the 2012 Olympics looming, the nature of sports participation in schools is firmly on the agenda. Each school is unique and needs to choose the system that works for them. 'But I feel sorry for the 500 schools where teachers and pupils want a sports day but can't. 'All miss out on a fun and stimulating day.'

The new school sports championships are designed to reverse the decline in competitive sport brought about by Left-wing councils that scorned it as 'elitist' and insisted on politically correct activities with no winners or losers.

The first championship will take place in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games. They will involve a wide range of sports including football, rugby, netball, golf, cricket, tennis, athletics, judo, gymnastics, swimming, table tennis and volleyball. Schools will compete against each other in district leagues from 2011 with winning athletes and teams qualifying for as many as 60 finals. The most talented will then be selected for national finals.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said: 'We need to revive competitive sport in our schools. 'Fewer than a third of school pupils take part in regular competitive sport within schools and fewer than one in five take part in regular competition between schools.'

SOURCE







Phenomenal school performance by East Asian students in Australia

Despite the large handicap of coming from a different linguistic and cultural background. Effort alone cannot account for that. For an Asian to become competent in English is a huge leap. Try learning Chinese if you doubt it

CHILDREN of recent Asian migrants are dramatically outperforming students from English-speaking households to dominate the ranks of the top selective high schools.

A Herald analysis shows 42 per cent of children from non-English speaking backgrounds who sat the annual selective high school entrance test last year won a place in the elite system. Fewer than 23 per cent of students whose families speak English at home were successful.

Letters and emails were sent this week to inform 4133 year 6 students that they had won a place for next year at a selective high school. The percentage of students from migrant families entering the selective system has risen dramatically from 29 per cent in 1995 to as high as 62 per cent in 2008. The component is sharply skewed towards children from Asian-origin families.

Students whose families speak other languages comprise a little more than one-quarter of the total public school population.

Many of the successful students are graduates of the burgeoning network of private coaching colleges which gauge their success by their ability to secure places in the selective system and who tailor courses towards the "opportunity class" and selective exams. Coaching colleges are dominated by children of recent migrants.

"Anglo families have a different sense of what a child's life should look like and they are really concerned about narrowing a child's life down to passing the selective school entrance test," says Craig Campbell, a Sydney University academic and co-author of School Choice, a book on how parents negotiate the school market. "But they're having to change because of the competition."

High school principals, worried about losing students and prestige, are said to be pushing hard to establish selective streams in their schools, according to Associate Professor Campbell.

At James Ruse Agricultural High, the state's top selective school, an overwhelming majority of students are from families that have migrated from Asian countries.

The selective system was expanded this year with 600 more places created through the establishment of 14 partially selective high schools, where a high-achieving stream has been added to a comprehensive high school.

The students from migrant families also win up to half the opportunity class placements available for years 5 and 6 at specialised public schools. These classes are designed to provide "intellectual stimulation and an educationally enriched environment for academically gifted and talented children", says the Department of Education.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some parents avoid selective high schools because of the extent of Asian domination. The former head of the NSW selective schools unit, Bob Wingrave, recalls his surprise to hear a colleague had decided against sending his child to James Ruse "because there were too many Asians there".

"All kids who go to a selective high school will benefit from going," Mr Wingrave said. Coaching might gain students a few marks at the most.

Children from a non-English-speaking background answered more questions in the selective schools entry test than other students, he said. "The Anglo kids won't answer it if looks too hard and they are less likely to finish than the non-English-speaking background kids," Mr Wingrave said.

SOURCE



2 July, 2010

Education bailout added to House war bill

The Democrats apparently have a bottomless pit of money. No wonder they won't set a budget

The U.S. House approved a war-funding measure that includes $10 billion in aid to state governments to prevent thousands of teacher layoffs, after a veto threat from the White House.

Lawmakers voted 239-182 to back a plan the Obama administration threatened to veto yesterday because the state aid would be financed in part by cutting $800 million from one of the administration’s signature education initiatives. Earlier, the legislation cleared a procedural hurdle with a 215- 210 majority.

The vote sends the $80 billion package to the Senate, where Republicans have signaled they will fight to delete unrelated items added to a bill primarily designed to fund President Barack Obama’s decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

The disputes not only threaten an election-year spending fight among Democrats, they also promise to delay getting the long-stalled measure to Obama’s desk until later this month.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged lawmakers earlier this month to pass the bill before leaving for their weeklong Fourth of July recess, saying the Pentagon would otherwise be forced to do “stupid things” such as taking money out of other programs to ensure adequate war funding. He said the agency may have to furlough civilian employees if the money isn’t approved by mid- August.

The House bill includes $37 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $13 billion for additional benefits to people exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, among other programs.

Separately, lawmakers failed to pass legislation extending unemployment assistance, which means 2 million Americans could see their aid interrupted by mid-July, according to the Labor Department. The House yesterday approved a bill extending the assistance, sending it to the Senate for consideration after lawmakers return to Washington on July 12.

Senate Bill

House Democrats considered passing, without change, a Senate-approved draft of the war bill omitting the teacher funding in order to get the money to the Pentagon this week. Democratic leaders opted instead to add the education funding, which led to the financing dispute with the White House.

“The administration is more than willing to work with the Congress to pursue fiscally responsible ways to finance education jobs,” a White House statement said. “It would be short-sighted to weaken funding for these reforms just as they begin to show promise.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, the lead sponsor of the legislation, said tough choices were needed to avoid adding to the deficit. “I didn’t come here to be Arne Duncan’s congressman,” said Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, referring to the secretary of Education. “Who do people think put the money into these programs in the first place? I did,” Obey said. “Welcome to Washington and welcome to hard choices.”

Additional Programs

Democrats also added $5 billion for Pell college tuition grants, $142 million in aid to fisherman and others affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and $701 million for border security. Those costs would be partially defrayed by provisions clamping down on so-called pay-to-delay payments made by brand- name pharmaceutical companies to generic-drug makers to delay lower-priced generic drugs from entering the market.

Senator Thad Cochran, the ranking Republican on the appropriations committee, said his colleagues won’t accept the House changes. Reconciling the competing drafts will delay getting a bill to Obama until “at least” late July, he said. Representative James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the House isn’t “a rubber stamp for whatever the Senate does -- we have opinions too.”

SOURCE






Muslim pupils taken out of music lessons in British schools 'because Islam forbids playing an instrument'

Muslim pupils are being withdrawn from music lessons because some families believe learning an instrument is anti-Islamic. The move comes despite the subject being a compulsory part of the national curriculum.

While parents have legal rights to withdraw children from religious and sex education classes, no automatic right exists to pull them out of lessons such as music.

One education expert said up to half of Muslim pupils were withdrawn from music lessons during Ramadan. And The Muslim Council of Britain said music lessons were likely to be unacceptable to around ten per cent of the Muslim population in Britain.

However, in certain branches of Islam - such as Sufism, which is dominant in Pakistan and India - devotional music and singing is actually central to the religion.

A BBC investigation found that in one London primary school, 20 pupils were removed from rehearsals for a Christmas musical and one five-year-old girl remains permanently withdrawn from mainstream music classes.

Some Muslims believe that playing musical instruments and singing is forbidden according to Islam. At Herbert Morrison Primary in Lambeth, 29 per cent of children come from mainly Somalian Muslim families. Headmistress Eileen Ross said some parents 'don't want children to play musical instruments and they don't have music in their homes'.

One girl remains permanently withdrawn from the school's music curriculum, which consists of a government-backed project to learn instruments such as the violin. 'There's been about 18 or 22 children withdrawn from certain sessions, out of music class, but at the moment I just have one child who is withdrawn continually from the music curriculum,' Mrs Ross told the BBC. 'It's not part of their belief, they feel it detracts from their faith.' Ofsted and education experts raised concerns over the findings.

The Open University's Dr Diana Harris, an expert on music education and Muslims, said she had visited schools where half of the pupils were withdrawn from music lessons by their parents during Ramadan.

'Most of them really didn't know why they were withdrawing their children,' she told the BBC. 'The majority of them were doing it because they had just learned that it wasn't acceptable and one of the sources giving out that feeling was the Imams.'

A spokesman for Ofsted said: 'Music is an important part of any child or young person's education. Any examples of pupils being treated unequally would be a matter of significant concern.'

SOURCE





A third of British graduates in low-skills jobs or on the dole six months after leaving university

One in three graduates is on the dole or working in stopgap jobs such as stacking shelves or pouring pints [of beer].

The impact of the recession on graduate recruitment was laid bare in official figures showing a rise in unemployment and a reliance on jobs unlikely to justify the expense of studying. Nearly 20,000 of last year’s graduates – one in ten – were unemployed six months after leaving university – up from eight per cent in 2008.

A further 50,000 failed to land graduate-level posts and resorted to roles for which they are likely to be over-qualified, working as secretaries, waiters, bar staff and factory employees. In total, 34 per cent jobless or in non-graduate roles. Some were taking part-time jobs to help pay for further degrees.

Only 40 per cent managed to land professional or managerial jobs, with the remainder studying a higher degree full-time, working abroad or describing themselves as ‘unavailable for work’, possibly because of gap years.

The figures emerged after two days of bleak reports on the graduate job market. Yesterday experts predicted graduate unemployment could reach a quarter – a record level – amid unprecedented competition for work and looming cuts in the public sector, which employs significant numbers of graduates.

‘The impact of the proposed cuts could be sufficient to have a profound effect on the labour market for new graduates,’ said Charlie Ball, of the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. ‘It is possible that the next four years could be the toughest for new graduates ever.’

The latest study, issued by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, shows how last year’s graduates fared six months after leaving university. Out of 205,300 graduates who gave data, 8,400 were in ‘elementary’ occupations' – for example hospital porters and roadsweepers. A further 610 got jobs as machine operatives while 18,000 work in sales or customer services. And 8,100 were in ‘personal services’ including hairdressing while 13,720 were in administrative or secretarial roles.

Around 1,000 others were in skilled trades such as plumbing. Universities Minister David Willetts said: ‘Employers are continuing to recruit graduates in large numbers even though these are students who graduated at the height of the recession.

‘The job market does remain competitive for new graduates in these difficult economic times, as it does for everyone. However, a degree remains a good investment in the long-term.’

SOURCE



1 July, 2010

Texas textbook controversy

Through out my years of living in Texas I have experienced much stereotyping from people outside of the state. They seem to think that we are all country bumpkins who walk around with ten gallon hats and speak with thick country accents. There are even some who think that we drive around with cow horns on the hoods of our cars. They also think of us as inbred yokels who are incapable of having any intelligent thought. Unfortunately the recent scandal over what has been written in the textbooks probably reinforced this image for those who like to turn their noses up at this state.

Recently, the conservative members of the Texas Board of Education passed revisions to the textbooks used by public schools. There are many states who are concerned that these revisions may spread into their domains, since Texas is the largest purchaser of textbooks.

I am not certain what has been written in the new textbooks. All I know is what the media has claimed and we all know how reliable the mainstream media can be. Even the local media has proven itself to be worthless.

One of these changes is the portrayal of America as a constitutional republic as opposed to a democracy. I wasn’t even aware that this concept was being disputed. I was always taught that America was a republic, a form of indirect democracy. Whenever we said the Pledge of Allegiance, the words were “to the republic for which it stands” not to the democracy for which it stands. I didn’t realize that things have changed so much since I last attended public school.

There were some changes that seem absurd, such as the exclusion of Thomas Jefferson from the Texas Curriculum’s world history standards on Enlightenment thinking. I suppose that the logic behind this was to show that the US was founded on Christian values and since Jefferson was a Deist, he didn’t quite fit the mold. I would have to agree that this change is utterly ridiculous. The idea of excluding one of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment period because he contradicted the idea of the US being a Christian country goes way beyond absurdity. Not to say that Judeo-Christian values didn’t play a part in the formation of this country. However one can not deny that there were many Deists, like Thomas Jefferson, who also influenced the formation of this nation.

There were many Hispanic activists that were upset over the absence of key Latino figures in the curriculum, such as Caesar Chavez and the Mexicans who fought on the side of Texas independence. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Chavez is being excluded since conservatives are known for their distain of union leaders. You would have thought that Chavez’s views against illegal immigration would have earned him some points among the conservatives. I do side with the Hispanics on including information about the Mexicans who fought for Texas independence. One of those men was an ancestor of mine, Jose` Antonio Navarro. He was a statesman who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Sadly most people don’t know of him or any of the other Latinos who fought for Texas.

The Democrats on the board also took issue with the curriculum standards regarding economics. One of those standards was the teaching of the rapid inflation that occurred after the abandonment of the Gold Standard. Apparently the Democrats don’t like the idea of anybody pointing out the fallacy of the money out of thin air system that replaced the Gold Standard.

The left-wingers on the board have also complained about the idea of teaching the ideologies of free market economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich A. Hayek, alongside the ideologies of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Keynes. Keynesian ideology is a form of Voodoo economics, which was responsible for prolonging the Great Depression.

We all know that Marxism has not only proven to be a total failure, but it has also led to the death of a hundred million people world wide. Considering that both of these ideologies have proven to be disastrous, I don’t see any problem with free market economics being taught in the curriculum.

There have also been some complaints about the textbooks mentioning the great conservative resurgence of the 1980’s and 90’s. These textbooks would feature organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, the NRA, and the Moral Majority. To what extent I don’t know. The media claims that the new textbooks would show favorable bias towards these organizations. Since I haven’t seen the new revisions for myself I can’t really comment on them.

The media also claims that the revisions put Joe McCarthy in a favorable light. Once again I don’t know how true this is, but they seem to base this on the fact that the new books would make reference to the Venona Papers. Even though McCarthy was a paranoid drunk who helped start a series of witch hunts, it turned out that he was right about many of the high profile people that he accused of being Communists. These revelations would come after the release of the Venona Papers, which came from decoded Soviet cables.

I can’t say that I have ever been fond of McCarthy’s legacy, but it turns out that he was right about many of the people he accused. We shouldn’t ignore the facts just because we may not like a certain individual.

The board also wanted the Republican’s role in the Civil Rights movement to be mentioned, which seems fair. It seems like people have this misconception about the Civil Rights movement being a Democrat vs. Republican conflict, when it was actually a fight against Southern leaders who wanted to cling on to their archaic ways. After all, there was a higher percentage of Republicans who voted for the Civil Acts of 1964 and there were many Democrats, such as Governor Wallace of Alabama, who supported segregation.

The internment of Italian and German Americans during World War II was something else that the board wanted to mention in the textbooks. Most of the history books only make mention of the Japanese Americans who found themselves imprisoned in concentration camps. I believe that the Americans of German and Italian descent also deserve to be mentioned. According to the media, the motive behind this move is to show that the internments weren’t motivated by race. As long as they don’t try to justify one of the grossest violations of civil liberties in American history, I don’t have a problem with it.

With the exception of the exclusion of Thomas Jefferson and key Latino figures that have much historical significance, most of the changes seem with in reason. Most of the bias that I have seen in textbooks usually leans to the left. You never hear that mentioned by any of the mainstream media outlets.

SOURCE





Math, reading gap among Native American students

I think this shows that only the dumb ones remain on the reservations

Native American students at schools overseen by the federal Bureau of Indian Education performed significantly worse on national standardized tests in reading and math compared with those in public schools.

The National Indian Education Study released Wednesday found lags in achievement and persistent gaps among Native American students and their peers. There was also a significant disparity among Native American students depending on the type of school they attend, according to the U.S. Department of Education study.

Those in public schools, and particularly those in schools where Native American students represent less than 25 percent of the population, consistently scored higher than their peers who attend schools heavily populated by Native Americans. The most stark contrast was seen among those who attend Bureau of Indian Education schools, which were created to provide quality education to Native Americans.

The bureau oversees 183 schools on 64 reservations in 23 states, a majority of which are run by tribes. They educate an estimated 44,000 students — less than 10 percent of all Native American children nationwide.

In reading, fourth grade students at Bureau of Indian Education schools scored an average of 181 on a 500 point scale on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — 25 points lower than Native Americans attending public schools. There was a 23 point gap among eighth grade students. Similar gaps were seen in math.

Poverty, less access to resources and difficulty obtaining and retaining teachers to work in tribal areas could be part of the problem, researchers said.

"If I could pinpoint it, I could bottle it and sell it and solve the problem," said Bart Stevens, deputy director of school operations for the Bureau of Indian Education. "It's one that we keep plugging at, and a lot of things that impact our students are not necessarily within our control, as with any school system."

Overall, Native American students are struggling, with more than a third scoring below the basic level in reading and math, according to the study. Those scores have remained basically unchanged since 2005.

"The fact that our American Indian and Alaska Native students have not made any progress since 2005 is alarming and cause for major concern," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

The American Indians' scores were similar to those of black and Hispanic students.

Kerry Venegas of the National Indian Education Association said the challenges facing Bureau of Indian Education schools are similar to those in large, urban schools — but exacerbated. On some reservations, unemployment hovers at 70 percent and graduation rates are low.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressed his dismay at the situation at a National Press Club luncheon in 2009, in which he described having visited a reservation in Montana where the dropout rate was as high as 65 percent. Teachers told him only one student had graduated from college in the past six years.

"If we can't help those Native American children be successful over the next couple of years, than I think I personally would have failed," Duncan said.

The study also included a look at the integration of Native American culture into education. Forty-three percent of fourth grade students said their teachers did integrate Native American culture and history into class.

The issue of retaining Native American culture is not lost among people like Harold Dusty Bull, 60, vice president of the National Johnson O'Malley Association, a nonprofit educational organization. He recalled how in the 1940s Native American children were sent to government boarding schools where they were stripped of their culture and language.

"It started out with bad history, and I don't think it's ever really overcome it yet," he said.

SOURCE






British parents 'should get grants for private schools'

Private schools are Federally subsidized in Australia, by way of example

Parents should be given grants to send their children to private school, according to an education leader. Families should be allocated a tax code each year and decide whether to use it to send their child to their local state school or top it up to pay independent school fees, it was claimed.

David Hanson, chief executive of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, said those on the lowest incomes should be given more money than the richest. He called for independent schools to be seen as an "integral part of education provision", putting them on par with private health care.

Ministers are desperate to create a more diverse education sector in England and have invited parents' groups and teachers to open their own “free schools” funded at taxpayers’ expense. But they are unlikely to directly fund private schools amid fears it will leave them open to accusations of “elitism”.

Commenting on the plan, Mr Hanson said: "This proposal not only extends provision and draws upon public sector expertise, but very importantly would for the first time provide a truly level playing field and therefore dramatically increase social mobility. “In a nutshell, all parents would be able to choose any type of school for their child."

The IAPS, which represents 600 private prep schools, suggested that all parents should have “personal educational grant”, which would be “tapered”, with the poorest receiving the most.

Mr Hanson said the poorest could have a grant of £6,000 and the richest would get just £1,000. All families would then be required to pay – through the Inland Revenue – for their child's schooling. He said the grant could be topped up to pay for a private education, adding: “It should be redeemable in any chosen local authority or private, independent or voluntary school."

Mr Hanson said that parents are already paying for education through their taxes, but this was not made explicitly clear.

Mr Hanson's comments will resurrect the debate about "education vouchers". The Tories announced plans for a "school passport" in 2003 - a voucher-style scheme that would allow parents to "spend" the amount allocated to them on the school of their choice. But the money could not be used in part payment of private school fees. The proposals were dropped shortly after the 2005 General Election.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "We have no intention to introduce anything like the proposal put forward by the Independent Association of Prep Schools. "We are committed to investing more in the education of the poorest, and that is why the new pupil premium is at the heart of this coalition Government's plans for schools.

"Additional money from outside the existing schools budget will be made available to ensure that those teaching the children most in need get the resources to deliver smaller class sizes, more one-to-one or small group tuition, longer school days and more extracurricular activities."

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers union, said: "The IAPS clearly either hasn’t read or understood the Coalition Government’s guidance on the establishment of free schools. “Instead of IAPS inventing its own barmy idea, it can simply advise its members to use the one already thought up by the Coalition Government.

“Any independent school failing to make ends meet can now have its bank account under-written by the taxpayer and parents can send their children to the school at no additional cost.”

SOURCE





Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


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


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


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray