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30 June 2006

Great Moments in Higher Education

Post lifted from Taranto

The U.S. Senate is considering an amendment to the Constitution that would exclude the desecration of the flag from the First Amendment's free-speech protections, effectively overturning the Supreme Court's ruling in Texas v. Johnson (1989) that held burning the flag to be a form of "symbolic speech." Sixty senators have signed on as sponsors, with 67 needed to propose the amendment. The House approved it last year, 286-130, so an affirmative Senate vote would send it to the states, 38 of whose legislatures would have to ratify it. Weighing in against the proposed amendment, in an op-ed for the Charlotte Observer, is Dr. Susan Roberts:

Flag burning was thrust into the public eye following an arrest of a young man during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. The man identified himself as a member of a group calling itself the Revolutionary Youth Brigade. He was charged with a violation of the Texas Desecration of Venerated Objects statute.

In 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed an appellate court decision that the man was within his First Amendment rights. Wasting no time, Congress passed the Flag Protection Act just months after the ruling. Wasting no time, the Supreme Court ruled that the Flag Protection Act was inconsistent with First Amendment freedoms and thus unconstitutional. It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court would now uphold an amendment prohibiting flag burning, even with the change in the court's composition.

It may seem unlikely that the Supreme Court would uphold a statute prohibiting flag burning (and indeed, in 1990's U.S. v. Eichman it overturned the federal Flag Protection Act of 1989). That's why Congress is considering a constitutional amendment, which the court couldn't overturn.

It's embarrassing enough that Dr. Roberts's error got past the editors of the Observer, but it's even worse that she made such a goof in the first place. For she is not a real doctor but a professor of political science, at North Carolina's Davidson College, where she teaches such courses as The Legislative Process (POL 211) and The Politics of Feminism (POL 215). It is troubling indeed to think that the political scientists of tomorrow are being taught by people who lack basic knowledge about the workings of American government. [No doubt she was an "affirmative action" appointment with an "affirmative action" doctorate]



No place for New Age school syllabus

In the Australian State of New South Wales

NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt has slammed other states for designing their curriculums using an "outcomes-based" approach, saying school students should be protected from syllabuses adopting the latest educational fads. Ms Tebbutt warned that if those curriculums infused the new national syllabus and Australian Certificate of Education being promoted by the Howard Government, there was a risk NSW students could be penalised. "What's happened in some other states is that they've elevated one (outcomes) at the expense of another (content) and my view is you need both," she told The Australian.

The NSW school curriculum differs from other states in prescribing the content of what students should be taught as well as describing the outcomes of what students should be able to do, which Ms Tebbutt said shielded NSW students from the educational trends adopted in some other states, such as postmodern interpretation of literature. "I certainly don't subscribe to the view that there are no pieces of work that aren't more superior than other pieces of work," she said. "There are great pieces of literature, and they should be studied as such." In some states, literary works such as those by Shakespeare are treated as having equal merit with websites, film posters and CD covers.

Ms Tebbutt, who belongs to the Left faction of the ALP, expressed concern that NSW students would be forced into studying a narrower curriculum if the new national syllabus were restricted to the common elements from among the other states. "Any attempt to examine students right across Australia would end up ... pooling the common elements from each state and territory, and we'd only get a part of what we teach being tested," she said yesterday. "The danger is that your teaching program gets skewed to what's being tested, and that ... would narrow our curriculum."

The NSW school curriculum is widely regarded by educational experts as the benchmark, with the West Australian Government saying it would look to the NSW system in redesigning its controversial courses for Years 11 and 12. The Australian Certificate of Education and a national curriculum are expected to be discussed at the national education ministers' council next month.

Ms Tebbutt gave short shrift to many of the current educational trends that carry weight in other states. For instance, she questioned the ability of senior students to grasp complex philosophies, such as Marxism, and apply them to English texts. "I don't subscribe to the view that there are no universal truths ... we might as well all give up now if that's the case," she said. "I don't support that view because it then becomes completely unclear what students are supposed to be learning."

Ms Tebbutt said ensuring a content-rich syllabus was taught consistently throughout the state had enabled NSW to avoid its curriculum becoming dominated by one approach. "We've had a strong approach and we don't want fads in our system," she said. "We stick to an approach that's worked." While some teachers asked senior English students to analyse Shakespeare plays from a Marxist and feminist point of view, Ms Tebbutt questioned the capacity of students to interpret a work at that level. "You've got to remember it's Year 12 students," she said. "And sometimes we're expecting them to have a level of understanding about other philosophies that at that age they're not able to make."

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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29 June 2006

WARD CHURCHILL FINALLY GETS THE ORDER OF THE BOOT

Below is a circular from University of Colorado head Phil DiStefano

Fifteen months ago, I met with you to discuss the findings of specific allegations concerning the scholarship and conduct of Professor Ward Churchill. My Committee sought to answer two primary questions raised in various allegations. First, did certain statements by Professor Churchill exceed the boundaries of protected speech? Second, was there evidence that Professor Churchill engaged in other conduct that warranted further action by the University-such as research misconduct, teaching misconduct, or fraudulent misrepresentation in performing his duties? The key findings of this review were the following:

* The content and rhetoric of Professor Churchill's essay on 9/11 and other works that we examined were protected by the First Amendment.

* Allegations regarding research misconduct, including plagiarism, fabrication and misuse of others ` work, had sufficient merit to warrant further inquiry, and they were referred to the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

* Questions raised about Professor Churchill's possible misrepresentation of his ethnicity in order to gain employment advantage were reviewed, resulting in a finding of no action warranted. However, questions raised in regard to the allegation of misrepresentation of ethnicity to gain credibility and an audience for scholarship were also reviewed, and the Committee felt that such misrepresentation might constitute research misconduct and failure to meet the standards of professional integrity.

Nine allegations of research misconduct were sent to the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. The nine allegations were reviewed by an Inquiry Subcommittee, which dismissed two of the allegations because they did not fall within the definition of research misconduct. The Inquiry Committee referred the remaining seven allegations to an Investigative Committee to explore them in more detail.

Membership of the Investigative Committee included three distinguished professors from the Boulder campus and two distinguished professors from other universities. I want to publicly thank these outstanding faculty members for their time and commitment to this difficult and onerous task. The investigative Committee concluded that Professor Churchill committed research misconduct. You all have seen a copy of that previous report and can refer to it for additional detail. It is also posted on our Web site.

The Standing Committee on Research Misconduct accepted the Investigative Committee's report on May 15, 2006, and issued its report to the provost and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences on June 13, 2006. Both the Investigative Committee and the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct recommended sanctions ranging from suspension without pay to termination.

I have carefully reviewed the Report of the Investigative Committee, Professor Churchill's responses to the Committee, and the Recommendations of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. I have met with and obtained the separate input of Provost Susan Avery and Todd Gleeson, the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. I met with Professor Churchill and his attorney, David Lane. After conducting the due diligence I felt was necessary, I have come to a decision regarding the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct pertaining to Professor Ward Churchill. Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado, Boulder. My issuance of this notice now triggers a process that is governed by Regents Law, Article 5.C.1 and 2 and Regents Policy 5-I.

Let me make two very important points. The first is about the integrity of the process that was used to investigate the allegations of research misconduct. Faculty members from this institution and others across the country enjoy the freedom of expression that is the foundation of what they do in their scholarly pursuits. A university is a marketplace of ideas-a place where controversy is no stranger and opinionated discourse is applauded. Indeed, one of our most cherished principles is academic freedom-the right to pursue and disseminate knowledge without threat of sanction.

But, as is true with all liberties enjoyed by all Americans, with freedom comes responsibility. Appropriately, we in the academy are held to high standards of integrity, competence and accuracy, at the same time we freely engage in spirited, unimpeded discourse in the "marketplace of ideas." The faculty members on both Committees fully understood their duty to uphold the standards that allow them academic freedom and freedom of expression, and I applaud them for their work, their dedication, and their commitment.

Secondly, of great importance to me as chancellor is the suggestion that the University's ethnic studies department is in some way responsible for, or deficient, because of the investigation of research misconduct of one of its faculty members. This perception is unfounded in fact, and it is a perception that the University will work to reverse in the coming months.

At no time during the work of the Inquiry and Investigative Subcommittees, or the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct, has the work of the other faculty members of the ethnic studies department been called into question. As stated in the Standing Committee's recommendation, "We have taken pains in this report to explain that the findings apply only to Professor Churchill, and should not be casually generalized to others in his department or field of study." Indeed, the proceedings of all the Committees have been focused on the research misconduct of one faculty member only.

The Standing Committee also made some recommendations with regard to the University's policies and procedures. We are following through on these specific recommendations.

Now, let me briefly explain the process as we go forward. Professor Churchill may request within 10 days to have President Brown or me forward this recommendation to the Faculty Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. If Professor Churchill does so, a special panel will then conduct hearings about this matter and make a recommendation to the president about whether the grounds for dismissal are supported. The handout you received outlines more detail about this process.

Source



Corrupt lesbian UC Chancellor takes a jump

Shocked community leaders wondered Sunday whether the pressure of the job prompted the apparent suicide of the University of California, Santa Cruz chancellor. "Everybody's stunned," Santa Cruz Mayor Cynthia Mathews said of the death Saturday of Denice Dee Denton, 46. "It's sad for her personally and for the university. It's been a very tough tenure for her."

Denton apparently jumped from a 43-story luxury apartment building in downtown San Francisco, police and university officials said. Her longtime partner, Gretchen Kalonji, has an apartment in the building, according to property records.

In this city famous for political activism, running the University of California campus can be a pressure-cooker, Mathews said. "This is a community that puts everybody in a spotlight," she said. "That can create a lot of pressure. I'm not sure she was prepared for that." Denton's mother, Carolyn Mabee, was in the apartment building the time of the death, and reportedly told investigators her daughter was "very depressed" about personal and professional problems.

Denton was appointed two years ago and inherited an array of controversies. There were red-hot debates over the university's long-range plans to increase enrollment, and growing statewide concerns about UC perquisites for executives. Denton was also plagued by accusations of lavish spending at a time the university is raising fees and cutting budgets. She was criticized for demanding $600,000 in renovations to her campus home and for helping secure a $192,000-a-year job for Kalonji as director of international strategy development. Denton was also ensnared in the controversy that erupted last fall over revelations that UC executives were granted millions of dollars in bonuses, housing allowances and other perks without proper approval. An independent audit released in April found that Denton received a series of benefits in violation of UC policy, including a $21,000 moving allowance and a $16,000 signing bonus....

And though Denton was not heavily involved in activism surrounding local gay and lesbian issues, she was an influential role model, said Bob Correa, past director of The Diversity Center, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center. "She came to town with the label as an 'out lesbian,' no one outed her, and that always has a positive impact," Correa said. "Young people need to see that. Her role as a leader in the UC community was an important symbol."

More here. See also here regarding the corruption. From the photo supplied with the original article, she looks more like a guy with a wig on than anything else. If she did indeed have female genitals, no wonder she was depressed

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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28 June 2006

Blacks Call UCLA Biased, Seek Overhaul of Admissions

Leaders in Los Angeles' African American community called Thursday for the overhaul of UCLA's undergraduate admissions practices, charging that many black applicants were unfairly rejected by the university.

The demand for reforms follows the disclosure two weeks ago that blacks account for only 96, or 2%, of the more than 4,700 freshmen expected to enroll at UCLA this fall. That is the lowest level in more than three decades, and gives UCLA a lower percentage of African American freshmen than USC or UC Berkeley.

The call for changes was also propelled by this week's release of a report by researchers at UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies that was sharply critical of the university's freshmen admissions procedures.

In a news conference on campus, a newly formed group consisting of African American religious, civic, alumni and student leaders said UCLA's admissions practices discriminate against blacks.

The Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education rejected university administrators' frequent assertion that California's ban on affirmative action in public employment, contracting and education - mandated by the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996 - was a major impediment to bringing in more black students.

The activists called for a complete overhaul of admissions practices to bring about "immediate and demonstrative actions to increase African American admissions and enrollment." They did not offer specifics other than urging a more holistic approach that would put applicants' achievements and performance in a fairer context.

Mandla Kayise, president of the UCLA Black Alumni Assn., said the alliance holds the University of California regents and the UCLA administration responsible for "denying highly qualified African American students who have achieved some of the highest levels of academic achievement [and] personal achievement and have overcome some of the greatest life challenges of any group of students the African American community has ever produced."

"They have been accepted at UC Berkeley, they have been accepted at USC, they have been accepted to top campuses across this country and yet we find some of those same students have been denied at UCLA," Kayise said.

UCLA officials said that their declining number of black freshmen was tied to Proposition 209. Before the ban was imposed on affirmative action, "We consistently led the UC system year after year after year in both the number of admits and the proportion of our freshman classes that were underrepresented minorities," said Tom Lifka, a UCLA assistant vice chancellor.

But many of the group of about 20 black community leaders who appeared at the UCLA news conference cited the new Bunche Center report as evidence of UCLA's flawed admissions practices.

That report noted that UCLA is extending fewer admissions offers to black high school seniors despite rising percentages of African American students in the state who are meeting the minimum standards for eligibility for UC campuses and who are applying to the schools.

Darnell Hunt, director of the Bunche Center, said UCLA's admissions procedures fail to fully account for the obstacles low-income black students often face compared to affluent students who have more opportunities to take Advanced Placement courses and SAT preparation classes.

He added that UCLA's numbers of African American students have fallen to such low levels that even when black prospective students visit the campus, "It becomes a tough sell when they . don't see any other people like themselves."

Ward Connerly, a former UC regent and leading opponent of affirmative action, took issue with the Bunche report, saying that the main problem is a small pool of high-performing black high school students.

Source



Bush/Kennedy education reforms not doing much good: Harvard study

U.S. President George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education policy is failing to close racial achievement gaps [Surprise!] and will miss its goals by 2014 according to recent trends, a Harvard study said on Wednesday. It said the policy has had no significant impact on improving reading and math achievement since it was introduced in 2001, contradicting White House claims and potentially adding to concerns over America's academic competitiveness. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was meant to introduce national standards to an education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for blacks and Hispanics.

The study released by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project said national average of achievement by U.S. students has been flat in reading since 2001 and the growth rate in math has remained the same as before the policy was introduced. The study follows results last month from the first nationwide science test administered in five years which showed achievement among U.S. high school seniors falling over the past decade -- a time when students in many other developed countries are outscoring U.S. students in science testing. The Harvard report said only 24 to 34 percent of U.S. students will meet a reading proficiency target by 2014 and 29 to 64 percent will hit a math target under current trends.

Under No Child Left Behind, children in every racial and demographic group in every school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and English each year. Failure to achieve annual progress can lead to sanctions against schools. Children in poorly performing schools can switch schools if space is available. In extreme cases, schools can be closed. But a surge in the number of schools identified as "needing improvement," including many considered top performers in their state, has stirred opposition to the law nationwide -- from a legal challenge in Connecticut to a rebellion by state legislators in staunchly Republican Utah.

U.S. officials counter the reforms are working. "Across the country test scores in reading and math in the early grades are rising," Deputy Secretary for the Department of Education, Raymond Simon, testified in Congress on Tuesday. "The 'achievement gap' is finally beginning to close."

That differs from Harvard's study, which predicts less than 25 percent of poor and black students will hit the 2014 target in reading proficiency and less than 50 percent in math, with the overall racial achievement gap barely closing by 2014. The averages were based on the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered the most accurate test for measuring achievement in core subjects.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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27 June 2006

EDUCATION PROMOTES IMMATURITY?

The adage "like a kid at heart" may be truer than we think, since new research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever. Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry.

Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny. The theory's creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which will feature a paper outlining his theory in an upcoming issue.

Charlton explained to Discovery News that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be a sign of fertility, health and vitality. In the mid-20th century, however, another force kicked in, due to increasing need for individuals to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends. A "child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge" is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, "unfinished." "The psychological neoteny effect of formal education is an accidental by-product - the main role of education is to increase general, abstract intelligence and prepare for economic activity," he explained. "But formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity to new learning, and cognitive flexibility." "When formal education continues into the early twenties," he continued, "it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age."

Charlton pointed out that past cultures often marked the advent of adulthood with initiation ceremonies. While the human mind responds to new information over the course of any individual's lifetime, Charlton argues that past physical environments were more stable and allowed for a state of psychological maturity. In hunter-gatherer societies, that maturity was probably achieved during a person's late teens or early twenties, he said. "By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people," he said. "People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact."

Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, "immature" people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift. The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness. At least "youthfulness is no longer restricted to youth," he said, due to overall improvements in food and healthcare, along with cosmetic technologies.

David Brooks, a social commentator and an op-ed columnist at The New York Times, has documented a somewhat related phenomenon concerning the current blurring of "the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture," which Charlton believes is a version of psychological neoteny. Brooks believes such individuals have lost the wisdom and maturity of their bourgeois predecessors due to more emphasis placed on expertise, flexibility and vitality.

Source



SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLS BETTER?

Boys and girls are no more likely to achieve better results when they are educated in separate schools than together, according to a study of the way children learn. Girls' schools consistently top the league tables at GCSE and A level - which the author suggests is attributable to selection and background, rather than gender.

Advocates of single-sex schooling argue that children achieve more academically when they are taught separately. After reviewing a decade of international and national research, Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, says that the evidence does not support this view. "On performance, there is no evidence that girls will get better results in a single sex than a co-educational school. The same is true for boys," Professor Smithers said. "The girls' schools feature highly in the league tables because they are highly selective, their children come from particular social backgrounds and they have excellent teachers."

The number of single-sex state schools has declined from 2,500 in the 1960s to 400 today. In the independent sector, 130 single-sex schools for boys and girls have merged, turned co-educational or closed. Many single-sex comprehensives perform relatively poorly overall. "If you look at GCSEs and at A-level results, girls overall do better than boys," Professor Smithers said. So, on average, a girls' school would achieve better results than a boys' school. "However, if you have a highly selective boys' school, they will do better than most girls," said Professor Smithers, who this week presents his findings at Wellington College, which recently turned co- educational.

Last year 23.9 per cent of girls were awarded A grades at A level, compared with 21.5 per cent of boys. In most subjects, with the exception of English and modern languages, girls outperformed boys. Professor Smithers, who sent both his daughters to a single-sex school, is keen not to diminish the schools' achievements but insists that their emphasis on gender is misplaced. He cites, for example, the claim that girls in single-sex schools are more likely to study science than if they study alongside boys. According to his research, this is simply not the case. The proportion of girls taking physics went up between 1960 and 1985 - at a time that single-sex schools in Britain were disappearing. The trend, he says, appears to have been caused by the new mixed comprehensives offering girls more opportunities to take physics. "The pattern emerging was that girls were at least as likely or more to study physics in co-ed schools, possibly because of the critical mass of students, the facilities and the teachers," said Professor Smithers. This was particularly the case among the brightest girls.

His research will be unwelcome to the top boys-only public schools such as Eton, Harrow and Radley - as well as to the country's 203 feepaying girls' schools. They point out that last year girls and boys in single-sex independent schools achieved 10 per cent more A grades at A level than those at independent co-educational schools. Brenda Despontin, president of the Girls' Schools Association and head of Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls, says that single-sex schooling offers more than academic achievement. "Children have the opportunity to develop at their own pace, to grow in confidence and not worry about others around them," she said. "They gain much more than As at A level - they come out aiming high and confident of taking the world by storm."

Last year a study by academics at Cambridge University suggested that single-sex classes within co-educational schools could be the key to helping adolescent boys and girls succeed. Schools that taught boys and girls certain subjects separately - to address differentials in achievement - found that both became more confident and grades climbed rapidly. This "parallel education" is favoured by Steve Biddulph, the Australian educational psychologist and author of Raising Boys. After 20 years of research he believed that there was strong evidence to suggest that boys and girls aged between 12 to 15 did not learn well together. "The reasons are developmental - there is an almost two-year difference in the onset of puberty, so girls leap ahead physically and emotionally," Mr Biddulph said. Among his suggestions were that although boys and girls should mix in the playground, in their teens they should learn separately until they reached the age of 16.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



26 June 2006

Charter schools moving parents away from union-controlled schools

A decade ago, charter schools existed largely on the fringes. Many were start-ups operating out of rented church basements -- alternatives to failing urban schools that struggled to teach the basics. Now more than 200,000 California students are enrolled in 574 charters -- independently operated public schools that have wide latitude in what they teach and how they teach it.

While charters are still most popular in big cities and among low-achieving students, they're starting to take root in bedroom communities and affluent suburbs, creating stiff competition for regular public schools and drawing students from highly regarded private schools as well. ``We shop around to find the right mechanic for our car, but a lot of time we don't take the same approach when it comes to choosing schools,'' said Wanny Hersey, a skilled pianist and principal of Bullis Charter School in Los Altos. ``Once parents realize that school choice is out there and that one size doesn't fit all, they can evaluate different programs.''

Bullis was founded three years ago by parents outraged after their neighborhood elementary school was closed during a budget crunch. The K-6 school lacks a permanent campus; it's housed in a dozen portable trailers on the parking lot behind Egan Middle School. But families are flocking to the young school's small classes, rich drama and instrumental music programs and individual learning plans for each student. One measure of parent interest: 180 students applied for 40 kindergarten slots available this fall. Sustainable cooking, public speaking and conflict management are among the electives. Numerous projects, including an environmental education partnership with Hidden Villa, a 1,600-acre wilderness preserve in Los Altos Hills, are in the works.

For Steve Johnson, moving his daughter Sophia, 12, from a private school to Bullis last year was like moving from a house to something that really feels like home. Sophia graduated from sixth grade last week. ``She has learned faster and better here,'' he said. ``It's challenging, but she's rising to the occasion. I wish they would expand.''

Charter schools are by no means a magic bullet for the numerous challenges of public education. Some stumble, fail to meet community expectations, lose students and ultimately close. The California Charter Academy, a statewide chain of schools, fell to pieces in 2004, and a state audit found millions of dollars in questionable spending.

Some schools never make it through the approval process. RAICES, a proposed K-8 charter school in San Jose's Alum Rock neighborhood, recently had its petition rejected by the Santa Clara County Board of Education. ``The curriculum hadn't been thought through, and it felt slapped together,'' said Bill Evers, who serves on the county board and is generally supportive of charter schools. ``The charter didn't look ready, and I couldn't in good conscience approve it.''

The research on charter schools is also mixed. A May report by EdSource found that charter elementary and middle schools were more likely than non-charters to reach their goals when it came to improving test scores, but that charter high schools lagged.

There are 18 charter schools in Santa Clara County serving more than 5,400 students. Roughly half were founded to help struggling students from low-income families. Two more are scheduled to open this fall, and others are in the planning stages. Downtown College Prep in San Jose got enormous statewide attention when its standardized test scores shot up 90 points in 2004-2005. It focuses on students who would be the first in their families to go to college; the vast majority speak Spanish at home. Entire classes go on field trips to colleges and universities.

But charters are also drawing families who are frustrated with the teach-to-the-standardized-test pressure facing many public schools, as well as parents shopping for specific programs. ``With No Child Left Behind, many schools are focusing just on reading, writing and arithmetic,'' said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Association. ``Parents of all kinds are looking for schools that still offer music and science and a diverse, enriched curriculum. Charter schools are a direct response to that.''

In Silicon Valley, the charter school movement has largely grown by word of mouth -- parents talking to other parents at soccer games and birthday parties. However, local school districts, which can approve or deny charter school proposals, are not always as enthusiastic as parents. ``The fact is that getting a charter approved is still difficult, and a number of districts have signaled `Over my dead body,' '' said Eric Premack, co-director of the Charter Schools Development Center in Sacramento.

Other districts are wholeheartedly in favor: Cambrian School District in west San Jose converted four of its five elementary schools to charters so each could have more autonomy. Charter schools are governed by their own boards, have fewer regulations and work rules and have greater flexibility when it comes to raising and spending money, hiring staff and developing curriculum.

The first years of a charter school are reminiscent of dot-coms in the early days: It's a mad scramble to find classroom space, and charters often outgrow their facilities within weeks. There's enormous energy and excitement, along with near-constant retooling. ``It's like a full-time start-up job. This is pretty much my obsession,'' said Barbara Eagle, a parent who has helped drive Discovery Charter School, scheduled to open this fall in Campbell with a student body drawn from 25 public and private schools. ``It's really hard, but I knew we could do it.''

Source



Australia: Black welfare 'link to school'

The Federal Government is considering tying welfare payments to school attendance and nourishment at home as part of its response to the social crisis in Aboriginal communities. The idea has been endorsed by Treasurer Peter Costello ahead of tomorrow's summit of state and federal indigenous affairs ministers, called to find ways of combating violence and child sexual assault blighting many remote settlements. The summit is also expected to consider garnishing welfare payments for parents who are substance abusers. Under the proposal, part of their payments would be held by the Government and directed towards their children's welfare.

Mr Costello said there had been "no shortage of money spent on Aboriginal affairs". "Like any other people, they get family tax benefits and CDEP (Community Development Employment Projects). In addition to that, they get much higher per-capita spending on health and education, yet they're still suffering from great hardships. "What we've proven is that simply shovelling money at these problems is not necessarily the answer. "One option is to tie that money to health and education outcomes much more carefully. For example, making family benefits payments payable only if the parents' kids are going to school. "You could also make family benefits payments conditional on the kids being properly nourished. It's no good if the money is being spent on grog and gambling."

Mr Costello said he'd been convinced to try the scheme by Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson. He said the Government had set aside money for pilot schemes tying welfare to health and education in the Cape. But in the wake of a controversial call by Health Minister Tony Abbott for a "new paternalism" in Aboriginal affairs, Mr Costello said his plan would apply to all welfare recipients. He said it would probably work better in Aboriginal communities, where leaders were able to identify families in need.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



25 June 2006

BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS UNDER ATTACK

The charitable status of private schools and hospitals will be challenged by a powerful campaign led by MPs, charities and lawyers, and backed by the Charity Commission, when the Charities Bill returns to Parliament next week. The Bill replaces the 400-year-old common law definition of charity and removes the presumption of charitable status from independent schools. Instead, it requires all charities that charge high fees to demonstrate that they are of “public benefit” if they are to retain tax breaks worth a total of 88 million pounds a year.

As the Bill does not give any details of what constitutes the “public benefit”, critics believe that it is almost meaningless and want a stricter definition. Without it, the whole Bill could fall, taking with it changes that will modernise the legal framework within which charities operate, they say.

Stuart Etherington, of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), which represents 4,700 charities, said a tighter definition of public benefit was essential. “The Bill must protect and promote the charity ‘brand’ by making it clear that only those organisations that benefit the public can be charities,” he said. He insisted that the NCVO’s stance, which is widely shared by leading charities, was not aimed at excluding particular types of charity. “It’s about ensuring that long-term trust and public confidence in charities is maintained and enhanced.”

The Charity Commission, which will be responsible for ensuring that all registered charities pass the public benefit test, is also calling for a clearer definition of terms. “It would be helpful to see an amendment to the Bill removing some of the uncertainty, particularly as regards fee-charging charities,” a spokeswoman said.

John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, is one of perhaps 50 Labour backbenchers who want a more robust definition. He said: “Without it, the Government would have a problem.” Martin Horwood, the Liberal Democrat charities spokesman, favours an amendment modelled on Scottish law, to ensure that charities charging high fees do not place “unduly restrictive” conditions on people wanting to use their services. Scottish law requires the regulator to weigh up the benefit to those that can access a charity’s service against the “disbenefit” to the general public who cannot, particularly where there is a charge involved.

Stephen Lloyd, Head of Charity and Social Enterprise at the law firm Bates, Wells & Braithwaite, said that without such an amendment there would be two types of charity: Scottish and English. “If the English public benefit test is less onerous than the Scottish one, you could see independent schools which might be under threat under the Scottish test setting themselves up as English charities but operating north of the Border,” he said.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office, the department in charge of the Bill said that the government was happy with the way it was worded. He added: “Of course, it still has to be scrutinised.”

The Independent Schools Council argues that most independent schools that are charities already provide a public benefit, saying that for every 1 pound in tax benefits they get they provide 3 pounds in assistance with fees. The Conservative Party seems implacably opposed to any kind of public benefit test. Andrew Turner, MP for the Isle of Wight, said such a test was unnecessary for schools, religious organisations or charities working for the poor.

Source



Education Savings Accounts: Giving Families Ownership in Education

With college tuitions soaring, parents are beginning to save for their children's education earlier and earlier. A growing number of families are putting their savings in education savings accounts (ESA), which enjoy certain tax advantages. The popularity of these accounts suggests that parents want to control the resources spent on their children's education. Policymakers should consider how these accounts could be used to expand school choice and improve American education. Federal law provides two kinds of educations savings accounts. So-called 529 plans allow for tax-protected savings for higher education through state-managed plans. Coverdell ESAs allow for tax-free savings in privately-managed accounts for K-12 and higher education expenses.

529 accounts-named after a section in the IRS code-offer families two ways to save for college expenses. This first option is to lock in today's tuition rates and prepay tuition at a participating higher education institution. The second is to invest in a state-managed investment account where earnings grow tax-free and can be used for tuition when a child enrolls. Under 529 plans, annual contributions can range from $10,000 up to $300,000 in some states. States contract with financial institutions to manage the 529 accounts, and each state offers families different investment options. Most states don't require residency to invest in a 529 plan, and so families are free to shop the state plans to find the best investment. This is important, because some states offer different fees and rates of returns, and competition ensures that families can get the best deal.

The Financial Research Corporation reports that total assets in 529 college savings plans totaled $68 billion at the end of 2005-30 percent over 2004 levels. One reason for the growing use of 529 plans is that 25 states provide various tax incentives-credits or deductions-for investment contributions. (Learn more about 529 accounts here [http://www.savingforcollege.com/college_savings_201/] and whether your state offers tax incentives incentive here [http://www.findaid.org/savings/state529deductions.phtml].)

Until now, states have limited tax incentives for contributions to the state's own plan. But this year, the Maine state legislature enacted a per-beneficiary deduction worth $250 per year for a contribution to any state's 529 plan. This could pave the way for more states to provide tax breaks for out-of-state plans. If so, families can look forward to greater competition among providers and better investment options and returns. Unlike 529 plans, Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)-named after the late Georgia Senator-let families contribute up to $2,000 per child annually in a tax-free savings account that can be used for K-12 or higher education expenses. Eligible expenses include K-12 private school tuition, books, school supplies, tutoring, and after-school programs. Unlike 529 college savings plans, Coverdell ESAs can be opened and managed by banks and brokerage firms, similar to 401(k) accounts.

No state currently offers tax incentives for Coverdell ESAs. And since the tax benefits of Coverdell ESAs are deferred, few families are using them. But many American families could make good use of this opportunity to save for their children's education.

As familiarity with education savings accounts grows, supporters of parental choice in education should consider reforms that give families control of education resources. One option would be for states to level the playing field between 529 accounts and Coverdell ESAs by evening out the tax breaks for contributions to either savings vehicle. Another option would be for Congress to reform 529 accounts to include K-12 education expenses, like Coverdell ESAs do today. At a minimum, federal lawmakers could increase contribution limits for Coverdell ESAs to give families greater ability to save.

The promise of a system of widespread ESAs is great. Parents, grandparents, and other relatives would have greater opportunities to save for a child's education. Charities, corporations, and individuals could be given incentives to make contributions to low-income children's accounts, which could be used to pay school or college tuition or any other legitimate educational expense. State governments could create matching-funds plans to help needy children-seven states are already doing this with their 529 plans.

Widespread use of education savings accounts would improve the efficiency of education spending. According to the Department of Education, U.S. taxpayers spend approximately $500 billion annually on K-12 education. Government officials and bureaucrat largely dictate how it's spent. Expanding access to education savings accounts would begin to return control of education decisions to parents. With parents in charge, educators would compete for students and tailor their products and services to individual children's needs.

Choice and competition are keys to improving American education. By giving parents greater power to direct their children's education, education savings accounts could make widespread choice and competition a reality.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



24 June 2006

Pope report rips into writing at UNC, NCSU

The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy released a paper Monday criticizing introductory writing courses at UNC and N.C. State for overemphasizing group work and underemphasizing grammar and literature. Nan Miller, author of the paper and a former English professor at N.C. State and Meredith College, also condemned the courses for including instruction about writing for the sciences and social sciences at the expense of writing about the humanities.

The Pope Center, a conservative watchdog group, has criticized Carolina faculty members in the past. The organization has ties to the John William Pope Foundation, a group from which the university has requested about $4 million for programs in Western studies. That grant proposal has drawn ire from some UNC professors who say an outside and politically motivated organization should not intervene in curricular choices.

Todd Taylor, who directs UNC's writing program, called the Pope Center's publication of the paper an effort to "whip up politically biased hysteria aimed at teachers and education." "The writing programs at UNC and N.C. State are some of the least political, least liberal areas of the curriculum," Taylor wrote in an e-mail message. "Both of these programs are national exemplars, filled with instructors who are exceptionally committed to their students."

But Miller said professors are not spending enough time teaching during writing courses. She questioned whether workshop-style classes, in which professors spend little time giving traditional lectures, are effective. "An inherent contradiction in this arrangement is that students with SAT scores not high enough to place out of freshman composition are presumed qualified to critique the work of their peers," Miller wrote in her paper, called "English 101: Prologue to Literacy or Postmodern Moonshine." Miller also said group work wrongly takes competition out of the classroom. "To eliminate competition is the greatest disservice you can do to a student," said Miller, who presented her paper Monday at a luncheon at the John Locke Foundation, the public-policy think tank that founded the Pope Center.

In a telephone interview, Taylor said seminar-style courses -- which emphasize work-shopping and revising writing -- align with the goals of many education associations. "Our pedagogy is perfectly consistent with what the university promotes and what large organizations on teaching and learning promote," Taylor said.

Miller said she conducted most of her research on the curriculum at Carolina by talking with writing instructors and senior faculty members in UNC's English department and by looking at course information online. Other main points of her research were that students do not learn enough about grammar or read enough literature in traditional writing courses. Miller said universities make the latter curricular choice out of a belief that the study of books silences student voices and promotes too much "teacher talk."

Source. The PDF of the full Pope report is here



Democrats for (school) choice

When the Arizona legislature concludes its 2006 session in a few days, it will set a record for school-choice legislation by enacting four new or expanded programs allowing disadvantaged children to attend private schools. Even more remarkable: The programs were enacted in a state with a Democratic governor.

Yet Arizona is not an aberration. Already in 2006, a new Iowa corporate scholarship tax credit bill was signed into law by Gov. Tom Vilsack; and in Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill increasing the Milwaukee voucher program by 50%. Gov. Ed Rendell may expand Pennsylvania's corporate scholarship tax credit program, as he did last year. Messrs. Vilsack, Doyle and Rendell are all Democrats. And last year, hell froze over: Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed the inclusion of private schools in a rescue effort for over 300,000 children displaced from their schools by Hurricane Katrina. As a result, tens of thousands of kids are attending private schools using federal funds, amounting to the largest (albeit temporary) voucher program ever enacted. Before that, a voucher program for the District of Columbia was established with support from Democratic Mayor Anthony Williams and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Joseph Lieberman.

What gives? The Democrats are not exactly untethering themselves from the education establishment. While some (like Messrs. Williams and Lieberman) are converts to the idea of school choice, others (like Messrs. Kennedy, Vilsack, Doyle and Rendell) remain generally opposed. Still, school choice has experienced unprecedented legislative success over the past two years for a few underlying reasons. First and foremost, the school choice movement is acting smarter. Instead of taking the unions and their massive resources head-on, advocates are adopting toe-hold strategies, pursuing small programs addressing specific problems that are difficult for politicians to oppose. The strategy makes sense from a moral perspective, for it focuses assistance on the neediest schoolchildren.

It also works politically, because choice begets choice: Once the Rubicon is crossed and legislators vote to adopt a school choice program--no matter how small or targeted--it becomes easier to support a new one, or expand the old one, the next time around. Hence, of the seven new school choice programs enacted last year, six were in states that already had school choice. The seventh was a program for disadvantaged children in Utah, which was expanded this year. At the same time, pro-school choice legislators are bargaining hard, exchanging increases in public school funding for private school choice.

Arizona offers a classic example. The state already has so much school choice--open public school enrollment, more charter schools per capita than any other state, individual scholarship tax credits--that it's more or less impossible for opponents to demonize it. So accepted and popular is the idea that when Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano proposed a full-day kindergarten public school program last year, she called it school choice because, after all, families could choose whether to enroll their children.

This year, the Republican legislature enacted a $5 million corporate tax credit to provide low-income children with scholarships to attend private schools. Ms. Napolitano vetoed it twice before allowing it to become law without her signature. In a budget compromise between the governor and legislature reached last week, the corporate scholarship tax credit will be doubled this year, and increased by 20% each subsequent year, until it grows to nearly $21 million and 7,000 students by 2010. Additionally, Ms. Napolitano agreed to a voucher program for children with disabilities (similar to programs in Florida and Utah) and a first-of-its-kind voucher program for disadvantaged children in foster care.

In return, Republicans agreed to Ms. Napolitano's statewide full-day kindergarten program and salary increases for public school teachers. Both sides will now see which reforms work better: Pouring more money into public schools, or greater choice and competition. Fortunately, both parties are learning that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

Another factor inducing a more supportive or tolerant attitude toward school choice among Democrats is that they are running out of viable alternatives. The U.S. Department of Education reported recently that three million children are attending chronically failing schools--that is, schools that have failed to satisfy minimal state standards for at least six consecutive years. Under the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, children in schools failing to make adequate progress are entitled to transfer to better-performing public schools within the district. Trouble is, the number of children eligible to transfer vastly exceeds the number of seats available in the better public schools. In Los Angeles, for example, only two of every 1,000 children in failing schools have transferred.

For Democrats who truly believe in social justice, that presents a terrible dilemma: Either forcing children to remain in schools where they have little prospect for a bright future, or enlisting private schools in a rescue mission. Democrats are increasingly unwilling to forsake the neediest children.

For children in chronically failing schools, the day of reckoning is fast approaching: Legislation to add private school options to NCLB will be introduced next month. Democrats who supported private school relief for Katrina children to alleviate a disaster will be forced to confront the reality that New Orleans schools were in crisis long before the hurricane appeared--and so are millions of other children in inner cities across the nation. Arizona is evidence of the possible. Although she could have allowed them to become law without her signature, as she did with the corporate scholarship tax credits, Gov. Napolitano yesterday became the first Democrat to sign new voucher programs into law. For children with disabilities or in foster care, how the bill became law is of little moment; but by affixing her imprimatur, Ms. Napolitano conveyed powerful symbolic evidence that the future for school choice is bright.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



23 June 2006

New Arguments on Affirmative Action

While courts continue to hear arguments about affirmative action and Michigan voters prepare to decide the issue in their state, another round of intellectual debate is brewing in law reviews. Two articles - one just published and one forthcoming - challenge some conventional wisdom about affirmative action in higher education. Early buzz suggests that the pieces may attract considerable attention and challenge both critics and defenders of affirmative action.

One article - in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law - takes on the view that the primary beneficiaries of the end of affirmative action in college admissions would be Asian American applicants. The piece analyzes some of the same data that has been used to make that argument and says that what it really shows isn't that affirmative action hurts Asian Americans but that "negative action" (in other words, discrimination) is placing a limit on the enrollments of Asian Americans.

The other article - not yet available online or published - will appear in the North Carolina Law Review. This article examines the attrition of black lawyers from top law firms and links their departures to their poor grades in law school, which in turn the author has previously attributed to the use of affirmative action to admit minority law students who, on average, can't compete at the same level with their white colleagues. A previous article on affirmative action by the same author - Richard Sander - was one of the most discussed pieces of legal scholarship in 2004, drawing both strong praise and intense criticism. Advocates are already lining up to dissect the new Sander article, even before it has appeared.

`Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action'

The article about Asian Americans comes amid many reports that they are the group that most benefits from the elimination of affirmative action. That supposition is important for several reasons, both practical and political. On a practical level, it counters the idea that colleges will be all white in a post-affirmative action era. Politically, these projections have been used repeatedly by critics of affirmative action, arguing that they are not "anti-minority" and to appeal for Asian support in referendums. One of the most dramatic studies on this issue came last year, when two Princeton University researchers analyzed data from elite colleges and projected that, without affirmative action, four of every five slots lost by black and Latino students would go to Asian Americans.

In "Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action: Asian Pacific Americans Are Still Caught in the Crossfire," William C. Kidder takes issue with the Princeton study and similar findings by other scholars. It's not that the demographic shift seen by the Princeton researchers wouldn't take place in an admissions system that's truly race-neutral, says Kidder, a senior policy analyst at the University of California at Davis. Rather, it's the question of why those slots would go to Asian applicants.

The reason, he says, isn't the elimination of affirmative action, but the widespread use of "negative action," under which colleges appear to hold Asian American applicants to higher standards than they hold other applicants. Using the available data from the Princeton study - and not all of it is available - Kidder argues that the vast majority of the gains that Asian American applicants would see come from the elimination of "negative action," not the opening up of slots currently used for affirmative action. Based on the data used by the Princeton study, Kidder argues that negative action is the equivalent of losing 50 points on the SAT. The lead author of the Princeton study did not respond to messages about the findings.

Kidder wanted to check his critique of the Princeton findings about undergraduate applications so he also compared the impact of the end of affirmative action on Asian American enrollments at five public law schools where racial preferences were banned: three in the University of California, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington. Tracking enrollment patterns from 1993, when all of the law schools had affirmative action, to 2004 - when they all did not - and then to 2005, when Texas restored it, his results were surprising. Without affirmative action, the share of Asian American enrollments dropped at two of the law schools and increased only marginally at three of the schools - even though people assume Asian American enrollments will go way up without affirmative action. Kidder notes that during the time period studied, the percentage of Asian Americans applying to law school increased 50 percent, so the pool should have created the opportunity for major increases.

What does this all mean? Kidder argues that all the references to growing Asian enrollments in a post-affirmative action world encourage a return to the "yellow peril" fear of people from Asia taking over. More broadly, he thinks Asian Americans in particular aren't getting accurate information about the real cause of their perceived difficulties getting into competitive colleges. Their obstacle, he says, isn't affirmative action, but the discrimination Asian Americans experience by being held to higher standards than anyone else. He says that the differential standards appear to be growing and are similar in some ways to the way some Ivy League institutions limited Jewish enrollments in the first half of the 20th century. "Whether an individual Asian American supports affirmative action or not, this is an independent problem, not because of affirmative action," Kidder says.

His interest in law schools comes from his own experience, since he is a graduate of Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, and was a student there in the second class after affirmative action was eliminated. He could see the more diverse third-year class and compare it to his own, which was almost entirely white, as is Kidder. "There was an erosion in discourse and the quality of education I received," he says, noting that in his experience, the affirmative action changes that sent black and Latino enrollments tanking did not lead to an influx of Asian American enrollments.

`The Racial Paradox of the Corporate Law Firm'

The article on law firms might appear to be about affirmative action outside of the educational context, but it is very closely related to law school and other admissions policies. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, uses the article to explore why black lawyers appear to do well in getting hired by top law firms, but rarely rise to be partners. Sander's earlier work on affirmative action argued that by admitting poorly qualified black applicants, law schools do them a disservice as they don't do as well as they would have at less prestigious law schools. The new piece carries the idea forward and argues that law firms hire black students with grades that would never have been sufficient for a white student - and that this sets the black students up for failure.

While the article has not been publicly released, Stuart Taylor wrote about it Monday in National Journal and copies of the Sander article have since become a hot commodity. (Sander did not reply to messages Tuesday.) Many defenders of affirmative action see the Sander work as likely to have a big impact - as his 2004 article had - and to be applied broadly to higher education. "This is an extension of his basic argument of a mismatch between students and schools, which he's applying to law firms," says Christopher Bracey, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and co-administrator of Blackprof.com, a group blog of black law professors. "This is now going to be applied to any sector of the economy, and people are going to say that this explains the reduction in tenure rates of African American professors," Bracey says. He sees Sander's arguments as appealing to those "who want to sincerely believe that we are in a meritocracy."

What Sander does in his article is set out a series of statistics that suggest a sharp gap in the educational achievements of white and black law students who end up at top firms. (He also compares figures for other minority groups, but the gaps are most stark for black students). For example, of new lawyers working in law firms with offices of at least 100 lawyers, Sander finds that 21 percent of white students, and only 2 percent of black students, have grade point averages of 3.75 or higher. Only 14 percent of white students who work at such firms have GPA's below 3.25, but 46 percent of black students do. Not only do these data suggest race-based hiring standards, but the new black lawyers themselves believe that their race played a role in getting their jobs. Asked if various factors were important in obtaining their jobs, 56 percent of new black lawyers said that their race or ethnicity was important, compared to only 2 percent of white lawyers who felt that way.

Sander writes that law firms place a high value on appearing to be diverse, and so hire black lawyers with low grades, even though these lawyers are then far more likely to leave the firms and far less likely to rise than are other lawyers. Of various activities and legal duties Sander compares, there is one where new black lawyers are significantly more likely than white lawyers to be participants: 41 percent of black lawyers and 26 percent of white lawyers report that serving on a recruitment committee is something they do regularly.

Citing a range of other data, Sander writes that law firms have found that law school grades actually mean something - and predict success in legal work - so that if they are willing to apply that test to white applicants, they should apply it across the board. Sander writes that law firms would benefit by placing less emphasis on their numbers of black lawyers and more on the quality of those they hire. "If firms are less focused on achieving proportional representation among summer associates, and more focused on hiring a modest number of minority associates whom they are more committed to training and developing, they will both narrow the credentials gap and decrease the likelihood of attrition," Sander writes. He also urged top law firms to pressure law schools to improve black student performance - both by decreasing the use of affirmative action in admissions and by providing more academic support.

The same issue of the North Carolina Law Review with Sander's article will contain a strongly worded rebuttal by James E. Coleman Jr. and Mitu Gulati, law professors at Duke University. In their piece, they argue that Sander overstates the role of grades and understates other factors in explaining the performance of new black lawyers. In particular, they note that law firms have cultures that may or may not be receptive to diversity (and they suggest that some are and others aren't).

Coleman and Gulati also argue that Sander doesn't have enough evidence about grades and subsequent legal career performance to make the claims that he does. They state, for example, that he should have tracked the group of black students who do perform well in law school to see whether their grades correlate with success in large law firms. Failing to look at such students, they write, raises major questions about his findings. They also cast doubt on his reiteration of his belief that black students will be better off earning better grades at less prestigious law schools. Where is the evidence, they write, that top law firms will recruit at such law schools? (There's ample evidence that top law firms recruit at a very narrow group of law schools.)

Even as they question Sander's article, however, Coleman and Gulati write that they fear its impact. Sander's writings are "taken seriously" outside law schools, they write, and this work will damage young black professionals as it will reinforce stereotypes about their abilities, they write. "To the extent there is material in his article that will be understood as empirical confirmation of the lack of qualification of black students, the article imposes a high cost on those who need no additional obstacles placed before them," they write.

Bracey, the Washington University professor, has his own criticism of Sander's ideas - even while acknowledging that he believes that there is a grades gap between black and white law students. Bracey is in many ways part of the sample that Coleman and Gulati suggest Sander should have examined: He not only went to Harvard Law School, but excelled academically, serving as an editor on the Harvard Law Review and holding a clerkship before working for a few years in a large law firm. Sander's work would classify him as someone who somehow "failed" - even though he's a professor at a top law school, Bracey notes. "Many minority lawyers move to different sorts of activities," Bracey says. "That's not necessarily a negative."

In his courses, Bracey says, he feels confident that race does not influence grades: Tests are scored blindly. But when you are a black law professor, he says, you get visits from plenty of students - minority students and women, who talk about the culture of institutions - about fellow students' expectations, about what it means to study in libraries where portrait after portrait shows dead white men, about courses where you are expected to be the voice of black men or white women, or some other group. Even without overt racism, Bracey says that there are many "subtle factors" that have a real impact on the experience of minority law students.

In his courses, Bracey says, he goes out of his way to include plenty of case law about issues of race and gender and bias, but he also makes sure that he asks students - black and white, male and female - about all of these issues. He wants all students to see that these issues are important, and that no one group is responsible for these issues. "I do these kinds of things, but not everyone does," Bracey says. "I'm a blip on the otherwise steady radar that students experience."

Source



Mom? Dad? I'm Home!

Why are so many grads returning to live with their parents? $40 billion in loans

Keep an eye out for more boomerang kids, the ones who move back in with mom and dad. In fact, the most recent crop of college graduates will be home a lot longer than their parents expect because of burdensome student loans.

A soon-to-be released study commissioned by AllianceBernstein Investments attempts to document just how much and how long the burden of college debt weighs down grads. The survey of some 1,500 21- to 35-year-old college grads, sometimes referred to as Generation Broke, found this cohort owes an average of $30,000 in student loans. What's more, they are delaying marriage, kids, even medical procedures, to pay off their educational loans. "Clearly, the scope of this issue is much broader and more far-reaching than just college planning," says Michael Conrath, senior product manager for 529 college savings plans at AllianceBernstein Investments.

The bottom line? Parents with debt-laden grads may want to dig into their pockets to help their kids gain some financial footing, says Jennifer DeLong, AllianceBernstein's director of college savings plans. And, more than ever, parents with young kids need to start socking money away for college as soon as possible. "Unless parents today do something about it and begin to save, we are not going to break the cycle," DeLong says.

Grads say parents should take some of the blame for this mess. Forty-four percent with debt would give their parents or guardian a "D" or "F" in their financial preparations for college.

The Class of 2006 faces an especially frightening financial picture. The 3 million students graduating from U.S. colleges and universities this year carry more than $40 billion in student loans, and interest rates on federal loans are jumping two percentage points in July. That means new grads are going to feel an even bigger pinch than their predecessors, such as the people profiled in "Thirty & Broke" (BW -- Nov. 14). They do have a window to secure the lower rates if they consolidate their loans with one lender by June 30 ("Locking in low rates," BW -- May 22).

The first step for new grads is to tackle credit-card debt, since interest rates tend to be in the double digits. Those who want to play the balance-transfer game -- the survey found a $3,000 average balance -- can find a list of credit cards with low introductory interest rates at bankrate.com.

Living with mom and dad, while not ideal, will cut costs. Nearly a third of the respondents to the AllianceBernstein study say they had been "forced to move back in with parents or guardians or lived with them longer than they expected" because of education-related debt. Over a third of respondents with debt had sold personal possessions to make ends meet, vs. 17% of respondents with no debt. More than a quarter said they had delayed a medical or dental procedure.

That's a predicament Kelly Reid, 27, knows all too well. After she finished graduate school at the London School of Economics & Political Science, Reid sold her car to pay off loans, and she moved back in with her mother in Harrisburg, Pa., for eight months. She avoided going to the dentist for three years because she couldn't afford it. Her advice: Suck it up and live with your parents for as long as it takes to get your financial house in order. "You are not pathetic," says Reid, now a program manager at a human rights group in San Diego. "I take comfort in the fact that all my friends moved back home, too."

Advisers say planning ahead for college is key for parents, yet three-quarters of those polled who have kids say they haven't started saving for their own children's college education. "By the time my kids go to college, I'll still be paying off my debt, plus taking on theirs," says Maddy Stephens, 25, a publicist in Los Angeles who graduated from Trinity College and University of Southern California, with more than $70,000 in student loans.

Even if they make sacrifices to trim costs, few respondents expect to pay off their college debt anytime soon. Indeed, 31% of those paying off college debt say Madonna will become a grandmother before they are debt-free. Like the Material Girl, they are living in a material world.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



22 June 2006

THE RETURN OF THE UNIFORM IN FRANCE

Four decades after school uniforms were abolished in France, head teachers are being urged to bring them back in an attempt to improve classroom discipline. Gilles de Robien, the Education Minister, called yesterday for trials in a few schools with a view to reintroducing uniforms across the country.The move comes as debate rages in France over the need to restore order on unruly youths, and as ministers in Switzerland and Germany are also expressing support for a return to a formal dress code. M de Robien was supported by Francois Bayrou, head of the centrist Union for Democracy in France party and a likely candidate in next year’s presidential election. He urged his compatriots to “reflect on the British approach”.

British-style uniforms were abandoned in French schools after the Second World War when pupils were told to wear overalls instead. But those, too, disappeared after the May 1968 riots ushered in a philosophy of individual freedom. School dress codes now tend to be lax, although the Government introduced legislation banning pupils from wearing religious symbols, notably Muslim headscarves, in 2004.

Calls for a return to uniforms have caught the mood of a nation increasingly worried about its youth. Both the leading contenders for the presidency — the Socialist Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right Interior Minister — have pushed order and discipline to the centre of their policies. In an opinion poll published yesterday 59 per cent of respondents said that they would prefer more order and authority in France, while 37 per cent said they would prefer greater personal freedom.

The mood is also changing among parents, with 48 per cent saying that they are in favour of restoring uniforms and 44 per cent against. Mothers are more likely than fathers to favour school uniforms.

Although supporters of school uniforms cite discipline as a reason, parents also have an eye on the household budget, with a typical family now estimated to spend between 600 euros and 700 a year on clothes for teenage children. Yesterday M de Robien said uniforms “may be an interesting way of avoiding the rush for expensive clothes, although I would not want to take a dogmatic approach to this”. Dominique Marcilhacy, a spokeswoman for the Union of European Families, said: “Children who don’t have the right clothes are rejected and ostracised in a very cruel way. That is a good reason to consider uniforms.”

Some senior French politicians are also calling for l’uniforme a l’ecole to stamp out what they describe as indecent clothes — and particularly the Lolita look. Eric Raoult, the Mayor of Raincy, near Paris, for instance, denounced girls “who wear low-slung jeans so everyone can see the ring in their navel. They wouldn’t be allowed into a nightclub like that.”

Source



Australian Catholic school parents want grades

The overwhelming majority of Catholic school parents support the introduction of the new A-to-E report cards, particularly the move to rank students against their peers. The support opens up a potential split with parents groups in government schools after their national body, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, foreshadowed at the weekend a campaign to inform parents of their right to refuse the new plain-English reports.

ACSSO president Jenny Branch wants state parents and citizens branches to ensure parents are aware they can choose to exclude their child from the new system, designed in response to complaints existing assessment models are vague and confusing. Challenging the push towards simpler A-to-E gradings on report cards, she told The Weekend Australian on Saturday the "traditional end-of-the-year report card is a celebration of achievement of a child throughout the year".

But a survey by the Federation of Parents and Friends Associations and the Catholic Education Office in Sydney shows almost three in four Catholic school parents support the introduction of the plain-English reports and just 8per cent are opposed. Reporting the results in the parents newsletter, About Catholic Schools, federation executive officer Franceyn O'Connor said parents were "largely enthusiastic" about the five-level grading system. "Many parents have indicated in several discussions and meetings held throughout the year that they welcome the opportunity to compare their child's progress against statewide standards using a common grading scale," Ms O'Connor said. "They appreciate how difficult it may be for teachers to convey bad news but they still want a fair and honest assessment of their child's abilities to determine their rate of progress."

The federal Government introduced a requirement for all schools in the government, Catholic and independent sectors to provide plain-English report cards as a condition of funding. All the states and territories are introducing the reports, which must grade students in five levels, such as A to E, and also provide information on the students rankings according to their peers.

Ms O'Connor said the decision by governments to only grade and rank students from Year 1 was crucial for parents' support, with the survey showing more than one in five were concerned that grading children when they started school could harm their self-esteem. ACSSO, representing parents in government schools, maintains opposition to the grading and ranking of students, raising questions of how representative their views are.

The federal Education Department has received many letters of support for the reforms to school reports and federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said the parents she had spoken to welcomed the changes. "The vast majority of parents I talk to want to know in plain English how their children are performing, and how they're performing in relation to other students," she said.

One parent quoted in the Catholic newsletter, Veronica Molloy, who has two children in high school and one at primary, welcomed the chance to gauge how her children were performing against statewide standards. Ms Molloy's only concern was about preconceived ideas that attached a stigma to any grade lower than an A. "There are a lot of negative perceptions in society about a C grade, for example," she said. "Children themselves might perceive any grade other than an A as a failure ... it's up to the Government to address these misconceptions."

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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21 June 2006

Education Myths

Myths aren't lies. They are beliefs that people adopt because they have an air of plausibility. But myths aren't true, and they often get in the way during serious problem-solving. This essay identifies seven common myths that dominate established views of education these days. Dispelling these misconceptions could open the door to long-awaited improvement in our nationIs schools.

The money myth

If people know anything about public schools today, it's that they are strapped for cash. Bestselling books, popular movies, and countless lobbying groups portray urban schools as desperately underfunded, and editors of the New York Times write without fear of contradiction that "providing quality education for all America's children will take...a great deal of money." Bumper stickers declare, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." No matter what aspect of education is being debated, activists generally find the solution in more school spending.

This is the most widely held myth about education in America--and the one most directly at odds with the available evidence. Few people are aware that our education spending per pupil has been growing steadily for 50 years. At the end of World War II, public schools in the United States spent a total of $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars. By the middle of the 1950s that figure had roughly doubled to $2,345. By 1972 it had almost doubled again, reaching $4,479. And since then, it has doubled a third time, climbing to $8,745 in 2002.

Since the early 1970s, when the federal government launched a standardized exam called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it has been possible to measure student outcomes in a reliable, objective way. Over that period, inflation-adjusted spending per pupil doubled. So if more money produces better results in schools, we would expect to see significant improvements in test scores during this period. That didn't happen. For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years. And the high school graduation rate hasn't budged. Increased spending did not yield more learning.

This big-picture evidence is strongly confirmed by academic research. Though you'd never know it from the tenor of most education debates, the vast majority of studies have found no sustained positive relationship between spending and classroom results. Economist Eric Hanushek of Stanford University examined every solid study on spending and outcomes--a total of 163 research papers--and concluded that extra resources are more likely to be squandered than to have a productive effect.

Still, countless people assume that our schools are underfunded. One explanation is that people don't want to believe that large amounts of public money have been used without producing significant results. There's plenty of room for debate on how best to reform our school system, but the sooner Americans realize that lack of resources is not the real problem in our schools the sooner we can have a meaningful debate on how to make education more productive.

The teacher pay myth

The common assertion that teachers are severely underpaid when compared to workers in similar professions is so omnipresent that many Americans simply accept it as gospel. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has declared that teachers ought to be excused from paying any income taxes. Teachers unions are not shy about claiming, like one spokesman for the National Education Association, that "it's easier to earn more money with less stress in other fields." Even First Lady Laura Bush, herself a former public school teacher, has said that for teachers, "salaries are too low. We all know that. We need to figure out a way to pay teachers more."

But the facts tell a different story. The average teacher's salary does seem modest at first glance: about $44,600 in 2002 for all teachers. But when we take an accurate account of what teachers are paid for their labor and compare it to what workers of similar skill levels in similar professions are paid, we find that teachers are not shortchanged at all.

One reason for the prominence of the underpaid-teacher belief is that people often fail to account for the relatively low number of hours that teachers work. It seems obvious, but it is easily forgotten: teachers work only about nine months per year. During the summer they can either work at other jobs or use the time off however else they wish. Either way, it's as much a form of compensation as a paycheck--as anyone who has ever had to count vacation days knows. If a teacher makes $45,000 for nine months of work while a nurse makes $45,000 for 12 months of work, clearly the teacher is much better paid. Nurses would certainly consider it to be a generous raise if they were offered three months' vacation each year at the same annual salary.

The most recent data available indicate that teachers average 7.3 working hours per day, and that they work 180 days per year, adding up to 1,314 hours per year. Americans in normal 9-to-5 professions who take two weeks of vacation and another ten paid holidays per year put in 1,928 working hours. Doing the math, this means the average teacher gets paid a base salary equivalent to a fulltime salary of $65,440. That's the national average for all teachers--more experienced instructors, and those working in better-paying school districts, make tens of thousands of dollars more, sometimes approaching the equivalent of six-figure salaries.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor show that in 2002, elementary school teachers averaged $30.75 per hour and high school teachers made $31.01. That is about the same as other professionals like architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, chemists, physicists and astronomers, and computer systems analysts and scientists. Even demanding, education-intensive professions like electrical and electronic engineering, dentistry, and nuclear engineering didn't make much more than teachers per hour worked. And the earnings of teachers are much higher than those of registered nurses, police officers, editors and reporters, firefighters, and social workers.

Some argue that it's unfair to calculate teacher pay on an hourly basis because teachers perform a large amount of work at home--grading papers on the weekend, for instance. But people in other professions also do offsite work. The only important question is whether teachers do significantly more offsite work than others.

Many assume that teachers spend almost all of the school day teaching. But in reality, the average teacher in a departmentalized school (where students have different instructors for different subjects) taught fewer than 3.9 hours per day in 2000. This leaves plenty of time for grading and planning lessons during regular school hours.

What's more, unlike most other professionals, public school teachers cannot easily be fired. Teachers have unparalleled job security because of the strong tenure protections they (but almost no other profession) enjoy. They face essentially none of the performance tests, work quotas, or pressures to produce that people in most other professions requiring a college degree do. Further, unlike other professionals, teachers are not rewarded for exemplary performance with pay raises because their salaries are entirely driven by their years of experience and the number of academic credentials they have earned. This leaves them with little incentive to do great amounts of weekend or overtime work.

It has been well documented that the people drawn into teaching these days tend to be those who have performed least well in college. If teachers are paid about as well as employees in many other good professions, why aren't more high performers taking it up? One suspects that high-performing graduates tend to stay away from teaching because the field's rigid seniority-based structure doesn't allow them to rise faster and earn more money through better performance or by voluntarily putting in longer hours. In any case, it's clear that the primary obstacle to attracting better teachers isn't simply raising pay.

The myth of insurmountable problems

Schools frequently cite social problems like poverty, broken homes, and bad parenting as excuses for their own poor performance. They claim the existence of these challenges means education is doomed to fail. Some seem to think that the very idea of a "failing school" is misleading--that it is really society that has failed, not educators. "It's just plain folly to demand that a school, where a kid spends part of the day, be held accountable for what happens the rest of the day," argues Richard Cohen. Student failure is inherent in poverty itself, he says.

No one would deny that because of factors beyond a school's control, learning is more difficult for some students. If the advocates of this argument were merely cautioning us to be mindful of difficulties like poverty and broken homes, or exhorting us to try to alleviate social problems, no one could disagree with them. But instead, they use these problems as an excuse to oppose school reforms. If low-income minority students perform poorly, they argue, it's because of poverty. No school reform can ever make a difference. Kids who start out lagging must always lag. Social problems are forever more powerful than anything a school may do.

This argument that schools are helpless in the face of social problems is not supported by hard evidence. It is a myth. The truth is that certain schools do a strikingly better job than others at overcoming challenges in the culture. To test the evidence on this question, I developed a systematic method for measuring levels of advantage and disadvantage in student populations across states. I combined measurements of 16 social factors that researchers agree affect student outcomes, such as poverty, family structure, and health. I named this measurement the Teachability Index, and tested its relationship with actual student outcomes. I found it to be a reliable predictor. Armed with this tool, I calculated the level of achievement that each state's students should be expected to reach. Then I compared that to actual achievement in every state. I found a large degree of variation.

In Texas, for example, schools perform much better than their student demographics would predict: whereas its raw test scores place it 32nd among the states, Texas ranks fourth after its academic outcomes are adjusted for the Teachability Index. In Louisiana, on the other hand, schools performed less well than student backgrounds would predict.

Inherent in the claim that schools are helpless to educate disadvantaged students is the idea that any attempt to improve educational outcomes through reforms to the system would prove futile. However, the evidence suggests that reforms that focus on the incentives of public schools lead to educational gains. One reform that has been shown to work is measuring each school's performance through standardized testing, and then providing rewards or sanctions based on a school's performance. This gives a school a direct incentive to educate its students well. States with this sort of accountability testing make statistically significant improvements, researchers have demonstrated. Stanford investigators have found that stronger accountability systems particularly help black and Hispanic students.

Another reform that can help overcome the educational challenges caused by social problems is school choice. Few question that vouchers help the students who use them to leave failing public schools for a private school. This positive impact for voucher participants has been found in five "random assignment" studies. Less understood, however, is the positive effect that school choice has on students who remain in the public schools as well. When school choice programs, such as vouchers and charter schools, are adopted, urban public schools that once had a captive clientele must improve the education they provide or else students, and the funding they represent, will go elsewhere.

In a study I performed of a voucher program in Florida, I found that when chronically failing public schools faced competition from vouchers, they made very impressive gains compared to the performance of all other schools. Similarly low-performing schools whose students were not eligible for the vouchers did not make similar gains. Many other researchers have found that school choice programs increase the performance of public schools. In fact, despite the frequent claims of teachers unions, I am not aware of a single study that has found that a school choice program harmed the academic performance of a public school system.

Both of these strategies--accountability and choice--have been shown to improve student performance, even in places where lots of kids come to school with lots of problems. Other strategies that focus on the incentives of public schools have also been demonstrated to have positive effects. So schools are hardly helpless in the face of social challenges--we only need to adopt the proper reforms.

The class size myth

Just about everybody agrees that smaller classes produce better results. This view was captured crisply in a Chicago Tribune feature story on schools: "The advantages of small classes seem intuitive; who wouldn't want children to learn in a small class? Parents crave them, teachers love them, and policymakers push for them."

As popular discontent with the state of education has grown, class sizes have emerged as a key political issue for both parties. The National Education Association has been particularly aggressive, supporting "a class size of fifteen students in regular programs and even smaller in programs for students with exceptional needs." Given that shrinking class sizes means hiring more teachers, and thus putting more money into the pockets of teachers unions, it is hardly surprising that unions are the loudest supporters.

Unlike other myths, this one isn't totally baseless. Research suggests there may be some advantages to smaller classes--though if so, the benefits are modest and come at a very high price tag. And whether this research is actually correct is a matter of debate. So the strong claims for class size reduction made by political activists are not at all justified.

The centerpiece of class-size research was the STAR project, a 1980s experiment conducted by the state of Tennessee. Students were randomly assigned to one of three types of classes as they progressed from kindergarten through third grade. The first type was a regular-sized class of around 24 students with one teacher. The second option was a regular-sized class with a teacher plus a teacher's aide. The third alternative was a small class of around 15 students with one teacher.

The study found that students in the small classes showed a one-time benefit in test scores as compared to students in regular-sized classes (the teacher's aide resulted in no significant difference). The increase, however, was not large--the equivalent of an eight-percentile-point improvement in performance for a student starting in the middle of the pack. But follow-up research found that 44 percent of students in STAR's small classes took college entrance exams, compared to 40 percent among regular-class students--not so trivial a difference. If we could be reasonably sure that this increase resulted from smaller classes, and could be replicated on a large scale without sacrificing other educational priorities, then class-size reduction would be solidly supported. Unfortunately, the evidence does not allow us to reach those conclusions.

There were a number of shortcomings in the STAR program's implementation that raise doubts about the accuracy of its findings. Most significantly, students weren't tested when they entered the program--so we can't confirm that the three groups started out at the same level as the experiment began. There is no way to know if the project's random assignment method was accurate, and thus no way to be certain that differences observed among the groups weren't there from the beginning.

There is reason to be suspicious because of an anomaly in the research findings: If smaller classes really do improve student performance, we would generally expect to see these benefits accrue over time. But instead, the improvement in STAR test scores was a one-time event. This is unusual and unexpected. Considering that the project's supposed benefits were moderate to begin with, this raises serious doubts about whether the STAR results should lead to policy prescriptions--particularly since evidence on large-scale class size reduction is much less encouraging.

In California, the state appropriated $1 billion in 1996 to reduce elementary school class sizes. When California's test scores rose, advocates of smaller classes held up their program as a model. The reality, however, wasn't so clear. A RAND Corporation study concluded that California students who attended larger elementary school classes improved at about the same rate as students in smaller classes. Though California's overall educational performance went up, it did not seem to be due to smaller classes. (The state had also undertaken a number of other major education reforms at the same time it was reducing class sizes.)

Even if class size reduction does improve performance under optimal conditions in a small, controlled experiment like the STAR project, labor pool problems may prevent this from being reproduced on a large scale. Replicating the benchmarks of the STAR project would entail hiring almost 40 percent more teachers nationwide. Digging that deeply into the teacher labor pool would require accepting a lower quality of hire, likely bringing disappointing results.

And the financial costs of reducing class sizes on that scale would be exceptionally high--$2,306 per pupil according to calculations by Caroline Hoxby of Harvard University. There is only a finite amount of money available, so every dollar spent on class size reduction is a dollar that will not be available for salary increases, books, equipment, or the implementation of other reform policies. This will be true no matter how much money a school system has. Given that other reform strategies are more promising and less costly, the modest benefits of class size reduction simply can't justify the very large sacrifices that would have to be made.

The certification myth

Receiving professional certification is generally regarded as a reliable sign of expertise, because in most occupations, credentials are given to those who have proven their worth. Few people would see a doctor who wasn't licensed, or a lawyer who hadn't passed the bar. Teacher quality is certainly a crucial factor in students' academic achievement, but having an extra education degree is not linked to success.

Many researchers, politicians, and most Americans assume that more credentialing means better teachers, but the evidence suggests that it doesn't. One of the strongest and most consistent findings in the entire body of research on teacher quality is that teaching certificates and master's degrees in education are irrelevant to classroom performance. Yet most school systems reward certification and experience, instead of rewarding more reliable direct indicators of good teaching.

In a review conducted for the Abell Foundation, researchers found that teachers holding a master's in education did not produce higher student performance, and among new teachers, traditional certification made no difference in student performance. After examining every available study on the impact of teaching credentials on job performance--171 in total--Eric Hanushek found that only nine uncovered any significant positive relationship between credentials and student performance, five found a significant negative relationship between the two, and 157 showed no connection. Looking at Teach For America--a program that lets recent college graduates become teachers without obtaining traditional education credentials--three scholars at Mathematica Policy Research found that students taught by these non-credentialed instructors made significant gains in math in one year, and kept pace in reading. Current policy--which generally centers on teachers having education certificates--therefore appears to be seriously misguided.

The current teacher pay system, which connects compensation to education degrees, also harms teacher quality by artificially redirecting time and money toward earning those pieces of paper instead of advanced knowledge in specific subject areas. One NAEP study pointedly concluded that education master's degrees have "little effect on improving teachers' abilities," and therefore the enormous amount of money spent pursuing these degrees "is arguably one of the least efficient expenditures in education."

Researchers have also investigated the relationship between years of teaching experience and students' academic achievement. Here, the story is inconclusive. If anything, the evidence indicates that teachers grow a little more effective during their first few years as they get up to speed in the classroom, but that after this initial period, their effectiveness plateaus. This evidence raises doubts about the practice of giving relatively small raises in a teacher's second and third years, while giving teachers in their 20th and 30th years large annual raises.

Members of the education establishment fiercely resist giving up the old linkage of pay to paper accomplishments. When Michigan adopted new standards emphasizing a teacher's proven academic ability (as measured in skills tests) rather than their credentials or years of experience, the Detroit News profiled angry teachers. "It's a slap in my face that I have to go back and take a test," said one teacher with a master's degree and 30 years of experience. Until we stop hiring and financially rewarding teachers according to qualifications that are irrelevant to their performance, we can never expect improved quality in classroom instruction.

The rich-school myth

A popular myth says that private schools do better than public schools only because they have more money, recruit high-performing students, and expel low-performing students. The conventional wisdom is captured in one Michigan newspaper's warning that "a voucher system would force penniless public schools to shut down while channeling more and more money into wealthy private schools."

There is no question that, on average, students in private schools demonstrate significantly greater achievement. For example, on the eighth-grade reading portion of the NAEP test, 53 percent of private school students perform at or above the level defined as "proficient," compared to only 30 percent of public school students. In eighth-grade math, only 27 percent of public-school students perform at the "proficient" level, compared to 43 percent of private-school students. Interestingly, twice as many private-school eighth graders go on to earn a bachelor's degree as their public-school counterparts, in percentage terms.

However: it simply isn't true that public schools are penniless while private schools are wealthy. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average private school charged $4,689 per student in tuition for the 1999/2000 school year. That same year, the average public school spent $8,032 per pupil. Among Catholic schools (which educate 49 percent of all private-school students), the average tuition was only $3,236. The vast majority of private-school students actually have less than half as much funding behind them as public-school students.

Some point out that private schools don't always provide all the services that public schools do: transportation, special ed classes, lunch, counseling. But in an analysis comparing public-school and Catholic-school costs in New York, D.C., Dayton, and San Antonio, researchers found that excluding all of these services plus administration costs from the public-school ledger still left public schools with significantly more resources than Catholic schools. Besides, if public schools provide additional services, then those services should contribute to their students' educational outcomes. All spending is ultimately relevant to the question of a school's cost-effectiveness.

Just as lack of money cannot be blamed for poor outcomes in public schools, neither can differences in selectivity be held responsible. Surprising as it may be, most private schools are not very selective. A study of the nation's Catholic schools concluded that the typical institution accepted 88 percent of the students who applied. Other research in D.C., Dayton, and New York private schools found that only 1 percent of parents reported their children were denied admission because of a failed admissions test. Moreover, the academic and demographic backgrounds of students who use vouchers to attend private school across the country are very similar to those who don't.

Private schools don't significantly alter their student populations by expelling low-achieving or troublesome students, either. One study found that "Catholic high schools dismiss fewer than two students per year" on average. While it is true that every student is officially entitled to a publicly funded education, students in public schools are regularly expelled. According to the U.S. Department of Education, roughly 1 percent of all public school students are expelled in a year, and an additional 0.6 percent are segregated into specialized academies. That's more than in Catholic and other private schools. Moreover, public schools actually contract out 1.3 percent of their disabled students to private schools.

In any case, numerous studies have compared what happens when students with identical backgrounds attend private versus public schools. And consistently, in study after study, the matched peers who remain in public schools do less well than children who shift to private schools. Higher student achievement is clearly attributable to some difference in the way private schools instruct--and not to more money, or simple exclusion of difficult students.

The myth of ineffective school vouchers

When reporting on school vouchers--programs that give parents money they can use to send their children to private schools--the media almost always describe research on vouchers' effects as inconclusive. The New York Times, for instance, responded to a Supreme Court decision approving vouchers by declaring: "All this is happening without a clear answer to the fundamental question of whether school choice has improved American education. The debate...remains heated, defined more by conflicting studies than by real conclusions."

In reality, though, the research on vouchers isn't mixed or inconclusive at all. High quality research shows consistently that vouchers have positive effects for students who receive them. The only place where results are mixed is in regard to the magnitude of vouchers' benefits. There have been eight random-assignment studies of school voucher programs, and in seven of them, the benefits for voucher recipients were statistically significant. In Milwaukee, for example, a study I conducted with two researchers from Harvard found that students awarded vouchers to attend private schools outperformed a matched control group of students in Milwaukee public schools. After four years, the voucher students had reading scores six percentile points above the control group, and standardized math results 11 percentile points higher. All of the students in this study (which is mirrored by other research) were low-income and Hispanic or African American.

In a study of a different program based in Charlotte, North Carolina, I found that recipients of privately funded vouchers outperformed peers who did not receive a voucher by six percentile points after one year. All of the students studied were from low-income households. In New York City, a privately funded school choice program has been the subject of many careful studies. One found that African-American voucher recipients outperformed the control group by 9 percentile points after three years in the program. Another analysis found a difference of 5 percentile points in math. A similar program in Washington, D.C. resulted in African-American students outperforming peers without vouchers by 9 percentile points after two years.

Every one of the voucher programs studied resulted in enthusiastic support from parents as well. And all this was achieved in private schools that expend a mere fraction of the amount spent per student in public schools. The most generously funded of the five voucher programs studied, the Milwaukee program, provides students with only 60 percent of the $10,112 spent per pupil in that city's public schools. The privately funded voucher programs spend less than half what public schools spend per pupil. Better performances, happier parents, for about half the cost: if similar results were produced for a method of fighting cancer, academics and reporters would be elated.

Spread the truth

Over the past 30 years, many of our education policies have been based on beliefs that clear-eyed research has recently shown to be false. Virtually every area of school functioning has been distorted by entrenched myths. Disentangling popular misconceptions from our education system--and establishing fresh policies based on facts that are supported by hard evidence--will be the work of at least a generation. That work will be especially difficult because powerful interest groups with reasons to protect and extend the prevailing mythology will oppose any rethinking. But with time, and diligent effort by truth-tellers, reality and reason have triumphed over mythology in many other fields. There is no reason they can't prevail in schoolhouses as well.

Source



The Media Studies Mess

By Keith Windschuttle, the ABC board's latest appointment, who says media studies reject everything that journalism stands for



University degrees in communications and media studies in recent times have had the highest entry level requirements of any courses in the humanities and social sciences in Australia. In some institutions, it is as difficult to get into a media course as it is to get into medicine or law. This popularity has been important in ensuring that many of the new universities created since 1988 have been able to attract a high-calibre enrolment and have not been seen to house a second-rate student body.

Not surprisingly, this development has been a source of pride to many of the new university administrators. Indeed, these courses are changing the idea of what it means to study for an arts degree. Every year, more of the older universities, faced with declining entry aggregates in the humanities, are reappraising their traditional liberal arts degrees to accommodate media and communications studies, thus shoring up their student demand.

Within media studies, journalism is one of the options between which students choose. Journalism is offered as a major or a subject stream by more than 20 universities in Australia. In a typical bachelor of arts degree, the journalism stream occupies one-third to one-half of the total hours a student spends as an undergraduate. The rest of the program normally contains a small number of liberal arts subjects, with the remaining one-third to one half of the total degree devoted to media theory. There are a number of variations on this model, including some programs devoted almost entirely to media and communications theory, but it remains fairly typical.

There are three characteristics of journalism that most teaching in the field upholds. First, journalism is committed to reporting the truth about what occurs in the world. Second, the principal ethical obligations of journalists are to their readers, their listeners and their viewers. Third, journalists should be committed to good writing. This means their meaning should be clear and their grammar precise. However, in most of the media theory that is taught within Australian communications and media degrees, none of these principles is upheld. Indeed, they are specifically denied, either by argument or by example, by the dominant intellectual field that has reigned in media theory for at least 15 years. The methodologies and values of journalism are undermined, contradicted and frequently regarded as naive by the proponents of media theory.

In those institutions that teach journalism and media theory within the one degree, the result is a form of intellectual schizophrenia among students and staff alike. But even in those journalism schools fortunate enough to avoid this material, it remains completely unsatisfactory that the practice of professional education is overshadowed and denigrated by the dominant theory.

When journalism was taken up as a subject by a number of colleges of advanced education in Australia in the mid-1970s, prevailing academic opinion held that vocational education on its own was insufficient to constitute a bachelor's degree. So to get their courses through the higher education boards that most state governments had set up to accredit the new college degrees, journalism educators had to add something else to their subject matter. In most cases, the additional material comprised some liberal arts subjects plus communications studies or media studies.

At the time, however, the field of communications was dominated by American management theory and hence was largely inappropriate, while academic discussion about the media was then focused on the relatively narrow issues of the organisation of work, the ownership of the press and the selection of news. So there was a big gap in the market for a more all-encompassing field of study. This gap was quickly filled by British cultural studies, a movement that came to define the nature and methodology of media theory and which, despite several twists and turns, has held sway ever since. In Australia, cultural studies came to be taught in media degrees that contained vocational majors such as journalism, film production and the like, which were confined to the then colleges of advanced education, as well as in a number of new courses in communications theory offered by English and sociology departments in the established universities.

While journalism educators are trying to teach students to use active voice, short sentences, concrete nouns and verbs, precise grammar and clear meaning, they are faced with cultural studies courses that reward students who ape the passive voice, arcane abstractions, long and turgid expressions and grammatical howlers that characterise the latter.

Perversely, one of the reasons the cultural studies movement has been so successful is because it has adopted verbiage. Few people outside the field can understand what is being said, so wider opposition is thereby minimised. Obscure expression is a clever tactic to adopt in academic circles, where there is always an expectation that things are never simple and that anyone who writes clearly is thereby being shallow. Instead of signalling a communication theorist's inability to communicate properly, obscurantism such as the above is assumed to equal profundity.

But if media theory is as degenerate, how could media courses be so attractive to students? It is important to understand that the popularity of media courses owes nothing to cultural studies. Indeed, if my experience is any guide, large numbers of students will freely admit to sympathetic lecturers that they loathe everything cultural studies stands for. Once they have experienced it, most students come to regard media theory as a largely incomprehensible and odious gauntlet they must run in order to be allowed to do what they really came to the institution for: to study media practice. Students who take media courses want to learn skills that will gain them employment in what they perceive to be attractive and interesting careers. Before they enrol, very few of them realise how much of the course is consumed by media theory, nor do they appreciate what media theory actually is. They assume it is something that complements media practice, not its antithesis.

The great irony in the conduct of media courses lies in the relative status of those who teach theory and those who teach practice. Most media practitioners who join academic departments do so after at least 10 years', and more commonly 20 years', employment in the industry. However, most only have BA pass degrees and find that although their industry experience will get them a job, it will not get them a promotion. To be promoted from lecturer to senior lecturer, they are required to complete a PhD or a masters research degree. The result is that most lecturers in journalism, television production and similar practical subjects languish at the lecturer and senior lecturer level in the academic hierarchy.

On the other hand, the theorists in cultural studies are invariably people who have done honours degrees at university and then gone on to postgraduate studies. They go straight from university study to university teaching. Hardly any of them gains direct experience within the media. Most cultural studies theorists in Australia have never been employed by any media organisation in any capacity. Most have never set foot inside a newspaper office or TV studio, let alone made a living from writing or broadcasting. They know the media only from the consumer's perspective, that is, from what they see on the screen or read on the page. The reality of the industry, its production methods, values and constraints are understood by them, at best, at third hand, and in most cases not at all.

Yet because they have gone through the university system and gained postgraduate qualifications, they are considered better fitted to running media studies departments than the real practitioners. The result is that within Australian universities the theorists have gained the lion's share of positions as professors in the field. They head most of the departments, chair curriculum committees, set texts and pull strings in making appointments.

What, then, is to be done? Most of the people I am criticising here are members not of a suppressed younger generation but of an entrenched older one. Most have tenured posts and are aged in their 40s or early 50s, which means they have another 20 years of working life left in them, 20 years in which they are most unlikely to change their ways. The best way for media practitioners to respond would be to compete with them head on. Rather than confining themselves to their specialist areas, they should be writing their own general textbooks and developing their own theory. Those who know the cultural industries from the inside are much better placed than any of their opponents to throw proper light on the field.

The threat posed by the introduction of courses in communications and media studies into the older universities, as well as the contamination of traditional humanities subjects by the assumptions and politics of cultural studies, rises all the time. How best to resist this, or, rather, whether it is still possible to resist at all, I am not sure, but since the post-Dawkins university system is now driven by student demand, and since secondary school students are so demonstrably ill-informed about the study of media and communications at the tertiary level, one strategy would be to try to influence demand by enlightening the potential customers.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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20 June 2006

Cuban Propaganda Gets the Chop in Florida

But against heavy legal pressure

Portraying life in Castro's Cuba as some sort of paradise is something that only the far Left would do. That untold numbers of Cubans risk their lives to escape the "paradise" concerned is surely enough all by itself to give the lie to such a picture.

Yet there are lots of copies of books in the school libraries of Miami that DO portray Cuba in a rosy light. Finally, however, the school board has voted to remove such misleading books from all Miami-Dade school libraries.

The ACLU is going to sue to keep the books of course. Defending lies is no problem for them, as long as they are Leftist lies.

There are of course untold numbers of lying books and articles in the world and all adults have to make judgemnents about which to believe. But to be happy with little kids being fed lies in the guise of education is obnoxious.



Student strike-breakers

A big whine below about British students wanting value for their money

The industrial action by university lecturers in Britain has now been suspended after a deal was reached between the unions and their employers. The University and College Union (UCU) agreed to a pay rise of 10.37 per cent over 22 months and a 15.5 per cent rise for the lowest-paid non-academic university workers. There will also be an independent review of salaries in 2008, which will examine how much money is available for pay rises from extra revenues gained from top-up fees.

Although the ending of the strike should be welcomed, there are worrying lessons to be learned from the student population's reaction to it. We witnessed a startling lack of solidarity within higher education and a very small-minded approach to education from many of those students who have benefited greatly from it. Sally Hunt and Paul Mackney, the general secretaries of the UCU, said: `No settlement ever provides everything that you want for members, but we believe that this is the best that can be achieved within the current national negotiating environment.' Students are partly to blame for creating that negative `negotiating environment', which limited public support for the lecturers.

The majority of the media coverage of the strike showed students moaning about the detrimental effect such industrial action might have on their studies. For instance, 21-year-old fashion student Lucy Macfarlane questioned what students were `getting from it' (university) despite the government `putting fees up so much'; she also maligned lecturers for using students as `bait'.

This trend of self-centred thinking extended as far as Kat Fletcher, president of the National Union of Students (NUS), who continually emphasised the `extremely difficult time' students faced during and after the strike, despite the fact that the NUS, officially at least, supported the lecturers' demand for higher pay. The NUS supported the lecturers' demands while disagreeing with the only viable method they had of achieving a substantial pay rise - namely, striking during the exam period.

The majority of students are guilty, it seems, of treating education as nothing more than a means to employment, and by doing so they are betraying the very spirit of education. [Which is .... ?]

A survey in the Times Educational Supplement highlighted the bizarre student approach to the strike. Sixty-eight per cent of students agreed that academics deserved higher pay, as did the Bett Committee (1999), the last major independent review of university pay, which recommended a `significant increase' in minimum starting salaries for lecturers and said that those with much responsibility, such as professors, merited `rewards more commensurate with the weight of their responsibilities'. However, 77 per cent of students simultaneously opposed the lecturers' boycott of assessment. It is of course legitimate for students to be concerned about their work going unmarked; however, the student population failed to recognise that the lecturers were not striking out of malice but rather were taking the only course of action through which they could achieve their aims.

If all of the academics in England staged a one-day strike at any other time of the year, as workers in many other industries can, it would have achieved nothing and received little attention. It is only when exams are threatened that lecturers get attention from vice chancellors and media coverage. Yet Emma Powell, the Student Union president at the University of Kent, where students marched against their lecturers, stated: `We don't want to be used as leverage anymore. We do support the [union's] demands for better pay but we just want our marks.'

This lack of solidarity within higher education was detrimental to the UCU's quest for higher pay. The media and public seemed more concerned with the effect the action would have on graduates in the short term than with the decline in wages that has been occurring for nearly 30 years. A mix of self-importance and indifference characterised the student response to the strikes....

The notion of an institution of education entering into a business agreement/contract with its students is a perversion of the very spirit of education that such institutions must cultivate. Education should not be seen purely as a means to employment, yet it is exactly this mindset that seems widespread among students up and down the country. Education is an end in its own right, a vital component of self-fulfillment; it must not be seen to be subservient to other goals and should not be treated as such. [In that case the teachers should be idealistic and accept low pay too?] ....

Those on the left worry about liberalising the market in higher education further, but they have missed a vital point. The market already exists in the most damaging place of all - the minds of the students.

More here



Schools may be 'liable' for bullies

Schools which fail to protect students from bullying could be forced to pay thousands of dollars in legal damages, an academic has warned. Brisbane-based Professor Des Butler, from Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Faculty of Law, said there were many Australian examples of bullied students taking civil court action against their schools and winning "sizeable" financial compensation. "Under the law, a school may have breached its duty of care if it has failed to prevent its students from being bullied at school," Prof Butler said.

He said bullying had become a serious problem, which could result in criminal and civil action against the perpetrator as well. "The problem with taking civil action against the perpetrator, they may not be worth suing," Prof Butler said. "This is why we see cases of schools being sued, because they are seen as having deep pockets. "Public schools have government backing and private schools have insurance."

He said that in 2001 a jury ruled in favour of a teenage boy who was awarded $60,000 after suffering bullying over three years at a school in Ballarat, Victoria. "It was a daily campaign he had to put up with - one student tried to strangle him with a cord ... it was a combination of both physical and psychological (bullying)," Prof Butler said. "The school was held to not have taken adequate steps to deal with it."

Prof Butler said another Melbourne student was awarded $73,000 in 2003 for her school's failure to prevent her being bullied over two years. "She again was subjected to a range of behaviours, verbal and physical assaults, intimidation and harassment ... she had girls calling her 'fat bitch', 'fat slut', 'two-dollar hooker' ... she was in years seven and eight," he said. "They were engraving these things into classroom tables and threatened to kill her and harm her on a daily basis."

However, Prof Butler also said schools were not insurers of students' safety. "The school is only held responsible if it has failed to take reasonable care and take the precautions that a school would take," Prof Butler said. "Just because a student has been bullied doesn't mean a school is automatically responsible for it. "You can't exactly wrap them with cotton wool - you can't have a prison camp type of environment but by the same token there are certain behaviours that shouldn't be allowed. "Part of the problem with these things is where do you draw the line?" He said it was essential schools adopted a "zero tolerance" policy to tackle bullying with tough consequences.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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19 June 2006

Another Chance for a Colorblind Constitution

Maybe America's next generation of students will get to see a colorblind Constitution after all -- at least through their high school graduation. Three years ago, a bare majority of the Supreme Court of the United States further delayed Dr. Martin Luther King's dream that his children would one day live in a nation where they would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" when five justices ruled colleges and universities could admit students based on their race.

As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote of the decision then, the High Court had granted colleges and universities a "25-year license to violate the Constitution," thus teaching America's future leaders the lesson that their race matters. But, on Monday, a new High Court signaled that maybe, just maybe, that same lesson won't be taught to our nation's elementary and high school students. Specifically, the justices agreed to hear two cases next term challenging the practice of some public school districts to use race in deciding whether students can choose to attend the elementary or high school of their choice.

The cases come from Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, where the public school districts allow students (with the assistance of their parents) to choose which schools they want to attend. However, in assigning a school to each student based on his or her preferences, those school districts also considered the student's race if the school of choice already enrolls too many pupils of that same skin color.

Of course, the school districts claim they have a legitimate reason for engaging in this obvious racial discrimination. The school districts argue they need to ensure each one of their elementary and high schools maintains the "proper" racial balance so that their students can reap the reward of educational diversity. Not surprisingly, this was the rationale approved by the bare majority of the Supreme Court three years ago.

In truth, the racial balancing engaged in by the Louisville and Seattle public school districts is anything but permissible under both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it. While five justices did uphold the University of Michigan's consideration of an applicant's race in admitting each student to law school, the Court said such racial consideration had to be "individualized" on a student-by-student basis to promote the "educational benefits" of "diversity."

Indeed, in the companion University of Michigan case, a larger majority of the High Court struck down the University's undergraduate admissions process that gave a fixed number of "bonus" points toward admission to under-represented minority applicants. Such a rigid preference for students of particular races was unconstitutional racial discrimination that violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, the High Court ruled.

Rigidly is exactly how racial preferences have been used by the Louisville and Seattle public school districts. Quite simply, those school districts used race as a disqualifying factor once a specific elementary or high school already had "enough" students that looked the same. This certainly cannot be the holistic "individualized" consideration of race in education the bare majority approved three years ago.

Moreover, this new Court should get back to basics and reconsider what they want to teach our nation's school children about the Constitution. Three years ago, five justices taught students applying for higher education that their race could matter more than their past educational performance or future academic potential. Next year, the newly constituted High Court should teach America's elementary and high school students that the Constitution ensures their race shouldn't matter at all, and that Dr. King's dream is on its way to becoming reality.

Source



Australia: Attack on university media courses

The article below quotes the current head of journalism studies at the University of Queensland as rejecting Windschuttle's critique of such courses. The former head of Journalism at the University of Queensland, Prof. John Henningham, however, would likely support the thrust of Windschuttle's criticisms. An experienced journalist himself, he was so dissatisfied with the university offering that he took early retirement and started his own private J-school. See here

Keith Windschuttle, the controversial author and historian this week appointed to the ABC board, believes graduates from university media courses over the past 20 years have been taught anything but good journalism. In a paper first delivered in 1995 and reprinted in The Weekend Australian today, Windschuttle says journalism is committed to reporting the truth, without favour, to inform the audience - but the media theory taught in universities denies these principles. "The methodologies and values of journalism are undermined, contradicted and frequently regarded as naive by the proponents of media theory," he wrote in 1995. "I haven't changed my views at all," Windschuttle said yesterday, "There are some real ex-journalists teaching but they are swamped by those teaching cultural studies nonsense."

Michael Bromley, professor of journalism at the University of Queensland, said yesterday that Windschuttle's argument was very old and outdated. "In some places around the world they didn't even have the argument because it seemed so pointless," Professor Bromley said. "Journalism is about the social world. It is about people's social experience and social reality and the things they talk about. "Good journalists can pick up on those things and report them fairly and accurately. If life changes and things move on, and people are less interested in politics and more interested in Kylie Minogue, then who are we not to report that - or pull a face and say that should not be featured."

ABC TV reporter Quentin Dempster, who was favourite to take up the role of staff-elected board member before the position was abolished by the Government, said Windschuttle's views on media courses could prompt "a debate worth having". "If Keith could give more specific examples of the journalism which has been debauched in such a way, that would be useful to engage the journalism academics around Australia," Dempster said yesterday. "One of the things that has always concerned me about journalism is the influence of commerciality on journalism and editorial judgment and story selection and things like that. If Keith could be more specific and give us some examples it would be a debate worth having."

Dempster said he was opposed to Windschuttle's appointment. "I've got no problem with Keith Windschuttle or anyone else, at a personal level, being on the ABC board," Dempster said. "What his appointment continues, however, is a pattern of jobs for political and ideological mates that has been followed by both the Labor Party in government and the Liberals in government - and I'm sick and tired of it. "We want to make the ABC better."

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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18 June 2006

U.K.: What have burnt toast, Gerry Adams and a burger to do with September 11?

Ever wondered what our schools are teaching children about terrorism? To judge by some of the material in an education pack being used in my London borough, the questions might include: could al-Qaeda poison your burger? Did the American Government stage the September 11 attacks? And what lessons for the Middle East can you learn from arguing with your mum?

The glossy pack of CD-Roms and worksheets is for secondary school citizenship classes. Called 9/11: The Main Chance (no, I don't know either), it is sponsored by the Neighbourhood Regeneration Fund (no, I don't know either). When I saw it reported in the Walthamstow Guardian, it sounded too bizarre to be true. Having studied the pack, I can confirm that it is bizarre, but it is true. So here is a glimpse of what might be going on in the citizenship classes that the Government now claims will teach children "our values".

9/11: The Main Chance attempts to deal with September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East and human rights in a simple way intended to make sense to pupils not keen on conventional teaching methods. The result seems more likely to raise levels of confusion and concern.

A worksheet on the targets chosen on 9/11 asks pupils: "Are there any possible targets in your local area?" If that is not enough to get them boycotting public transport, it asks: "What weapons or methods could be used?" There follow helpful links: one to a story on "Food terrorism - the nightmare scenario" illustrated by a juicy burger (which seems an extreme way to get children off junk food), the other to a report "How safe is our water? The threat of terrorism", which may help the water companies to cut consumption. When the Walthamstow Guardian asked if the 9/11 attacks should be used as a teaching tool, one educationist said the pack was not about "preaching" to children, but about providing "impartial and unbiased information" and "letting them make sense of it".

That would be information such as: "The terrorists had shown that, despite America's size and military power, careful planning and complete faith could defeat them."

So al-Qaeda defeated America. Or did it? After all, according to this impartial pack, "it is not known whether Flight 93 was taken over by passengers or shot down by the military". The only people to whom this should be "not known" are conspiracy theorists. You might as well tell kids it is not known whether men really landed on the Moon.

The outside sources of "impartial and unbiased information" include a news website that speculates about whether images of Satan appeared in smoke over the Twin Towers, and the mystic significance of the number 11. Another link, to explain the role of the US Vice-President, turns out to be an excerpt from a 9/11 conspiracy website that asks whether Dick Cheney "was directing the response to the attack. Or was he directing the attack?" The pack's main attempt to situate 9/11 in some context is a lengthy list of "Osama's grievances". Raising the chestnut about terrorists and freedom fighters, the pack asks: "Which category do these people belong in: Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Gerry Adams, Martin Luther King?" A better question might be: what do any of them have to do with 9/11?

The orthodoxy today is that all education must be made "relevant" to pupils' own experience. Thus the section on "Tolerance and 9/11" ends with a quiz about how you would react if your mum burnt your toast, or your brother lent your favourite DVD to his mate. The lesson on conflict resolution suggests that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is like a family dispute about sharing.

No doubt this teaching pack was put together by well-intentioned educationists, despite the inaccuracies and omissions. Of course it is not "pro al-Qaeda". But nor does it appear to be pro anything else. Instead it reflects the wider confusion and incoherence about these issues. We are unsure who we are or what we stand for as a society, and it is nonsense to expect citizenship classes to fill that vacuum. Government commitment to teaching "values" is worthless when we don't know what those might be.

This teaching pack is big on "putting yourself in the other person's shoes". The trouble is, if you are not sure where your own shoes stand in the first place, you risk falling flat on your face.

Source



Australian State vows to bring back A-E grades in its schools

New South Wales would introduce A to E graded school report cards despite mounting opposition from teachers and parents, state Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said. Under nationwide changes to be introduced from next year, the states will start implementing report cards, from year one onwards that grade students on a scale of A to E. More than 12,000 NSW Teachers Federation members have rejected the report cards, saying they brand students as failures. The teachers also have revealed a lack of training in implementing the new system.

Adding voice to the teachers' opposition, national bodies representing government school teachers and students' parents also are encouraging parents to refuse to accept the new cards. Ms Tebbutt today acknowledged the teachers' opposition and admitted her Government must "lift its game" supporting schools to implement the new system. But she said the Government was responding to parents, who want better information about their children, and she was committed to introducing the reports. "The parents that I've talked to are overwhelmingly positive about the changes we are introducing," Ms Tebbutt said. "They have been frustrated beyond belief with the report cards that they have been getting."

The "plain-English" A to E report cards, to be introduced nationally, are aimed at helping identify student problems in particular areas with a standardised national scheme. All states are required to introduce the cards by next year to maintain their federal funding under national reforms to the reporting of student grades.

NSW Teachers Association president Maree O'Halloran said the Australian Council of State School Organisations is encouraging parents to rejecting the A-to-E model. P&C Associations were also telling her they want a choice about assessment. "The state government is saying A to E, no choices," Ms O'Halloran said.

Contrary to his party's federal counterpart, NSW opposition education spokesman Brad Hazzard said parents do not want the A-to-E model. "They don't want their children labelled - particularly six-, seven-, eight-year-olds - labelled as failures," he said. "Really it's utterly unnecessary, and the state opposition opposes it. The A-to-E system will not work in the best interests of children." Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said the reports were insulting to children and would damage schools' sense of community. "It's something that the Government should just say is a bad idea, and move on," Ms Rhiannon said.

Moves towards a national system followed complaints from parents and educators that the existing reports were vague and confusing. Currently schools are free to use their own system of presenting students' progress to parents, resulting in a number of different assessment models. Some involve an A to E grading, others use numbers one to six or descriptive terms only. The Government said the A to E reports would bring the consistency missing from assessment that will better inform parents. But the A to E system has split parents and teachers, with some parent bodies arguing that the proposed report cards were not intended to identify problems with students but to provide a written record of their achievements.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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17 June 2006

A university is forced to treat white professors equally

Talk about back wages due: A federal judge in Phoenix this month said that Northern Arizona University owes $1.4 million to a group of professors who have been pursuing justice through the courts since 1995. The 40 teachers, all white men, argued that they were discriminated against when the public university gave raises to minority and female faculty members in the early 1990s but not to white males. Not only that--the plaintiffs said in a Title VII civil-rights suit--the salary bumps resulted in some favored faculty members earning more than white men in comparable positions.

The lawsuit and its outcome are yet another striking illustration of the perils of affirmative action, with its often contorted logic of redress and blame and its tendency to commit exactly the sort of discrimination that it was designed to prevent.

The university may persuade U.S. District Court judge Robert Broomfield to lower the bill for what is effectively back pay to the professors. But the school is also facing a claim for the plaintiffs' legal expenses. Their attorney, Jess Lorona, tells us that, with more than a decade of litigating on both sides totted up, the cost to Arizona taxpayers could soar to $2.5 million.

What happened here? The professors' victory, it should be said, is not a sweeping defeat of affirmative action, and the plaintiffs didn't ask for one. The university maintains that when it raised pay for certain faculty it was simply following a federal mandate to eliminate race or gender wage disparities. What got the school in trouble was not "catch up" payments per se but the way it made them. Even so, "the reverberations are going to be tremendous," attorney Lorona predicts. He explains that this decision "sets out case law about what needs to be done when you're trying to cure pay inequity."

Lesson One: You should probably prove that discrimination exists rather than just infer it from dodgy statistics. In 1993, the university's then-president, Eugene M. Hughes, assumed there had been discrimination, based partly on a study he'd commissioned. The study used salaries at other schools to help determine a theoretical median wage that should prevail at Northern Arizona. A lot of white males there fell below the median, but the significant finding for President Hughes was the one that showed minorities and women under a "predicted" par.

As Judge Broomfield noted in 2004, the initial study ignored factors such as whether people held doctorates. At any rate, the study's own figures indicated that white faculty were earning only about $87 a year more than minorities, and men were making about $751 more than women. Mr. Hughes's solution: raises of up to $3,000 for minorities and $2,400 for women. White men got nada.

So here's Lesson Two and the winning issue in this case: If you want to pay "catch up" wages to some employees, don't overcompensate to the point where they draw ahead for no reason other than their race or gender. As Andrew Kleinfeld, a judge on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in his 2002 opinion lambasting Mr. Hughes: "The scheme here was straightforward: Minorities are gold, women are silver, white men are bronze. . . . [E]veryone in America knows that the Constitution prohibits the government from treating some people better than others because they are of a preferred sex or ethnicity." Well, at least they now know in Arizona.

Source



The tutoring industry has exploded, thanks to parents who can't let kids "fall behind."

Back in the 1980s, when Japanese financiers gobbled up U.S. companies like so many Pacmen, Americans became unnerved. Japanese society seemed scarily focused: The discipline in schools was so brutal that a tardy child might be crushed to death by the doors slamming shut precisely on time. We heard about juku, cram schools where Japanese children went each afternoon after regular classes for three hours more of academic drilling; Saturdays, too.

Americans joked about how we'd all be carrying yen in our wallets someday, but we could comfort ourselves--and people did--by saying that at least our children were individuals. American childhood was to be enjoyed, not grimly marched through with joyless eyes fixed on getting into the Ivy League.

Ah, but will you look at us now? We're building a juku system of our own. Millions of American children no longer have the time to kick a ball around after school because they're already late for an appointment with the math tutor or a "study skills" lesson or cognitive skills training or Spanish immersion or "reading comprehension support" or academic enrichment of one sort of another.

Tutoring as a concept is, of course, nothing new. Where would the 19th-century novel be without pretty young governesses presiding over schoolrooms in country estates? Outside of literature, tutors have long been a fixture of both ends of the bell curve. Struggling children got help to keep afloat at grade level; super-bright children might see tutors to challenge them further. What's happening now is different. Tutoring has become near ubiquitous among the panicky classes: middle- and upper-middle-income families where there are ample brains and money.

Today it's not uncommon for six-year-olds to receive private lessons in how to overcome "executive function issues," for if they can't handle the paperwork in first grade, heaven help them in the cutthroat bureaucracy of third. Middle-schoolers see tutors to boost their math and reading skills, and thus help them get into the right high school; high-schoolers sign up for private SAT prep. The parents of high-schoolers and college students hire specialists for as much as $500 a hour to tweak calculus skills or edit essays. Some families hire tutors in Bangalore because they're available on email at midnight and cost a fraction of what it would take to bring a teacher to the house.

"In 1989 I would mumble, 'I'm a tutor,' and hang my head a little, because it seemed a marginal job," says David Kahn, who runs a tutoring company in Manhattan. "People used to think it meant I was poor, and now they think it means I'm rich."

There is no real mystery about why tutoring has become such a growth industry. It can be traced in part to the proliferation of standardized tests. At Kaplan, the biggest corporate tutor, the number of students in its test prep and after-school programs has more than doubled since 1998. According to the research firm Eduventures, schools spent $879 million on corporate tutoring and test prep in the 2004/2005 academic year--25.2% more than the year before. Uncle Sam is giving tutoring a boost too. Under No Child Left Behind, the federal government pays for the tutoring of any kid in a failing school. (This market in tutoring for low-income students barely existed six years ago.) In all, Americans spend more than $4 billion a year on tutoring.

The propelling force behind this revenue stream is, of course, modern parents: a whole generation of anxious, competitive, aspirational parents who agonize about whether their children are doing well enough, or missing out on anything, or, God forbid, falling behind in some crucial way.

At the park the other day, I met a woman who had taken the afternoon off to "do sports" with her son. This consisted of her bouncing a ball toward him and waiting for him to bounce it back. She fretted openly that she had been too slow in having the boy taught to play basketball. She worried that it might already be too late for him to win a place on a particular high-status private-school team. "Some of those other kids are pretty good," she said uneasily of the competition, which, like her son, is about four years old. It's the perception of relative disadvantage that makes such situations poignant. If every other four-year-old in that woman's milieu is taking basketball lessons, of course her son will fall "behind."

It is a truth universally acknowledged among teachers and tutors that modern parents want their children to do exceptionally well. They demand A's, not B's. They expect stratospheric SAT scores. Anecdote suggests, however, that they seldom want to spend any time in pursuit of these goals themselves. "I told one family they were wasting their money. The parents told me to keep doing it anyway," says Chuck Hoag, a private-school math teacher who tutors after hours in suburban Maryland. According to Mr. Hoag, the tutee in question could have done well with just 15 minutes a night of his parents' attention. He says gloomily: "So many parents seem [to be] saying, 'I'm living up to my responsibility by giving my child a tutor.'"

But parents are not simply shirking their own responsibility, they are encouraging kids not to take any. "There is a tutor culture \[of\] parents who don't let their children fail once in a while. They're scared it'll look bad on their record," says Caleb Rossiter, a professor at American University, who has noticed this trend even on the college level. This semester, he gave a failing grade to a lackadaisical student. The girl's mother, a lawyer, immediately phoned: "She said, 'We want to challenge this grade. My daughter can't afford to flunk.'" When Mr. Rossiter declined to change the girl's grade, the family asked about finding a tutor. "I said, 'I am her tutor,'" he laughs. "I have office hours. You're paying $40,000 a year, and yet your daughter has never once come to see me."

Mr. Rossiter's experience hints at a darker trend of which mass tutoring is only a symptom: the spread of a high-grade, get-ahead academic ethos that is decoupled from an actual, mind-broadening education. On NPR recently, a reporter asked 87-year-old Hazel Haley, who just retired after 67 years of teaching English in a Florida high school, how today's teenagers differed from the ones she taught generations ago. She gave this dispiriting response: "Today's young people [think], 'I'll learn it for the test, I'll do well on the test, and then I will flush it.' "

Mr. Kahn, the Manhattan tutor, notices the same thing. He sees a distressing number of children who are "completely burnt out and won't accomplish anything in college because they were driven through high school the way an associate is driven through a law firm." "For many kids," Mr. Kahn says, "getting into college is such an ordeal that once they're there, they just kick back." Shades of juku again: In Japan, cram schools focus on getting into university, not necessarily getting much out of it. It's a shame that we're importing that frame of mind.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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16 June 2006

Culture, Discipline, and the No Child Left Behind Act

I agree fully with Mr Kosar's comments below but it should be noted that the delay of gratification research literature has characteristic problems. Mr Kosar tactfully does not mention an even bigger problem than differences in culture -- differences in ability

David Brooks of the New York Times has been on a bit of an education kick of late. In his May 7 column, "Marshmallows and Public Policy," he wrote of the famous Mishel experiment. “Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn't ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows. …. The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores.”

Two and one-half weeks later (May 25 th ), Brooks penned, "Of Love and Money," wherein he wrote, “The people who do well not only possess skills that can be measured on tests, they have self-discipline (which is twice as important as I.Q. in predicting academic achievement, according to a study by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman).” For this study, Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E.P. Seligman, “Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents,” Psychological Science , vol. 16, issue 12, Dec. 2005, pp. 939-944.)

Interestingly, both Brooks' columns and this study sound a bit like the hypothesis proffered over three decades ago by Edward C. Banfield. In his book, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis (1970), Banfield warned school reformers that their proposals to improve student learning were bound to run into a brute fact— large numbers of children in the United States were the product of “lower-class culture.” To be clear, by “lower class” Banfield did not mean “poor.” Rather, Banfield argued, “a person who is poor, unschooled, and of low status may be upper class; indeed, he is upper class if he is psychologically capable of providing for the distant future.” While “upper class culture” imbues a long view of life and goal orientation, lower-class culture has a live-in-the-moment ethos. Thus, youths reared in lower class culture tend to find school difficult because their parents failed to help them develop the mindset that enables them to sit still and learn.

When Banfield's book came out, he was roasted by the Left, who denounced him as a hard-hearted bigot who did not care about the poor. Too bad. Whatever one might say about The Unheavenly City as a whole, it is clear that in the chapter on education and schooling, Banfield was on to something. Both common sense, and now science, tell us that children need to come to school prepared to learn.

Before policymakers set about to rework the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), they should keep the issue of culture in mind. Here's why. NCLB, ostensibly, aims to raise student achievement by improving the operations of schools and state education systems. In exchange for federal dollars, states must establish standards and test students. All this is good and fine— but, NCLB also requires schools to get 100% of children proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 and delivers punishments to schools where children fail to meet achievement targets (“adequate yearly progress”).

Washington , we have a problem. The idealism of “No Child Left Behind” is on a collision course with reality. NCLB aims only at the institutional side of the schooling formula; it does not, though, attempt to elevate “lower class” culture or turn all parents into good nurturers. Nor, quite frankly, is it clear how NCLB or any policy could. Schools, especially those serving large numbers of children whose parents don't well prepare them for learning, cannot possibly see to it that 100% of children reach proficiency. To insist that they do is to imagine that a government institution can obliterate the effects of culture and parental child-rearing.

Hence, the goal of 100% proficiency must be lowered. How low should it be set? That is a question worthy of serious discussion. Some politicians and advocates might balk at any such discussion, grousing that setting a lower goal is tantamount to capitulation to what President Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” But, as Professor Banfield intoned, “[F]acts are facts, however unpleasant, and they have to be faced unblinkingly to improve matters…”

Source



L.A. DROPOUT RATE GETS WORSE

The kids can't all have gone to Orange County. Note that no explanation for the drop in enrollments is attempted -- the dog that did not bark?

Enrollment in city schools will continue to drop by thousands of students next year, Los Angeles education officials said Tuesday, and the decline is expected to cost the Los Angeles Unified School District tens of millions of dollars in state funding.

The enrollment projections came to light when Supt. Roy Romer submitted a $7.5-billion budget for the coming school year to the Board of Education. According to Romer's proposed budget, about 20,000 fewer students will attend classes next year at the roughly 690 traditional campuses that dot the sprawling district, dropping enrollment to about 678,000. The loss would mark the fourth consecutive year the district has lost students. Last fall, district officials were caught off guard by a decline of 20,258 students for the current school year, which far exceeded their projections.

The number of students attending scores of independently run charter schools in the district, meanwhile, is expected to rise by about 5,000, bringing the district's overall head count to about 712,000 children.

Because nearly all the funding a school district receives from state coffers is based on enrollment, the declining totals in traditional Los Angeles schools will cost the district an estimated $114 million. At the same time, the district will save about $40 million in costs because there will be fewer students to serve. Despite the anticipated money loss, Romer presented a balanced budget, made possible largely because the state's improving economy has increased overall funding to schools. In coming weeks, the seven-member school board will debate the allotments put forth by Romer before voting on the final budget in August.

At the center of Romer's budget is a series of initiatives aimed at improving academics and safety in middle and high schools. The largest of the programs is a $36-million infusion that would improve science labs, modernize libraries and make other improvements at 17 of the district's lowest-performing high schools. Romer has also called for money to be set aside to provide incentives to attract special education teachers and increase training for teachers. But with the district in the early stages of contract negotiations with the teachers union, Romer said he had not built into the budget any raises for teachers.

The decline in enrollment has also had an effect on the district's ambitious construction and repair projects, which aim to end severe overcrowding that has plagued schools for decades. For the final phase of the building project, district officials had envisioned the need to build 21 elementary schools to reach the goal of removing all students from cumbersome, year-round schedules. Now, however, with projected enrollment showing a continued decline for the next six to eight years, Romer said only 15 new elementary campuses are needed. He emphasized that no schools under construction or in the formal planning stages have been canceled because of the lower student figures.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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15 June 2006

U.K. schools 'too feminine for boys'

Boys are being failed by schools because lessons have become too "feminised" in recent years, an academic is expected to warn. Dr Tony Sewell will call for more nurturing of traditional "male" traits, such as competitiveness and leadership. Schools focus too much on "feminine" qualities such as organisation and attentiveness, he will tell an NASUWT union conference in London. The government said it was working "to better engage" male pupils.

Dr Sewell, a former lecturer at Leeds University, will call for some coursework to be replaced with final exams and for more emphasis on outdoor adventure in the curriculum. He will also demand extra efforts to recruit more male teachers and introduce more "excitement" to lessons. Dr Sewell told the BBC News website: "On the one hand, boys have to adapt to the world they are living in, which is not all about muscle and machismo. "On the other hand it's clear many of their needs are not being met. "We are often frightened by the traditional idea of the male, where we think it's wrong to be overtly competitive, and boys often lack an outlet for their emotions. "Young women have lots of support, with magazines and programmes devoted to them, and boys often do not."

Dr Sewell is calling for science lessons to include more practical experiments to interest male pupils. He said:" The girls seem more able to adapt to more theory-only learning, while boys want more action. They want to blow things up and see science in action. "I'm not suggesting that there aren't many lazy boys out there, but there needs to be more done to attract males to learning." Some boys are turning to gang violence as an outlet for their frustrated masculinity, he said.

Male pupils' exam results lag behind those of girls. In 2004, 63.3% of female GCSE entries resulted in an A* to C grade, compared with 54.9% of male entries. A Department for Education and Skills spokesman said: "We are delivering a curriculum and school experience to better engage boys in education. "Massive investment in personalised learning, as well as reforms to 14-19 education, will deliver catch up classes, challenge for gifted and talented pupils, and a new curriculum to keep both boys and girls engaged and excelling in learning."

Source



Spelling Gutting: The near death of NCLB

A few weeks ago when an Associated Press story revealed that more than half the states had created gaping loopholes in No Child Left Behind's strict school-rating system-with the approval of the U.S. Department of Education-the press and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were quick to decry the situation and call for an immediate fix. Not so Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who expressed only the mildest dismay, and promised no concrete remedy. That's because Spellings-who first helped design and then enforce the law during four years at the White House domestic-policy shop-has been methodically gutting No Child Left Behind since about the time she became secretary. As a result, the massive law, once thought of as downright Draconian, has lost much of its power-an outcome about whose necessity and long-term effects experts differ.

However, there's only so much dismantling of a law that you can do before folks start to take notice. Since the AP raised the alarm a few weeks ago, the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both started asking questions about the secretary's performance. And Spellings has started tightening down a little.

This wasn't always the plan for NCLB. For much of George W. Bush's first term, the law-the president's sole major domestic achievement-was insulated from nearly all tinkering. And Spellings was its behind-the-scenes enforcer. At Spellings's insistence, former Secretary Rod Paige valiantly (and sometimes reluctantly) held the line against complaints about the law's requirements and unintended consequences-much to the dismay of many educators, some parents, and a small but growing number of elected state officials. Over and over, Paige and others were sent out to tell unhappy educators that there would be no exemptions or waivers. Do we really have to include nearly all disabled and bilingual kids in the testing and reporting system, asked states? Yes. What if it costs a lot to transport kids to better-performing schools, asked districts? Pay for it. You're not really serious about this annual 100 percent proficiency thing, are you, asked nearly everyone? Super serious.

However, since about the time Spellings moved from the White House to the Department of Education in early 2005, much the opposite has been true: over and over, Spellings has backed down, eased off, and otherwise undercut the law in ways that would previously have been unimaginable. Last summer, when the law was on the verge of shifting tens of millions of federal education dollars from urban school districts to outside tutoring companies, Spellings created a "pilot" program that allowed several big-city districts to keep on doing their own tutoring-and to keep the money.

Halfway through the school year, Spellings announced that the department would let some states come up with their own ways of measuring their progress towards eliminating the achievement gap instead of the much-loathed "annual yearly progress" specifications that had been enacted. And just last week, Spellings-who has received adoring press coverage up to this point-announced that only eleven states faced possible sanctions for failing to ensure that poor children are being taught by fully qualified teachers. The states had already been given four full years to comply with this requirement, and Spellings had already promised them an extra year. Insiders predict that few states if any are likely to get fined.

Of course, Spellings didn't do all this on her own. The law itself is full of loopholes. Each year, state and local education officials have gotten better at finding and exploiting them. Congressional Democrats washed their hands of the law seemingly within minutes of having voted overwhelmingly to pass it, while former House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner all but excised his central role in its passage when running for majority leader. And, while some speculate that Spellings is unwilling or unable to play bad cop in public like she had in private, it's almost certain the White House supported her moves to roll things back.

Opinions differ on whether Spellings's reversals were really necessary. Some insiders thought that the law's initial implementation was creating a rebellion that could lead to the wholesale repeal of the law or-even worse-could discredit the 15-year effort to promote standards and accountability in education. Others thought that the worst had passed, and that a handful of states refusing federal education funding to get out of the law's requirements wasn't too high a price to pay for creating what would be, in effect, a first-ever national system of education accountability. It would not have been pretty, that's for sure.

But as time has passed, it's gotten harder to keep No Child Left Behind and Spellings's maneuvers under wraps. The end point may have come during the last month or so, during which the New York Times editorial page, long ambivalent about the law's impact on schools and teachers, expressed its concerns that Spellings was letting this go too far (School Reform in Danger). The Wall Street Journal also weighed in at about the same time, declaring that "Ms. Spellings's generosity with these exemptions is leaving schools to their own worst devices. And it is hurting the system's most vulnerable children."

And so, things finally may be heading back to center. Boehner's replacement, Howard "Buck" McKeon, announced the start of committee hearings on NCLB. Spellings announced that just two states (North Carolina and Tennessee) would be allowed to experiment with developing their own school-ratings systems-an approach that many worried would undo the law entirely if applied nationally. What we'll never really know is whether No Child Left Behind would have been better off left alone.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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14 June 2006

N.Y. STUDENTS SMARTER THAN THEIR "PROGRESSIVE" ADMINISTRATORS

On some days, as few as three of 25 registered students show up for Bonnie Campbell's art class at Buffalo's Lafayette High School. And in Rhonda Mathiebe's health class, attendance dips as low as eight of 32 students. Teachers place much of the blame on a new grading system that allows many students to pass their courses even if they don't show up for the second half of the school year. Many students have learned that, if they earn an 80 average through the first half of the school year, they can skip the rest of year and still pass. The lowest grade the district gives is 50, so that grade averaged with the 80 results in a passing grade of 65.

Teachers said the new policy - which involves the elimination of district-generated final exams - has caused low attendance rates at Buffalo public high schools to get even worse. "It [absenteeism] is just rampant," said Campbell, a teacher for 30 years. "The students know they don't have to be here [to pass], and there's no way of keeping them in the building."

The problem is hardly confined to Lafayette. For the attendance period that ended March 31, 12 of 13 city high schools had lower attendance rates than they did during the corresponding period last school year. In many cases, the drop was severe. Riverside's rate fell from 78.5 to 67 percent; Seneca's from 82.2 to 74.5 percent; East's from 81.1 to 77.3 percent; and Lafayette's from 83.8 to 78.6 percent. School officials say attendance rates of less than 90 percent are unacceptable.

The grading system in effect since December is a significant factor, Lafayette Principal Jacquelyn Baldwin said. "There are students who are smart enough to find the out," she said. "The kids looking for the out took it." District officials plan to meet with teachers to hear and address their concerns, said Heather Groll, a spokeswoman for Superintendent James A. Williams. "There are a lot of variables that can contribute to attendance numbers," she said. The grading quirk dates to December, when Williams announced that district-generated final exams were being eliminated. "They are not scientifically based and, in my view, are not aligned with state standards," he said of the exams.

Under the new policy, students will pass courses if they receive a final average of 65 on their course work or a grade of at least 65 on a corresponding Regents exam. A student's final grade is determined by averaging report card grades for the school year's four marking periods. So a student who gets 80 in both the first and second marking period is assured of a year-end average of at least 65, since the minimum allowable report card grade is 50. (Two 80s and two 50s average out to 65.) When district-generated final exams were given, they often counted for as much as 25 percent of a student's grade. As a result, they played a pivotal role in the marking system and gave reluctant students a compelling reason to continue attending classes.

Teachers still can give final exams, but can only use the results to help determine grades for the fourth marking period. Long before then, students may have already secured passing grades. "They figure it out," Mathiebe said. "They know. Some of them actually come up and say: "You won't see me again until graduation.' " The wave of absenteeism is evident even in Regents classes, where students are still required to pass an exam to get credit.

Flora Osmani, a Lafayette teacher, considers it "a good day" when 15 of 25 enrolled students show up for her Regents biology class. "This attitude that exists in other classes has been transferred to my class," she said. "Kids are not coming to school."

Cat-and-mouse games with grading and attendance policies at Buffalo schools are nothing new. Until this year, students were disqualified from final exams if they were absent more than 28 times. As a result, teachers and administrators said, some students took 26 or 27 days off, then started coming to school regularly. The Board of Education is now considering a proposed attendance policy that would base 10 percent of a student's grade on classroom attendance during each 10-week marking period. Board members tabled that proposal for further discussion after learning that the policy did not distinguish between a student who skips school and one who is home with the flu.

Source



Australian Leftists embrace elite universities

Labor is abandoning the centrepiece of its university funding policy under a radical rethink that will return the party to a system of rewarding high-achieving institutions. In a shift to the Centre that Opposition Deputy Leader Jenny Macklin said should have occurred years ago, Labor will dismantle the 1980s' "one-size-fits-all" funding model that treated all universities, including converted colleges of advanced education, as equal. Labor will abandon the system it introduced through the Dawkins reforms of funding all universities on the same basis per student and instead allow institutions to focus on specialised areas and let other areas lapse.

While Ms Macklin declined to provide details of the new policy, it raises the possibility that law and neurosurgery might become the specialist domain of sandstone universities, while regional universities might be encouraged to focus on agriculture or teaching. Ms Macklin, who holds the Opposition education portfolio, said Labor would fund student places differentially between universities to "allow them to do what they do best". "We want to fund (each university) according to mission, and have differentiated missions," Ms Macklin said. "It is time to end the one-size-fits-all approach. We must embrace diversity."

The move, alongside Labor's recent dumping of its rich-schools hit list, represents a shift to the Centre for education policy under Kim Beazley. Labor is ditching the shibboleth of the Dawkins reforms of 1987, named for Hawke government education minister John Dawkins. His "unified national system" turned CAEs into universities overnight. All public universities - there are now 37 in the country - have been funded at the same level per student place ever since. Governments have stuck with the model for fear that weaker universities might collapse if they are forced to compete for public funding. Ms Macklin yesterday would not guarantee there would be no failures under Labor's proposal.

Her colleague, federal Labor MP Craig Emerson, went further, saying universities should be allowed to fail and be taken over by more successful competitors. But Ms Macklin said no university would be worse off because Labor would put "serious additional public investment" into the system. She said change was needed to ensure Australian universities, where funding per student has been in long-term decline, keep pace with international competitors.

The move was welcomed by individual universities. Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Chubb said the proposal was "necessary". He said the idea that "we should all do the same thing, achieve the same standards and therefore get funded at the same rate per student by discipline" was "a relic of the distant past". "If we are going to get better at what we do, and build on the stage that is suitable for the different institutions, then you have to get differential funding per student."

University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis called Labor's shift an "important development" alongside this week's approval by Education Minister Julie Bishop for his university to reshape itself as an US-style graduate school. It showed that both sides of politics now believe "it is time to move on", he said. He said the rapid growth of private higher education providers in recent years could only mean that public universities "are not offering the sort of courses many students are looking for", and the funding system prevented them from doing so.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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13 June 2006

UK: Plea for schools to improve pupils' handwriting

Children who are not taught to write properly at primary level will struggle at secondary school and university and are also likely to find their poor handwriting as much a handicap in the jobs market as poor reading and numeracy, according to a report out today. The study and survey from the Institute of Education found that few primary schools have consistent policies and practices to ensure children learn to write legibly, fluently and quickly. Even in this age of computer technology and an emphasis on keyboard skills, handwriting remains an essential skill for everyone, it says.

Researchers surveyed 39 large and small urban and rural primary schools in south-east England where pupils come from a wide range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. While most of the schools had a designated person responsible for handwriting and a written policy, a quarter had one without the other. Over half of the teachers surveyed felt they had not received sufficient training, while only one-third had been shown how to teach handwriting in their teacher training course.

Most schools taught handwriting as a separate subject, but less than half set aside time, the survey found. Only a fifth of schools with handwriting policies taught children ways of increasing their speed, which could affect their performance in exams. Only 45% communicated with parents about their methods of teaching handwriting or particular children's progress.

Some countries have a national style or model for teaching handwriting. But in England schools are free to select a style, with the only government recommendation being that it should "be easy to join later". More than half of teachers thought it would help to have a national style.

The report, Handwriting Policy and Practice in English Primary Schools, concludes: "This study echoes others in revealing an unhealthy variation between schools in the extent to which teaching policy has been explicitly formulated and applied to practice. If the national curriculum is to be commended for recognising the importance of handwriting, the absence of any detailed prescription is a matter for regret." A researcher, Rhona Stainthorp, said: "For many years, handwriting has been the Cinderella skill of literacy. The ability to handwrite legibly is not an optional extra; it is essential for everyone, even in this age of computer technology."

Source



A victory over the Leftist destroyers of education



The West Australian Government abandoned its new gradeless schools curriculum yesterday, bowing to pressure from teachers and parents and promising to maintain real course content in place of ideological bent. In an embarrassing about-face, Premier Alan Carpenter announced the changes to the state's new-age "outcomes-based" education system after a morning crisis meeting with education leaders in his office. Mr Carpenter, flanked by his controversial Education Minister, Ljiljanna Ravlich, announced after the meeting that the new system would now maintain percentage marking of students.

His Government will give up its plan for an evaluation system based exclusively on eight "levels", in favour of the NSW system, which combines similar streaming of students but with traditional marking based on a percentage. It will introduce compulsory content in each of the 17 new courses to be introduced next year for Years 11 and 12, reviewing each one over the next few weeks. Teachers will be able to prepare examinations in the traditional fashion, rather than being forced to use those prepared by curriculum developers that require students to provide "values oriented" answers on ideological interpretations of their subjects.

Ms Ravlich told journalists that "about 85 to 90 per cent of content will be exactly the same" as current courses, and conceded that the outcomes-based plan was too ideologically driven. "Perhaps the direction we were moving in was a bit purist," Ms Ravlich said. She and Mr Carpenter insisted outcomes-based education would still be introduced next year, but conceded there would be adjustments. "We have listened to the teachers. We are responding to their concerns. We are simplifying the process of change and making it clearer to all concerned," the Premier said.

The Australian has exposed many of the deficiencies in the outcomes-based courses and the West Australian curriculum, including a move to allow Year 12 English students to analyse the squiggly lines used to draw Mr Messy in the Mr Men children's book series. The secretary of the Western Australian Independent Education Union, Theresa Howe, said the newspaper played an important role in forcing the Government to correct the problems. "It has had an impact," she said. "It has informed a wider audience. The Australian has a high degree of credibility."

The changes announced yesterday amount to a significant reversal. The current courses will be used as a template and only changed according to what teachers, educationalists and unions will accept. Education Department director-general Paul Albert told The Australian that the new curriculum would be introduced in a "transitional" fashion.

The executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of Western Australia, Audrey Jackson, said she felt more confident after yesterday's meeting with the Premier and Ms Ravlich that courses would maintain a solid base. Ms Jackson, a chemistry teacher, said: "The emphasis will swing back towards the traditional form of chemistry, a mix of calculations, a display of knowledge of chemical processes."

Yesterday's backflip followed the intervention of Mr Carpenter to deal with a crisis that threatened to unhinge his Government, after Ms Ravlich failed to address the problem for months and refused to engage with teachers, unions, the media or the public. A weekend poll found 79 per cent of West Australians wanted the new curriculum delayed, and most respondents, by more than two to one, felt it risked "dumbing down" standards.

Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said Mr Carpenter should have acted months ago to take the matter out of the hands of Ms Ravlich, who he said was "not up to the job". Ms Ravlich is the parliamentary leader of the increasingly influential Centre Left faction backed by construction union warlord Kevin Reynolds. Her boyfriend is the Deputy Premier and Treasurer, Eric Ripper. The president of the State School Teachers Union, Mike Keely, said the Government was finally listening. But he said the union directive not to teach the new courses unless teachers were comfortable with them would remain at least until the union's state council meets this weekend.

Source

Comment by Kevin Donnelly:

Premier Alan Carpenter, whose other job is standing up for his Education Minister, should be thanked for backing down on the new West Australian senior school certificate. Providing teachers with a clear map on what is taught, as opposed to vague outcomes, ridding courses of political correctness in favour of essential academic content, and allowing teachers to mark out of 100 instead of grading on eight levels, represents positive change. But any praise should be muted. The Government has only acted out of self-interest -- after being in denial about the groundswell of public opposition to the certificate.

Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich as recently as two weeks ago said there was no place for compromise. Ravlich argued that the certificate was world's best practice. She said the Government would not back down on the basis that, to quote Hansard, "the responsibility of government is to put its policy position on the line and, basically, make sure that the policy is implemented".

Concerns about the Government's about-face are compounded by the fact schools that have been forced to implement the new courses this year - for example, English at Year 11 and Aviation at Year 12 - are now being told the curriculum approach is flawed. The Government has refused to budge from its position that the certificate be implemented next year, triggering doubts over whether there is enough time to review all courses and ensure that teachers are ready to teach the certificate at the start of next year.

Critics of outcomes-based education may have won the battle, but not the war. Teachers in primary and lower secondary schools are still being forced to implement an outcomes-based approach. If outcomes-based education has failed at Years 11 and 12, why is it being forced on younger students?

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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12 June 2006

Resolving the boy crisis in schools

A recent Chicago Board of Education report showed that girls enjoy a 63-37% advantage over boys in gaining admittance to Chicago's eight selective-enrollment college prep high schools. In response, Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and top administrators at Jones, Whitney Young and Brooks prep schools are advocating that schools consider "gender weighting." Yet to balance the scales by employing admissions preferences is misguided. What's needed instead is a rethinking of the way we educate, beginning at the earliest levels.

Many healthy, energetic, intelligent boys are branded as behavior problems as soon as they begin school, and are punished and put on Ritalin or other drugs so they will sit still. Little thought is given to two obvious questions: how could a six or seven year-old be "bad"? And how could so many boys need drugs to function in school? Because schools and classrooms do not fit their educational needs, many boys disengage from school long before they ever reach the prep school level.

Many modern educational practices are counterproductive for boys. Success in school is tightly correlated with the ability to sit still, be quiet and complete paperwork and assignments which are sometimes of questionable value. A "get tough" mentality-under which teachers give excessive homework lest they appear uncommitted or weak-has become a substitute for educators actually having a sound reason for assigning all the work they assign.

Many young boys are bodily kinesthetic learners who respond to hands-on lessons. The educational establishment finds this inconvenient, and thus largely ignores it.

The trend against competition and the promotion of cooperative learning strategies run counter to boys' natural competitiveness and individual initiative. Lessons in which there are no right or wrong answers, and from which solid conclusions cannot be drawn, tend to frustrate boys, who often view them as pointless.

Efforts to make schools gentler and to promote women's writing, while understandable, have pushed aside the action and adventure literature which boys have treasured for generations. In their place are subtle, reflective works which often hold little interest for boys.

The dearth of male teachers--particularly at the elementary level, where female teachers outnumber male teachers six to one--is a problem for boys. The average teacher is a well-meaning and dedicated woman who always did well in school and can't quite understand why the boys won't sit still, be quiet and do their work like the girls do. Instead, boys need strong, charismatic teachers who mix firm discipline with an understanding and good-natured acceptance of boyish energy. And though it's rarely mentioned, most teachers are weighed down by paperwork and secretarial labor, which limits the time they can spend planning creative, hands-on, boy-friendly lessons.

Recess and physical education time allotted during the day are insufficient for boys' needs, and the trend has been to reduce this time rather than to increase it. Pervasive fear of lawsuits has turned educators into guards vigilant to prevent any manifestation of natural boyishness outside the classroom from becoming the school district's latest legal settlement payout.

The deterioration of vocational education also hurts boys. US Department of Education data show that these programs suffered a sharp decline from 1982 to 1992 and never recovered. Vocational classes once started low and middle achieving boys on the path to careers as skilled tradesmen. They have now often been replaced by an asinine yet pervasive mantra that defines as successful only those who go to college and become doctors or lawyers. This mantra often disrespects boys' blue collar fathers, who also happen to be their primary role models. In fact, to suggest that a boy pursue a career working with his hands leaves a teacher open to charges of harming students by encouraging low expectations.

The boy crisis in our schools is more than an educational crisis-it is also a significant public health issue. Nearly nine million prescriptions of Ritalin are written for American children each year, most of them for boys between the ages of six and 12. According to a federal expert advisory panel, 10% of 10 year-old American boys are on Ritalin or similar drugs. In February the panel, which reviewed several dozen reports of deaths, heart problems, and toxic reactions associated with these drugs, recommended they carry a prominent 'black box' warning, the strongest warning for prescription drugs.

The gender weighting currently being pondered by Chicago's educational establishment wouldn't begin to solve these problems. Nor would it address the wide gender disparities that exist among low and middle achieving students. Boys don't need admissions preferences-they need a system which meets their educational needs.

Source



Big Brother ads and squiggles on the syllabus in Western Australia

Counting and analysing advertisements during Big Brother is one of the suggested assignments for Year 11 and 12 English students in Western Australia. Resource materials provided by the state Curriculum Council, which suggest projects for teachers to use in the classroom, also include tasks on the squiggly lines used to draw Mr Messy in the MrMen children's books. Other activities have students analysing junk mail and swimming pool rules and pretending they are celebrities for interviews by classmates.

The teaching guide suggests students count the number of ads screened during a one-hour prime-time television show, such as CSI or Big Brother, and note the products and their intended market. Students report on "the values, attitudes and beliefs underlying the television show" and the target audiences identified for the ads. "Consider what common messages are being sent to the social groups by the show itself and the advertisements screened with it," students are told.

The state's English course, which is being taught this year, has been widely criticised for replacing long literary texts with short texts such as movie posters. The sample exam was attacked for failing to require students to answer a single question about a literary text and instructing markers not to penalise students for poor spelling, grammar or punctuation.

West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter finally stepped in this week to try to restore public confidence in the state's new Certificate of Education. He is meeting teachers associations to address their concerns. But yesterday the English resource materials were still on the Curriculum Council's website. The teaching resources suggests student examine different movie posters, and then design a poster for a movie of their own life. Or they could design, promote and launch a product based on a mythological character.

Another suggested task recommends that students read a selection of children's books, such as the Mr Men books, recommended for children aged three to six, and identify the features used to appeal to their audience -- such as "characters that are distinct and recognisable, bright colours, shapes and lines, eg squiggles for Mr Messy, clothes and props such as hats, simplified facial expressions". Students should study the use of sentences, punctuation and spelling, and then write and illustrate their own children's book. And another task has students exploring "the phenomenon of unsolicited junk mail that uses visuals and writing, eg letterbox advertising, brochures and electronic spamming".

While most people clearing their letterbox don't bother reading junk mail, the curriculum council suggests students view a selection of junk mail, select one type to examine more closely and list the dangers and possible benefits of junk mail.

Another task covers celebrity interviews, requiring students to analyse the main features of several interviews found on the internet. Students then imagine themselves famous in 10 years' time, write a paragraph summarising their rise to fame, and then interview each other as pretend celebrities. The council even suggests students undertake market research, in this case discovering how familiar the general public is with a chosen mythological character. An assignment on mass media has students investigate "how the media manipulate news stories in order to make them more interesting, increase their ratings, or serve their own interests". Another aspect asks: "To what lengths are print media editors willing to go in order to sell news and, consequently, make money?" West Australian students can choose to sit a separate media production and analysis course.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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11 June 2006

CHRISTIAN BROTHERS ORDER LEAVING IRELAND

In the latest and arguably most powerful symbol yet of how dramatically modern Irish society is changing, the Christian Brothers are withdrawing from direct involvement in a network of primary and secondary schools that once formed the backbone of the country. Arrangements to hand over 29 primary and 109 secondary schools to a charity staffed entirely by lay people are being finalised. When pupils return in September the transformation will be complete.

The news has prompted memories - many bitter, but some more generous - from alumni. Nearly all of them focussed on the violence that accompanied their muscular brand of Catholic discipline. In 1998 the Brothers took out half-page newspaper advertisements to apologise for sexual and other abuse inflicted in their institutions. A year later Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, issued a fuller apology on behalf of the government to the victims. "Too many of our children were denied love, care and security," he said. "Abuse ruined their childhoods and has been an ever-present part of their adult lives . . . we must do all we can now to overcome the lasting effects of their ordeals."

A redress board to offer financial compensation to the victims was set up and a commission to investigate the claims established; it is still hearing evidence. One victims' group has 1,500 members in Britain alone. But it is the dramatic decline in religious vocations that has forced the Brothers to take this decision to abandon their prime education role. Brother John Heneghan, a spokesman, said that while they would continue to be owned by them "the Brothers won't have direct responsibility for the schools any more . . . the orientation is towards it being it a lay-operated entity".

As a Pontifical organisation, Brother Heneghan said, they would be asking the Vatican to approve the new structure and with Ireland fast become a secular society, the Pope's consent is a foregone conclusion.

Pat Kenny, Ireland's foremost radio and television broadcaster, said that he had received a superb education from the Brothers but their corporal punishment was excessive. "You could get three on each hand simply for being the last to move from A to B and someone had to be last. "It was, in the odd case, gratuitous cruelty. I've always felt the formation of the Christian Brothers was deeply flawed. We were subjected to recruitment drives in the classroom at the age of 12. We all knew in our bones that this was wrong."

John Banville, the author and winner of the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sea, attended a Christian Brothers primary school in Wexford. He said: "Speaking for myself I had an absolutely fine education. I didn't have any abuse at all, I did appreciate that they were providing free education to a country that was extremely poor at the time in the 1950s and 60s. So it is with a certain regret that I see them disappearing from the scene."

But Malachy O'Doherty, author of I was a teenage Catholic, recalled schooling with the Brothers in Belfast as an unhappy, dark time. "They brought to West Belfast a sense of a very conservative, miserable, male, rural world. "The boys' talk was constantly of, `What mood will HE be in today?' so it was understood by us that they were moody, unhappy people bringing the grief of their own stunted lives into our world."

Gay Byrne, retired host of television's The Late Late Show, said: "One went to school most days firmly convinced that you were going to get physically beaten at some stage during the day for some reason or another. "But people of my class and background wouldn't have received an education of any kind were it not for the Christian Brothers at that time."

But Brother Heneghan said that he believed history would judge their work more kindly. "Unfortunately the tendency has been to pick on the negative but I think that when history looks at the overall story of the building of the Irish nation and the emergence of the leaders of this country of ours it will be very positive."

Source



POOR KIDS GET BAD TEACHERS

Surprise! Would any teacher with options want to stand up every day in front of an undisciplinable rabble? Another case of unintended consequences: Protecting children from effective discipline destroys the education of the poor

One in five teachers of core subjects like math, science and English in poor public middle and high schools across the state lack sufficient training in the field they teach, according to a study released yesterday. By contrast, just 3 percent of teachers of those subjects in wealthy schools are not qualified. The disparity in New York reflects what Education Trust, the nonprofit that conducted the study, claims is a nationwide trend in which poor and minority students are shortchanged when it comes to quality teachers.

The study also mirrors the findings of a Post analysis of city schools last year that found the most experienced teachers gravitate toward schools with affluent student bodies. "We take the kids who enter school with less and give them teachers who have less - less education and less skills," said Kati Haycock, director of Education Trust, which used data provided by states for the study.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, states must show that 100 percent of their teachers are "highly qualified" in the subjects they teach by June 30 - a deadline federal education officials have already said will not be met by any state. To earn the "highly qualified" label, teachers in New York must be certified to teach and have completed a college major or coursework or state exam in their subject areas.

Michael Rebell, director for the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University's Teachers College, said the situation was even more dire than the study suggested because the "highly qualified" designation was misleading. "It basically means they meet state certification requirements. They're minimally qualified," Rebell said. "I'm all for getting certified teachers, but it is by no means going to get us the dramatic breakthrough that the [law] would expect us to get."

The state next month will present its plan to shore up the number of qualified teachers to the federal government, which includes encouraging districts to start their own incentive programs for luring quality educators. According to the state, one in 10 public-school teachers in the city is not qualified in his core subject. Sixteen percent of science teachers in the city, 9 percent of math teachers and 12 percent of English teachers have not met all the state standards. A whopping 32 percent of art teachers are not qualified.

The city recently launched two major initiatives to attract quality teachers - offering housing subsidies and creating a "master teacher" position in which experienced educators can earn an extra $10,000 to mentor younger teachers in tough schools. Last year, the city claimed to have fired more than 1,200 teachers who were not on track to become "highly qualified."

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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10 June 2006

FEW BLACKS CAN MAKE IT ON THEIR OWN IN A TOP UNIVERSITY

Nobody who knows the first thing about IQ stats would be remotely surprised by the stats below but IQ is nowhere mentioned, of course

This fall 4,852 freshmen are expected to enroll at UCLA, but only 96, or 2%, are African American - the lowest figure in decades and a growing concern at the Westwood campus.

For several years, students, professors and administrators at UCLA have watched with discouragement as the numbers of black students declined. But the new figures, released this week, have shocked many on campus and prompted school leaders to declare the situation a crisis. UCLA - which boasts such storied black alumni as Jackie Robinson, Tom Bradley and Ralph Bunche, and is in a county that is 9.8% African American - now has a lower percentage of black freshmen than either crosstown rival USC or UC Berkeley, the school often considered its top competitor within the UC system.

The 96 figure - down by 20 students from last year - is the lowest for incoming African American freshmen since at least 1973. And of the black freshmen who have indicated they will enroll in the fall, 20 are recruited athletes, admissions officials said. "Clearly, we're going to have to meet this crisis by redoubling our efforts, which have not yielded the results we'd like to see," said Chancellor Albert Carnesale, who met Friday with a delegation of undergraduates upset about the situation.

In a telephone interview before the meeting, Carnesale described the preliminary numbers for black freshmen as "a great disappointment" and said that UCLA has been trying for years to boost those levels, within the limits allowed by law. He and other officials at UCLA and elsewhere said the problem of attracting, admitting and enrolling qualified black students is found at competitive universities across the country and that its causes are complex. In California, the problem is rooted partly in the restrictions placed on the state's public colleges and institutions by Proposition 209, the 1996 voter initiative that banned consideration of race and gender in admissions and hiring.

Other factors include the socioeconomic inequities that undermine elementary and high school education in California and elsewhere, with minority students disproportionately affected because they often attend schools with fewer resources, including less-qualified teachers and fewer counselors. [Because well-qualified teachers shy away from a blackboard jungle] ...

More here



America's 12th Graders Dumbing Down in Science

Dumb and Dumber was not only a 1994 comedy classic; it might also be the phrase the industrialized world uses to describe the science performance of American high school students for years to come. Last week, the Department of Education reported that science aptitude among 12th-graders has declined across the past decade. America continues to graduate students who know less and less about the world because Americans, dominated by lust for material consumption and personal comfort, raise kids who lack vision for learning directed at making the world a better place.

In our American meritocracy education is a means to a comfortable lifestyle, not a means of gaining knowledge to improve our world. Children are told to study so that they may personally escape poverty, not because they are expected to contribute to overall human flourishing. Grades–not preparation for a vocation directed at the good–are the bottom line for too many American parents.

The 12th grade results came from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a 2005 national comprehensive test administered by the Department of Education to more than 300,000 students in 50 states. The examination measured very basic knowledge of earth, physical, and life sciences and translated those scores into three achievement levels: advanced, proficient, and basic. For high school seniors, there has been sharp decline with only 54 percent performing at or above basic level, compared with 57 percent in 1996. Eighteen percent performed at the proficient level, down from 1996 levels of 21 percent.

As expected, educators are scrambling to find the culprit to blame for the lower scores. In a New York Times story about the NAEP report, Assistant Secretary of Education Tom Luce said the declining science scores reflect a national shortage of fully qualified science teachers, especially in lower income areas, where physics and chemistry classes are often taught by teachers untrained in those subjects. "We have too few teachers with majors or minors in math and science,” Mr. Luce said.

This confirms a now 4-year-old prophecy issued by the National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious group of U.S. scientists and engineers that offers advice to Congress and the government. The Council reported in 2002 that U.S. students continued to perform among the worst of all industrialized countries because schools have a critical shortage of qualified teachers in science, math and technology.

Some educators, of course, also blame low teacher salaries. However, a 2005 American Federation of Teachers report revealed that the average public school teacher’s salary is $46,597, including average starting pay of $31,704. How is this low? Granted, these levels are not among the highest of all professions, but considering the summer vacation and the non-monetary reward of influencing the world’s future, it is not a bad deal.

The problems are much deeper than salary I’m afraid. First, teaching is no longer a respected profession and our best and brightest citizens develop a social aversion to pursuing it. Many Americans continue to embrace the stupid adage that “those who can, do and those who can’t, teach.” If teachers can’t “cut it” then why do people continue to send their kids to school? Why is there no honor given to those are charged with equipping, forming, and shaping the hearts and minds of our world’s future?

Second, students are not encouraged to value learning about the world. Often students will say silly things such as, “Why do I need to learn physics? I can get a good job without it.” Visionless parental pragmatists actually dissuade their children from taking courses that they don’t “need” if there’s not a direct future financial benefit. How can you not “need” more knowledge about the world furnished by any legitimate area of intellectual inquiry?

This attitude not only obscures the moral value of education. Ironically, a seemingly pragmatic obsession with financial reward also obscures its economic value. In an ever-changing world, what appears to be a viable career today may disappear ten years from now. Students educated in a broad range of fundamental disciplines–including physics–will be able to adapt more easily to the changing demands of a dynamic economy. Concepts such as acceleration, Newton’s three laws, coefficients of friction, centripetal force, and inductance benefit the life of the mind (as well as having practical applications for many careers).

Unless we refocus, as a culture, on the value of education beyond material pragmatism, we run the risk of sabotaging an entire generation’s ability to meet the future, unpredictable needs of our complex and broken world.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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9 June 2006

THE PRINCE GETS IT

The Prince of Wales is to set up his own training programme to promote traditional methods of teaching English and history in state schools. Prince Charles renewed his attack on modern teaching methods yesterday, saying that they had robbed children of their cultural inheritance by promoting misguided notions of equality and “accessibility”. He announced that he was joining forces with Cambridge University to establish the Prince’s Cambridge Programme for Teaching to “re- inspire” teachers over the value of literature and history.

“For all sorts of well- meaning reasons, and for too many pupils, teaching has omitted to pass on to the next generation not only our deep knowledge of literature and history, but also the value of education,” he told teachers at the fifth annual Prince of Wales Education Summer School in Cambridge. “There is a need to revisit the fundamental principles that drive our educational beliefs; to reinspire teachers; to question the notion that equality and accessibility are best served by reducing the range and quality of work that pupils undertake; and to put a stop to the ‘cultural disinheritance’.”

The Prince said that the training programme would build on the success of his summer schools, which have attracted more than 500 teachers since 2002. It will offer a residential course each year as well as in-service training at schools. The Prince said that he was launching a teaching charity to promote the work. It will be backed by a 50,000 pound government grant and an anonymous private donation. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, supporting the move, said the summer schools had been “so beneficial”.

Source



Leave politics out of poetry: Australian dean



He says "Theory" is old hat now anyway



High school English is being turned into a political science course with its emphasis on neo-Marxist and deconstructivist analysis of literature. Addressing the Lowy Institute for International Policy on links between Milton and the terrorist mind, the dean of humanities at Australian National University, Simon Haines, said English teachers felt the need to give poetry and literature "political roughage" to make it relevant to students. "Make it a literature course, not a disguised political science course," he urged.

Dr Haines holds a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University and is a former diplomat, analyst with the Office of National Assessments and was chairman for three years of the OECD budget committee before pursuing a career in academia. He rejected the need to wrap literature in political relevancy, saying any high school student could relate to the emotional themes portrayed by writers such as Milton and Shakespeare.

Referring to reports in The Australian about a Year 11 English assignment asking students to examine Shakespeare's Othello from a feminist, Marxist or racial perspective, Dr Haines said teachers seemed to feel that poetry had to be wrapped in a political or theoretical package. "I'm never quite sure whether they think poetry is much too hard, obscure and unpalatable for the kiddies if it's not made relevant and tasty, or they're scared poetry is too soft and mushy and needs some hard political roughage to make it good for them -- to produce better outcomes, as they say in WA," he said. "There's nothing either soft or obscure about jealousy, or suspicion, or malignant scheming, which are the themes of Othello. "As we all know, these things are around us all the time; they're some of the most basic contours of life."

After his address, Dr Haines said the deconstructive theory taught in school English courses had been replaced in universities about 15 years ago. "In literature, there has been a very powerful historical reaction against those theories ... there's been a return to the historical contextualising of literature," Dr Haines said. He believed part of the problem was the lack of contact teachers had with universities after they had graduated.

The other problem lay in seeing education as distinct from the subjects taught at school. "The more you split education as a qualification on its own away from the actual disciplines that you are teaching in the classroom, the greater the risk you lose control," Dr Haines said. "This is what happened in Western Australia (where a gradeless curriculum built on the principles of outcomes-based education is being introduced). You lose a hold on the core of the discipline, whether it's literature, languages or music. "Instead you replace it with the ideology of education or an ideology of society, which is putting the cart before the horse."

While there was nothing wrong in looking at literature such as Othello from feminist and racist points of view, focusing on those political preconceptions in Years 11 and 12 was also "putting the cart before the horse". "It's premature," Dr Haines said. "It's better starting with what a Year 12 student would share with the play, those emotional aspects that are direct personal links between them and the play."

Source

***************************

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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8 June 2006

EXTREME LEFTIST BIAS IN SEATTLE

I mentioned this briefy on 29 May on Tongue-Tied. First I reproduce below an influential critique by the Cato Institute and then the not-very-repentant backdown by Seattle school officials

Planning Ahead is Considered Racist?

Are you salting away a little money for your retirement? Trying to plan for your kids' education? If so, Seattle Public Schools seems to think you're a racist. According to the district's official Web site, "having a future time orientation" (academese for having long-term goals) is among the "aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype and label people of color." Huh?

Not all the district's definitions of racism (and there are lots of them) are so cryptic. The site goes on immediately to say, "Emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology" is another form of "cultural racism." Did I mention that the district thinks only whites can be racist in America? Regardless of your color, your affinity for planning or your penchant for reading "Das Kapital" under Fremont's Lenin statue, does this make any sense to you?

See if this sounds familiar: a government agency redefining a highly charged word to advance a particular ideology. ... Um, note to the Seattle School Board and administration: George Orwell's novel "1984" was a cautionary tale, not a how-to book. And the folks trying to control people's thoughts through state manipulation of the language -- they were the bad guys.

But this is still a free country. Thanks to our (ostensibly racist) regard for individual liberty, Seattle Public Schools board members and officials are free to adopt whatever definitions of racism they choose. It is inherently divisive, however, for an official government school system to promote one ideology over another. Unfortunately, it is also unavoidable. Whenever there is a single official school system for which everyone is compelled to pay, it results in endless battles over the content of that schooling. This pattern holds true across nations and across time. Think of our own recurrent battles over school prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, the teaching of human origins, the selection and banning of textbooks and library books, dress codes, history standards, sex education, etc. Similar battles are fought over wearing Islamic headscarves in French public schools and over the National Curriculum in England.

There is an alternative: cultural detente through school choice. Historically, societies have suffered far less conflict when families have been able to get the sort of education they deemed best for their own children without having to foist their preferences on their neighbors. Some people fear that unfettered school choice would Balkanize our nation. Their concern is commendable but precisely backward. The chief source of education-related tensions is not diversity; it is compulsion. Why is there no cultural warfare over the diverse teachings of non-government schools? Because no one is forced to attend or pay for an independent school that violates their convictions.

It would not be difficult to design a school choice program that would ensure universal access to the educational marketplace without forcing anyone to attend or pay for schools whose teachings they opposed. It could be done by combining and expanding some of the education tax credit programs already operating in such places as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Illinois. Such a system would not be a threat to the ideals of public education. On the contrary, it would be a far more effective means of advancing those ideals than the official state schools that have gnawed at our social fabric -- and failed our most disadvantaged children academically -- for generations. Under such a choice-based system, those wanting to promote their own cultural and political philosophies could hang out a shingle and offer their services to any and all interested families. But they would lack the power, used and abused in Seattle, to impose their ideologies.

Source



School district pulls Web site after examples of racism spark controversy

An outpouring of criticism forced Seattle Public Schools on Thursday to pull a Web site that viewed planning for the future, emphasizing individualism and defining standard English as examples of cultural racism. The message had appeared under an "equity and race relations" section of the district's Web site and was mentioned Thursday in an opinion piece by a Libertarian writer in the Seattle P-I. Criticism of the site has been building in the world of blogs for weeks. In its place Thursday was a message that the site will be revised to "provide more context to reader around the work that Seattle Public Schools is doing to address institutional racism."

That message, written by Caprice Hollins, the district's director of equity and race relations, said the site wasn't intended to "develop an 'us against them' mind-set." But she may have stepped into a second controversy by saying the site also wasn't intended "to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as melting pot or colorblind mentality."

Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, was the author of Thursday's opinion piece. Among other things, he drew from the site's definition of cultural racism. "Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as 'other,' different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers," the definition said.

"It was very ideologically charged," Coulson said Thursday. "It was left of center by definition, criticizing individualism as racism and advocating a collective ideology. You can't get much more red versus blue than that; it's incredibly polarizing. That everyone who thinks in terms of individualism is racist?"

Coulson's piece was only the latest criticism of the site, and he said he tracked many others in the blogosphere. So even before his opinion piece appeared, the district had been "dealing with calls and e-mails for the last three weeks," said Peter Daniels, school district spokesman. "It did not have enough context for people not working on this issue, and it was poorly written," Daniels said. "... It's about institutional racism, particularly in an educational setting. There are particular structures and practices in place that disadvantage other students who are not of the Caucasian or white majority. It's really examining our own practices and education, but that wasn't very clear."

So Hollins' memo appeared Thursday, saying that "the intended purpose of our work in the area of race and social justice is to bring communities together through open dialogue and honest reflection around what is meant by racism." "It's a non-apology apology," said Coulson, an education history scholar and author of "Market Education: The Unknown History."

"My sense was that the definition was extremely offensive, but there was not much sympathy for those who were offended ...," he said. "The harm that can come from the Web site is the tarring of the ideal of individualism as racist, while the ideal of individualism is a central principle on which our nation was founded. Liberty is individual, not collective. So for our school district -- our official school organ of the state -- to tell children it's racist to believe in a principle on which our nation was founded -- is troubling."

Source



Justices to look at race-based school policy



The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether public elementary and high schools can use race in determining where students go to school. The move means that the court will re-enter the debate over affirmative action during the 2006-07 term with two cases that could affect districts that seek diversity in schools.

The cases from Seattle and Louisville will be the first of their kind taken up by the court led by new Chief Justice John Roberts. They also will be the first disputes over race-based policies to be heard since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate justice whose support of some forms of affirmative action became the court's standard. In 2003, O'Connor cast the decisive vote in a 5-4 ruling that allowed minority preferences in higher education to increase diversity.

Justice Samuel Alito, whose record is generally more conservative than O'Connor's, succeeded her in January. Three months earlier, Roberts succeeded fellow conservative William Rehnquist as chief. Alito and Roberts opposed some types of affirmative action when they were lawyers in the Reagan administration.

The Seattle and Louisville cases test whether the Constitution's guarantee of equality allows schools to use race as a factor in admissions. In both disputes, lower courts backed the school plans, and parents of white students appealed. "The scope of a ruling would be widespread," says Francisco Negrn, general counsel of the National School Boards Association. He says many public school districts have policies to boost diversity. The Seattle and Louisville area districts say considering race in assignments can have social benefits and offset racially polarized housing patterns. The Pacific Legal Foundation counters that such affirmative action policies place "racial identification" above individual rights.

Seattle allows students to choose their high school. Officials aim for each school to have about 40% white students and 60% racial minorities. When there are more applicants than openings at a particular school, students with a sibling there get priority. Officials use race as a "tiebreaker" to decide who is admitted. In the Louisville area, most Jefferson County schools have tried to keep most schools' black enrollment at 15%-50%. A challenge was brought by a white student who could not go to the school across the street from his home.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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7 June 2006

DESTRUCTIVE EDUCATION THREATENS BUSINESS

The threat you face derives not from any external factors that may affect your company. Instead, it comes from your own employees. The deadliest business hazard of our time is the result of a sea change in the American approach to education that occurred early in the 1970s. Across the United States, conventional educational standards were tossed out the window, replaced with feel-good theories like "whole-language learning" that emphasized personal fulfillment over the accumulation of hard knowledge. As a result, we now have two generations of men and women who expect gold stars not for succeeding, but simply for trying. And, sometimes, merely for showing up.

In Great Britain, even primary school students can name all the monarchs of England. How many American children can name the capital of their own state? In India, the study of mathematics is practically a religion. In the United States, how many retail clerks can make change without relying on a calculator? In Germany, vocational education is a rigorous and honorable pursuit, producing highly qualified workers and tradesmen. In the U.S.A., people actually boast about their inability to deal with anything mechanical.

But sheer stupidity is not the greatest danger presented by the current crop of blank slates. It is the arrogance bred of ignorance that constitutes an unparalleled descent into goofiness. In the long-dead past, incompetents generally recognized their own incapacity and behaved accordingly. Today, every jackass sees himself as a genius, and every fool fancies herself a philosopher.

Once, a young colleague at a major firm accosted me in tones of confusion and desperation. "Mark! Mark!" she called as I walked past her office door. "When was World War II?" I thought at first that she was joking, but, alas, she was not. The deadliest global conflict in human history had somehow escaped her notice. Yet if I had asked if she honestly believed she deserved her B.A. and felt qualified to perform her job, she would have been gravely insulted and likely kicked me until I was dead.

Like the pod people of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the arrogantly ignorant appear at first glance as normal as you or me. But beware. The most profound risk they represent springs not from their cluelessness, but from their inability to recognize their own limitations. Such blind hubris can lead to monumental errors of judgment, grotesque mistakes, and the refusal to accept -- despite a mountain of evidence -- that the strategy they are pursuing may be leading your organization off a cliff. When people like that are in your employ, it is you, not they, who suffer the consequences.

These days, the arrogance of ignorance is so pervasive that I feel confident in making a small wager: Ten bucks says that the worst offenders will read these words and wonder, "Who is this joker talking about?" If characters like that work for your company -- brother, you're in for a world of hurt.

Source



PRIVATE TUTORING

In what is an elite tweak on home schooling - and a throwback to the gilded days of education by governess or tutor - growing numbers of families are choosing the ultimate in private school: hiring teachers to educate their children in their own homes.

Unlike the more familiar home-schoolers of recent years, these families are not trying to get more religion into their children's lives, or escape what some consider the tyranny of the government's hand in schools. In fact, many say they have no argument with ordinary education - it just does not fit their lifestyles. Lisa Mazzoni's family splits its time between Marina del Rey, Calif., and Delray Beach, Fla. Lisa has her algebra and history lessons delivered poolside sometimes or on her condominium's rooftop, where she and her teacher enjoy the sun and have a view of the Pacific Ocean south of Santa Monica. "For someone who travels a lot or has a parent who travels and wants to keep the family together, it's an excellent choice," said Lisa's mother, Trish Mazzoni, who with her husband owns a speedboat company.

The cost for such teachers generally runs $70 to $110 an hour. And depending on how many hours a teacher works, and how many teachers are involved, the price can equal or surpass tuition in the upper echelon of private schools in New York City or Los Angeles, where $30,000 a year is not unheard of.

Other parents say the model works for children who are sick, for children who are in show business or for those with learning disabilities. "It's a hidden group of folks, but it's growing enormously," said Luis Huerta, a professor of public policy and education at Teachers College of Columbia University, whose national research includes a focus on home schooling.

The United States Department of Education last did a survey on home schooling in 2003. That survey did not ask about full-time in-home teachers. But it found that from 1999 to 2003, the number of children who were educated at home had soared, increasing by 29 percent, to 1.1 million students nationwide. It also found that, of those, 21 percent used a tutor.

Home schooling is legal in every state, though some regulate it more than others. Home-school teachers do not require certification, and the only common requirement from state to state is that students meet compulsory-attendance rules. Scholars who study home-schooling trends, business owners who serve home-schooling families and abundant anecdotal evidence also suggest that private teaching arrangements are on the rise. Some families do it for short stints, others for years at a time.

Bob Harraka, president of Professional Tutors of America, has about 6,000 teachers from 14 states on his payroll in Orange County, Calif., but cannot meet a third of the requests for in-home education that come in, he said, because they are so specialized or extravagant: a family wants a teacher to instruct in the art of Frisbee throwing, button sewing or Latin grammar. A family wants a teacher to accompany them for a yearlong voyage at sea. "Sailing comes up at least once or twice a year," Mr. Harraka said.

Parents say in-home teaching arrangements offer unparalleled levels of academic attention and flexibility in scheduling, in addition to a sense of family cohesion and autonomy over what children learn. To them, these advantages make up for the lack of a school social life, which they say can be replicated through group lessons in, say, ballet or sculpture.

Jon D. Snyder, dean of the Bank Street College of Education in New York, said his main concerns about this form of education were whether tutors and students were a good fit, and whether students got enough social interaction. "From a purely academic standpoint, it goes back to a much earlier era," Dr. Snyder said. "The notion of individual tutorials is a time-honored tradition, particularly among the elite." Think Plato, John Stuart Mill and George Washington. Philosopher kings and gentleman farmers. Because of the cost of in-home tutoring, the idea will probably not spread like wildfire, and just as well, Dr. Snyder said. "Public education has social goals; that's why we pay tax dollars for it," he said. "When Socrates was tutoring Plato, he wasn't concerned about educating the other people in Greece. They were just concerned about educating Plato."

On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Krystal and Tiffany Wheeler earn high school credits in adjacent pastel bedrooms after breakfast. The teachers come to them. Their mother, Charlene Royce, said she wanted her girls to experience the benefits of a personalized education but did not feel comfortable teaching herself.

More here



Texas: Student suspended for folding a piece of paper

Post lifted from Zero Intelligence

Destiny Thomas, an 11 year-old student at Amber Terrace Intermediate School in the Desoto Independent School District, folded a piece of paper into the shape of a gun. She and two classmates were suspended and sentenced to 30 days of alternative school for their flagrant violation of district anti-gun policies.

Destiny said she made the paper gun after a fellow classmate at Amber Terrace Intermediate School in Desoto showed her how to fold a computer paper. She said she had no intention of doing anything that would get her kicked out of school. "I know not to bring a real gun, but I didn't think a paper gun would get you in trouble," Thomas said.

Desoto school officials said the student code of conduct clearly states no weapons or replica of weapons are allowed on campus.

District officials reviewed the case the next day and revoked the punishment. All three students will be allowed to return to class. While I am glad that this was caught at the district level I am appalled that it ever got there.

A replica is defined as an exact reproduction, a copy exact in all details. A folded piece of paper is not a replica weapon in any sense of the word. The administers at Amber Terrace weren't trying to make their school a safer place. They were engaged in thought control - punishing pre-teens for engaging a concept that the officials disapprove.

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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6 June 2006

On campus, an absurd overregulation of sexual conduct

In the early 1990s, in the midst of a national debate about feminism, sexual relationships, and sexual violence, the media discovered an unusual sexual conduct policy at Antioch College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio. The policy, adopted in response to complaints from a group called Womyn of Antioch about not enough being done to stop date rape on campus, mandated explicit verbal consent every step of the way in a sexual encounter -- from undoing a button to sexual intercourse. At the time, it elicited a lot of mockery. But while the debate has gone away, the mindset that inspired the Antioch policy has not.

Over the years, a number of colleges and universities have adopted less extreme versions of this policy, requiring explicit verbal consent to sex though not quite in so much detail. But now, Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania seems to have outdone Antioch: Under that school's policy, a verbally unsanctioned hug could be treated as a sexual assault.

Gettysburg's policy, publicized by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, defines sexual misconduct as ''a threat of a sexual nature or deliberate physical contact of a sexual nature without the other person's consent," and goes on to state that the physical contact covered by the policy includes nonconsensual ''brushing, touching, grabbing, pinching, patting, hugging, and kissing," as well as ''coerced sexual activities, including rape."

''Each individual," the policy goes on to state, ''has a responsibility to obtain consent before engaging in sexual interaction. Consent is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing (for example, by stating 'yes') to engage in specific sexual conduct. If either person at any point in a sexual encounter does not give continuing and active consent, all sexual contact must cease, even if consent was given earlier."

One hopes this does not mean that both people in a sexual encounter must constantly reaffirm their willingness to continue what they're doing. But who knows? The foundation points out that because it is impossible to enforce such a policy consistently, it will inevitably be enforced in arbitrary ways. If everyone violates the rules at one time or another, anyone is a potential target for punishment.

Policies such as Gettysburg's and Antioch's stem from a noble concern with sexual violence. There has been much debate about the statistics on campus sexual assault. Some researchers claim that as many as one in four college women will be a victim of attempted or completed rape by graduation; critics charge that these figures are vastly overstated and include many instances of miscommunication, not assault. Still, whatever the scope of the problem, it is real and troubling.

Feminists have argued that the traditional romantic script of male aggression and female coyness often contributes to date rape: A man may think that he is sweeping the woman off her feet when he is actually overpowering her with force. There is some substance to this critique: It is difficult not to cringe while reading or watching some aggressive seduction/borderline rape scenes in old books and movies. ''No means no" is generally a good principle, even if sometimes it may be taken too far. (Some antirape activists argue that once the woman has said no, any attempt by the man to change her mind should be regarded as coercion.)

But the requirement of ensuring an explicit ''yes" takes the campaign against sexual assault to a new and absurd level. For one thing, it infantilizes women (while the policies may be gender-neutral on their face, they generally presume men to be the initiators in heterosexual encounters). Are women so weak that they can't even say ''no," or otherwise indicate their lack of consent, unless the man takes the initiative of asking?

Such policies also absurdly overregulate sexual relations -- particularly since they often require verbal consent to each act even in an ongoing relationship. Forget spontaneity, passion, the thrill of discovery. Forget letting go. At the time of the Antioch policy debate, one sexual assault counselor primly condemned ''the blind give-and-take of sexual negotiations," arguing that it should be replaced by clear communication. The worthy goal of rape prevention has been twisted into a utopian attempt to remake human sexuality -- in an image that is not particularly attractive.

The little-known 1987 movie ''Cherry 2000" portrayed a futuristic society in which every date was preceded by a sit-down with lawyers and a written contract about the specific activities to which both parties agreed -- and in which a lot of men sought the company of female androids programmed not only for sex but for old-fashioned romance. Is that where the Gettysburg policy is taking us?

Source



CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOL TOO SUCCESSFUL

It was apparently seen as bad that there were no failing students. Having a good learning environment for more able students could not be tolerated

When the Sequoia Union High School District board approved Summit Preparatory High School's charter petition Wednesday night, rows of signs popped out of the cheering audience that simply read: "Thank you" and "Gracias." It was the Summit community's creative way of showing its appreciation to the trustees for unanimously agreeing to sponsor the Redwood City charter school for two years.

This vote came despite concerns among trustees and district staff that the school is lacking in the diversity it claims to strive for in its petition. Summit's mission is to prepare a diverse student population for college. And yet, Sequoia Superintendent Pat Gemma presented a response to the school's petition, stating the school is lacking in its number of low-performing students as well as students in special education and English-learner programs. For example, data from the 2005 state standards test show that no sophomore or junior is classified as "far below basic" in the English language arts category. Nonetheless, he recommended the board approve the school's charter, with the condition that the school strive toward enrolling more struggling students.

The trustees agreed with this recommendation. "Teaching kids that are high-performing is great," trustee Don Gibson said. "Teaching kids that are lower-performing so they can get into college is what charter schools are about."

Summit's charter through the Summerville Union High School District in Tuolumne County expires this year. The school, which opened in 2003, submitted a charter petition to Sequoia in April, because state law now requires charter high schools to be sponsored by their local high school districts. Next fall, Summit will outgrow its current campus in an office building as it adds a senior class, bringing its enrollment to 375. Since Sequoia is required by law to provide facilities for charter schools within its boundaries, Summit will move into portable classrooms on property next to the district office and Sequoia High School.

Though trustee Olivia Martinez said she was very supportive of what the school offers students, she too developed concerns after she spoke to five students learning English who left the school. "The consensus was they didn't feel comfortable there," she said. "The expectations were too high." In the future, she said, she would like Summit to work on helping students be more at ease with the school's curriculum. "The (charter school) bill was designed to provide alternatives that would help all students," she said.

Sergio Fernandez, in his third year at Summit, said the school's teachers helped him overcome his struggles in math with tutoring and encouragement. "When I first went to Summit, I didn't believe in myself," Fernandez, 17, said. "They (the teachers) believed in me, and they're 100 percent sure I can go to college."

Source. Joanne Jacobs has some comments on the above.



Gutless school needs police to discipline a 6-year old!

A 6-year-old special education student who kicked a Naples teacher's aide and spent several hous in juvenile jail is facing felony battery charges. Her mother, however, wants to know why the case has gone so far. Takovia Allen suffers from behavioral problems and attends a special class at Lely Elementary in Naples.

According to an arrest report, on May 2, a teacher was trying to line up students to go to music class. Takovia refused to go and kicked the teacher's aide in the ankle. After a discussion among school officials and two law enforcement officials called to the school, the girl was arrested. Takovia was taken to juvenile jail and held there for several hours before being released to her mother.

She is being charged with battery on a public education employee. It's possible she will enter a program that includes counseling. If she completes the program successfully the charges could be dropped.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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5 June 2006

How much can we boost IQ and scholastic attainment?

The article below initially reports some very impressive data on the fixed nature of intelligence but the attempt in the last paragraph to give it a politically correct "spin" is pathetic (though probably necessary to get it published). OF COURSE intelligence is not the only determinant of success in life or at school -- nobody has ever said it is -- and of course immigrant kids do better on tests given in English in an English-speaking school system as they learn more English.

But the third assertion is a straight LIE. As a former Army psychologist, I can assure everyone that the Army certainly does not believe that. They SELECT officer candidates most carefully (using psychological tests) precisely because they think that you CANNOT make a good officer out of just anyone.

The title I have put on this post is of course an allusion

In our mobile societies, few of this month's graduating high-school seniors have been with the same classmates for 12 years. But if you know such students, think back to the pupils who, at 5 years old, were pint-size math whizzes and spelling champs. Now match those memories with the seniors at the top of their class. You'll likely find a near-perfect match. That raises some disturbing questions. Why doesn't 12 years of schooling raise the performance of kids who start out behind? Can you really tell which toddler is destined for Caltech?

For as long as there has been a science of intelligence (roughly a century), prevailing opinion has held that children's mental abilities are highly malleable, or "unstable." Cognition might improve when the brain reaches a developmental milestone, or when a child is bitten by the reading bug or suddenly masters logical thinking and problem solving. Some kids do bloom late, intellectually. Others start out fine but then, inexplicably, fall behind. But according to new studies, for the most part people's mental abilities relative to others change very little from childhood through adulthood. Relative intelligence seems as resistant to change as relative nose sizes.

One of the more striking findings comes from the longest follow-up study ever conducted in this field. On June 1, 1932, Scotland had all children born in 1921 and attending school -- 87,498 11-year-olds -- take a 75-question test on analogies, reading, arithmetic and the like. The goal was to determine the distribution of intellectual ability. In 1998, scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen tracked down 101 of those students, then 77 years old, and administered the same test. The correlation between scores 66 years apart was a striking .73. (A correlation of 1 would mean no change in rankings; a correlation of .73 is very high.) There is "remarkable stability in individual differences in human intelligence" from childhood to old age, the scientists concluded in a 2000 paper.

In the U.S., two long-running studies also show the durability of relative intelligence. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, launched in 1998, tested 22,782 children entering kindergarten. As in the Scottish study, individual differences in mental ability were clear and persistent. In math and reading, when the children were sorted into three groups by ability, ranking stayed mostly the same from kindergarten to the end of the first and third grades. Some gaps actually widened.

The National Education Longitudinal Study tested 24,599 eighth-graders on several subjects, including math and reading comprehension, in 1988 and again two and four years later. "There was a very high correlation between the scores in eighth grade and in 12th grade," says Thomas Hoffer of the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago. Again, rankings hardly budged.

He suspects that the way schools are organized explains some of that. Eighth-graders who show aptitude in math or language are tracked into challenging courses. That increases the gap between them and their lower-performing peers. "It's not that [relative student performance] can't change, but that standard practices in schools work against it," says Mr. Hoffer.

Now there is evidence that cognitive ability, or intelligence, is set before kids sit up. Developmental psychologist Marc Bornstein of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and colleagues followed children for four years, starting in infancy with 564 four-month olds. Babies' ability to process information can be tested in a so-called habituation test. They look at a black-on-white pattern until their attention wanes and they look away, or habituate. Later, they're shown the pattern again. How quickly they sense they've seen the image long enough, or have seen it before, is a measure of how quickly, accurately and completely they pick up, assimilate and recall information.

The scientists evaluated the children again at six months, 18 months, 24 months and 49 months. In every case, performance mirrored the relative rankings on the infant test, Dr. Bornstein and colleagues reported this year in the journal Psychological Science. Such stability, he says, "can entice" scientists to conclude that inborn, inherent, even genetic factors determine adult intelligence. But he believes crediting nature alone would be wrong.

For one thing, these tests don't measure creativity, gumption, character or other ingredients of success. For another, there are many cases of kids catching up, as when Mexican immigrant children in the U.S. start out with math skills well below their U.S.-born white peers but then catch up, says education researcher Sean Reardon of Stanford University. And as those familiar with management training and military training show, it's possible to turn even the most unpromising candidates into leaders. [What!! Reference please!] That leaves the question of how current education practices (and, perhaps, parenting practices) tend to lock in early cognitive differences among children, and whether those practices can be changed in a way that unlocks every child's intellectual potential.

Source



Australia (1): Homosexuality promoted in Victorian schools

Victorian schools are being advised to dump the words "mother" and "father" by a controversial new teachers manual that promotes the cause of same-sex parents. Out of sensitivity to same-sex parent families, teachers should use "parent" or "carer" instead, the manual states. Schools should also put up posters of gay celebrities in schools and not use gender-specific toys, the free Learn to Include teacher's manual urges. It also suggests pupils as young as five should act out scenarios in which they have two mums and have discussions about discrimination. The contentious manual, used in dozens of Victorian schools, is aimed at teachers of prep to year 3 pupils.

Victoria's Department of Education and Training has invited the editor of the manual, Vicki Harding, to promote it to principals and teachers at a taxpayer-funded conference in Melbourne next month. Ms Harding will advise teachers about using the manual and children's books she has written about children with two mums or two dads. Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan will address the conference.

The manual's classroom worksheets include a fill-in-the-word exercise about a child who climbs a tree while the youngster's "two mums" work in the garden. The manual suggests - to help children respect diversity - teachers "include pictures of notable lesbians and gay men among images around the school" and use "gender neutral play materials". Children should also be offered stories, games and television programs that show "people in various forms of relationships", it states.

The State Opposition claimed Ms Harding's invitation to the conference proved the State Government endorsed the guide. "Parents don't send their children to school expecting them to receive those sorts of lessons," Opposition education spokesman Martin Dixon said. "It is political correctness gone mad ... (and) the Government is endorsing it." Family Council of Victoria spokesman Bill Muehlenberg said parents would find the manual "reprehensible".

Department spokeswoman Melissa Arch said schools were free to decide whether to use the manual. "It is not something the department imposes over them," she said. Ms Allan's spokesman, Tim Mitchell, said the Government did not endorse the use of the guide.

Source



Australia (2): Leftist NSW teachers at work

They want failing students to stay that way

School reports that will grade students on a scale of A to E for the first time this year are in doubt, with teachers threatening a widespread revolt. Nearly 11,000 teachers from 800 public schools have written to the Minister for Education, Carmel Tebbutt, saying they need more time to prepare the reports. They are strongly opposed to using the A-to-E grading scale, saying it will brand very young children a failure and alienate them from the education system.

The NSW Teachers Federation will present a report on teacher submissions to its 300 delegates in Sydney today, along with a survey that found fewer than half of schools had received sample copies of the proposed reports. The federation's president, Maree O'Halloran, said teachers had overwhelmingly rejected the reports mandated by state and federal governments. "Teachers across the state have told the minister the reporting requirements are not good enough, that they are educationally unsound," she said. "What this means is that the minister is facing a massive revolt and that those schools will not be implementing the reports." Ms O'Halloran said just under 200 teachers had indicated their support for the reports, but the remaining 10,800 teachers wanted the format to change before they would implement it.

A federation survey of 322 schools so far has found that only 47 per cent had copies of the proposed reports and 13 per cent said that no teacher had copies. Most of the schools said they were concerned about the use of the scale and its mandatory use this year. Teachers argue that they will need until next year to properly implement the new reports.

The NSW-ACT Independent Education Union general secretary, Dick Shearman, said teachers in private schools shared the concerns. Completion of the reports this year using the grading scale was a condition of schools receiving federal funding, he said. "Most of our schools have completed the reports, but it caused teachers a great deal of anguish," Mr Shearman said. "The validity and integrity of the reports is compromised when you force them in quickly, impose unreasonable guidelines and tie funding to it."

Ms Tebbutt said she had received positive feedback on the new system from schools. "I don't get the sense that there is a strong negativity behind the need for greater consistency in reporting," she said. "We announced the reports in August last year to allow sufficient time for their implementation to meet federal requirements. We are not going to jeopardise the federal funding we receive by delaying implementation." Ms Tebbutt said the Department of Education would continue to offer support to teachers in the form of information sessions, new software and advice from the NSW Board of Studies on how to achieve greater consistency in reporting. She said sample reports were available on the internet.

Kindergarten pupils, those with significant learning disabilities and children with English as a second language would have written reports instead of a grade. "We will continue to talk to the federation about the concerns they have," Ms Tebbutt said. "We are committed to our implementation plan. These reports are going to provide clear and concise information on a student's achievement. Parents need that information to know how their child is performing."

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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4 June 2006

BUREAUCRATS GET THE CREAM AT UCD

Ari Kelman is a 37-year-old history professor at UC Davis, a hotshot new hire who had written a prescient book about building in flood-prone New Orleans. During his first semester on campus last year -- as Hurricane Katrina hit -- Kelman's expert opinion was sought by U.S. News and World Report, the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the New York Times and reporters across the country. Buoyed by his heightened profile, Kelman said he believes moving to Davis with his wife and toddler son is the best career move he's made. But for his pocketbook, it's turned out to be his worst.

University of California administrators have been under fire for giving millions of dollars in unauthorized perks to fellow executives, justifying it as critical to retain and recruit top-tier staff. But Kelman didn't get any of it, although he did try. Instead he's fretting about replacing his busted washing machine. "The executive pay stuff was tough to swallow," said Kelman, who earns $77,600 a year.

When he was lured from the University of Denver last year, he asked for $25,000 to help buy a house in Davis. He was told no. He tried being creative, asking for no-strings-attached "research" money. He was told no. His wife even had to pay her own way on a house-hunting trip. "My perception was, 'This is the University of California . the big leagues -- surely they can be competitive,'" he said. But a job with the noted history department at UC Davis was too good to pass up, although he and his wife did give up a lot.

In Denver, they owned a 4,000-square-foot-house and land in the Rockies on which they planned to build a cabin one day. The Kelmans sold it all and stretched to buy a 1,800-square-foot house in Davis. The three-bedroom home cost $700,000 and is the same size as the first house the couple bought in 1998, when Kelman was just out of graduate school and took a job as an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. The Davis home cost 10 times more than the one in Norman, Okla. "The only thing that almost kept us from coming here was the cost of living," Kelman said. "We came out and looked for houses and our heads exploded." The university did provide Kelman a routine benefit for faculty that ultimately made the move possible. The UC helped him secure a below-market home loan that he will be repaying until mid-century. It's $575,000 over 40 years, at a 3.7 percent variable interest rate.

Kelman said he didn't get into the business to make a lot of money. But he didn't figure that as a midcareer history professor at a major institution he would be worried about paying basic bills. At the same time, he considers himself lucky. He was able to purchase property. Kelman is already a top earner in his field for his experience level -- he prodded UC Davis to give him a pay bump above scale, about $12,800 more. And he's better off than faculty in liberal arts who can start a first job at under $60,000. (Top scale for liberal arts faculty is $130,900.)

As Kelman was adjusting to the costly California housing market this past year, auditors were poring over the books at UC headquarters, prodded by legislators and critics demanding an accounting of the full salary packages for executives. One theme emerged from the pay flap -- padded housing allowances and beefed up relocation payments for top administrators and campus leaders, such as chancellors and deans, that violated UC compensation policies. UC offers a maximum $53,300 housing allowance to UC executives and top administrators -- generally not to faculty -- parceled out over several years to defray higher living costs when moving from outside California. UC's internal auditor suggested market pressures led to bending the rules to help executives buy houses, turning benefits -- several were more than $100,000 -- into signing bonuses. Auditors also found the housing bonuses were routinely given to administrators who moved from one UC campus to another.

But Kelman, like other professors, was not eligible. "Rank-and-file professors of Serbian poetry are not going to get a housing bonus to come to Santa Cruz," said John Oakley, chairman of the UC systemwide Academic Senate. "For rank-and-file members we have to live in a world that makes it difficult to recruit people when housing costs are so high." Oakley, a UC Davis law professor, said the UC's low-interest home loan program is the best recruitment incentive but he warns of a "simmering crisis" as faculty salaries fall behind comparable public and private universities.

The university's faculty salaries are now about 13 percent below the national average, according to a study commissioned last year by UC regents. Adding in UC's health and retirement benefits put UC faculty at about 3 percent above average, but the study did not factor in housing costs. The UC Board of Regents acknowledges the discrepancy. Regents have pledged to keep faculty salaries competitive and boost them over 10 years, but funding remains limited.

Kelman saw the recruitment challenges from the other side when he served on a search committee for another new history professor at Davis this past year. He said the academic prestige and collegiality at Davis are played up. Job candidates are told about the low-interest home loan program, and that getting into the local housing market is better in the long term. "They have to say to themselves, 'Will I ever be able to live what most people consider a middle-class existence?'" Kelman said. "I took the job because this was the job I want to have for the rest of my career. I could say, 'OK, we're going to really, really feel this squeeze for five or 10 years. . Eventually it's not going to hurt that much.'"

Source



Gradeless curriculum 'the way of the future'

Or so says the crazy Yugoslav in charge of Western Australian education. All students must be made equal! Tito would approve. Press report below:

The Education Minister in charge of implementing a gradeless curriculum in West Australian schools has come out fighting in defence of the new courses. Ljiljanna Ravlich conceded that the courses, described by John Howard as gobbledegook, "could have been more clear". She admitted it was wrong to name the new literature course Texts, Traditions and Cultures. And she said she did not agree with the Curriculum Council that a turntable was a musical instrument of equal merit to a violin. Yet she argued that the curriculum, developed on the principles of outcomes-based education, was the way of the future. "I know it's the right thing to do and I know it's for the right reason, and I can tell you it's a view that is shared by 30 other OECD nations, all of whom are moving towards an outcomes-based education," she said.

Under the new curriculum, all subjects are equal, meaning a top performance in cooking and dance could help a student into a university law degree, ahead of those who studied physics and chemistry.

Ms Ravlich admitted to problems in how the curriculum had been presented. "I do agree that (the language) could have been more simple and to the point," she said. "It is probably partly responsible for, I guess, feeding some of the misconceptions." But she insisted the courses would be implemented. "This has been a debate where there's been more of a focus from a small number of teachers, a minority of teachers who, for a variety of reasons, may be resistant to change," she said. Teachers have raised concerns a draft exam for the new English course did not require students to have read a novel, though one question required them to have read a book of some kind.

Ms Ravlich said she was satisfied that students had to read a book to pass the English course and said that, because the first Year 12 exams were 18 months away, there was time for changes to exams where needed. While a marking key for the draft English sample exam stated "student responses should not be penalised for poor spelling, punctuation, grammar or handwriting, unless these are elements ... specifically being assessed", Ms Ravlich said students must learn grammar, punctuation and sentence construction in the new course.

Ms Ravlich was yesterday enjoying a victory over the State School Teachers Union over the plan to roll out 17 of the new courses into Year 11 next year. While the union last week ordered teachers to treat the courses as voluntary, it has since learned that those who do so will deprive students of the opportunity to attend university, as the old courses will not be recognised.

Rather than dictating what students should know and grading them, outcomes-based education focuses on what students are able to do. It aims to shift the emphasis from teaching to learning and provide tools to pinpoint students' strengths and weaknesses. Teacher lobby group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes claims the courses, in which students will be assessed on eight outcomes, lack detail, are too open to interpretation and make assessment subjective. But Ms Ravlich, 48, a Croatian-born former social studies teacher who has been the partner of state Treasurer Eric Ripper, 54, for more than a decade, though they maintain separate homes, said she believed firmly in the principles.

Source



RACIST HISPANICS IN TROUBLE

Police were investigating a KABC-AM reporter's accusations that a man assaulted him and grabbed his tape recorder after he attempted to interview the principal of a charter school that a host at his radio station said was "openly segregationist." Reporter Sandy Wells was chased and tackled by the man Thursday after a school employee told him to leave Academia Semillas Del Pueblo campus east of downtown, said station spokesman Steve Sheldon.

Wells was not injured, but "very shaken," Sheldon said, adding that the station believes that Wells was targeted because he was investigating the school's academic program. "We are very concerned about the alleged incident that reportedly occurred at Academia Semillas del Pueblo charter school and police authorities are investigating," the Los Angeles Unified School District said in a statement.

The school district, which issued the charter license to Academia Semillas Del Pueblo, said it was reviewing the school's academic programs to determine whether to renew its charter operations. The school came under scrutiny by KABC host Doug McIntyre after he received a tip from a listener that the school didn't fly the American flag on May Day, Sheldon said. The Web site for the school described it as a kindergarten through eighth grade public school "dedicated to providing urban children of immigrant native families an excellent education founded upon their own language, cultural values and global realities." Students learn English, Spanish, Mandarin and Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico. "It's exclusionary, it's separatist, it's openly segregationist," McIntyre told KABC-TV.

A call to the school's principal, Marcos Aguilar, was not immediately returned Thursday. Aguilar issued a statement contending that while most of the school's pupils are Hispanic, it does not discriminate against students on the basis of their ethnicity or national origin. He noted that the school's curriculum was approved by the district's and state's school boards. "The perception has been made that our school exercises racist policies and that our curriculum ... is contrary to a quality education," Aguilar said. "Academia is in fact committed to providing a high-quality, public school education to all students, but most notably the underserved kids in our local community."

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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3 June 2006

Public tax dollars fund racist California school

K-8 institution backed by groups seeking to retake Southwest U.S.

Taxpayers along with radical groups that aim to reconquer the Southwestern U.S. are funding a Hispanic K-8 school led by a principal who believes in racial segregation and sees the institution as part of a larger cultural "struggle." The Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School was chartered by the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2001, local KABC radio host Doug McIntyre - who has been investigating the school for the past three weeks - told WND.

Among the school's supporters are the National Council of La Raza Charter School Development Initiative; Raza Development Fund, Inc.; and the Pasadena City College chapter of MeCHA, or Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan. "La Raza," or "the Race," is a designation by many Mexicans who see themselves as part of a transnational ethnic group they hope will one day reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

The school teaches the ancient Nahutal language of the Aztecs and its base-20 math system. Another language of emphasis is Mandarin, even though no Chinese attend. MEChA, founded at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1969, has the stated goal of returning the American Southwest to Mexico. As WorldNetDaily reported Sunday, students identifying themselves as members of MEChA at Pasadena City College said they stole 5,000 copies of the campus newspaper because it did not cover their high school conference. One of the charter school's listed donors, a Nissan/Infinity dealer in Glendale, Calif., asked to be removed from the website after hearing McIntyre's broadcast about the school yesterday, the host told WND.

Marcos Aguilar, the school's founder and principal, said in an interview with an online educational journal, Teaching to Change L.A., he doesn't think much of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated American schools. Aguilar simply doesn't want to integrate with white institutions. "We don't want to drink from a white water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts," he said. The issue of civil rights, Aguilar continued, "is all within the box of white culture and white supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger." Ultimately, he said, the "white way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn't about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it's about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier."

Aguilar said his school is not a response to problems in the public school system, as it's available only to about 150 families. "We consider this a resistance, a starting point, like a fire in a continuous struggle for our cultural life, for our community and we hope it can influence future struggle," he said. "We hope that it can organize present struggle and that as we organize ourselves and our educational and cultural autonomy, we have the time to establish a foundation with which to continue working and impact the larger system." On its website, the school describes itself as being "dedicated to providing urban children of immigrant native families an excellent education founded upon their own language, cultural values and global realities." "We draw from traditional indigenous Mexican forms of social organization known as the Kalpulli," the website says, "founded upon the principles of serving collective interests, assembling an informed polity, and honestly administering and executing collective decisions."

Born in Mexicali in Baja California, Aguilar attended schools on the border in Calexico, a farm worker community. "We grew up with the knowledge that in Arizona, in Yuma, Arizona, everything was black and white," he said in the journal interview. "The dogs and Mexicans drank from one spot and the white people drank from the other one." Teachers in the Los Angeles area, he contended, have little regard for the culture of Hispanic children. By learning the Aztec tongue of Nahuatl, he said, students "will be able to understand our own ancestral culture and our customs and traditions that are so imbued in the language." Said Aguilar:

"The importance of Nahutal is also academic because Nahuatl is based on a math system, which we are also practicing. We teach our children how to operate a base 20 mathematical system and how to understand the relationship between the founders and their bodies, what the effects of astronomical forces and natural forces on the human body and the human psyche, our way of thinking and our way of expressing ourselves. And so the language is much more than just being able to communicate. When we teach Nahuatl, the children are gaining a sense of identity that is so deep, it goes beyond whether or not they can learn a certain number of vocabulary words in Nahuatl. It's really about them understanding themselves as human beings. Everything we do here is about relationships."

KABC's McIntyre, noting the school's emphasis on Aztec language and culture combined with test scores that fall below the L.A. school system's meager results, told WND he believes the school is bordering on "educational malpractice." "What high schools are they preparing kids to go to?" he asked. "The whole multi-culture-diversity argument is blowing up in our faces," McIntyre said. "What's lost is, we have a culture, too. But when you defend American culture - which I believe is the most diverse in the world - you are branded a xenophobe."

The school has no whites, blacks or Asians, McIntyre pointed out. According to statistics he found, 91.3 percent are Hispanic and the rest Native American or Eskimo. McIntyre said he was teaching a writing class at UCLA in 1993 when Aguilar, as a student, participated in a 50-day student takeover after Chicano activist and labor leader Caesar Chavez died. School officials eventually gave in to demands to create a Chicano-studies major and agreed to pay some $50,000 in damages caused by the protesters. Aguilar repeatedly has refused to come on McIntyre's program, the host said.

Source



U.K.: Back to basics as maths problems multiply

The usual inexcusable use of kids as guinea-pigs shows up once again

Modern methods of teaching maths which have mystified parents and confused many pupils are to be abandoned six years after the Government forced them on primary schools. The same unit at the Department for Education which devised the strategy now wants teachers to go back to the "standard written method" it abolished.

The decision has prompted a backlash from some primary teachers and maths advisers who say children are better able to understand the concept of arithmetic when they break sums down into a series of units. They say the "back to basics" approach heralds a return to the "dark ages" of adding up, subtracting, multiplying and dividing in vertical rows without understanding what they are doing. But evidence has shown that many pupils are arriving at secondary school unable to do long division and multiplication and reliant on columns of workings out which take longer and are more prone to errors along the way.

The proposed change, put out to consultation yesterday, has already won support from many teachers on the website of The Times Educational Supplement, who say it is better for pupils to master one, simple, standard method than struggle with many. Primary schools were inundated with complaints from parents when the new method came in and some organised meetings to explain the technique. However, many parents who gave it the benefit of the doubt began to panic when their children entered the teenage years unable, for example, to divide 196 by six or multiply 56 by 27 with speed and accuracy.

The lesson plan for the numeracy hour introduced in 1999 instructs teachers to use the "grid" method for multiplication. Numbers are split into tens and units which are multiplied by each other in turn to give four totals which are then added together. In division pupils are taught to subtract multiples of the divisor until they end up with a number less than the divisor. They then add up the number of times they have multiplied the divisor and express the number less than the divisor as the remainder. Children are not allowed to "carry" numbers or put figures in vertical lines, such as 56 with x27 beneath it. They are also strongly discouraged from using the bracket form of dividing each number in turn with the answer above the line and the remainder placed before the next digit.

The proposed new framework says the techniques of the last six years may still be used with younger children, especially to help with mental maths, but that by the time they reach the age of 11, pupils should be able to use the "standard written method", by which they mean the way parents were taught.

In a joint statement, five leaders of the Mathematical Association opposed the change. "Don't let us go back to the bad old days with books full of pages of vertical sums when only a minute percentage of pupils understood what they were doing and only a third could carry out calculations," they said. National statistics for maths show that 25 per cent of 11-year-olds failed to reach the basic standard expected for their age last year rising to 26 per cent of 14-year-olds.

The decision to return to the old methods will come as a relief to many parents. Christine Turno says she dreads the twice-weekly homework with her nine-year-old daughter. "She goes ballistic," she said. "We have massive rows because she says I'm doing it wrong and she has to do it the way the school says. But she can't understand what they want and it's a complete mystery to me." A 20-minute homework session turns into an hour. Mrs Turno, of west London, said: "The teachers say it is the new way and if the answer is wrong it doesn't matter as long as she is using the right method. It's quite bizarre." Of 30 in the class, 10 get private tuition.

Source

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

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

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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2 June 2006

BRITISH EDUCATION FAILS ITS TARGETS

The Government will fail to meet more than one in three of its vital targets in education - the policy area claimed as a personal priority by the Prime Minister. The dismal record, revealed in the Department for Education and Skills annual report, shows a range of failures in benchmarks relating to everything from reading and writing to GCSEs, under-age pregnancy and the smoking habits of young mothers. Of the 15 performance targets set in 2004, five have "slipped", five are on course and five have not been "fully assessed". Progress on outstanding targets set in 2002 is even worse, with just three of the eight milestones likely to be achieved. There is serious under-performance in all areas under the department's control, including schools and colleges, the 3 billion pound Sure Start scheme and the Teenage Pregnancy Unit.

Critics condemned the "complacent" language used in the report, published without fanfare on the department's website two weeks ago, and claimed the failures pointed to generations of children being let down. It represents a huge blow to a Government accused of an obsession with setting targets, particularly in education, which Tony Blair famously claimed as a personal crusade when Labour won office in 1997, a pledge later renewed in 2001.

One of the main education targets set by the Treasury is the requirement for 85 per cent of England's 600,000 11-year-olds to reach the expected standard in English and maths by this year. This target had "slipped", however. Current progress has seen just 75 per cent achieve the standard in maths, with 79 per cent reaching the level in English. Similarly, targets for performance in tests for 14-year-olds will be missed. They require 85 per cent of teenagers to achieve the expected standard by 2007. On current form, an unprecedented jump in results of more than 10 percentage points would be required to reach it. At GCSE, the targets require all schools to get at least 20 per cent of their pupils to the five good GCSEs marker by 2004, rising to 25 per cent by 2006. However, 42 secondaries are still struggling to get over the 20 per cent figure, while 112 schools languish below the 25 per cent mark.

David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, said: "When the Government claims that it is on target, the reality is that it has fallen behind. When it admits slippage, what it really means is failure. Instead of pretending things are better than they are, they need to urgently improve their policies."

Prof Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University, said the Government must be held to account for failing to fulfil its own target-setting agenda. "If it were a school, it would be under threat of closure. These failures must be confronted seriously by ministers."

Targets set for the Sure Start scheme have also "fallen short". The scheme has had a negligible impact on the number of mothers who smoke during pregnancy and on reducing the proportion of children living in households where no one is working. The aim of cutting teenage pregnancies by 50 per cent by 2010 is also unlikely to be met. Claims in the report that some targets will be achieved have even been challenged. The Department describes the aim of getting half of all young people into university by 2010 as "on course". Yet the Higher Education Policy Institute says that there is "no prospect whatever" of achieving this target.

Targets that have been met include boosting the stock of registered child care by 10 per cent and increasing the number of pupils who spend at least two hours a week doing PE. A spokesman for the Department said: "We are seeing rising standards, with our young people achieving record results at age 11, 14 and at GCSE. We are also seeing progress in other key areas, like adult basic skills. We make no apology for demanding targets in schools and other areas. It is what the public rightly expects."

Source



'Scrap homework' call from Swedish Left Party

Anything to achieve the Holy Grail of equal outcomes

The Left Party has proposed abolishing homework for children up to the age of 16, saying that it wants to compensate for differences in pupils' backgrounds. Scrapping homework is one of the proposals put forward in the party's program for 'equality at school', which was presented on Wednesday.

The disappearance of homework would be compensated for with more concentrated teaching and more qualified teachers, said the Left Party's political secretary Anders Thore to Svenska Dagbladet. The party did not intend to make the school day longer, he said. Thor‚ pointed to a Teleborg school in Vaxjo, which he said had positive experiences of abolishing homework. The party argues that schools are not meeting their aim to give every pupil the same chances, and that they are not compensating for pupils' social differences.

The Liberal Party's education spokesman Jan Bjorklund described the proposal as "beyond idiotic". Unions were also critical. Eva-Lis Preisz, chairwoman of the Swedish Teachers' Union, said that politicians should not interfere with schools' homework policies. She said that politicians had an "excessive ambition" to micromanage the work of schools.

Source



English course to be replaced by political indoctrination in West Australian schools

Some far-Left meatheads have really got into the driver's seat in Western Australia

The subject that would replace English literature in West Australian high schools encourages political and moral sermonising, according to a noted English professor who shares the concerns of teachers lobbying against the changes to the course. Poet Dennis Haskell, the University of Western Australia's acting head of English, Communication and Cultural Studies, said it was sad that the draft consultation exam for the course, called Texts, Traditions and Culture, was inherently political.

The draft exam, obtained by The Australian, asks students to consider economic rationalism, redundancy and redeployment in a passage from an Australian play. Supporting documents from the course instruct Year 11 and Year 12 students to record their responses to "mainstream texts" such as video music clips and games, song lyrics and commercial television.

Professor Haskell said the course appeared to train students in social and political commentary without allowing them to simply appreciate the "music of language". The students will be assessed against four "outcomes" called textual production, applying skills and understandings of self and society, readings of texts, and processes and strategies for exploring, developing and shaping ideas through texts. "Ironically, that kind of thing is on the wane in universities," Professor Haskell said. "You need to allow students a certain amount of innocence, above everything a certain amount of pleasure in reading and it does not appear to be offered here. "The ancient, longstanding dictum of Aristotle was that the purpose of the arts was to entertain and instruct -- this seems to go heavily towards the instruct and the entertain goes out the window, and that's pretty sad."

Some English teachers told The Australian this week that the draft exam could be passed by a student who had not even completed a literature course. "It needs a great deal of rewriting so that it is clearly a literature-based course designed to extend those students who are interested in studying literary texts and being challenged intellectually," one teacher said.

The English Teachers Association of Western Australia supports the course, despite concerns about assessment. Curriculum Council acting chief executive David Axworthy agreed a student who had not done a literature course could pass the draft exam, but was annoyed the document was facing media scrutiny. "It is getting past ridiculous that every piece of paper released by the Curriculum Council, in its consultations with teachers, has to go under the media microscope," he said. "This is a draft consultation exam, which has recently been sent to principals and heads of department so we can find out what they think about it - because we respect the views of the teachers." The Carpenter Government has announced it will work with teachers to help them better prepare for the rollout.

Source

***************************

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



1 June 2006

GET 'EM EARLY

Brought to you by the people who have ruined Grade-school education

From coast to coast, states are pushing to get more 4-year-olds into classrooms like Cheryl Smith's thriving pre-kindergarten group at Cool Spring Elementary School in Adelphi. Many youngsters arrive in Room 10 speaking English as a second language and Spanish as their first. Nearly all come from homes where paying for preschool is impossible. But by springtime, after passing or nearing their fifth birthday, children in this state-funded program have formed valuable relationships with peers and Smith, gained a familiarity with letters and numbers, and developed a thirst for learning that should propel them in school for years to come. "It's almost time for kindergarten. We are ready now!" Smith's children sang one morning last week, swaying from side to side. "We have learned so much this year, it's time to take a bow!"

A few states have made public pre-kindergarten open to all; others are debating the expansion. Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) proposed universal access to pre-kindergarten last year during his campaign. But debate over a universal pre-kindergarten proposal on the ballot June 6 in California shows that widespread disagreement continues over whether the education of all 4-year-olds should be a public obligation.

Proposition 82, pushed by actor-director Rob Reiner, would require California to offer three hours of preschool a day to all 4-year-olds, with funding obtained from a tax increase of 1.7 percent on individual income of more than $400,000 and on joint-filer income greater than $800,000. Advocates say every dollar spent on public preschool will save $2.62 by lowering remedial education costs, reducing crime rates, and providing other long-range social and economic benefits.

Opponents reject the savings estimate as exaggerated and question whether the proposal can achieve lofty goals that may be contradictory -- closing achievement gaps and raising performance of all students. Some critics say helping students who have advantages will only reinforce those advantages, leaving the disadvantaged perpetually behind. Polls show that the initiative's prospects are uncertain. Many newspapers have lined up against it. "Universal preschool, like world peace or thoughtful television, is a worthy goal," the Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial opposing the initiative. The newspaper added: "Studies make clear that preschool can be a boon to disadvantaged kids. But they don't tell us whether preschool helps more than, say, full-day kindergarten, or smaller class sizes, or family literacy classes."

Many education analysts are tracking the California debate over whether pre-kindergarten should be universal or targeted to disadvantaged kids. "From Ted Kennedy to George Bush, we have policymakers pushing to close achievement gaps," said Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He was referring to the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and the president, who teamed up on the No Child Left Behind law. "The way you close gaps is to target public assistance on those children and families at the low end of the income spectrum."

But W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, said many children who fail at school or drop out come from the middle class -- strong reason, he said, for the nation to move toward universal pre-kindergarten. Research shows that "effects of preschool education on middle-income children are somewhat smaller than on the poor, but are still substantive," Barnett wrote in an e-mail. "Studies show that poor children benefit from attending preschool education with middle-income children." Oklahoma and Georgia have well-established universal pre-kindergarten programs. They were joined recently by Florida. Barnett's institute found that 38 states offered pre-kindergarten in 2004-05, not including federally funded early education programs such as Head Start.

In the District, about 70 percent of 4-year-olds are served by preschool programs, D.C. schools spokeswoman Roxanne Evans said. Barnett's institute estimates that in Virginia, 24 percent of 4-year-olds receive publicly funded preschool through the state and federal governments. The state Department of Social Services estimate is 20 percent. Regardless, Kaine wants to increase access greatly through an initiative he calls Start Strong.

Maryland's public preschool system serves about 43 percent of the state's 4-year-olds, according to the institute. Maryland school systems have reported a steady rise in pre-kindergarten enrollment in recent years, fueled in part by funding from the 2002 Bridge to Excellence Act. In September 2003, Montgomery County had about 2,700 students in pre-kindergarten. It now has more than 3,000. Prince George's County pre-kindergarten enrollment jumped from about 3,600 to 4,900 during that time, an increase of more than 35 percent. Rolf Grafwallner, assistant state superintendent for early childhood development, said Maryland's program remains targeted to low-income students. But he said a new state law has created a task force to study broader access.

Smith, who has a master's degree in early childhood education, teaches one of five pre-kindergarten classes at Cool Spring. She says education begins in infancy. "You're preparing the child from the day they are born to the day they enter school," she said. But Smith has the children for only 180 days before they enter kindergarten. As one of those days began last week, the youngsters called out to Smith the days of the week, counted to 24 to mark the date on the calendar, spelled the month "M-a-y" and counted to 169 to mark how many days they had been in school. They studied the letter "N," cutting out examples from magazines and gluing them to sheets of paper. Andrea Reyes and Natalie Avalos, both 5, picked out the letter "N" in their names. "We're finding words all over and N's all over," Smith told them.

Some children from last year's Cool Spring pre-kindergarten program attended nearby Langley Park-McCormick Elementary School this academic year. Langley Park-McCormick Principal Sandi Jimenez said she had three kindergarten classes -- one was made up predominantly of students who had attended pre-kindergarten classes; the other two were not. She said the former class is ahead of the other two in academic and social development. "The differences are absolutely marked," Jimenez said.

Source



"Postmodern" garbage losing clout in Australia

Prominent Leftist historian retreats after the Windschuttle onslaught on him and his Leftist colleagues



A postmodern interpretation of history that analyses the use of language and challenges the truth of historical facts has had its day, influential historian Henry Reynolds said yesterday. Declaring himself to be "an old-fashioned historian", Professor Reynolds said postmodernism had provided an interesting take on the language of history but "it just goes round and round, with lots of lights and colours and doesn't get you anywhere". "I think the postmodernist movement has gone," he told a session of the Sydney Writers Festival. "We live in profoundly different times to 1980. We live in some ways in a terrifying world where old-fashioned history and truth continue to have their great value and virtue."

During a discussion with fellow historian Ross Fitzgerald, Professor Reynolds said he believed history had a purpose, which was to search for the truth. "Truth is important. It always has to be partial, it always has to be as I see it, but that is what we have to search for," he said. After the session, Professor Reynolds said that school history courses were tending to preach rather than teach, which was inappropriate. "History can teach us to understand and empathise and sympathise with people who are different from us, either because they're (from) different cultures or of a different era," he said. "If that also makes us more understanding and tolerant, I think that's a splendid thing."

But courses such as the NSW modern history syllabus were "too prescriptive" for attempting to go beyond fostering an appreciation of different cultures and traditions. The syllabus said students will "display a readiness to counter disadvantage and change racist, sexist and other discriminatory practices". "That's probably too prescriptive," Professor Reynolds said. "It's not the central point of history, which is explaining things so people understand why others behaved the way they did. "You have to have confidence in your students. They have to make up their own minds ... otherwise it's just propaganda. It's wrong to preach at them. "I always tell my students, 'I will tell you what I think happened but you've got to make up your own mind'."

In Western Australia, the draft history exam for the new course to be introduced next year contains little examination of historical events. Rather, it requires students to analyse primary historical sources, comparing messages in the sources, identifying opinion and fact, and the nature of bias or prejudice. Professor Reynolds said he had no problem with such questions as long as the students knew enough facts to make sense of the interpretations. "As a general principle, I think for students to make sense of history, they have to have a good factual foundation," he said. "Only then can they make sense of all assessments and interpretations."

Indicative of the direction of history teaching in schools is a question asking ancient history students whether the raiding of the pyramids was analogous to sending Aboriginal artefacts, including human remains, overseas. Australia's leading Egyptologist, Naguib Kanawati of Macquarie University, said there were no similarities, saying Aboriginal culture was an existing culture with links to the artefacts. "But an Egyptian mummy is just a mummy. It should be treated as a human being, with respect, but no modern Egyptian has a spirtual link to it," he said. The other important difference was that Egyptian artefacts had left the country with the permission of the government. Professor Kanawati said the issue of respecting cultural artefacts was an important ethical consideration that should be part of a course preamble. But the study of the pyramids was not about their looting but about the magnificence of the structure and the achievement of ancient man.

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SCHOOL CONDEMNS COFFEE

Not quite, but they condemn caffeine, which is in coffee. All done in aid of their nasty kid-hating twitches

LOWER BURRELL, Pa. - A middle school student was suspended for three days for sharing chewing gum because it contained caffeine, school officials said. The girl, whose name and age were not released, gave another Huston Middle School student Jolt gum. The gum is "a stimulant that has no other redeeming quality," said Amy Palermo, schools superintendent.

Products acting as a stimulant are prohibited and possessing them is grounds for disciplinary action, and the suspension was mainly based on the girl's decision to share the gum, she said. "What if the gum had been given to a student with a heart condition?" Palermo said Thursday. The school has soda machines, but they aren't turned on during school hours and drinks containing caffeine aren't sold in the lunchroom. Jolt is manufactured by GumRunners LLC of Hackensack, N.J., and is marketed as a caffeine-energy gum.

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

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

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