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30 June, 2008

America's Universities Are Living a Diversity Lie

Thirty years ago this past week, Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. condemned our nation's selective colleges and universities to live a lie. Writing the deciding opinion in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, he prompted these institutions to justify their use of racial preferences in admissions with a rationale most had never considered and still do not believe – a desire to offer a better education to all students.

To this day, few colleges have even tried to establish that their race-conscious admissions policies yield broad educational benefits. The research is so fuzzy and methodologically weak that some strident proponents of affirmative action admit that social science is not on their side. In reality, colleges profess a deep belief in the educational benefits of their affirmative-action policies mainly to save their necks. They know that, if the truth came out, courts could find them guilty of illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.

Selective colleges began lowering the bar for minority applicants back in the late 1960s to promote social justice and help keep the peace. They felt an obligation to help remedy society's racial discrimination, even if they generally weren't willing to acknowledge their own. And with riots devastating the nation's big cities, they saw a need to send black America a clear signal that the establishment it was rebelling against was in fact open to it – and that getting a good college education, not violence, represented the best path to wealth and power.

In the mid 1970s, when colleges talked about the educational benefits of race-conscious admissions, what they had in mind were the benefits reaped by minority students. And tellingly, the University of California had said nothing about the educational benefits of diversity in defending the UC-Davis medical school's strict racial quotas against the lawsuit brought by Allan P. Bakke, a rejected white applicant. When the U.S. Supreme Court took up that decision on appeal, however, the educational diversity argument was tucked into a few of the many friend-of-the-court briefs submitted in the case.

Justice Powell would come to rely heavily on one of those briefs, in which Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania joined in arguing, without any empirical evidence, that diversity "makes the university a better learning environment." Like the four other conservatives on the court, Powell rejected the social-justice rationale for such policies, arguing that the government should not be in the business of deciding which segments of American society owed what to whom for past misdeeds. Nevertheless, he did not want the court to be radically changing how colleges did business. Looking for a way out, he ended up saying the four elite colleges had convinced him of the educational benefits of treating some applicants' minority status as a "plus factor."

Most selective colleges interpreted Justice Powell's controlling opinion in the case as a green light to keep doing what they had been as far as racial and ethnic-group admissions preferences were concerned. At the same time, they fretted little about how their campuses were actually becoming less diverse in socioeconomic terms as they jacked up tuitions and increasingly favored applicants from families wealthy enough to fatten endowments and pay their children's full fare. And despite a professed concern with viewpoint diversity, some colleges adopted rigid speech codes aimed at squelching statements that made minority students uncomfortable.

Academe got a rude awakening in 1996. Californians passed a ballot measure in that year barring public colleges from considering race and ethnicity in admissions. And a federal appeals court rejected Justice Powell's diversity rationale in a lawsuit, Hopwood v. Texas, involving the University of Texas law school. In his book, "Diversity Challenged," Gary Orfield, a staunch advocate of affirmative action, says people in higher education looked around and suddenly realized "no consensus existed on the benefits of diversity" and "the research had not been done to prove the academic benefits."

Over the next several years, education researchers scrambled to find such proof and repeatedly met with college leaders to discuss their progress. Their work took on a sense of urgency, on the expectation the Supreme Court would soon be revisiting Bakke. Yet again and again, their studies were shown to have gaping holes and deemed too weak to hold up in the courts.

Fortunately for affirmative-action advocates, the Center for Individual Rights, which coordinated the legal assault on race-conscious admissions, made a tactical decision not to seriously challenge such research – out of a belief it could win on legal principle. When the Supreme Court waded back into the controversy, it reaffirmed Justice Powell's diversity rationale in a 2003 decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, involving the University of Michigan law school. The opinions revealed that the majority of justices had been swayed by a barrage of friend-of-the-court briefs spinning and exaggerating what the research said about the alleged educational benefits of diversity.

Proponents of race-conscious admissions policies have yet to produce a study of their educational benefits without some limitation or flaw. Many focus only on benefits to minority students. Others define benefits in nakedly ideological terms, declaring the policies successful if they seem correlated with the adoption of liberal views. A large share relies on survey data that substitute subjective opinions for an objective measurement of learning. The University of Michigan's star witness, Patricia Gurin, a professor of psychology and women's studies, presented studies showing the educational benefits of classes and campus programs that promote interracial understanding. Those may exist at colleges that don't consider an applicant's race.

Affirmative action advocates argue that it is unreasonable to expect more of the research, because no education policy has incontrovertible proof of effectiveness. But affirmative-action preferences are not just any education policy; they require some students to suffer racial discrimination for the sake of a perceived common good. In grounding his definition of that good in the shifting sands of social science, Justice Powell may have left colleges legally vulnerable for decades to come. The courts, after all, are known for diverse opinions.

Source




Attack on British university standards

Universities told to favour poor schools

Universities are to be told to give preferential treatment to pupils from poorly performing state schools in a move that is likely to anger independent schools. The government is to endorse proposals that admissions staff should tailor offers to candidates according to the quality of school they attended. The report, commissioned by Gordon Brown, is intended to devise ways of increasing the number of pupils from the poorest families reaching top universities. Only 29% of university students come from the poorest socio-economic groups. At Oxford and Cambridge the percentage is even lower – 9.8% and 11.8% respectively.

Ed Balls, the schools secretary, and John Denham, the universities secretary, are expected to give public backing to the report from the National Council for Educational Excellence on Tuesday. It will say that universities should take into account all available “contextual data” about the performance of a school’s A-level candidates and the number of pupils it sends to university.

The effect is likely to be an increase in the number of pupils from poor schools who are required to get lower A-level grades than those from grammar or independent schools. Last month freedom of information requests by The Sunday Times showed seven top universities had already introduced versions of such schemes.

The report will argue that pupils from the poorest families are being let down by the state school system. It will present new research showing that 11-year-olds from poor families with the best test results are only half as likely as those from better-off households still to be high achievers when they reach the age of 14. It will be presented to Balls and Denham on Tuesday by Steve Smith, the vice-chancellor of Exeter University, Alison Richard, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, and Les Ebdon, the vice-chancellor of Bedfordshire University. The council will present its findings to Brown in the autumn.

“There is a massive gap in your chances of going on to higher education depending on what socio-economic group you belong [to] and there has hardly been any improvement in the situation. That is what we have to put right,” said Smith, who has drawn up the report. He has been helped by Sir Michael Barber, a senior Downing Street aide under Tony Blair.

Independent schools will also regard as hostile a recommendation for a delay until at least 2012 before universities make offers based on the new A* grade at A-level. The grade, which will be awarded for the first time in 2010, was intended to help universities distinguish between the surging numbers of students gaining three As. Last year more than a quarter of A-level exams taken were given an A grade. Cambridge turns away more than 5,000 candidates a year with three As and is one of the universities planning to use the A* in its offers.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckinghamshire University, was critical of the proposals. He said: “Discrimination of that kind will undoubtedly weaken our universities and make it harder for them to compete in the world league. It introduces institutional unfairness.” Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington college, said: “I think there’s always danger where you artificially prop up a system. The real effort ought to be to bring up the standard of state schools to independent schools.”

Source




Australian school has a "plan" to deal with bullying (but does nothing)

As long as the paperwork is in order, who cares about anything else?

A high school student accused of bullying may be legally banned from going near his 12-year-old victim. In a landmark court case, the 13-year-old Year 8 student is facing an application for a peace and good behaviour bond, which could prevent him attending his school on the Darling Downs. In the Children's Court last week, the parents of his alleged victim said the Education Department failed to act to protect their son from daily attacks. They are considering suing the State Government for neglect, arguing the department failed in its duty of care. "The department has been treating (the accused boy) with kid gloves, yet he is running riot," said the alleged victim's father, who cannot be named for legal reasons. "When we complained to the school, we were told our son had anger-management problems. The school is 100 per cent liable, yet will not admit any liability."

The case will be considered at a hearing early next month. The court could ban the student from going within a certain distance of his alleged victim, which could keep him out of the school grounds. The father told The Sunday Mail: "Thousands of parents would go through this every day, and the schools don't want to get involved."

The alleged victim, who has been put on detention himself over the conflicts, says he is subjected to regular threats of assault, including blows to the back of the head.

The mother of the alleged bully has defended her son, despite admitting he had a history of schoolyard violence which included being suspended from primary school for bullying. She said he was recently suspended for five days following an attack. "He is not totally out of control," the mother said. "I am not saying he is 'a home angel and a street devil'. I have had a lot of contact with the principal since the incident and (the boy) has been removed from the class. There is not much more the school can do." She said she would fight a court order, on the grounds her son was too young.

A check of court records shows there is no case in Queensland of a student being granted such a bond over another student for bullying. However, in the New South Wales city of Newcastle, a 13-year-old school bully was placed on an 18-month good behaviour bond in September 2003 after grabbing a small boy by the neck and demanding he give him $5 the next day.

Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford last week defended Nerang State High School, where an alleged bully has avoided suspension despite attacking a former fellow student at a bus stop.

Education Queensland has declined to comment on whether it has breached a duty of care to the alleged victim in the Darling Downs case. A spokeswoman for Education Queensland said only: "Under common law, teachers owe to all students a duty of care to adhere to a reasonable standard of care to protect them from foreseeable harm. The department respects the process of law and will respect the terms of any decision made by the court." [Big of them!] She said the school had a responsible-behaviour plan in place as part of last year's introduction of the state-wide Code of School Behaviour.

Commissioner for Children and Young People Elizabeth Fraser said if students were not satisfied with a school's response, they could raise concerns with the commission's complaints team, which could be an advocate for them.

Source





29 June, 2008

All parents deserve the right to choose

State lawmakers should approve pilot program to allow 4,000 kids in poor communities to escape failing schools

Opponents of school choice in New Jersey -- mainly teachers unions -- build their case like a house of cards, stacking each individual argument carefully so the whole thing doesn't collapse.

They say school choice -- i.e. vouchers -- drains money from public schools. They say private schools can't do a better job than public schools. They say public tax dollars shouldn't go to private and religious schools.

Piled up, it may look to some like a solid argument until you consider this fundamental principle of what school voucher opponents are saying -- parents and kids should not have any control or choice over their own education. They're telling parents, "Hey, we know what's best for your kids, not you, and your kids have to go to the assigned public school we say and that's it."

You can spin the debate a million different ways, and the New Jersey Education Association and now the Camden Education Association are trying to do just that, but the bottom line remains the same. These teachers' unions lobbying so hard on this issue are determined to make sure kids and parents in eight of the state's worst school districts don't have a basic American freedom, the freedom of choice, when it comes to education.

In this country we can choose what we say, where we worship, what we eat, where we go and what we wear. It's the American way.

When it comes to using public facilities, everyone has a choice. If one public park is cleaner, nicer and has a bigger playground than another park, people go to the better park. If one road is wider and better paved than another potholed road, people use the better road. It doesn't matter what town or neighborhood that road or park is in.

But with schools, we don't allow for choice, at least for those without economic means. Middle- and upper-class families can move where they want for the schools they want. The poor cannot move so easily. Thus, they have little or no choice with schools.

So why are the teachers unions so afraid of giving families in our poor, urban areas a choice? Fear, perhaps. The fear of failing schools being exposed when parents start yanking their kids out. The fear of jobs being lost. The fear that parents will suddenly have power and school officials will lose power. The fear of minority students coming to mostly white schools.

Those peddling such fears are aligning right now in Trenton. They're determined to kill bill S-1607, a pilot program that would give 4,000 kids from the state's poorest and worst public school districts scholarships of $6,000 for K-8 kids and $9,000 for high schoolers to attend better public or private schools in their town or elsewhere.

Our lawmakers, always looking for a campaign donation, need to stop cowering to the NJEA, which has made itself a champion of the status quo on this issue.

Guess what, the status quo for kids in Camden, Newark and Trenton stinks. Most of the public schools there aren't working. It's sad but true.

This pilot program, sponsored by state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, is far from a panacea. It will not magically turn around failing public schools in poor communities. What it will do is offer a lifeline for 4,000 kids and open the door just a crack to a freedom that most parents in this state have, but those in poor communities do not, the freedom of choice. Far more than 4,000 poor families should have this freedom, but at least this plan represents a start.

Source




The War on Abstinence

The Los Angeles Unified School District doesn't want Karen Kropf talking to its students. District leaders fear that what she says isn't "balanced" and that she's not a certified "expert" in the field. Really, though, they just don't like her message about teenage sexual self-control and the limited protection of condoms. That, and they're worried about what the ACLU might say, especially given California's law against "abstinence-only" education.

Investigating Kropf's situation, I was startled to discover an alarming trend that has gone unreported: The ACLU and Planned Parenthood have teamed up in an aggressive campaign over the past several years-a campaign to pressure states to eliminate abstinence education and to reject federal funding for these programs. And though their work hasn't drawn much attention, it has been remarkably successful. A year ago, only four states refused federal abstinence-education funding. Today the number is seventeen. The goal is to get enough states to refuse the federal abstinence-education funding to the point where the ACLU and Planned Parenthood can convince Congress to eliminate such funding entirely.

All this is happening, by the way, as fresh reports arrive almost every month about the benefits of teen abstinence and the effectiveness of abstinence programs.

But first, back to Karen Kropf. For ten years now, she has been speaking at local schools and community centers. When she was invited to speak at an L.A. public school, she was always brought in as a supplement to the official comprehensive sex-ed programs. Planned Parenthood frequently provides the official version, so you can imagine why teachers were eager to invite Kropf.

Kropf would share her story of how she became pregnant at eighteen and had an abortion. Of how the child she aborted would be her only chance, her multiple Chlamydia infections having eventually left her infertile. Her husband would come to the classes as well, warning the students that he had contracted genital herpes despite consistent condom use.

By telling these stories, Kropf brought the statistics about condom failure to life. But her message was more than a scare tactic or a command to "Just Say No." She would clear away the common rationalizations that teenagers use when they begin to feel the pressure to become sexually active.

More important, she would paint an appealing picture of what the alternative could look like-sexual self-control, resilience against passing temptations, better avenues of communication, a wider range of interests, and, ultimately, the ability to make a complete gift of self to another in marriage. As Kropf told me that she would tell the students, for her husband and her, this all "led to the only gift we had to give when we married, . . . proof that we could be faithful." It's a message that students respond to.

Scott Cooper, a teacher at James Monroe High School, where Kropf spoke, first heard her nine years ago. He told me that, "in my twelve years of being involved in educating high-school students, Karen Kropf's presentation is the most effective abstinence presentation I have seen. Students listen, students are shocked, students are moved by the emotional pain Karen has felt, and students respond. Every time I have seen Karen present in a classroom (at least twenty-five times now), easily 80 percent of both male and female students choose to accept Karen's charge that they are worth waiting for." He was so impressed by her presentation, that he joined her board of directors a year ago.

Kropf doesn't ask for any compensation for her programs. Relying on community support, she charges schools nothing and has never received government funding. Still, some were not happy with her message-though notably not the teachers who invited her, the students who appreciated her, or the parents who wanted their kids to wait until marriage (80 percent of American parents, according to a 2007 Zogby study).

But in 2006, with the ACLU attacking abstinence programs, the Los Angeles school district told Kropf that although she had been invited by teachers to public schools for eight years, she had to stop speaking until she wrote a curriculum and received approval.

She complied and submitted a curriculum. And this past December, the district notified her that she was not qualified to share her experience because she lacked a degree in the field-and, perhaps more decisively, she didn't promote condom use and birth control. It appears that the district was afraid of violating a California law that prohibits abstinence-only education. The California Department of Education reports that state law "prohibits `abstinence-only' education, in which information about preventing pregnancy and STDs is limited to instruction on abstinence from sexual activity."

Of course, the school district had someone else coming in to teach about contraception-couldn't Kropf continue as a supplement? No, because all "classes that provide instruction on human development and sexuality . . . shall include medically accurate, up-to-date information about all FDA-approved methods for: 1) reducing the risk of contracting STDs, and 2) preventing pregnancy." Even a supplementary speaker to a "comprehensive program" must be comprehensive, as California understands the term.

More here




British government schools killing off literature

A shake-up of GCSE [middle school] English will allow pupils to study travel brochures or biographies rather than novels, the qualifications regulator announced yesterday.

Exams in English, maths, and information and communication technology (ICT) will undergo a transformation in two years' time. The draft syllabuses were released yesterday by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which is seeking feedback from the public.

Pupils will be able to choose between three English GCSEs, rather than the traditional two. As well as English and English literature, there will be a new qualification in English language.

Although this includes assessment of reading, pupils will be able to pass the exam without studying any plays, poetry or classic novels.

The QCA says: "The aim is to develop students' understanding of language use in the real world, through engaging with and evaluating material that is relevant to their own development as speakers, listeners, readers and writers."

It describes the qualification as an "attractive stand-alone course" for students who have English as a second language. This reflects developments in the school population, and indicates that the exam system is changing to embrace the influx of immigrant families in some areas.

The QCA guidance adds that the English language exam would be suitable for "those needing a language qualification at this level but who are not required to fulfil the range of reading stipulated [in English literature]". It adds: "It provides an opportunity for students to extend their own skills as producers of spoken and written language in contexts that are both practical and challenging."

Source





28 June, 2008

Is Prestige Worth It?

by Thomas Sowell

The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to finance sending a son or daughter off to Ivy U. or the flagship campus of the state university system. Sometimes both the student and the parent end up with big debts from financing a degree from some prestige institution. Yet these are the kinds of institutions that many have their hearts set on.

Media hype adds to the pressure to go where the prestige is. A key role is often played by the various annual rankings of colleges and universities, especially the rankings by U.S. News & World Report. These rankings typically measure all sorts of inputs-- but not outputs. The official academic accrediting agencies do the same thing. They measure how much money is spent on this or that, how many professors have tenure and other kinds of inputs. What they don't measure is the output-- what kind of education the students end up with.

A new think tank in Washington is trying to shift the emphasis from inputs to outputs. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity is headed by Professor Richard Vedder, who gives the U.S. News rankings a grade of D. Measuring the inputs, he says, is "roughly equivalent to evaluating a chef based on the ingredients he or she uses." His approach is to "review the meal"-- that is, the outcome of the education itself.

The CCAP study uses several measures of educational output, including the proportion of a college's graduates who win awards like the Rhodes Scholarships or who end up listed in "Who's Who in America," as well as the ratings that students give the professors who teach them. Professor Vedder admits that these are "imperfect" measures of a college's educational output, but at least they are measures of output instead of input.

Some academic institutions come out at or near the top by either input or output criteria but there were some large changes in rankings as well. Among national universities, the top three are the same-- but in different order-- whether ranked by U.S. News or by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. They are Harvard, Yale and Princeton, according to Professor Vedder's think tank, and Princeton, Harvard and Yale in the U.S. News rankings.

Among the liberal arts colleges, however, there were some big changes. Although Williams and Amherst were the top two in both rankings, Washington & Lee moved up from 15th to 6th when ranked by Professor Vedder's group and Barnard climbed from 30th to 8th. Whitman College, which was ranked 37th by U.S. News on the basis of the college's inputs, jumped to 9th when evaluated on its output by Vedder and company. Wabash College jumped from 52nd to 10th. West Point rose from 22nd to 7th.

One of my own favorite measures of output-- the percentage of a college's graduates who go on to get Ph.D.s-- was not used by either set of evaluations. Small colleges dominate the top ten in sending their alumni on to get doctorates. Grinnell College, which was not among the top ten on either the U.S. News list or on Professor Vedder's list, sends a higher percentage of its graduates on to get Ph.D.s than does either Harvard or Yale.

No given criterion tells the whole story. In fact, the whole idea of ranking colleges and universities is open to question. To someone who is making a decision where to apply, what matters is what is the best institution for that particular individual, which may not be best-- or even advisable-- for that applicant's brother or sister.

"Choosing the Right College" is by far the best of the college guides, partly because it does not give rankings, but more because it goes into the many factors that matter-- and which matter differently for different people.

What Professor Vedder's study does is provide yet another reason for parents and students not to obsess over big-name schools or their rankings-- or to go deep into hock over them.

Source




A third of British secondary schools have a sex clinic

Nearly 1,000 secondary schools are providing `sexual health services' for their pupils. It means a million youngsters can get contraception, morning-after pills, pregnancy tests and tests for sexually transmitted diseases without any possibility that their parents will be told. A high proportion of secondary pupils are under 16 - the legal age of consent.

The rapid spread of sex services through schools with pupils as young as 11 has been hailed by campaigners who want sex education made compulsory and extended to primaries. Parents can find, however, that their children have not just been given contraception without their family's knowledge. In 2004 there was an outcry after it was revealed that 14-year-old Melissa Smith was given abortion pills without her mother being told. She was encouraged to have the termination by a 28-year-old health worker at her school sex clinic.

The survey of schools was carried out by the Sex Education Forum, an organisation run by the National Children's Bureau, a œ12million-a-year campaign group largely funded by taxpayers. Researcher Lucy Emmerson said: `We are encouraged to find that so many schools are providing sexual health services on-site. This is key to reducing teenage pregnancy rates and improving sexual health.' The survey was made public after a week which saw abortion hit record levels, with a 21 per cent rise among girls of 13 and a 10 per cent increase among under-16s.

Critics say giving out contraception in schools increases pregnancy and abortion by signalling that it is all right for young teenagers to have sex. Jill Kirby, of the centre-right think tank Centre for Policy Studies, said: `This is the normalisation of sex for pupils without the consent of parents.'

The survey was carried out among 2,185 schools, two-thirds of the secondaries in England. It found that 29 per cent had an `on-site sexual health service' - defined as distributing condoms and testing for pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. One in six of these schools gave pupils the morning-after pill, while one school in 20 offered contraceptive options, with prescriptions available for the Pill, injections or implants.

Sexual advice and the distribution of condoms by schools is a key plank of the Government's 138 million pound Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which was intended to halve the number of pregnancies among under-18s between 1998 and 2010 but is acknowledged to be failing.

Miss Emmerson said parents should not worry about what their children might be offered at school. She said: `Parents with children in those schools will know that the support services will involve sexual health advice and what the range of services on offer are. Also, health professionals always encourage the young person to talk to their parents about any problems.'

Patricia Morgan, a researcher and author on family matters, said: `There is no evidence that giving out condoms works. Children have sex, you get pregnancies and abortions and the spread of infections. If you want progress you should start by telling children not to have sex.'

Government guidelines say that where children under 13 are thought to be having sex, police should be brought in. But opponents say that breaches the children's privacy and makes them less likely to seek help.

Source




Top students' gains found mediocre

Teachers pay more attention to low achievers, report says

The nation's gifted and talented students have not made the notable academic gains the lowest-performing students have made in recent years, and teachers are pay more attention to struggling students than high achievers, a new report has found. The report, made public Wednesday by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, examined test scores and teacher opinion before and after the implementation of the 2002 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which requires states to bring students, including the lowest-performers, to grade-level proficiency in reading and math.

The study found that while the bottom 10 percent of students made notable gains in reading and math over several years, gains made by the top 10 percent have been less impressive - a pattern that bodes poorly for global competitiveness, some experts said. "If we want to compete with the rest of the world, we need our best and brightest to be making progress also," said Mike Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Fordham Institute.

Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Assocation, said NCLB is "particularly problematic" for high achievers because it forces teachers to focus on lower performers to avoid law's penalties. Mr. Weaver, whose group is a lead critic of NCLB, said it is "time to usher in a new era" in which schools have enough resources to be able to focus equally on education of all children.

But NCLB is not to blame for the slower improvement of the top students, since the study found the students were essentially making the same minimal gains before NCLB as they were making during it, said Tom Loveless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who conducted research. And while low-achieving students made bigger strides during the NCLB era than they did before the law , he said, the study couldn't determine whether NCLB played a role. Teacher training, textbooks or other state initiatives could have been involved in the improvement.

His study found the lowest-performing fourth-grade students gained an average of 16 points in reading from 2000 to 2007, while those in the 90th percentile gained an average of only three points, according to an analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In eighth-grade math, the bottom 10 percent of students gained an average of 13 points over that time, while the highest-performers improved by an average of five points. Both groups made notable gains in fourth-grade math while neither improved in eighth-grade reading, the study found.

It also found states with school testing and accountability in place in the 1990s showed a similar pattern of narrowing achievement gaps between high and low performers, with low performers making stronger gains. Mr. Loveless suggested lawmakers should add incentives to NCLB that encourage teachers to raise high-performers' scores, too.

The report also included a survey of 900 public school teachers who were asked about academic gains and their students. Researchers at the Farkas Duffett Research Group , which conducted the poll, found that 60 percent said struggling students are a top priority at their school and 23 percent said the same of academically advanced students.

The survey also found that 81 percent said low performers are more likely to get one-on-one attention while five percent said the more advanced students were more likely. The survey also found 86 percent said all students deserve equal attention, and 77 percent said the recent focus on getting low performers to proficiency has crowded out high performers.

Source





27 June, 2008

A Choice for D.C. Children

How would punishing 1,900 scholarship students improve the public schools?

AMONG THE most maddening arguments used against the D.C. school voucher program is that it hurts the public schools. Any money set aside for vouchers comes on top of a generous federal allocation for the city's public and charter schools. Any effect of the vouchers on public education has yet to be established or studied. Most of all, which members of Congress would accept an argument that they should be forced to send their children to a failing school for the good of the school?

Yet critics repeatedly return to this canard. That's why it's important that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) reiterate to Congress that his school reform efforts will not be helped by depriving 1,900 poor children of an opportunity to choose their schools.

This week, the House Appropriations Committee is set to consider whether to include funds in next year's federal budget for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The program, which allows the participating children to attend private schools, dodged a bullet last week when the Appropriations subcommittee headed by Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) wouldn't go along with efforts to dismantle the program. Even though the committee recommended less money than proposed by President Bush, the subcommittee's action, if sustained by Congress, would allow continuation of the program for another crucial year.

While Mr. Serrano voiced doubts about vouchers, he wisely deferred to the District's leaders and their "right . . . to make these choices." Members of the full committee, including a number of Washington area representatives who well understand the importance of D.C. home rule, should follow Mr. Serrano's lead in abiding by the city's intent. Joining Mr. Fenty in his support of the vouchers are leaders as disparate as D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and former mayor Anthony A. Williams. Notwithstanding the objections of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), there is widespread local support for the vouchers. Indeed, demand is reflected in the number of children who are on waiting lists. Continuation of this very limited, local program hurts no one. But its elimination would profoundly affect poor and minority children. Is that a choice Congress really wants to make?

Source




Homeschool is a constitutional right for parents

Can California force parents to send their children outside the home for their education, regardless of the quality of instruction they receive at home? Today, the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles will hear arguments in a case raising this issue - the constitutional rights of parents to direct the education of their children. The case arises out of a dependency hearing in which court-appointed attorneys for Jonathan and Mary Grace, two minor children who had been receiving instruction at home, asked the trial judge to order them to attend public school. The judge refused on the grounds that the parents have a constitutional right to homeschool their children. But the Court of Appeal reversed the ruling and interpreted California law as requiring homeschooling parents to have teaching credentials.

Understandably, the appellate court's decision in February created an immediate controversy with homeschooling and parental rights' advocates across the nation. Subsequently the Court of Appeal, in an unusual move, decided to withdraw its first decision, request additional briefing, and hear the case again.

But - should the court ultimately rule the same way - a mandate against homeschooling, rather than a focus on the merits of this individual case, makes no sense. For one, the court can resolve the appeal without addressing the constitutional issue by interpreting state law not to require credentialing for homeschool instructors.

Further, experience shows that homeschooling works and that public schools don't always provide quality instruction. Consider that California's educational system is consistently in the bottom 10 percent as compared to the rest of the states, while homeschoolers are winning the national history and spelling bees on a regular basis. What's more, the California Department of Education's most recent data shows that the high school graduation rate for students who attended from 2002 - 2006 was 67.1 percent. That's 1-in-3 students not getting a diploma.

But perhaps more important than any of the quality-of-education issues raised by this case is whether the state has the power to require parents who wish to instruct their children at home to obtain a teaching credential. The U.S. Supreme Court has long interpreted the Constitution as protecting parents' rights to direct and oversee the education of their children. More than 80 years ago, the Supreme Court noted, in a case challenging an Oregon law requiring all children to attend public schools, that "The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

And the court has continued to emphasize since then that the state must defer to parental decision-making. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in a case from the Supreme Court's 2000 term, "[T]he Due Process Clause does not permit a State to infringe on the fundamental right of parents to make child-rearing decisions simply because a state judge believes a 'better' decision could be made.' "

Of course, the state has the power to ensure that children receive a quality education. But the truth is that competent instruction can be received just as well at home as it can in public or private schools, and that parents should be the ones to decide where their children will be educated. The court would therefore do well to respect the constitutional rights of parents by sticking to the merits of the individual case being argued today and not make any pronouncement on homeschooling generally.

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So now Britain will have degrees in quackery

It's hard to grade nonsense on a scale, but of all forms of medical quackery, psychic surgery must be judged one of the least scrupulous. You might recall the odd television expose of its practitioners - so-called 'surgeons' who appear to be operating on patients with their bare hands, and who seem to be able to remove allegedly diseased tissue without making any incisions. Despite being exposed as hoaxers, 'psychic surgeons' continue to cast their spell over the gullible and desperate – mostly in Brazil and the Philippines. The odd case still crops up in the supposedly less superstitious United Kingdom.

About a year ago the Conservative MP Robert Key wrote to the Department of Health following a complaint by one of his constituents, who had been a victim of such fraudulent "healing." I have the full ministerial reply in front of me. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath told Mr Key: "We are currently working towards extending the scope of statutory regulation by introducing regulation of herbal medicine, acupuncture practitioners and Chinese medicine. However, there are no plans to extend statutory regulation to other professions such as psychic surgery. "We expect these professions to develop their own unified systems of voluntary self-regulation. If they then wish to pursue statutory regulation, they will need to demonstrate that there are risks to patients and the public that voluntary regulation cannot address. I hope this clarifies the current position."

Indeed, it does. It makes it clear that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. For a start, how could Philip Hunt, previously director of the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts, possibly have thought that "psychic healing" constituted a "profession" – let alone one which would "develop its own system of voluntary self-regulation? What might this involve? A code which declares that members must never perform genuine surgery, lest it brings the "profession" into disrepute?

Last week, in fact, the Department of Health published the report which outlines the regulation hinted at by Lord Hunt. It is called the Report to Ministers from the Department of Health Steering Group on the Statutory Regulation of Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and other Traditional Medicine Systems Practiced in the United Kingdom.

It is a scary document, and not just because many of its recommendations stem from something called the "Acupuncture Stakeholder Group". You thought they just used needles, didn't you?

Acupuncture is at the most respectable end of the alternative health spectrum – its practitioners would be affronted to be lumped in with psychic surgeons. Yet what, really, is the difference? There are many "patients" in the Philippines and Brazil who will insist that psychic surgery has cured chronic ailments which conventional medicine failed to alleviate. Such is the power of placebo – the driving force of all unconventional medical treatments, including acupuncture.

A few months ago an investigation into acupuncture, involving 1,162 patients with lower back pain, made a splash in newspapers across the world. The researchers at Regensburg University declared that just 27.4 per cent of those who had only conventional treatments such as physiotherapy felt able to report an improvement in their condition. However, of those who also underwent acupuncture, 47.6 per cent reported an improvement. So all that stuff about "different levels of Qi", "meridians", "major acupuncture points" and "extraordinary fu" is scientifically validated, then? Well, not quite, despite what some of the news reports said.

You see, the cunning researchers of Regensburg had one control group of back-pain sufferers who were told that they were undergoing traditional acupuncture – whereas in fact the needles were inserted entirely at random; and instead being put in to a depth of up to 40mm (as required by the acupuncture textbooks) were merely inserted just below the skin. This was sham acupuncture. And guess what? It worked – within the statistical margin of error – just as well as the "real" acupuncture: 44.2 per cent of the recipients of the sham treatment said that their back pain had been alleviated in a way which they had not experienced through conventional medicine.

Now here's another remarkable thing: the main body of the report produced for the Government last week does not contain the word "placebo" – and it crops up only twice in the appendices. One can understand why the various "stakeholders" who were consulted might have wanted to steer away from this fundamental question, but it's surprising that the chairman of the report, Professor Michael Pittilo, principal of Robert Gordon University, didn't insist upon it.

After all, Professor Pittilo claims that his report was an "echo" of the House of Lords' Science and Technology Committee report on the same subject – which had declared that the single most important question that any such investigation must address is: "Does the treatment offer therapeutic benefits greater than placebo?"

That indefatigable quackbuster, Professor David Colquhoun of University College London is on the case, however. His indispensable blog points out that Professor Pittilo is a trustee of the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Integrated Health, which advocates exactly the sort of therapies that this committee is supposed to be regulating.

Pittilo and his band of "stakeholders" have come up with their own way of "regulating" the alternative health industry – which the Government has welcomed. It is to suggest that practitioners gain university degrees in complementary or alternative medicine. Pittilo's own university just happens to offer such courses, which Professor Colquhoun has long campaigned against as "science degrees without the science."

It will be a particular boon to the University of Westminster, whose "Department of Complementary Therapies", teaches students all about such practices as homeopathy, McTimoney chiropractic, crystals, and 'vibrational medicine'.

One can see how this might fit in with the Government's "never mind the quality, feel the width" approach to university education. One can also see how established practitioners of such therapies might see this as a future source of income – how pleasant it might be to become Visiting Professor of Vibrational Medicine at the University of Westminster.

Thus garlanded with the laurels of academic pseudo-science, the newly professionalised practitioners of "alternative medicine" can look down on such riff-raff as the "psychic surgeons". Yet in one way those charlatans are less objectionable than Harley Street homeopaths: they openly admit that they are faith-healers, rather than pretend to academic status; and while they have made fools of their patients they haven't-yet-made a fool of the Government.

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26 June, 2008

Moaning Academic Women

They want to be looked after -- but it is sexist to treat them differently!

Interviews with 80 female faculty members at a research university - the largest qualitative study of its kind - have found that many women in careers are deeply frustrated by a system that they believe undervalues their work and denies them opportunities for a balanced life. While the study found some overt discrimination in the form of harassment or explicitly sexist remarks, many of the concerns involved more subtle "deeply entrenched inequities."

While the study was conducted, with support from the National Science Foundation, at the University of California at Irvine, the report's authors and most of those who were interviewed for the research state that they don't believe the problems discussed are unique to Irvine. The women interviewed who had worked elsewhere or discussed such issues with colleagues elsewhere portrayed their concerns as entirely typical of what goes on at research universities. And the authors - also at Irvine - stress that they don't view the campus as exceptional.

While some issues in the report mirror concerns raised in other venues (such as the difficulty for women in particular of balancing work and family responsibilities), others receive more attention here than elsewhere. For example, service responsibilities are seen as a significant source of both sexism (women receive more of the assignments) and career roadblocks (the service work doesn't count for tenure).

Those interviewed in the report even go so far as to criticize the NSF program that sponsored the research because it also urged Irvine to create "equity" positions in which faculty members - typically women - helped to review searches to be sure that diverse pools and perspectives were being sought. "To paraphrase one participant who wished anonymity: `They'll not get the next promotion, or the next raise. And it also made them lightening rods for all the frustration on campus that women are getting special treatment. So it was a perfect example of service that helps the institution but really hurts the individual.'"

The article, "Gender Equity in Academia: Bad News From the Trenches, and Some Possible Solutions," appears in the new issue of /Perspectives on Politics/ (abstract available here ). The authors are Kristen Monroe, a professor of political science and philosophy at Irvine and director of its Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality, along with three graduate students in political science at Irvine: Saba Ozyurt, Ted Wrigley and Amy Alexander.

The analysis opens with a review of the national statistics in which women's gains in the graduate student population are gradually diminished as academics advance to first jobs, to tenure, and to senior positions. Most of the analysis focuses on summaries of the in-depth interviews conducts with the women at Irvine, who came from a range of disciplines and seniority levels. Here are some of the highlights:

*Unintended bias and outdated attitudes:* Many of the women in the study described a steady stream of comments, some of them ostensibly offering support, that suggested that the older men who made them didn't really understand how to interact with women in a professional manner. These men generally had no clue that their attitudes were either patronizing, sexist or both, the report says. One woman is quoted as describing a job interview in a top department in which an African American scholar took her aside and said, "This is a great place for people like you and me, if you know what I mean, honey." The report quoted the woman as noting the irony that "he simply did not realize that it might be as inappropriate to call a 26-year-old woman `honey' as it would be to jovially slap a black man on the back and call him `boy.' "

*Devaluing positions once women hold them:* At Irvine, as at most research universities, the last decade has seen a significant change in the number of women serving as committee chairs, department chairs, deans and administrators in a variety of capacities. And the women interviewed for the study praised this development, crediting women in various senior positions for being mentors or going to bat for their younger counterparts. But the women - across disciplines - described a pattern in which once a woman was named to a more senior position, others treated it as more service-oriented and less substantive. The paper dubs this trend "gender devaluation," saying: "When a man is department chair, the position confers status, respect and power. When a woman becomes department chair, the power and status seems diminished."

*Service and gender: *Those interviewed reported some protection for junior faculty women, but said that among the senior faculty ranks, women were picked disproportionately for service assignments, especially those that are time-consuming. Then those same women are criticized for not doing more research, and the theoretical credit awarded service is never to be found.

*Family vs. career:* As in similar reports, women reported intense pressure - well beyond that faced by their male colleagues - with regard to having children, raising them, and also caring for aging parents. Many women reported strong reluctance to take advantage of policy options that might be helpful, fearful of how they would appear to male colleagues, and women reported regret and some dismay over choices they made to avoid confronting colleagues with their needs for more flexibility. One woman interviewed described having a child this way: "I was determined that I would drop that baby on Friday, teach on Monday, and nobody would ever know. That's what I had to do. That was just how I felt like life had to be. Indeed, my first child was born ten days after I submitted my final grades. I did have the summer off. I went back to teach in the fall, but by that September my first book was due at the publisher, and it all got done. That's what one had to do. That's what I felt. I was a competitive bitch, and that was what I felt I had to do in order to make as statement about who I was." (She added that she took a different attitude with her second child's arrival four years later.)

*Activism vs. making it work:* Generally, the women interviewed described the offices and services designed to help them as places that were focused on legal and technical issues, and given that many of their frustrations weren't legal, they didn't rely on these services. In addition, the women interviewed - citing in part a desire not to have their careers hurt - tended to focus on figuring out informal ways to deal with problems, rather than seeking policy changes. Women are "extremely adept at detecting the academy's cues," the study says. "Many feared backlash and retribution if they agitated openly for change."

While these women themselves focused on individual solutions, the overall theme of the report - in considering how to improve the situation of women at research universities - is a call for much more flexibility. Career paths are needed, the report says, that do not presume that the quality of work is based on hours in the lab or office, or time to tenure, or time finishing various projects. In addition, the report calls on universities to assign tasks in a more gender-neutral way, so that service activities aren't presumed female, and to credit work performed equally - even if women are more likely than men to do that work.

Asked for a reaction to the study, Irvine released a statement criticizing it. "Professor Monroe's article draws attention to the persistence and toll of sex discrimination on women faculty. Unfortunately, the article cannot to be said to offer original insight into the promise and challenge of gender equity in higher education. The formulation of the problem overlooks research in a host of related issues, such as gender schemas, work-life balance, and leadership development among others," the statement said.

The Irvine statement went on to cite progress for women on a number of fronts, noting that women on the campus hold such positions as vice chancellor of research and deans of the graduate division and of undergraduate education. Women account for 43 percent of assistant professors, 37 percent of associate professors, and 22 percent of full professors. Those figures are going up in science and technology fields too, Irvine noted, and women now are 37 percent of assistant professors, 31 percent of associate professors and 18 percent of full professors in those disciplines.

The statement added that "Professor Monroe does not appear to be informed about campus and university engagement with gender equity or for that matter family-friendly accommodation policies and procedures."

In an interview (prior to when Irvine released its statement), Monroe said that she would be interested to see how the university responded and that she hoped it would be positive. She noted - as the reported noted - that many of the concerns expressed in the study didn't have to do with official policies or programs, but with more subtle questions.

In her career she was helped by good advice she received early on from mentors. She was urged to agree to serve on one universitywide committee and one departmental committee and never more. She was also urged to work from home in the mornings, so she couldn't be drafted into other meetings, and would always have focused time for research. Monroe said that as a political scientist, she had that option in a way that a lab scientist would not. While Monroe said she was able to have a family while succeeding in academe (in part because of choices her husband made), she said that talking to women about their choices was in many cases "heartbreaking."

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Textbook council accuses publisher of being politically correct on Islam

A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history. "Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths."

Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence. He cites Houghton Mifflin's popular middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been approved for use in Montgomery County Schools. It defines "jihad" as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."

"But that is, literally, the translation of jihad," said Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and acclaimed author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam." Aslan explained that the definition does not preclude a militant interpretation. "How you interpret [jihad] is based on whatever your particular ideology, or world viewpoint, or even prejudice is," Aslan said. "But how you define jihad is set in stone." A statement from Montgomery County Public Schools said that all text used by teachers had been properly vetted and were appropriate for classroom uses.

Aslan said groups like Sewall's are often more concerned about advancing their own interpretation of Islam than they are about defining its parts and then allowing interpretation to happen at the classroom level.

Sewall's report blames publishing companies for allowing the influence of groups like the California-based Council on Islamic Education to serve throughout the editorial process as "screeners" for textbooks, softening or deleting potentially unflattering topics within the faith. "Fundamentally I'm worried about dumbing down textbooks," he said, "by groups that come to state education officials saying we want this and that - and publishers need to find a happy medium."

Maryland state delegate Saqib Ali refrained from joining the fray. "The job of assigning curriculum is best left to educators and the school board, and I trust their judgment," he said.

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Corrupt New York's Novel Way to Kill Charter Schools

Ten years ago, New York joined the charter school revolution by passing a law to allow these innovative public schools to open. Today there are nearly 100 charters in the state and dozens more in the pipeline. But now, thanks to the state's Department of Labor and a labor-friendly state judge, building a new charter school just got a lot harder and a lot more expensive.

Charter schools are built on a simple idea. In exchange for less state funding and a mandate on performance, charters are exempt from many high-cost regulations that hamstring traditional public schools. Tapestry Charter School in central Buffalo has accepted that bargain and has excelled. It has served lower- and middle-income students since it opened its doors in 2001. Today it has about 350 students and, like most charters, outperforms district public schools on state tests.

With smaller class sizes, more individual attention, longer school days and a longer academic calendar, students at Tapestry receive nearly two years more of instruction by the time they enter high school than students in other schools.

Recently, Tapestry won approval to add high school grades, and this is where the trouble started. To accommodate these new grades as well as serve the other students, the school decided to build a new building. It expected to pay about $8.5 million.

But last autumn, as a sop to labor unions, Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith ordered charter schools to adhere to state "prevailing wage" requirements, which mandate paying union wages for construction projects and which typically add 30% or more to the cost of a project. In Tapestry's case, it would add more than $1.5 million, putting the school's building expansion plans on hold.

Since their inception, charter schools had been exempt from this state law which, like its federal counterpart, the Davis-Bacon Act, applies to most public-works projects. Last month, however, state trial judge Michael Lynch upheld the new mandate, erroneously applying labor law to charter schools beyond anything intended by the legislature or precedent. The case is on appeal and will likely be overturned, but that could take years.

"Critics say there aren't enough charter high schools, but this latest hit makes it near impossible to afford to build one," Joy Pepper, Tapestry's co-founder and director, said. "How can it be good public policy for the state to raise the cost of school buildings when we get no capital money to begin with? It's the students they're hurting."

This ruling is an egregious example of the withering autonomy of charter schools. Charters successfully educate students on 70% of the funding spent by district school competitors. But the state's education bureaucracy, legislature and now the courts are all piling on regulatory burdens.

Before prevailing wages were imposed, Elmwood Village Charter School, a few blocks from Tapestry in the Allentown section of Buffalo, was able to renovate a long-abandoned building, helping to revitalize the neighborhood. "There is no way we could afford this state-of-the-art building and serve our students if we were forced to pay another 25% [because of] prevailing wage," John Sheffield, the school's director, said. "There wouldn't be a charter school here, and our kids would remain in district schools at an academic disadvantage, frankly."

In Albany, the Brighter Choice Foundation built a KIPP charter middle school -- absent prevailing wage -- for less than $7 million. It took only nine months and won praise from Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings, who said, "It's a beautiful facility, one that anyone would be proud to send a child to." By contrast, the Albany school district spent about $40 million to build a new middle school, thanks to prevailing-wage and other mandates.

The Brighter Choice Foundation wants to build other charter schools, including Albany's first public all-girls high school. That will be much more difficult if it has to adhere to prevailing-wage mandates. "If they don't fix this, artificially higher costs will guarantee that fewer students in needy urban districts will be ready for college," said Chris Bender, the foundation's director.

The charter school movement in New York, after thriving for nearly a decade, faces an uncertain future if the state continues pushing charters to be more like the failed bureaucratic schools from which charter students fled. Prevailing wage is one way to stop the charter revolution in its tracks -- which may be the point, sadly.

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24 June, 2008

Britain: Social mobility disappeared along with selective schools

"Comprehensives" were supposed to bring equality. They did the opposite

It's a puzzle how Gordon Brown manages to maintain the aura of a serious intellectual. He clearly reads widely. But so, too, do my nephews, albeit books with shorter words. The problem lies not with his ability to read but to draw the correct conclusions. His speech yesterday on social mobility is a case in point - a weird mix of platitudes and outright nonsense. Parents should want their children to do better than they did themselves. Wow. What an insight. And this "cannot be achieved without people themselves adopting the work ethic, the learning ethic and aiming high... We must set a national priority to aggressively and relentlessly develop the potential of the British people." It's difficult to imagine a priority aggressively and relentlessly to hold back the potential of the British people.

The difficulties start when he talks in more than platitudes. Yesterday's speech was predicated on the notion that, while he had been fortunate to be "a child of the first great wave of postwar social mobility", there was then a "lost generation" of "Thatcher's children" who were denied the chance to progress. Mr Brown is right to talk about the reversal in social mobility that took place in the last century. But he is about as far from the truth as it is possible to imagine in describing its cause. Margaret Thatcher did not create the problem; she inherited it.

A 1996 study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed what strikes most people instinctively: education is the great engine of social mobility. "There is a clear correlation between high mobility up the income distribution and a high level of educational attainment. Non-movers are almost five times as likely to have no qualifications as big movers; at the other end of the scale, big movers are more than seven times as likely to have A levels or better than non-movers are." And with the educational opportunities laid out in Rab Butler's 1944 Education Act, which enshrined the tripartite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools, increasingly it was no longer true that where you were born on the social scale determined where you ended up.

As Churchill said to the boys of his alma mater, Harrow School, in 1940: "When this war is won... it must be one of our aims to establish a state of society when the advantages and privileges which have hitherto been enjoyed by the few shall be more widely shared by the many, and by the youth of the nation as a whole."

And this started to happen: the proportion of public-school-educated undergraduates at Oxford was, for instance, on a steady downward path after the Second World War. In 1946 65 per cent of male students were from independent schools. By 1967 only 53 per cent of male students were from public schools. The pattern was even clearer with women, the share falling from 57 per cent of arts undergraduates in 1946 to 39 per cent in 1967. For all the problems with technical and secondary modern schools, grammar schools did a fine job of lifting children out of poverty and into opportunity. Yet today, our comprehensive system has one of the worst rankings in the developed world.

Education was seen by the advocates of comprehensive schools "as a serious alternative to nationalisation in promoting a more just and efficient society" (as Tony Crosland, who would not rest until he had "destroyed every f***ing grammar school", put it). But this was Grade A drivel. Class divisions were made worse, not better. Now those who can afford to do so leave the state system for private education or move to a middle-class catchment area. The rest are stuck with what they are served up. As A.H.Halsey, an adviser to Crosland and one of the leading egalitarian theorists of the 1960s, put it: "The essential fact of 20th-century educational history is that egalitarian policies have failed."

The speed of the process was astonishing. In the late 1960s the state grammar schools and quasi-state direct grant schools easily outclassed the independent sector in terms of academic output. The next decade saw both these meritocratic pillars of the state school system collapse. In 1971 35 per cent of all state schools were comprehensive; in 1981 the figure was 90 per cent, and almost all the direct grant schools had joined the private sector. In destroying the direct grant schools on the altar of equal opportunity, the 1974-79 Labour Government succeeded only in denying opportunity to many poor children.

Mr Brown is right to emphasise the imperative of social mobility. But until he stops speaking in platitudes and starts understanding what has gone wrong, he will never be able to put anything right.

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Many states watch - and like - Florida's education policy

Florida is No. 1 in the nation in vouchers. It's No. 2 in charter school enrollment. It's No. 4 in the percentage of high school students passing college-level exams. Numbers like these have made Florida the nation's most-watched laboratory for education policy. But now former Gov. Jeb Bush is holding up Florida as not just a lab, but a model.

Bush, 55, has been out of office 18 months, but his controversial policies continue to roll. And today, a who's who of education super wonks will gather in Orlando to turn a national spotlight on the changes he championed - from vouchers to school grades to merit pay for teachers. They already know what many in Florida don't - that many states are watching Florida. And a number of them like what they see.

"Florida's system has been held in pretty high regard," said Kathy Christie, chief of staff for the non-partisan Education Commission of the States, which assists policymakers nationwide. "I can't tell you how many times I've highlighted policies in Florida."

Bush's vision isn't popular in Florida. But he and his supporters insist that evidence is on their side. "Florida's education reforms have caught the attention of policymakers across the country because our students are making progress," Bush said in an e-mail to the Times. "My hope is that other states working to improve their quality of education can replicate some of the successes we have achieved." Bush's critics groan at the possibility.

The state's graduation rate remains one of the nation's worst. And critics say Bush's agenda is fueled by a right-wing ideology that has produced more spin than miracle. "There are good things going on in Florida and not good things going on," said Sherman Dorn, a University of South Florida professor whose 2007 book title, Accountability Frankenstein, riffs on the lab analogy. "Unless you're willing to see both sides, I don't think you are being realistic."

The two-day summit is sponsored by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which Bush formed last year to "improve the quality of education in classrooms across Florida and the nation." Bush will be the keynote speaker today. Other speakers and panelists will trumpet the same brand of reform, which is heavy on school choice and high-stakes testing. Among them: Frederick Hess (director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute) and Checker Finn (president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation)

Many tend to be classified as conservative. But guests also include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, a lifelong Democrat. All of them know the Florida story.

For better or worse, Bush pushed the envelope during eight years as governor. Florida did not have a voucher program when he was elected in 1998 and had only a handful of charter schools. Now it has nearly 40,000 students on vouchers and more than 100,000 in charters.

Bush made the FCAT the keystone of an accountability system that included school grades, and retention and intervention for struggling third-graders. More quietly, Bush and his loyalists pushed literacy in early grades and the use of test data to help teachers pinpoint where students were falling short.

Did it work? Florida's graduation rate hovers around 60 to 70 percent (though some calculations show it rising sharply). Per-pupil spending ranks in the bottom tier. Teachers are paid below the national average.

On the other hand, Florida elementary students have made the most dramatic gains in the nation on well-respected reading and math tests. The state leads the nation in the percentage of high school seniors taking advanced placement exams. And it's no longer just right-wing think tanks giving Florida credit. "I'm a big fan," said Janet Hannaway, an education researcher at the nonpartisan Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Florida "is a very smart policymaking state, at least in education."

She and a handful of other highly regarded researchers recently looked at how Florida's accountability system affected schools with F grades. Their conclusion: Schools ended up focusing more on struggling students and devoting more time to teaching. And their students improved faster than students at schools with higher grades.

Then again, researchers also said it's too early to tell whether Florida's approach is the best one, a line other observers use about Bush's broader changes. Some ask: Will Florida students continue to make gains on national tests? Will higher scores result in higher grad rates? "The results (in Florida) so far are promising. But there's no long-term trends yet," said Alan Richard, spokesman for the nonpartisan Southern Regional Education Board.

Bush said Florida shouldn't wait on them. He described the past decade as just the beginning. "I hope we never stop trying to implement bigger, better and more audacious reforms."

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Jeb Bush Supports Return Of School Vouchers

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he will fight for two controversial amendments. One of the amendments would restore Bush's private school voucher program; the other would give lawmakers the power to send public school money to religion-based schools. Bush said he believes that one of the best ways to help needy students in struggling public schools is to give them a choice between public school and vouchers to pay for private school. In 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled the vouchers unconstitutional.

Bush launched the voucher program, and now he has joined the fight to reinstate it. He wants voters to pass Amendment Seven, called "Religious Freedom," which would eliminate the ban on using revenues from the public treasury or indirectly in aid of any church. Bush is also supporting Amendment Nine, which would reverse the Florida Supreme Court decision to prohibit funding of private school alternatives, such as vouchers. "The simple fact is the Florida Legislature should have the say, the policy at the state level as it applies to education policy, not an unaccountable Supreme Court," Bush said. "I think Floridians will support that. What role I'll play is yet to be determined."

Gay Parker of the Seminole County Education Association is part of a teacher's union movement suing to eject the amendments from the ballot. "Experimental programs are not the answer," Parker said. He said with plummeting state revenues and teacher layoffs, it does not make sense to give money to private schools. "It's not fair, it's not proper, I don't believe that it is legal and FEA (Florida Education Association) is going to argue that position," Parker said.

Amendment Five is another controversial amendment that will be on the ballot in November. It would eliminate local school property taxes, forcing state and local lawmakers to come up with new money, possibly through new sales or service taxes.

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24 June, 2008

Britain: Kids should learn to be tough

"Happiness lessons" that are used in many schools to teach children to be sensitive, empathetic and caring are under threat from a new hardline approach that advocates mental toughness. Academics say that instilling a robust attitude among pupils can improve their exam performance, behaviour and aspirations dramatically. Mentally tough children are less likely to regard themselves as victims of bullying and will not be deterred by initial failure. Having this outlook can be learnt, according to Peter Clough, head of psychology at the University of Hull.

Along with AQR, a psychometric-testing company, he is conducting a long-term study of children and evaluating their mental toughness. His ideas - based on sports psychology - have been used in industry. Dr Clough claims that a simple test and follow-up techniques can transform performance. He said: "We know that students with higher levels of mental toughness perform better in exams. They are also less likely to perceive themselves as being bullied and are more likely to behave more positively. "We also know that by using a variety of techniques - many of them very simple - we can increase an individual's level of mental toughness."

Dr Clough is working with 181 pupils aged 11 and 12 at All Saints Catholic High School in Knowsley, Merseyside. He will help to make them mentally tough and hopes this will "open doors of opportunities that they would not previously have considered". Parents and teachers are also being shown the intervention techniques.

Dr Clough said: "There is no point in working with pupils who then go into a classroom environment where nobody understands the process, and home to parents who have no interest. Showing the teachers how the techniques work means that the benefits that pupils are getting from this study can be repeated year after year."

Dr Clough and his team measured the levels of resilience and emotional sensitivity of pupils using a questionnaire. They then picked almost 40 pupils with low scores. They are now using techniques to improve their rating, such as visualisation, anxiety control and relaxation, improving their attention span and setting goals.

It comes a week after two academics said the emphasis on Seal (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) was "infantilising" students. Dennis Hayes and Kathryn Ecclestone, of Oxford Brookes University, said that teenagers were encouraged to talk about their emotions at the expense of acquiring knowledge. This left them unable to cope on their own. They pointed to the increased presence of parents on campus, and of counsellors and support officers, saying that "everyone was looking for a disability to declare".

Dr Clough said that he helped children to set realistic goals and used techniques that worked rapidly. These include imagining scenarios and random-number tests that forced them to concentrate. He said: "Really concentrating is a skill a lot of them have never had. We try to get them to realise they are in control of their lives and need to stick a foot in the door when they get the opportunity. No one else is going to make that decision. "They don't recognise that people who are successful sometimes have less ability but more drive. They are drawn to a 'shortcut culture' of instant success and dream of winning The X Factor, but don't see that you need to practise before auditions."

Of happiness lessons, which aim to boost self-esteem, Dr Clough said: "All the positive thinking in the world isn't going to make a third look like a 2:1."

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To Curb Truancy, Dallas Tries Electronic Monitoring

Jaime Pacheco rolled out of bed at dawn last week to the blaring chorus of two alarms. Then Jaime, a 15-year-old high school freshman, smoothed his striped comforter, dumped two scoops of kibble for the dogs out back and strapped a G.P.S. monitor to his belt.

By 7:15, Jaime was in the passenger seat of his grandmother's sport-utility vehicle, holding the little black monitor out the window for the satellite to register. A few miles down the road, at Bryan Adams High School in East Dallas, he got out of the car, said goodbye to his grandmother and paused to press a button on the unit three times. A green light flashed, and then Jaime headed for the cafeteria with plenty of time before the morning bell.

It was not always like this. Jaime used to snooze until 2 p.m. before strolling into school. He fell so far behind that he is failing most of his classes and school officials sent him to truancy court. Instead of juvenile detention, Jaime was selected by a judge to be enrolled in a pilot program at Bryan Adams in which chronically truant students are monitored electronically. Since Jaime started carrying the Global Positioning System unit April 1, he has had perfect attendance.

"I'm just glad they didn't take him to jail," said Jaime's grandmother Diana Mendez, who raised him. "He's a good kid. He was just on a crooked path."

Educators are struggling to meet stricter state and federal mandates, including those of the No Child Left Behind Act, on attendance and graduation rates. The Dallas school system, which, like other large districts, has found it difficult to manage the large numbers of truant students, is among the first in the nation to experiment with the electronic monitoring. "Ten years ago the issue of truancy just slid by," said Jay Smink, executive director of the National Dropout Prevention Center. "Now the regulations are forcing them to adhere to the policies."

Nearly one-third of American students drop out of school, and Dallas has the seventh-worst graduation rate among large school districts, according to a study released in April by America's Promise Alliance, founded by Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state.

At Bryan Adams, 9 of the more than 300 students sent to truancy court this year are enrolled in the six-week pilot program. The effort is financed by a $26,000 grant from Bruce Leadbetter, an equity investor who supports the program's goals. The bulk of the money pays the salary of a full-time case manager, who monitors the students and works with parents and teachers. "I can't do anything with them if they don't come to school," said Cynthia Goodsell, the principal at Bryan Adams.

Kyle Ross, who runs the in-school suspension program at Bryan Adams, was skeptical of the electronic monitoring until he saw that it worked. "We're always yearning for something tangible to use as tools to teach self-efficacy," Mr. Ross said. "Everyone's so overwhelmed. We'll try anything."

Dallas's experiments in tracking truancy started three years ago. Last year, case managers used a G.P.S. system to locate a truant student on the verge of overdosing on drugs, and they discovered that a student had skipped school because he was contemplating suicide.

Ricardo Pacheco, 18, who is no relation to Jaime, said electronic monitoring had helped him get on track last year, despite advice from his friends to "just yank it off." "It was easier to come to school each day, stay out of the streets and be home every night," said Mr. Pacheco, a father of two young children and a former gang leader. Now he is about to become the first male from his father's side of the family to graduate. "They all dropped out or are in jail," Mr. Pacheco said.

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Australia: Stupid woman revives failed Leftist idea

The heavy diversion of teacher attention to problem students required in "integrated" schools deprives normal students of needed attention

QUEENSLAND Liberal Senator Sue Boyce has called for special schools to be scrapped and disabled children sent into mainstream education. Senator Boyce, who has a daughter with Down syndrome, said it was time someone was "brave" and "crazy" enough to push for total integration of students. "We won't fix education until we abolish special schools," Senator Boyce told a Down Syndrome Association of Queensland fundraiser last week. "If mainstream schools had no option but to accept children with disabilities, they would concentrate on how to make it work, not how to avoid getting involved. "And if all the human and funding resources currently tied up in special schools were handed over to the mainstream system, it would be so much easier to make it work."

Senator Boyce said her 24-year-old daughter had always gone to mainstream schools and is now a bakery assistant. "In the 60s and 70s, no one believed a child with Down syndrome could be educated," she said. "Special anything is a way of excluding them from the community."

She said she had yet to express her opinion to her Liberal Party counterparts because it was her "personal view". But Education Minister Julia Gillard said special schools had an important role in educating many Australian students. "The Rudd Labor Government has promised an education revolution to ensure no Australian kids miss out on a quality education," Ms Gillard said last week. "Unfortunately, it seems the Liberal Party's only plan for education is to shut down schools."

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23 June, 2008

The Groves of Academe Contain Vast Petrified Forests

It is to laugh. The Chicago Tribune reports Naming U. of C. research center after Nobel Prize winner [Milton Friedman] has faculty split -- chicagotribune.com

Critics says proposed Milton Friedman Institute would be a right-wing think tank In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors-about 8 percent of the university's full-time faculty-said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity."

In the article the go-to guy for the potent quote is frequent Chicago Tribune contributor and U of C divinity professor Bruce Lincoln, a man whose claim to "diversity of thought" is the course he teaches on "The Theology of George W. Bush" (Hint: He's agin' it. )

"It is a right-wing think tank being put in place," said Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions and one of the faculty members who met with the administration Tuesday. "The long-term consequences will be very severe. This will be a flagship entity and it will attract a lot of money and a lot of attention, and I think work at the university and the university's reputation will take a serious rightward turn to the detriment of all."

A center named after one of the towering intellects of the age is a "detriment to all?" Lets take a look at Bruce Lincoln's less than distinguished CV at the U of C :

"[Lincoln's] research tends to focus on the religions of pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran, but he has a notoriously short attention span and has also written on a wide variety of topics, including Guatemalan curanderismo, Lakota sun dances, Melanesian funerary rituals, Swazi kingship, the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, Marco Polo, professional wrestling, and the theology of George W. Bush. - Bruce Lincoln @ The University of Chicago Divinity School

When not busy with ADD, Lincoln evidently labors over his patented George Bush Decoder ring ( Code for Vote for Me: Speaking in the Tongue of Evangelicals) as his excuse for an original contribution to knowledge. Oh yes, he also believes that Christian fundamentalists are very bad and was shocked, shocked at Abu Ghraib:

Only when Seymour Hersh, our modern Ctesias, secured publication of these photos were the signs of hero and villain inverted, so that a broad audience could read the story as one of moral depravity. FROM ARTAXERXES TO ABU GHRAIB: ON RELIGION AND THE PORNOGRAPHY OF IMPERIAL VIOLENCE

You've gotta love a mind so colonized by lock-step thinking and swollen with self-importance that it could toss off the phrase "Seymour Hersh, our modern Ctesias." I can just hear the deep internal chortle when that one rolled out of the keyboard. He probably sipped sherry over it for months at the faculty club.

You've gotta love a mind so colonized by lock-step thinking and swollen with self-importance that it could toss off the phrase "Seymour Hersh, our modern Ctesias." I can just hear the deep internal chortle when that one rolled out of the keyboard. He probably sipped sherry over it for months at the faculty club.

Having a drudge like Lincoln call to reject a real intellect such as Friedman only underscore the leading affliction in the Groves of Academe today: Intellectual Insanity, a dread disease that cripples and kills minds that might otherwise have been used to ask the universe: "Do you want fries with that?"

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Academic Hokey Pokey

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs points to the rather sophomoric rantings of a San Francisco `academic.' He points to an article by one George Bisharat a professor of law at Hastings College of Law. Bisharat takes issue with Israel as a `Jewish' state. He does not seem to recall that most of the middle east claim to be Muslim states- and given the barbarous track record of those broken, failed and dysfunctional states, he is in no position to take umbrage at Israel. Bisharat is not the first Arab academic with no clothes.

The LA Times published an Op-Ed piece, Why Does The Times Recognize Israel's `Right To Exist'?, by Saree Makdisi. The piece is a toast to drivel,absurdity and deceit, masquerading as `informed thought.' Mr Makdisi provides a textbook look at malignant narcissism and the consequences of that behavior (an accurate, if unflattering review by his peers can be found here). In the Op-Ed piece, Makdisi begins his remarks with outright and characteristic deceit:

First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).

It is not "meaningless" when a `non-state' not only refuses to `recognize' a state, but also insists on destroying that state, her inhabitants and publicly promises a new genocide (Mr Makdisi cannot make those pesky audio tapes, video tapes, newspapers, school curricula and `religious' broadcasts go away). In addition, Mr Makdisi also cannot make the opposite true- if the Palestinians are a non-state, they are not automatically entitled to any kind of special recognition or support by Israel or the international community any more than are the more deserving Kurds or a thousand and one other indigenous groups.

The Palestinians are a recent political construct and no more, who came into being after Egypt and Jordan washed their hands of them. Makdisi would predictably argue that Israel too, is a recent political construct, and to some extent, he would be correct. The reality of course is that the Palestinian political entity came to the show later on and as such, are a day late and a dollar short. Mr Makdisi is free to adopt an Orwellian dance of historical revisionisim and deny Jewish history and ties to the Holy land as do some of his colleagues, but it seems clear he wants to maintain the facade of intellectual credibility. Makdisi continues:

Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years - and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?

For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?

What mindless drivel! Makdisi is attempting, in his own words, `recycle meaningless phrases than to ask - let alone to answer - difficult questions.' Israel's borders were absolutely defined until the Arab world insisted that they would redefine them, permanently, in 1967.

In 1967, Egypt kicked out UN peace keepers from the Sinai Peninsula. They massed troops on Israel's borders and threatened her destruction. Radio broadcasts at the time, monitored and recorded, exhorted Arab troops to an orgy of destruction, rivers of blood and rape- literally, saying these was Islamic destiny. Syria followed suit, massing borders on Israels northern flank. The Gulf of Aqaba was blockaded (an act of war in itself) and despite pleas from Israel to Jordan's King Hussein, he too was to enter the fray.

In response, Israel called up it's armed forces and reserves and on June 5, 1967, launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It was over in 6 days. By then, Israel has crossed the Suez Canal and had taken Gaza (Dayan said, "Give me 12 hours and I can be in Cairo."

Israel offered the land back, for peace, secure borders and mutual recognition. The Arab countries said no and ratified that `No' in The Khartoum Declaration of 1968. There it was decided that violence would not cease until Israel and her inhabitants were destroyed.

Makdisi seems oblivious to the reality of realpolitick. Virtually every nation in the world came into existence by way of conflict of one kind or another. Further, Makdisi makes no mention of Palestinian and Arab world textbooks that make no recognition of Israel at all. Nor does he deal with the reality that the Palestinian curricula and media have made the physical destruction of Israel- and Jews- a reality. Makdisi also does not address the perverted religious component of that reality.

Makdisi's concern for the Palestinians is touching. That said, his concern for the equal number of Jews booted out of Arab nations at the time is non existent. He seems to conveniently forget that UN Resolution 194 was intended to address the rights of all refugees in the region. Saree Makdisi and UC Berkeley's Sandy Tolan (we wrote about Tolan here) share a similar ideological platform. They differ in a few significant ways, however.

Tolan is self serving- that is, Sandy Tolan has found a niche to exploit and does so with great solemnity and with an all knowing, didactic approach ("let me explain what is really happening"). That is ideal for the NPR pablum that allows Tolan a showcase for his shallowness. That he needs to break with reality is a necessary trompe L'oeil, much like that of the Three Card Monte huckster that needs to deceive to make a living. He knows he's deceiving everyone watching, but hey, it's a living and besides, he means well.

Saree Makdisi is another story. His kind of deceit is much more significant, because his deceit is predicated on defending and then promulgating an agenda of hate. Makdisi wants you to believe he 'speaks our language' and shares `our cultural values,' his ideas are meritorious and his interpretation of events in the Middle East are correct. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

He says say the Palestinians are `just like us,' only misunderstood, because of the Israel, AIPAC, and the conspiracy theory du jour. They have kids, go to work, come home and have dinner, and they want the exact same thing we do. Sounds reasonable, right. The Palestinians are just like the Israelis, right? They are the same, right?

Well, there are a few differences Saree Makdisi neglects to mention. He would have you believe that just because Palestinians agree that hamburgers, fried chicken and pizza are terrific, we are all the same. The same Palestinians who come home and have dinner and worry about report cards are also teaching their children to hate and sometimes, even to kill some people of different races or religions. They believe in the racist and bigoted rhetoric of their society and swell with pride as their children march to the latest Hamas marching ditty, `Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the Gas!` and they listen attentively as Palestinian media reinforce racism, bigotry and hate as `honorable' expressions of Palestinian `dignity.'

That is like saying the Ku Klux Klan is a fine and upstanding organization because they have bake sales and sponsor Little League baseball teams. Truth be told, there is very little, if any, difference between what is taught in Palestinian schools and what is KKK ideology. Makdisi and his ilk blur the the lines in the Middle East out of contempt for democracy and freedom and to further a racist agenda. His claim to be motivated by `justice' or `peace' is laughable. In supporting causes whose fundamental underpinnings are hate, intolerance and for the denial of participation by those who are different from themselves, he is exposed for who and what he is and who and what he believes in. Saree Makdisi is no more concerned about `justice' or `peace' than is the Ku Klux Klan- and he knows it.

From a political standpoint, Israel has every right to demand recognition and renunciation of violence from the Palestinians. For decades, the `occupation' of the West Bank and Gaza, brought on by the Arab world and their subsequent refusal to negotiate for peace, has been the most benign occupation in history.

That said, Israel does not need recognition from the Palestinians or even the Arab world. They are among the most backward, corrupt and dysfunctional regimes in history. Israel stands to gain absolutely nothing from diplomatic ties with the Arab world.

Outside the Arab world, Israel has relations with almost every single nation on earth. Even nations that do not have formal relations maintain a not so discreet `open door policy.' Israel and the rest of the civilized world maintain world class exchanges of scientific, educational, technological and cultural programs.

According to the UN Human Development Report, the Arab world is at the bottom of the education barrel. If Saree Makdisi really cared about the welfare of the Palestinians or the Arab world, he would be demanding that the Palestinians and Arab world forge ties with a nation that could offer them so much- and would, despite their mistreatment. That alone speaks volumes about the differences between western democracies and democratic values and the dysfunctional Arab world.

Instead, Makdisi and his ilk are only to happy to see the Palestinians rot. He's quite the Arab champion. He displays the characteristics of a malignant narcissist: "The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism." He may like burgers and pizza, but he is nothing like us at all.

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Australia: Senior High School students opting out of bullsh*t courses in English

ALMOST a quarter of Queensland's senior students are studying an easier communications subject rather than mainstream English, according to latest research. Some students admit they are dropping out of English because they regard the course as too hard, and too big a risk in terms of getting a pass to ensure a Senior Certificate. Of the 44,000 senior students studying English subjects last year, 10,500 students chose English Communication, an increase of 300 on the previous year. The course had 209 students when introduced in 1995.

Education Minister Rod Welford is not concerned about the numbers, arguing English Communication with its emphasis on practical assignments rather than poetry, suits students headed on vocational pathways. However respected principals and English academics believe an investigation is needed into the teaching of mainstream English at both state and independent schools. They fear the English curriculum, with its emphasis on "deconstructing" texts and poetry, is creating a generation of students "burnt out" and capable of only writing "gibberish" at university.

Dr Tim Wright, headmaster of Sydney Church of England Grammar School, believes English should no longer be looked upon as a compulsory subject after Year 10 and students could be given more input into the curriculum. "I think in education, the voices that we often least listen to are the voices of the kids," he said.

English Teachers Association of Queensland president Garry Collins said he could see the value in a system which was voluntary, but believes students also needed to study English through to Year 12. "The vast majority of students should do some English throughout school. It is an important part of managing teenagers to allow them to make their own informed choices," he said.

The English Teachers Association of Queensland has prepared a submission on the English curriculum, but Mr Collins declined to comment until it was reviewed by the Queensland Studies Authority. Mr Welford is confident on the outcome of the current review of the English curriculum after concerns students were learning "mumbo jumbo" due to the emphasis on critical literacy theory.

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22 June, 2008

German Homeschooling Parents Sentenced to Three Months in Prison

Sieg heil to Germany's modern-day Fascists!

The parents of a homeschooling family in the German state of Hesse have each been sentenced to three months in prison for the crime of homeschooling their seven children. According to a staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), the sentence was issued to Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek after the federal prosecutor, Herwig Muller, said last year that he was dissatisfied with the fines the couple had already paid for homeschooling their children.

As reported by WorldNetDaily (WND), staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association, Mike Donnelly, was appalled by the decision. "Words escape me, it's unconscionable, incredible, shocking." He then affirmed, "They will appeal of course." He concluded by summarizing the actions of the prosecutor: "You guys are rebelling against the state. We're going to punish you."

Homeschooling is illegal in Germany under a law dating back to the Hitler era. Homeschooling families in the country have faced increasing persecution in recent years, with police in several cases physically transporting children to school and even removing one teenager from her parent's care. A spokesperson for the German homeschool advocacy group, Netzwork-Bildungsfreiheit, commented on the mandatory public school attendance laws, which deem homeschooling families to be in breach of the state's criminal code. "It is embarrassing the German officials put parents into jail whose children are well educated and where the family is in good order," wrote Joerg Grosseleumern. "We personally know the Dudeks as such a family."

WND also reported that Judge Peter Hobbel, who originally imposed the fines on the parents, criticized the school system for denying the requests of the parents to have their "private school" recognized.

In a previous WND article, it was noted that the Dudek's wrote a letter to the HSLDA regarding a new law that gives German authorities the right of "withdrawal of parental custody as one of the methods for punishing 'uncooperative' parents." The law is essentially enacted when "child abuse" is suspected. Conveniently, German courts have consistently deemed homeschooling a form of child abuse. "The new law is seen as a logical step in carving up family rights after a federal court had decided that homeschooling was an abuse of custody," read the letter signed by Juergen Dudek.

In a blog, Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, attempted to defend these new developments, saying the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion." Arno Meissner, the chief of the government's local education department, has also promulgated the government's intolerance of homeschooling families, confirming they will continually rely upon the mandatory school attendance law.

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Selective schools condemn thousands to failure, says British school boss

The fact that their phasing out has coincided with fewer working class kids going to university must not be mentioned, of course. Grammar schools have long been Britain's best ladder out of poverty for bright pupils but the socialists hate them

Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, launched his most brutal attack yet on grammar schools, accusing them of condemning thousands of pupils to educational failure. He said the existence of the 11-plus in some areas created a damaging two-tier system in which many children fell behind. In a speech to headteachers, Mr Balls insisted those who missed out on grammar school places were made to feel like they had "already failed" at the age of 11. The comments were made as he unveiled a multi-million pound package to improve standards at struggling secondary moderns - non-selective schools in grammar school areas

The National Grammar Schools Association accused Mr Balls of a "secret plan" to abolish grammars. It also came as Labour sought to reopen Conservatives splits over selective education. Michael Gove, the Tory shadow children's secretary, visited a grammar school in Trafford - a year after the party was engulfed in a damaging row over its decision not to open any more selective schools. Mr Gove insisted grammars should be "absolutely defended" where they already existed and that other secondaries could learn from top-performing academic schools. But he insisted it did not amount to a U-turn, accusing the Government of using education policy "not as a means of improving children's futures but scoring political points".

It marks the latest twist in a long-running row over the future of England's few remaining selective schools. Academic selection was abolished in the 1970s with the introduction of comprehensive education in most counties. But 170 secondary moderns and 164 grammars still exist in areas such as Kent, Lincolnshire, Birmingham and Buckinghamshire which retained the 11-plus.

Addressing a conference in Birmingham, Mr Balls said: "Let me make it clear that I don't like selection. I accept though that selection is a local decision for parents and local authorities. "But I do not accept that children in secondary moderns should be left to fall behind. Some secondary moderns are showing that it is possible to achieve really excellent results, but the fact is that selection does make it more difficult for these schools. "They still have a much more deprived intake than their neighbouring grammar schools - over six times more in fact. "And I've heard first-hand how some of the young people starting in these schools feel on day one that they have already failed."

Under a new "secondary modern strategy" being published next month, up to 1m pounds will go to the worst-performing schools over three years and new partnerships will be made with outstanding schools nearby. Mr Balls also hinted that headteachers could receive extra pay to work in secondary moderns.

Last year, the Conservatives faced a revolt by backbenchers after severing the party's long-standing ties with the 11-plus. Graham Brady, then shadow Europe minister, quit over the move. Mr Gove visited a series of comprehensives and grammars in Mr Brady's Altrincham and Sale West constituency. He said: "More broadly, the Conservative party has always said that where grammar schools exist and where they command the support of the local community, then they should be absolutely defended because we believe in not just excellence in education but also respecting local wishes. "Our policy has not changed. We are clear that there will be no return to the 11-plus nationally but we are also clear that, where good schools exist, it would be foolish not to learn from their success and see how we can apply those more widely across the state system."

Mr Brady said: "I think it ought to be possible to have elements of selection but that is a political discussion which can be had. "Michael's visit has very clearly demonstrated that there is no educational argument against selective areas and there is no social argument that we are achieving opportunities for all children in grammar schools and high schools."

But Jim Knight, the Government's schools minister, sought to exploit what he described as Tory splits over selective schools. Last year, Dominic Grieve, a Buckinghamshire MP and new shadow home secretary, said more grammars should be opened in the county if they were needed. "We do not know where David Cameron or Michael Gove really stand or what Conservative Party policy is today," said Mr Knight. "David Cameron has relied on shallow salesmanship to dodge the tough questions for over a year but it's now time for the Tories to come clean."

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California: Stupid Muslim nerd who hacked his school grades faces 38 years in jail

It could be a long time before Omar Khan goes to college: as long as 38 years, according to Orange County prosecutors, who have arrested and charged the 18-year-old student with breaking into his prestigious high school and hacking into computers to change his test grades from Fs to As. If convicted on all 69 counts, including altering and stealing public records, computer fraud, burglary, identity theft, receiving stolen property and conspiracy, Mr Khan could spend almost four decades in prison. He is currently being held on $50,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court today.

Mr Khan's defence lawyer, Carol Lavacol, described her client as "a really nice kid" and said: "There's a lot more going on than meets the eye." Prosecutors claim that between January and May, Mr Khan, who lives in Coto de Caza, one of Orange County's oldest and most expensive gated communities, repeatedly broke into Tesoro High School, which was made famous by the reality TV series Real Housewives of Orange County.

In an alleged plot that resembles the script to the 1986 high school comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off, prosecutors claim that he then used teachers' passwords to hack into computers and change his test scores. In at least one test, an English exam, Mr Khan had been given an F grade because he was caught cheating.

Prosecutors claim that the teenager, who is alleged to have broken into the school late at night with a stolen master key, also changed the grades of 12 other students, and that he installed spyware on school hard drives that allowed him to access the computers from remote locations.

Tesoro High has 2,800 pupils and often appears in Newsweek magazine's annual list of best high schools.

Mr Khan's plan, the prosecution argues, was to get a place at one of the colleges within the University of California system. After his application was rejected, he requested copies of his student records, known as "transcripts" in the US educational system, so he could appeal. But when teachers looked at his files and noticed all the A grades that had magically appeared next to all the courses he had taken they realised something was wrong.

"School administrators alerted law enforcement after noticing a discrepancy in Mr Khan's grades," the Orange County District Attorney's office said. "Subsequent investigation revealed that Mr Khan was in possession of original tests, test questions and answers, and copies of his altered grades. Khan is accused of stealing master copies of tests, some of which were e-mailed to dozens of students."

The case has once again raised the question of whether technology, in particular mobile phones that can access the internet, has resulted in an epidemic of cheating in the high-school system. The Orange County Register, a local newspaper, asked its readers yesterday to respond to a poll asking if "technology is giving [students] an advantage", or whether it is just "the same stuff using new tools".

Another student, Tanvir Singh, also 18, is accused of conspiring with Mr Khan and faces up to three years in prison. The pair allegedly exchanged text messages last month while organising a break-in.

Jim Amormino, of the local sheriff's department, said that he was astonished by the sophistication of the scheme, especially given the age of the defendants. "I think they [now] wish they would have put their talents into studying," he said.

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21 June, 2008

Islamic School Director Arrested

Al-Shabnan Charged With Failure To Report Child Abuse

The director of a Saudi government-funded Islamic school has been arrested and charged with failing to report a child abuse allegation, adding to scrutiny of the northern Virginia academy as protesters came out Tuesday to call for a federal investigation of its teachings.

Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan, director of the Islamic Saudi Academy, was also charged with obstruction of justice, according to a police report about the June 9 arrest. The misdemeanor counts come at a time when the private school is under heavy criticism from a federal commission and others over textbooks that allegedly teach violence and hate. More than a dozen protesters lined up outside the school Tuesday, waving signs that read "Saudi hate is not an American family value" and "Islamic Shariah teaches violence and hate."

The protesters, including the conservative Traditional Values Coalition, want the Justice and State departments to investigate the school. The State Department last year obtained copies of the school's textbooks but has so far refused to make them public. Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, said the arrest of al-Shabnan is just further evidence of problems at the school. "The academy is a virtual one-stop shopping center for law enforcement," she said, citing the case of a former school valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was convicted of joining al-Qaida after leaving the school and plotting to assassinate President Bush.

Al-Shabnan's arrest came after police alleged he covered up an incident in which a 5-year-old girl attending the school reported that she was being sexually abused by her father. According to court papers, Al-Shabnan, 52, of McLean, told police that he didn't believe the girl, and advised the girl's parents to put her into counseling. But state law requires school authorities to report alleged child abuse within 72 hours of learning of the allegation. Al-Shabnan is free pending trial. Police said in court papers that Al-Shabnan ordered a written report about the girl's complaint, which had been prepared by other school officials, to be deleted from a school computer.

Al-Shabnan has not returned repeated phone calls and e-mails from The Associated Press seeking comment over the last week. Last week, a federal commission issued a report detailing numerous troubling passages from school textbooks. A 12th-grade text on Quranic interpretation teaches students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to the investigation by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a panel created by Congress that monitors religious freedom rights around the world.

Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists."

The school issued a statement saying the textbooks had been mistranslated and misinterpreted and that some of the textbooks studied by the commission are no longer in use. But the statement offered no detailed explanation of the specific passages cited by the commission, and school officials have not returned calls seeking comment.

Generally, the school has said in the past that some of the textbooks it uses come from Saudi Arabia and contain harsh language inappropriate for use in the United States. The school has said it revises the textbooks as needed. Indeed, the commission found evidence that individual passages were removed from individual textbooks, sometimes covered up with correction fluid.

But John Cosgrove of Springfield, Va., one of the protesters outside the school, said the revisions are even more troubling given the passages cited in the commission's report that were not deleted. "It stands to reason that the material they left in is material they think is acceptable," Cosgrove said.

The commission and other critics of the school say the State Department ought to take a more assertive role in regulating the school because it functions as an arm of the Saudi embassy. Also, the school's lease with Fairfax County specifically gives the State Department the right to intervene if it has concerns about the academy.

Protesters also criticized the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for voting unanimously last month to extend the school's lease. The lease was extended after county officials conducted their own review of the textbooks and said they didn't find any serious problems.

The board's chairman -- Gerry Connolly, who is the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia's 11th District -- offered a strong defense of the school and accused the school's critics of slander during the meeting in which the lease was approved. Connolly did not return calls seeking comment.

Source




Choice for the Children

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program gives disadvantaged children a chance at a private education.

If Marion Barry can change his mind on school vouchers, there's hope that others can as well. For more than a quarter century, the former D.C. mayor and current City Council member has been an outspoken opponent of school vouchers. But he recently shocked the District by writing in support of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program in an article for the Washington Post

What changed his mind? Talking to parents and families who know that their child's scholarship is a lifeline that has rescued them from low-performing schools."Moms, dads, aunts, uncles, and other guardians in my community tell me that these programs are making a difference in their children's lives and giving them hope they have never had," Barry wrote.

He specifically pointed to one mother, Wanda Gaddis, who told him: "The schools in D.C. were not educating my child. At first I did not have a choice, but I am so thankful that I and so many other parents did get choice with the Opportunity Scholarship Program. I can't begin to tell you how much my child's education has improved since starting with this program."

I understand how Ms. Gaddis feels. In the 1990s, I was in her position. My son was struggling in D.C. public schools. Back then, we had no choice but to send him to the local public school. One day, a caring neighbor gave me a private school scholarship for William. He enrolled in Archbishop Carroll High School, where he would go on in thrive in school. Instead of becoming another student lost in the D.C. public school system, my son earned his diploma and went on to join the Marines, where he has served in Iraq. Unfortunately, not all families are so fortunate.

In 2003, when President Bush proposed bringing a school voucher program to Washington, D.C., many DC parents walked the halls of Congress to let lawmakers know that they were desperate to find better schools for their children. Despite strong opposition from teachers unions and other interest groups, some prominent Democrats, like former Mayor Tony Williams, former DC Council Member Kevin Chavous, and Senator Joe Lieberman, stood up in favor of the voucher program. In the end, Congress enacted the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program.

Today, that program is helping 1,900 disadvantaged children to attend private schools, funded by these scholarships. The program is changing lives. Participating children are thriving, gaining confidence in the classroom, and becoming eager to learn.

Unfortunately, this success hasn't changed everyone's mind. And with Congress debating whether to continue this program, some lawmakers who reflexively oppose vouchers are working to end the program and send these 1,900 children back to low-performing public schools.

But I think if people had the opportunity to actually hear from parents themselves, they'd put their ideological differences aside and understand why we need to give families the power to choose their children's schools. Our new website offers just that opportunity, giving parents and students participating in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program a chance to make their story heard.

Listening to these parents and students - as Joe Kelly, father of four, explains how the voucher program has changed his family for the better, or students Carlos and Calvin Battle explain how happy they are in their new private schools - demonstrates how school choice offers these children an enriching academic experience. To remove these 1,900 children from their private schools would benefit no one, and would indeed hurt many.

Source




Rebellion against empty-headed British "science" curriculum

A leading grammar school has become the first state school to drop GCSEs in favour of a tougher exam based on the old O-level. Pupils at Bexley Grammar School in south-east London are to start studying for the International GCSE in science from this September.

More than 250 independent schools have already started teaching the new qualification because they believe it is more challenging. But state schools had previously held off, fearing the move would lose them funding because the International GCSE is not recognised by the Government's exam authority.

Bexley Grammar, where every pupil got at least five A* to C passes at GCSE level last year, says it will not lose money because its pupils will still be studying normal GCSEs in other subjects and schools are funded per child not per exam. It is dropping science GCSE following changes to the curriculum which mean pupils debate the ethics of science at the expense of traditional experiments. The International GCSE is seen as more rigorous as it relies less on coursework and retains more difficult material.

Rod Mackinnon, the school's headteacher, said: "We have concerns about the challenge of the new curriculum. "It would be the same with the top sets in comprehensive schools; we do not think it stretches our pupils enough. "We were clear it just wasn't going to stimulate our pupils enough." The change will affect Bexley Grammar's standing in league tables, as a new measure is to be introduced next year which will show how many pupils in each school get top marks at science GCSE.

But Mr Mackinnon said he was not worried if the school slipped in league tables if it meant his pupils were learning more about science. He said: "We will register a big fat zero there. However, I am happy to argue why we've done it. It is in the pupils' interests."

The Department of Children, Schools and Families has confirmed that Bexley Grammar will not lose any funding for ditching science GCSE. However it is believed other state schools may be put off from following its lead because of the effect on their standing in league tables. It comes just days after the think tank Civitas warned that pupils who do not attend independent schools will be "left behind" as they have less opportunity to study the tougher International GCSE.

Source





20 June, 2008

Declining university standards in Britain

Academic standards are in decline in many British universities. Students who would once have been failed their degrees pass, and students who would once have been awarded respectable lower seconds are now awarded upper seconds and even firsts. Students - British as well as those from overseas - commence their studies with levels of English so poor that universities run remedial English courses to ensure at least basic literacy. Cheating is rampant, encouraged partly by lenient penalties.

How do I know all this? Part of the evidence is statistical. Over the past decade the number of firsts has more than doubled, while the undergraduate population has increased by less than a half. The standard leaving qualification for most students is now an upper second - the lower second is an endangered species and the third on the verge of extinction.

A recent survey by the Higher Education Academy suggested that, of 9,000 or so cases of plagiarism recorded last year, only 143 resulted in expulsion. The survey pointed to an alarming variation in penalties. In many mainly post-1992 "new" universities, lecturers must take national, ethnic and even social background into account when punishing cheaters.

But statistical evidence is no more than a signpost. In recent years I have become alarmed and depressed at the number of inquiries I receive from usually young scholars just embarking on their careers and coming under intolerable managerial pressure to pass students who should fail and to "massage" students into higher qualifications.

It is not only probationer lecturers who are victims. Last year Paul Buckland, Professor of Environmental Archaeology at Bournemouth University, resigned in protest at the decision of university authorities that 13 students whom he - and a formal examinations board - judged to have failed a course should be passed. In so doing, the authorities appear to have endorsed the view of a senior official - an official, mind you, not an academic - that students should have been able to pass merely on the basis of lecture notes, without doing the required reading. Universities UK should have issued a formal public rebuke. Its silence on this and similar cases is a scandal. Faced with criticism that academic standards are being dumbed down, British vice-chancellors customarily point to the external examiner system as a guarantee that it cannot happen.

It can and does. In the typically modularised degree system run by the now typical university, external examiners - academic specialists from other institutions - no longer oversee the entire assessment process, and are not permitted to review individual grades. Their job, at most, is simply to ensure as best they can that correct procedures are applied. To quote from an e-mail I received yesterday from an external examiner, "the externals are not permitted to alter marks or comment on individual scripts in any way. Their function is to comment merely on adherence to procedures. I complained about this repeatedly, to no avail."

How has higher education got itself into this mess? An insidious managerial culture obsessed with league tables and newspaper rankings is partly to blame. The more firsts and upper seconds a university awards, the higher its ranking is likely to be. So each university looks closely at the grading criteria used by its near rivals in the league tables, and if they are using more lenient schemes, the argument is put about that "peer" institutions must do the same. The upholding of academic standards is replaced by a grotesque "bidding" game, in which standards are sacrificed on the altar of public image, as reflected in the rankings.

This is only part of the problem. League tables are here to stay. A robust university management, however jealous for its own reputation, will never let them dictate the terms upon which its guards its academic standards. Part of the problem stems from gross underfunding. Non-EU students attract full fees, and have become a lucrative source of cash. Failing or expelling a non-EU student can have serious implications. Was this, I wonder, why at one university last year, a lecturer was criticised for neglecting to give "token credits" to failures? In the modern, mass higher education system, there must be prizes for all, because the student is the customer and the customer must have something for his money.

What can be done about these evils? British universities are self-regulating, and I would not want it any other way. But with self-regulation comes responsibility. The representative bodies, and the Quality Assurance Agency to which all their members subscribe, should summon the courage to name and shame miscreant institutions, and perhaps even to suspend them.

Ultimately, the buck stops in the vice-chancellor's office and with the governing body that is legally responsible for the general character of the education at the university. Quality in higher education cannot be reduced to a simplistic rankings list, however appealing rankings may be to newspapers and their readers, not to mention university governors whose attention span (it seems) cannot extend beyond a set of numerical performance indicators.

When a professor says that a student should fail, the wise vice-chancellor will support that decision, and the governors will publicly congratulate both for putting first standards rather than student retention and "customer satisfaction".

Source




A moronic government school system in Canada

All involved should be seriously disciplined for their foolish and destructive behaviour -- but they won't be. That they have greatly harmed a mother and her disabled child is no worry to them -- all in the name of "protecting" the child, of course

The mother of an autistic girl says the public school board was "completely unprofessional" to formulate a theory that her daughter was being sexually abused based on a psychic's perception. Barrie [Ontario] resident Colleen Leduc wants an apology from the Simcoe County District School Board, which called in the Children's Aid Society (CAS) to investigate. According to the board, the case is still under investigation, although Leduc says it was closed.

Leduc immediately pulled her 11-year-old daughter, Victoria Nolet, out of Terry Fox Elementary School in north-end Barrie. "I have trust issues now," Leduc said. "What are they going to concoct next week?"

Dr. Lindy Zaretsky, a school board superintendent whose portfolio includes special education, said the school was just following protocol, adding the board is bound by the same legislation (Child and Family Services Act) as the CAS when it comes to suspected neglect or sexual abuse. "It is clear in all cases that this (information) must be reported," Zaretsky said.

The local CAS won't comment on specific investigations, but said the legislation stipulates that all cases of suspected abuse be reported "if there are reasonable grounds." "The schools are our eyes and ears in the community," said Mary Ballantyne, executive director of the Simcoe County chapter. "They are with children more than anyone else in the community and are the first to spot a child who may be in need of our protection." About 80% of the CAS's calls reporting abuse and neglect come from schools, she added.

But Leduc said information gleaned from a psychic shouldn't be the impetus for the board to launch a CAS investigation. "First of all, what were they doing taking a psychic's word? Then they correlated that with (Victoria's) behaviour to design a theory," Leduc said.

The board stands by its decision, despite where the initial information came from. "It has not been board practice to use psychic readings," Zaretsky said.

On May 30, Leduc picked Victoria up from school, where she's enrolled in an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) class with several boys around the same age. When Leduc returned home, there was an urgent call asking her to return to the Livingstone Street East school. Frightened, Leduc rushed back to the school. She and Victoria entered a room where they were met by the principal, the vice-principal and the teacher.

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter. School principal Brian Tremain -- who referred phone calls seeking comment to the board -- advised Leduc that the CAS had been contacted. "That's when I got sick to my stomach," she said. "I was shocked the whole meeting."

Source. More detail here and here




Dan Rather's education distortions

Some might have thought that the 2004 election scandal would have ruined the career of Dan Rather. Instead, he was given his own show at HDNet.

Now, four years later, Rather's show, Dan Rather Reports, offers viewers a glimpse into what the former CBS news anchor considers good reporting: not citing sources, overlooking conflicts of interest, and sensationalizing material to promote marxist class-warfare perspectives. All this is touted as news, even when Rather relies solely on anecdotes and ignores publicly-available statistics.

"And college admissions also strike at some of the most controversial issues facing the country-questions of race, wealth, privilege, and economic class," said Rather in a recent episode of his show, Stress Test. "Fact, fiction, or hard to tell that the current system clearly favors wealthier students?," he asks his star guest, Lloyd Thacker. Thacker answered yes.

Lloyd Thacker is the President of the Education Conservancy, a non-profit which opposes the growing commercialization of higher education. Aware of Thacker's activist agenda, Rather describes him as an activist who "leads a movement to change the status quo," starting with the ranking system.

Like Thacker, Rather is intent on demonstrating that the system of higher education is broken and governed by elitist, wealthy interests. Rather claims that these views are widely shared among the educational community. "The process of applying to college has become so tortured and demanding that many people-students, teachers, and experts-say the system is broken," he asserts.

But Rather's "analysis" amounts to little more than the repackaging of quotes and the careful casting of Thacker's supporters as independent sources. The mother he interviews is reacting to one of Thacker's speeches. Rather doesn't deign to show the question she's actually answering, however.

Other sources promoted by Rather have given large sums of money to Thacker's organization. Three of the four college presidents invited to Rather's roundtable discussion preside over schools which donated between $2,500 and $5,000 dollars to the Education Conservancy. Two of these four colleges, Earlham College and Kenyon College, have staff on the Education Conservancy's advisory board.

Did Rather know this beforehand? "Thacker is supported by contributions from over a dozen universities and foundations and one recent success was this May 2007 letter labeling the current ranking system misleading...," he said during the show. Clearly, Rather had some prior knowledge of Thacker's financial backing.

Ironically, the Educational Conservancy-which strongly opposes the rankings system-has received high-profile donations connected to 5 of the top 11 schools (U.S. News and World Report ranking) including:

Yale University ($5,000+) Harvard University Dartmouth College Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Chicago

Besides promoting Thacker's rhetoric, Rather seems intent on proving that our educational system perpetuates pervasive class and racial inequities. To do this, he takes the viewers first to upscale Great Neck South High School (Long Island) and then to the impoverished Central High (Providence, Rhode Island). According to Rather, Great Neck sends 99% of its seniors on to college. "Wealthy students are not what you'll find in Central High School...Here only about 20% of seniors will attend a four-year college, well below the national average," says Rather.

This is an unfair comparison. Rather fails to mention that Great Neck is listed by U.S. News and World Report as one of the 50 best high schools in the nation. Central High, on the other hand, is failing in virtually every measure.

According to the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), Central High has

9% Math Proficiency 21% English Proficiency SAT scores 127 to 138 points lower than the state average.

According to a National Center on Public Education and Prevention survey, 86% of Central High students receive free, federally-funded school lunches. Nearly half (48%) of student respondents reported speaking Spanish, not English, as their primary language at home.

But poverty is not Central High's problem. According to RIDE, students at Central High living above the poverty level do worse in school. "Non-poverty" students have 4% Math and 18% English proficiency, a 4%-7% gap, RIDE reports.

While Great Neck still has a significant achievement gap, its "disadvantaged students" achieve 82% proficiency, reports the U.S. News and World Report. Great Neck South High is, quite simply, a better school.

Facts like these do not seem to persuade Dan Rather, who focuses more on anecdotes and rhetorical arguments than actual data. In some cases, Rather's comments are just plain wrong. He said, for example,

"But this [financial aid] money isn't just earmarked for students from low-income families. They have to compete for it with students from middle and upper-income families. That's because an education at a private, four-year college can cost up to $50,000 a year...It's numbers like these that make students at Central High think college is an impossibility."

College is out of reach for many Central High students because only 9% of them achieve math proficiency and they have terrible SAT scores, not because college costs too much.

Rather has apparently never heard of the "expected family contribution" or Federal Pell Grants-or the Federal Application for Student Aid, for that matter. Each heavily favors low-income families. Pell Grants are exclusively for low-income families.

Rather says that Central High students don't know they can receive financial aid and that "they just think college is not for them." To exemplify the problems facing first-generation college applicants, Hannah Lewis, a College Advising Corp member, tells Rather she had helped students who didn't know that the SATs were necessary "to get started with the application process."

RIDE reports that just below half (46%) of Central High seniors take the SAT, another statistic Rather does not mention.

Getting into a high-ranked school can often cost low-income students very little, especially at high ranking ones. Take Princeton and Harvard-the nation's two highest-ranked schools-for example. Harvard prides itself on its need-blind applications. "Harvard is one of the few remaining colleges in the country to maintain a true need-blind admissions policy. Need-blind admissions means that freshmen are accepted on the basis of their scholastic achievements and other talents, not their ability to pay tuition," states its website.

The College Board estimates the expected family contribution (EFC) for a family of four earning $20,000 as, well, nothing. Many colleges calculate their financial aid based on the EFC.

The Princeton financial aid estimator places the expected family contribution, including student earnings, at about $2,000 a year for a family earning $20,000. This remains the same even at a more comfortable salary, such as $40,000. Because Princeton gives all its financial aid as grants, not loans, the low-income student could likely graduate debt free. Can many middle class students say the same?

Source





19 June, 2008

LA Times lies to readers -- with the help of an omission

Below this is a glowing article by Todd Gitlin on the 1960's student rebellion -- saying nothing of its nihilism and destructiveness

Todd Gitlin is what the university has become: A "well educated" man, with lots of credentials. He writes well and knows about history. What is left out is his prejudices: In 1963-64 he was the president of the Tom Hayden founded Students for a Democratic Society. The infamous SDS.

This is the group that promoted bomb-throwing radicals, supporting closing of schools and institutions. It broke the law and laughed at society. It opposed free speech, and demanded to control society through terror instead of the ballot box.

So the LA Times does not mention that the author is one of those promoting the fights and terror of 1968. It is as if he is just a historian. Instead he was a participant, closing the schools that he now speaks at.

Why did the LA Times refuse to give his background to the readers? Could it be that readers would see this as a propaganda piece if they knew the truth? How can we trust anything else the Times publishes? I seldom do.

Source

From 1968 to eternity

From the U.S., to Mexico, to Europe, revolutionaries and reformers forged our world

By Todd Gitlin

Rare are the times when the world seems to rise up in unison, energized, electrified, in outrage and solidarity, as millions of people put aside their everyday routines to obstruct business as usual, to yell and argue about a new way of life, to break rules, to conjure new ones -- to barge into history.

Only three modern periods saw such a spirit of revolt roll through much of the immense and variegated world. Between 1776 and 1789, the United States and France rose up against superpower monarchies and their "long trains of abuses," tore down existing states and established republics of very different sorts, but united on the principle that the representatives of the people deserved to rule. In 1848, Europe was swept with upheaval as liberal nationalists and democrats rebelled against the Habsburg, French, Prussian and other autocracies, and the movement spread as far as Brazil.

And then 1968, when, in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mexico, the young denounced the institutions of their elders, declared that some sort of a different world would be vastly better, tried to jam the old ways and press a huge restart button.

Start with the patterns. The singular noun "it" has its uses: It was freedom's revolt against a fossilized culture that stifled the young, the female, the gay, the rambunctious or the just plain different. It was an uneasy amalgam of radicals who wanted a more intense, communal, argumentative way of life and reformers who wanted a more equitable, even meritocratic, order. It tended to relish sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. It cherished the virtue of youth against the fossilized ideologies of the parental generation -- not least its obsolete attachments to war and the heavy-handed state. And in the end, its affirmations of a freer way of life prevailed, for the most part, even as its explicitly political demands were mainly rebuffed.

Danny Cohn-Bendit -- "Danny the Red," once the young German leader of the French revolt in May 1968 (in those days, a German Jewish student could lead a French revolt) and now a member of the European Parliament -- recently pointed out that before the cultural watershed of 1968, a man such as Nicolas Sarkozy, with a Hungarian immigrant for a father and a Greek Jewish rabbi for a great-great-grandfather, with two marriages (and a subsequent third), could scarcely have been elected president of France. As a conservative! In a race against a woman!

It seemed to many observers 40 years ago that the rebels everywhere were virtually fused in their ideals -- and, according to naysayers, in their excess. It was as if some unheard-of conspiracy were at work. As if.

And yet, the upheavals were linked. The world was thick with reciprocal influences. Television was a bully amplification system; so was the rebels' own underground press: inspiring rebels here with images of rebellion there. But the closer you look, the more the apparently unified picture dissolves. The animating spirit played very differently depending on the local landscape and what it was up against.

The American movement marched against the war in Vietnam; "black liberation" reached a boil. The German movement demonstrated against elders who refused to come to grips with their Nazi past; the Czechs against the Soviet overthrow of reform communists; Polish students in behalf of freedom of speech, whereupon an anti-Semitic communist ruling class cracked down. In France, radical students hurled themselves against a stodgy Gaullist state and old-fashioned education; in Italy too the rebels demanded government and university reforms (and sometimes a Maoist revolution); in both nations, students were joined by workers striking not only against a conservative establishment but a stodgy Communist Party. In Mexico, the movement's target was an encrusted one-party state.

Such moments of liberation, madness and recoil have to be rare, because human beings are not infinitely adaptable, even for freedom's sake or the sake of justice, and the collective nervous system can only take so much. If upheaval took place everywhere for weeks and months on end, the everyday world would grind to a halt.

As we've seen during the 2008 presidential campaign, it takes generations to work through cultural changes -- from a pre-'68 world where, in supposedly modern post-Enlightenment nations, interracial marriage and homosexuality were illegal, and women could not open bank accounts without their husbands' permission, to a world in which the mayors of Paris, Berlin and Portland, Ore., are publicly gay, and an African American narrowly defeats a woman for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

For grizzled veterans, international conferences abound on the "legacies" of 1968. So do nostalgia, wonderment, incomprehension and all sorts of criticism of those times, much of it warranted, much of it beside the point. Some celebrants still brandish abstracted slogans not so different from the ones they shouted at the time. Some embittered conservatives still smolder with unrelieved resentment, though even they mainly do not dare propose to repeal the human rights that were secured amid the 1960s upheavals.

"Forget '68, because we live in a different world," said Danny Cohn-Bendit recently. His point was not that we have passed the millennium. His point was that a prime reason why we live in a different world is that '68 happened.

The changes, on balance, were more good than bad. The history, and the wounds, are still raw because the conflicts that exploded in 1968 and the years immediately preceding and following went to the core of modern identity. Ideas about how to live in the world collided -- sometimes in the same hearts and minds -- and sometimes they mixed together, and the terms changed, but the forces unleashed four decades ago are still rumbling down through the decades.

Source




British teachers bad at mathematics

Most just barely scraped through middle-school math

Teachers would be paid 1,000 pounds to attend week-long summer schools in maths under proposals to improve teaching of the subject in England's 17,000 primary schools. The recommendation is outlined today in a major review of maths teaching in primary schools by Sir Peter Williams, a distinguished academic and businessman who chairs the Government's Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education. Sir Peter's report, seen by The Times, exposes how poorly equipped primary schools are to teach maths, noting that the highest qualification in the subject held by most primary teachers is grade C GCSE, often gained a decade or more before they embarked on teacher-training.

Only 227 of the 10,000 trainee primary teachers recruited on to PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) courses, or 2.3 per cent, have previously studied maths, science, technology or engineering to degree level.

The review, commissioned personally by Gordon Brown amid concerns that almost a quarter of 11-year-olds are failing to meet the expected standards in numeracy, calls for every primary school to appoint a maths specialist. These would be required to develop a deep "mathematical subject and pedagogical knowledge" to masters degree level so they could coach colleagues in the subject. "We have good reason to believe that the last maths training for the average primary teacher is their GCSE maths. That does not constitute a basis for pedagogical understanding," Sir Peter said.

The review rejects the idea of raising the minimum entry requirement for a teaching degree from grade C GCSE to either A level or AS level maths. Even raising it to a grade B GCSE would prevent large numbers of candidates from applying. Instead the review says that a nominated maths specialist from each primary school should be required to attend a week-long summer school at a university or other training institution for three consecutive years. They would be paid œ1,000 each time.

During their three summer school courses, teachers would build up credits towards a masters level qualification, which they could complete after two further years of part-time study. Maths specialists attaining a masters level qualification qualify for a one-off payment of 2,500 pounds.

Sir Peter is also proposing that an incentive payment of 5,000 pounds be made to trainee teachers who undertake a maths-focused PGCE course, with half the money paid up front and the remainder when the teacher achieves maths specialist status. Similar payments already exist for those training to teach maths at secondary school. Sir Peter estimates that the programme will cost less than 20 million a year. "It should be seen as an investment in the nation's future, not as a cost," he said.

Training for childminders and nursery workers should include appropriate mathematical content so that children could start learning their numbers through play from an early age. The review also says that schools should actively engage parents in maths workshops or with maths home-work that the whole family can join in. It was essential, if children were to grow up feeling confident about their maths abilities, that schools and parents combat the pervasive "can't do" attitude to maths, that appeared to be unique to Britain, Sir Peter said.

The review concludes that the current primary curriculum should remain, although it recommends a greater emphasis on the use of maths in everyday life. Mark Siswick, joint head teacher of Chesterton Primary School in Battersea, South London, which already has a maths specialist teacher, said: "Her role is to skill up other teachers. Once you do that, if teachers are strong, confident and enthusiastic, they will transmit that to the children."

Source




Red tape choking Australian childcare industry

And it all adds to the costs that parents pay

New government reporting requirements for childcare centres are eroding the amount of attention that can be given to the children, workers in the industry say. And staff numbers are dwindling as workers leave jobs where every move is monitored, judged and reported.

Registered childcare centres now have to independently report on 708 indicators which Federal Government inspectors use when conducting compulsory inspections every two years, Childcare Queensland president (Glynn Bridge said. If a childcare centre fails to get a tick for any of the 708 boxes under the Government's Quality Improvement and Accreditation system, it could lose accreditation. "The red tape is killing us," Ms Bridge said. Fear of losing accreditation has prompted some centres to introduce monthly checklists, which include directors reporting on more than 40 workplace practices, ranging from nappy-changing and hand-washing to childcare philosophy.

The industry fears more regulations are looming under a Rudd Government proposal to introduce a grading system for childcare centres. Centre owners say they are not opposed to inspections or health and safety requirements for their businesses, but fear losing experienced staff as a result of "unreasonable processes".

Kerrie Lada, the director of Hardy's Road childcare centre at Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast, is among those trying to juggle childcare and government paperwork. She said that would prefer to "get down on the ground" with children rather than sit in the office with piles of paperwork. "My job as director has changed over 20 years," Ms Lada said. "I'm basically doing paperwork rather than supporting staff and children and families. It's basically ticking boxes to say we have done it".

Another childcare centre director contacted by The Sunday Mail , who asked not to be named, said she had recently lost a senior employee and others had complained of stress because they feared letting down colleagues and the centre if they failed to get a "tick" on any of the criteria. "The stress levels are definitely high. What's confusing is the criteria changes every time. And you feel like you're being judged and watched," she said.

More than 900,000 children from about 700,000 families Australia-wide use childcare each year. About 10 per cent of centres in Australia failed to receive accreditation last year.

Ms Bridge said she had recently briefed Queensland Minister for Communities Lindy Nelson-Carr on industry issues and had requested a meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to discuss the complex regulation of centres.

The article above is by Paul Weston and appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on June 15, 2008.





18 June, 2008

Amazing Teacher Facts

Those four-year teacher qualifications are a crock. It's subject knowledge and motivation that counts

This month 3,700 recent college grads will begin Teach for America's five-week boot camp, before heading off for two-year stints at the nation's worst public schools. These young men and women were chosen from almost 25,000 applicants, hailing from our most selective colleges. Eleven per cent of Yale's senior class, 9% of Harvard's and 10% of Georgetown's applied for a job whose salary ranges from $25,000 (in rural South Dakota) to $44,000 (in New York City).

Hang on a second. Unions keep saying the best people won't go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make. Not only are Teach for America salaries significantly lower than what J.P. Morgan might offer, but these individuals go to some very rough classrooms. What's going on?

It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money - the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of "education" courses to be certified.

The American Federation of Teachers commonly derides Teach for America as a "band-aid." One of its arguments is that the program only lasts two years, barely enough time, they say, to get a handle on managing a classroom. However, it turns out that two-thirds of its grads stay in the education field, sometimes as teachers, but also as principals or policy makers.

More importantly, it doesn't matter that they are only in the classroom a short time, at least according to a recent Urban Institute study. Here's the gist: "On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers' effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience."

Jane Hannaway, one of the study's co-authors, says Teach for America participants may be more motivated than their traditional teacher peers. Second, they may receive better support during their experience. But, above all, Teach for America volunteers tend to have much better academic qualifications. They come from more competitive schools and they know more about the subjects they teach. Ms. Hannaway notes, "Students are better off being exposed to teachers with a high level of skill."

The strong performance in math and science seems to confirm that the more specialized the knowledge, the more important it is that teachers be well versed in it. (Imagine that.) No amount of time in front of a classroom will make you understand advanced algebra better.

Teach for America was pleased, but not exactly shocked, by these results. "We have always been a data-driven organization," says spokesman Amy Rabinowitz. "We have a selection model we've refined over the years." The organization figures out which teachers have been most successful in improving student performance and then seeks applicants with similar qualities. "It's mostly a record of high academic achievement and leadership in extracurricular activities." Sounds like the way the private sector hires. Don't tell the teachers unions.

Source




What schools need most is a motivated principal who is left alone by the bureaucrats

The item hardly made the morning news. [British] Government inspectors had discovered 14 "failed" schools that had suddenly become successes. Some bright spark thought it worth asking why. The answer came as a bolt of lightning: that all had benefited from something called leadership. It was the one common thread.

When stuck for an answer to a problem, I turn to the maxim known as Ockham's razor. It states: "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora," or do not apply many things to a task that can be done with few. It was brilliantly "razored" by the American marines to KISS, "keep it simple, stupid".

In modern state education, Ockham's razor is tantamount to knife crime. It lacks bureaucratic complexity. Its application demands no expertise, no grand staff, no research budget, no office blocks with atriums. Its mere mention endangers thousands of nonjobs, threatening to send former teachers now screwing up the school system back where they belong, in the schools.

Not a week passes without these people inventing for ministers a new and expensive quick fix for bad schools, an academy, a foundation, a trust, a "please look at me, I'm a minister" initiative. There is not a shred of evidence that any of these upheavals work, but each has its dedicated bureaucracy, its budget and its spin doctor.

Now along comes Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, and lets the cat out of the bag. If you want a good school, get the right head. Sack bad heads and appoint good ones. Give them the money and leave them alone. If they do not work, sack them again. Good heads are not made, except in the forge of experience. Mostly they are born.

In his charming novel Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones tells of an educated man living on a Polynesian island from which civil war has driven all public servants. The islanders plead with him to teach their children, for which he has no skills, books or equipment. All he has is an old copy of Great Expectations, which becomes his sole teaching aid. He requires nothing but his own personality, and that of Dickens.

The answers to most institutional problems are that simple. Ofsted approached 14 schools that were so dysfunctional as to be under "special measures". Each had shown dramatic improvement in 2003-7, in both exam performance and pupil behaviour. There had been a calculated programme of discipline, school uniform and subdivision into houses, and a promoting of school pride and identity.

While the report's jargon was close to gibberish, the message was clear: only a highly motivated staff would deliver "a whole-school identity and sense of belonging . . . an evident pride in recognising collective achievement". Then came the sting. The inspectors found that all depended on the courage, risk-taking and autonomy of one person, the head teacher, and on that person being left alone. Indeed, "outside help can actually make things worse . . . with a potential to create more problems and slow the pace of improvement". Local councils do best to disengage or, as the report put it, "manage robust exit strategies".

This finding echoes a 2006 report that found one in five English schools did not have a permanent head at all, and one in three vacancies had to be readvertised. The reason was that targetry and crushing paperwork had greatly reduced the appeal of running a modern state school and teachers were just not interested. The chief task of an English school head is to man the battlements to fight off marauding bands of ministers and officials. As one said to me: "They make the hoodies at the school gate look like a bunch of patsies."

Hansard reported that in one year under Labour the schools ministry sent out 3,840 pages of instructions to head teachers. Back in 2005 the "head teacher of the year" publicly attributed her success to "ignoring all government strategies". In March 2006 the chief examiner, Ken Boston, confessed that at British schools the "assessment load is huge . . . far greater than in other countries and not necessary for the purpose".

The centralisation of school administration has clearly not worked. The schools secretary, Ed Balls, admitted recently that we have "gone backwards" compared with the rest of Europe. He seemed bereft of any solution, other than yet more central initiatives.

Finding good leaders and then leaving them alone runs counter to Balls's entire outlook and Treasury upbringing. As he and his schools minister, Andrew Adonis, showed last week in yet another reorganisation of secondary education, their preferred route to improvement is through targets, regulations, inspections and the humiliating threat of closure. Balls publicly listed 638 schools on his hitlist, an act of mass demoralisation worthy of the Inquisition.

Towards the end of his career as a management pundit, the late C Northcote Parkinson retreated into what many saw as his least original phase. His famous "laws" had passed into the language, but none had had any effect. Paperwork still proliferated, work expanded to fill the time available and staff hired to do half-jobs still needed assistants. The one common trait that Parkinson could detect in all management success was that will-o'-the-wisp, leadership. An inspirational and determined leader defied his laws and moved bureaucratic mountains. Nothing else could do the trick. Parkinson's fans were contemptuous. How banal, they said. The genius had met old age.

The same response was given by the BBC to the Ofsted report on failing schools. Informed that the key lay in leadership, the interviewer remarked coldly: "But isn't that a statement of the blindingly obvious?" and turned to the next item. The BBC worships at the shrine of management consultancy and gorges on complexity. It cannot handle Ockham's razor. It loathes the simple answer.

Ofsted's discovery is of wider application than just to schools. As we watch the agony that Alan Johnson and his predecessors have inflicted on the National Health Service, we see the same syndrome. When anything is wrong with a hospital or health centre, the cure lies in reorganisation. There must, to use the prime minister's motto, be "solution through change". I think not. Public services are supplied by humans led by humans.

Whenever a hospital has in some sense failed, the cry is heard, "Bring back the matron", and some eager minister promises it. He then appoints 10 administrators over her head. These administrators have to be paid "incentive bonuses" just to do their jobs, defined as not to lead but to meet an external target. Nothing works.

We eulogise the simplistic managerial skills of an Alan Sugar, yet refuse to apply the lesson to the public sector. Top-down public administration in Britain is now obsessively complex. Last week it was announced that "popular schools will be allowed to take up to 26 extra pupils a year above their official limit, ministers propose". What on earth has such a detail to do with ministers? Such meddling reflects a lack of confidence in people to do good work. It ranks with the bonus fixation and targetry as a sure way of destroying professional self-esteem.

The cult of leadership was derided in the last century by the countervailing cult of management as shrouded in ugly connotations of superiority. The managerialists implied that running a human institution was a matter of technical skill, one that could be quantified, incentivised and taught. This appealed to the control tendencies of Whitehall. It reflected a lack of faith in the ability of democrats to hold institutions to account, be they schools, hospitals, care homes, police forces or even prisons - despite such accountability operating across the rest of Europe to general public satisfaction. Not a single cabinet minister to my knowledge has ever run an institution and thus known what it is like to deal with a cabinet minister on the rampage.

Leadership is notoriously indefinable and therefore hard to ordain from above. It lies in unexpected and untutored places, possessed for instance by Tony Blair but sadly not by Gordon Brown. It is unpredictable but essential to the running of institutions, often revealed only by trial and error. Ofsted has detected it in 14 lucky schools. Will the rest get the message?

Source




Mass. governor plans new kind of public school

Charter-type program upsetting unions so it must be good

Governor Deval Patrick, in a potential break with the teachers unions that helped elect him, is set to propose a new form of public school that would assume unprecedented control over matters ranging from curriculum and hiring decisions to policies on school uniforms and the length of the school year.

The governor's proposal for "readiness schools," a key element of his sweeping 10-year education plan to be unveiled later this month, aims to combine features of the state's charter schools and Boston's experimental pilot schools. Governed by local boards and freed from many constraints imposed by unions, school districts, and the state, the readiness schools would adapt to community needs and offer new alternatives in school systems across the state, administration officials said yesterday. "We need to radically transform the existing system," said one official briefed on the plan who talked on condition of anonymity.

The plan is likely to be embraced by suburban parents, who have clamored for more choices, and several education groups yesterday signaled their approval. But it could meet stiff resistance from teachers unions that have fiercely protected their influence over issues such as hiring policies and could represent a significant roadblock as Patrick tries to win political support. Additionally, school districts in the past have argued against charter-type schools, saying that they suck money from regular public schools and steal the best students from the systems.

"I told the governor I thought it was a breakthrough to put this on the table," said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, which has advocated for pilot schools in Boston. "But there's got to be a receptivity on all parties."

Patrick plans to file legislation on the readiness schools in January. If approved by the Legislature, the state could have its first such schools by the start of the 2009-2010 school year. Administration officials have an initial goal of 40 readiness schools within four years, but hope to create more after that. There are currently 1,870 public schools statewide.

Like charter schools, which have been operating in Massachusetts since 1993, readiness schools would be allowed to deviate from state curriculum guidelines and experiment with teaching practices. Unlike most charter schools, which are governed by the state, they would report to local school committees. Also unlike charter schools, readiness schools could be created from existing public schools, according to the plan. The readiness schools would be similar to Boston's pilot schools, created in 1993 when the city struck a deal with the teachers' union to create the charter-type schools that are free from School Department and collective bargaining rules.

Both pilots and charters have been hailed by advocates for offering more innovative teaching styles and curriculum. The schools typically admit students through a lottery system, and many have long waiting lists. Administration officials said readiness schools would be open to all students in a district and would have no admissions criteria.

Teachers unions have long criticized charter and pilot schools, which typically hire nonunion teachers. Union officials, who wield influence in the Legislature and with local school districts, said yesterday that they like the governor's program as a concept but want more assurances that their members' contracts are protected. "We are open to other ways of doing things," said Anne Wass, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has nearly 108,000 members. "Certainly we're not negative. We're willing to work with the administration on this."

One area that may prove controversial is an aspect of the plan that would limit collective bargaining to salary and benefits and due-process dismissals. "We're open to new ideas, but we're interested in protecting collective bargaining rights," said Thomas Gosnell, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, which has 27,000 members. He declined to comment further until the administration puts out more details.

Under the plan, there are four ways a readiness school could open: A group of educators could form a collaborative and present the local school committee with a plan to operate a school; a district could convert a school with teacher consent; a School Committee could contract with outside operators, such as charter school management companies; or the state Board of Education could convert a school deemed chronically underperforming. The schools would be held accountable through performance contracts; if student achievement lagged, the School Committee could vote to take the school back.

"As a concept, we're really intrigued," said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, a state advocacy group. "After years of not being included in discussions on education reform, we now feel there is going to be a really healthy dialogue."

Source





17 June, 2008

British State schools consider a return to the higher standards of the past

A new rival to the [middle school] GCSE exam designed along the lines of the traditional O-level may soon win backing from exam watchdogs and be taken up by hundreds of state schools.

Ofqual, the agency set up by the Government to regulate and accredit examinations, is studying plans for a new Cambridge International Certificate (CIC) which could be offered to high-performing pupils as an alternative to GCSEs. Pupils could start studying for the CIC, which would reduce coursework content and rely more heavily on end-of-course examinations, from September 2009, it was predicted yesterday.

Figures indicate that about 250 of the top fee-paying schools have dropped the GCSE. Martin Stephen, headmaster of St Paul's in London and a former chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, which represents elite private schools including Eton and Winchester, has described the exam as "in crisis". Private schools have opted for the International GCSE - designed by Cambridge International Examinations (CIE), which is linked to the Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Art exam board - for use overseas in countries wanting to retain an old-style O-level exam. But it cannot be used in state schools as it does not have national accreditation so ministers will not fund its use by any institution in the state sector.

Privately, CIE officials have been told they will never be given the green light for the International GCSE to be used in state schools, because it does not meet the published GCSE criteria to be based on the requirements of the national curriculum. However, the CIE was told that if it came up with another name which distinguished it from the GCSE, it could obtain accreditation, leading to ministers funding its use in the state sector. CIE said it had submitted "several syllabuses" to Ofqual.

A spokeswoman for Ofqual said that it would take at least two months for it to consider whether to approve the examination. If it did, ministers would then decide if state schools that wanted to use it would receive government funding.

Source




Failing Schools and Local Districts Undermining Families' NCLB Options

One of the major promises of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has been that kids in chronically bad schools will be able to reach beyond those institutions for help. According to a U.S. Department of Education report released in April, however, few kids have been using those options, and it's not due only to disinterest.

The report--Volume IV in the department's "State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act" series--examines implementation of NCLB's school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) provisions through the 2004-05 school year.

Under the law, parents with children in schools that receive federal Title I funds and fail for two consecutive years to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) on state assessments--schools deemed "in need of improvement"--are entitled to choose for their child a school in a district not deemed as needing improvement. In schools that miss AYP for another year, students must be offered free tutoring as well as choice.

The good news in the report is that more students used choice and supplemental services in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years than in NCLB's first year. In 2002-03, only 18,000 students nationwide used the school choice option provided by the law, and 42,000 used SES. By contrast, in 2003-04, 38,000 students nationwide took advantage of school choice and 233,000 used SES. Data were unavailable on SES for 2004-05, but 45,000 students nationwide used school choice.

Despite increases in absolute usage, findings about the percentage of eligible students using the NCLB options were less positive: Only 17 percent of eligible students used SES in 2003-04, and only 1 percent of eligible students took advantage of public school choice in 2003-04 and 2004-05.

The report offers several explanations for why choice and SES utilization were not greater. One is that in many districts choice options simply aren't available. The report notes 77 percent of districts have only one high school, 67 percent have only one middle school, and 53 percent have only one elementary school.

Another reason for low take-up is that parents don't feel exercising their options would be worth the effort it would require. For instance, 75 percent of eligible parents who didn't use choice said it was because their child's assigned school "is located in a place that's easy to get to." Forty-six percent of eligible parents who didn't use tutoring said it was because the times when tutoring was available were "not good for my family."

Most damning, however, is that districts themselves might be undermining NCLB's options. Researchers found in the 2004-05 school year only 29 percent of districts that were required to offer school choice notified eligible parents of their options before the first day of school. In addition, district letters notifying parents of their options were often "confusing, misleading, or biased in favor of district-provided services."

Kara Hornung, director of communications at the nonprofit Center for Education Reform in Bethesda, Maryland, said these latter findings are an indication too many district administrators are out to protect themselves instead of doing what the law requires and what is best for students. "They're trying to keep people in their districts, whether they like it or not," Hornung said.

With that as a distinct possibility, in late April the U.S. Department of Education proposed several new regulations to address the problem. These would include requiring districts to notify choice-eligible families of their options at least 14 days before the beginning of the school year and providing clear information about the availability and benefits of supplemental services.

Dan Lips, an education analyst at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, while encouraged by the proposed regulations, did not think they'd end district evasion. "If enacted, the Department of Education's new regulations would be an improvement over existing law," Lips said. "Unfortunately, I fear many public school systems will still find a way to get around these provisions and deny parents these options--as many have successfully done since 2002."

Source




Cold War on Campus

In order to fulfill the requirements for a major in history at Northwestern University, my daughter took a course called "The Cold War At Home." As one might imagine in the hothouse of the college system, left wing views predominate. The students read Ellen Shrecker, not Ronald Radosh. Joseph McCarthy has been transmogrified into Adolf Hitler. And victimology stands as the overarching theme of the course.

Communists in the United States are merely benign civil rights advocates and union supporters. The word espionage never once crossed the lips of the instructor.

An extraordinary amount of time and energy has been devoted to the "lavender persecution" - harm imposed on gay Americans. Presumably, this group was more adversely affected by McCarthy's allegations than others.

Despite the recent scholarship on the period such as Alan Weinstein's well researched book on Alger Hiss or Stanton Evans' biography of Senator McCarthy, views that do not fit the prevailing orthodoxy aren't entertained. Pounded into students is the view that America engaged in "totalitarian practices" not unlike the Soviet enemy we decried.

Although the course is entitled the Cold War at Home, you might think the instructor would be inclined to ask who the enemy is, why was the Soviet Union an enemy and what tactics did this nation employ against us. But these issues are not addressed.

Class session after class session was devoted to the drum beat of criticism. I asked my daughter if she read anything about Gus Hall and the American Communist Party or if she ever heard of I.F. Stone or if any time was devoted to the Venona tapes. She looked at me perplexed.

There is only one theme: the U.S. government was wrong; there wasn't any justification for harassing communists and Edward R. Murrow and Victor Navasky are the real heroes in this period.

Needless to say the historical story of that time is nuanced. McCarthy was over the top, but communists of the Alger Hiss variety did insinuate themselves into key positions in the State Department. Not every communist in the U.S. was a threat to national security, but many were and some gave military secrets to the Soviet Union.

Victor Navasky attacked Elia Kazan for naming names in Hollywood, but as Kazan saw it, he was protecting artistic freedom from communist handlers who wanted to approve every line in a film script.

Looking back, it is not so easy to describe heroes and villains, unless, of course, the instructor responds reflexively to the standard left wing agenda.

Here is the rub. I don't mind having my daughter exposed to the jejune interpretation of Navasky apologists. What I do mind is the lack of balance - the unwillingness to consider another point of view.

When I suggested that she should write her final paper on the role of anti communist liberals such as Sidney Hook, Irving Kristol, Stephen Spender, Midge Decter, among others, my daughter said "my instructor doesn't admire these people and I don't want to jeopardize a good grade by writing about them." So much for open discussion.

Of course, the condition I described is not atypical. Courses in the soft disciplines have become propagandistic exercises as instructors have arrogated to themselves the role of moral arbiters. Invariably the United States is wrong; our historical role in the Cold War malevolent and civil liberties were put at risk by demagogic politicians.

I can only wonder what historical scholarship will look like in a generation as my daughter's brainwashed cohorts enter the ranks of the professoriate.

Source





16 June, 2008

Bigoted Muslim textbooks being used in America

Last fall, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom asked the U.S. Department of State to secure the release of all Arabic-language textbooks used at a Saudi government school in Northern Virginia, the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA). The Commission took this action in order to ensure that the books be publicly examined to determine whether the texts used at the ISA promote violence, discrimination, or intolerance based on religion or belief. The ISA is unlike any conventional private or parochial school in the United States in that it is operated by a foreign government and uses that government's official texts. It falls under the Commission's mandate to monitor the actions of foreign governments in relation to religious freedom. The government of Saudi Arabia, as a member of the international community, is committed to upholding international standards, including the obligation not to promote violence, intolerance, or hate.

The Commission requested Saudi government textbooks repeatedly during and following its trip to Saudi Arabia in May-June 2007. Shortly after the Commission raised the issue publicly, the Saudi government turned over textbooks used at the ISA to the State Department, but as of this writing, the Department has not made them available either to the public or to the Commission, nor has it released any statement about the content of the books that it received. Nevertheless, although it was unable to obtain the entire collection, the Commission managed to acquire and review 17 ISA textbooks in use during this school year from other, independent sources, including a congressional office. While the texts represent just a small fraction of the books used in this Saudi government school, the Commission's review confirmed that these texts do, in fact, include some extremely troubling passages that do not conform to international human rights norms. The Commission calls once again for the full public release of all the Arabic-language textbooks used at the ISA.

In July 2006, the Saudi government confirmed to the U.S. government that, among other policies to improve religious freedom and tolerance, it would, within one to two years, "revise and update textbooks to remove remaining references that disparage Muslims or non-Muslims or that promote hatred toward other religions or religious groups." The Commission is releasing this statement as the two-year timeframe is coming to an end, and with particular concern over the content of textbooks used at the ISA, in order to highlight reforms that should be made before the 2008-09 school year begins at the ISA.

Examples of Problematic Passages in Current ISA Textbooks

The most problematic texts involve passages that are not directly from the Koran but rather contain the Saudi government's particular interpretation of Koranic and other Islamic texts. Some passages clearly exhort the readers to commit acts of violence, as can be seen in the following two examples:

* In a twelfth-grade Tafsir (Koranic interpretation) textbook, the authors state that it is permissible for a Muslim to kill an apostate (a convert from Islam), an adulterer, or someone who has murdered a believer intentionally: "He (praised is He) prohibits killing the soul that God has forbidden (to kill) unless for just cause." Just cause is then defined in the text as "unbelief after belief, adultery, and killing an inviolable believer intentionally." (Tafsir, Arabic/Sharia, 123)

* A twelfth-grade Tawhid (monotheism) textbook states that "[m]ajor polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible," which in Islamic legal terms means that a Muslim can take the life and property of someone believed to be guilty of this alleged transgression with impunity. (Tawhid, Arabic/Sharia, 15) Under the Saudi interpretation of Islam, "major polytheists" include Shi'a and Sufi Muslims, who visit the shrines of their saints to ask for intercession with God on their behalf, as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.

The overt exhortations to violence found in these passages make other statements that promote intolerance troubling even though they do not explicitly call for violent action. These other statements vilify adherents of the Ahmadi, Baha'i, and Jewish religions, as well as of Shi'a Islam. This is despite the fact that the Saudi government is obligated as a member of the United Nations and a state party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and other relevant treaties to guarantee the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. The statements include the following:

* "Today, Qadyanis [Ahmadis] are one of the greatest strongholds for spreading aberration, deviation, and heresy in the name of religion, even from within Islamic countries. Thus, the Qadyani [Ahmadi] movement has become a force of destruction and internal corruption today in the Islamic world." ("Aspects of Muslim Political and Cultural History," Eleventh Grade, Administrative/Social Track, Sharia/Arabic Track, 99)

* "It [Baha'ism] is one of the destructive esoteric sects in the modern age... It has become clear that Babism [the precursor to Baha'ism], Baha'ism, and Qadyanism [Ahmadism] represent wayward forces inside the Islamic world that seek to strike it from within and weaken it. They are colonial pillars in our Islamic countries and among the true obstacles to a renaissance." ("Aspects of Muslim Political and Cultural History," Eleventh Grade, 99-100)

* "The cause of the discord: The Jews conspired against Islam and its people. A sly, wicked person who sinfully and deceitfully professed Islam infiltrated (the Muslims). He was `Abd Allah b. Saba' (from the Jews of Yemen). [___]* began spewing his malice and venom against the third of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, `Uthman (may God be pleased with him), and falsely accused him." (Tawhid, Administrative/Social Sciences Track, 67)

(*The word or words here were obscured by correction fluid.)

* Sunni Muslims are told to "shun those who are extreme regarding the People of the House (Muhammad's family) and who claim infallibility for them." (Tawhid, Arabic/Sharia 82; Tawhid, Administrative/Social Sciences Track, 65) This would include all Shi'a Muslims, for whom the doctrine of infallibility is a cardinal principle.

Other problematic passages employ ambiguous language, and the textbook authors do nothing to clarify the meaning.

* A ninth-grade Hadith textbook states: "It is not permissible to violate the blood, property, or honor of the unbeliever who makes a compact with the Muslims. The blood of the mu'ahid is not permissible unless for a legitimate reason.the mu'ahid is an unbeliever who contracts a treaty with a Muslim providing for the safety of his life, property, and family." (Hadith, Ninth Grade, 142-3)

The passages about the mu'ahid are most troubling for what they leave out. They address the protected status of an unbeliever in a Muslim country, but are silent on whether unbelievers living in non-Muslim countries are afforded the same protections of "blood, property, or honor." Such an omission, taken together with the outright incitement to violence and vilifying language noted above, could be interpreted as tacitly condoning violence against non-Muslims living in non-Muslim countries.

The Commission would urge the textbook authors to put more context into some sections of the textbooks to avoid any perception that they could be encouraging violence.

More here




Britain: Classroom focus on expressing emotion 'leaves pupils unable to cope'

Schools and universities are producing a generation of "can't do" students, who are encouraged to talk about their emotions at the expense of exploring ideas or acquiring knowledge, academics claimed yesterday. The strong focus on emotional expression and building up self-esteem in schools and colleges was "infantilising" students, leaving them unable to cope with life on their own, according to the authors of a new book, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education.

Dennis Hayes and Kathryn Ecclestone, of Oxford Brookes University, argue that this "therapeutic" approach to education is at odds with the acquisition of knowledge because it views the emotional skills associated with learning as more important than subject content or criticism. "Turning teaching into therapy is destroying the minds of children, young people and adults," Dr Hayes told Times Higher Education. "Therapeutic education promotes the idea that we are emotional, vulnerable and hapless individuals. It is an attack on human potential."

They pointed to the increased presence of parents on campus, and substitute parents, such as counsellors and support officers. "Everyone looks for a difficulty to declare, like the hundreds of students who register themselves as dyslexic. Being dyslexic used to be something that people hid. Now students wear their difficulties as a badge of honour," Dr Hayes said.

Therapeutic education pervaded all levels of education. Dr Hayes cited the case of a primary school boy who was asked by an emotional learning assistant why he was so happy. When he said he was looking forward to a treat at McDonald's, she asked: "Are you sure there is nothing worrying you?"

The book follows the recent introduction into state schools of lessons in happiness and wellbeing under a programme known as Seal (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning). Ministers are convinced that teaching children to express their emotions boosts concentration and motivation. But there is growing disquiet that this attitude could undermine teaching and learning.

Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, said: "It inflates the importance of feelings to the point where they eclipse what is supposed to be going on in the classroom." It also made teachers and lecturers overcautious. "They will give a piece of work 55 per cent and then write on it 'this essay is superb' because they daren't say it's crap."

John Foreman, dean of students at University College London, agreed that students were not as "self-sustaining and robust" as they once were. He partly blamed overprotective parents. "If young people don't start learning to solve their own problems, when will they ever?" he said.

Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College in Berkshire, a pioneer of wellbeing classes, defended the approach. "Since we started wellbeing lessons [in 2005] our A-level results have gone up from 64 to 86 per cent of students getting As and Bs."

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Australia: Results falling at primary schools

The Leftist domination of education brings the expected results. Destruction is what the Left is good at. Why so? Because destruction of the society they live in is their real aim. All the rest is camouflage

LITERACY and numeracy levels have dropped alarmingly in Queensland primary schools, new figures reveal. State Budget figures show many Queensland students failed to meet national benchmarks for reading, writing and maths from Years 2 to 7. Of the 24 targets set by the State Government for 2007-08, only nine were met. Scores were down in 17 of 24 areas, compared with 2006-07. The worst results were for 11 and 12-year-olds in Year 7.

The Government set a target of 82 per cent of students achieving the national benchmark in numeracy but only 73 per cent passed. In reading, the target was 86 per cent but reached 81.7 per cent. It is the fourth year in a row they have under-performed. In 2004-05, 93.1 per cent of Year 7 students achieved the national benchmark in reading. That mark has dropped by 11.4 percentage points in three years.

For maths, it was 82.3 per cent in 2004-05. Now it is 9.2 percentage points lower. The Government hoped 54 per cent of indigenous Year 7 students would achieve the maths benchmark but only 45.9 per cent passed.

Opposition education spokesman Stuart Copeland expressed concern at the failure to meet the national benchmarks. "Every child should be taught the basics to function in today's society. They should be able to read, write and add up," he said. Former chairman of the Australian Council for Education Standards Colin Lamont said it reinforced his view that children were being "dumbed down". He said while teachers held some responsibility, he blamed bureaucrats who "experimented far too frequently" with the curriculum. "Everything has to be 'relevant' today . . . they have taken away what I call enrichment knowledge and that is a great shame."

Education Minister Rod Welford said he was not overly concerned by what were small fluctuations in the annual figures. "We are setting higher benchmarks these days than 20 years ago . . . I never panic about any one year's results through the primary years," he said. "If the changes have been more significant . . . then that is something we will need to monitor."

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said there were "real question marks about the validity of national testing". "If the benchmarks are down, then that is something that needs to be addressed," he said.

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15 June, 2008

Britain's socialists have INCREASED inequality

Attacking a major route to advancement -- the selective ("Grammar") schools did not help

Who would have thought that 11 years of a Labour government would make Britain more unequal? Yesterday's official statistics show that since 1997, the poor have - in relative terms - got poorer and the rich richer. Inequality in Britain is now at its highest level since it was first measured in 1961. And that is bound to put a dampener on Gordon Brown's attempts to make our society more mobile.

For the more unequal a nation is, the less social mobility it offers. David Cameron likes to claim that Britain is now a genuine meritocracy in which where we are going is more important than where we have come from. But that's simply not true if you look at the underlying figures. Our society is no more fluid now than it was a generation ago - and it is less fluid than it was a generation before that.

They buck you up, your mum and dad, or they muck you up. Either way, in modern Britain, what most determines where you will end up in life is your parents. If they are high-earning, ambitious professionals, the chances are you will be too. If they are poor and unemployed, you have only a small chance of improving your prospects, whatever the talents you were born with.

Britain - along with America - is one of the most socially rigid nations in the developed world. And that is not because it is uniquely difficult for a poor child to do well here. It is because there is so little downward mobility from the top. If your parents are in the top three social classes (out of the seven defined by sociologists), there is a 74 per cent chance that you will be too. It is only the fact that the middle classes have expanded, thanks to the economy generating more white-collar jobs, that some children born into the working class have been able to move up and join them.

Well-off children have an enormous head start in Britain, and the influences work on them long before they even begin school. The brightest poor children drop from the 88th percentile at the age of 3 (meaning that only 12 per cent of their contemporaries score more highly in tests) to the 65th by the age of 5. The least able rich children, meanwhile, move up from the 15th percentile at 3 to the 45th at 5. At that rate, the dim rich kids overtake the bright poor ones in test scores by the time they are just 7.

So it is not just innate ability that determines your fate. While it may - perhaps - be true that, on average, children of parents in intellectually demanding jobs have a higher IQ than those whose parents are poor and unemployed (as Bruce Charlton argued controversially in Times Higher Education), that could not on its own explain the fact that rich youngsters are more than four times more likely than poor ones to go to university.

Nurture seems to matter at least as much as nature. Children of poor parents here don't tend to be given the same intellectual stimulation or the same impetus to achieve. In a survey of 54 developed countries, England and Scotland showed the highest correlation between children's test scores and the number of books at home. Poor children are less likely to be read to, less likely to be taken to museums or the theatre and less likely to display the good behaviour and social skills that are also associated with success in later life.

They are also more likely to have parents who don't particularly value education. Attitudes to education are incredibly important - which is why disadvantaged Indian and Chinese pupils do much better at school than their white or Afro-Caribbean contemporaries from similar backgrounds.

Why are Britain and America (supposedly the land of opportunity) less mobile than other countries? Economists put it down to our high levels of inequality. The more unequal a society, the harder it is to move out of your social class. The distances are greater, for a start. It is no accident that the most socially mobile nations are Scandinavian.

How depressing, though, for Labour ministers that so much has been done to try to increase social mobility here to so little effect. There has been a huge redistribution of money from the middle classes to the poor. There has been extra investment in inner-city schools. And there has been the introduction of SureStart, a scheme aimed at improving the life chances of children from an early age. Yet all Labour has managed to do is stabilise the decline in mobility.

The trouble is that the countervailing forces have been so strong. The more that we move to a knowledge economy, the more employers value educational succ-ess. Jobs that used to be open to non-graduates now expect a degree, and junior employees without one can no longer hope to be promoted into them. Britain and the US have higher returns to education than most other countries, meaning that graduates can expect to earn far more than those who have not been to university.

This is something that middle-class parents understand, and all their efforts are devoted to ensuring that their children go to university - preferably one of the best ones - and end up in a good, graduate-only job. To this end, they work single-mindedly to find a place for their offspring in the best nursery school, the best primary and the best secondary. If they can't afford to go private, they may employ a tutor to top up at home what their children are taught at school. High educational achievement, for girls as well as boys, has become even more of a spur in middle-class families than it was a generation or two ago.

It is hard for poor parents to compete with these dedicated rivals. The working classes on the whole have a smaller (though often closer) network of friends. The middle classes tend to have a wider (if shallower) circle of acquaintances from whom they can get the best advice on schools, universities and jobs, and with whom they can place their children on work experience. They can afford to buy houses in better catchment areas. They have broadband internet access at home, shelves of books and quiet places for their children to study. They can even "help" with coursework.

Then there is what economists call "assortative mating". We tend to marry others from the same social class. When girls were not so well educated and mothers stayed at home, this made less difference. Now that high-achieving, high-earning men marry high-achieving, high-earning women who often carry on at work after they have children, the advantages for their offspring are greater still - and so is the polarisation of society.

And finally, of course, there is the question of private schools. Yes, state schools have improved in the past ten years. It would be a scandal if they hadn't, given the amount of money that has been poured into them. But private schools have improved at least as fast. They have upped their fees, allowing them to recruit better teachers and build more facilities. The best ones have become far more academically selective - witness the wails of Old Etonians who can no longer get their sons into the school.

We all know the odd privately educated person who ends up as a poverty-stricken failure. But that sort of downward mobility is almost perversely difficult to achieve in Britain. Private schools give children the social skills, the networks and the academic results that pretty much guarantee them the same status that their parents have enjoyed. In many private schools these days, every sixth-former goes on to higher education. After that start in life, it is pretty unlikely that they will be stacking supermarket shelves. As the Sutton Trust has shown, privately educated people still take a disproportionate share of Britain's top jobs.

There is nothing wrong with middle-class parents wanting the best for their children and going all out to achieve it. The left-wing response, led by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, has been to penalise these parents by introducing school lotteries and banning selection by interview. Rather than dragging them down, though, would it not be better to try to equalise the chances of less privileged children?

IntoUniversity, a charity with three centres in inner-city London, is trying to do just that. It offers disadvantaged youngsters the sort of opportunities and expectations that middle-class children take for granted. From the age of 7, it not only hosts after-school study sessions with tutors, books and computers, it also introduces the idea of university and professional careers to children who might never have contemplated them. They get taken to museums and theatres, take part in debates, do workshops with bankers and lawyers and journalists, and spend a week hosted by a university discovering how learning can be enjoyable.

Many are then paired with a mentor who is already an undergraduate, often from a similar background, who not only helps them study, but also makes university seem as normal an aspiration as it would be for a middle-class child. And the charity also gives help and guidance that their parents can't always offer: on GCSE and A-Level choices, filling in a UCAS form, choosing a course and a college.

It is startlingly successful and has so far sent more than 80 students to university. Ayisha Adedeji, now 19, started with IntoUniversity at primary school. She won straight As in her A Levels and is now studying law and sociology at Warwick. She remembers being taken on a trip to Belgium, ostensibly to learn about the Second World War, but also to help her and her fellow pupils raise their ambitions. "We stuck stickers on ourselves saying `I want to be a doctor' or `I want to be a lawyer'. IntoUniversity gave me that extra push."

Andrew Chaplin, a teacher at Walnut Tree Walk Primary School in inner-city Lambeth, recently took his whole Year 6 class to a week run by IntoUniversity. "Every child in the class now talks about going to university and what course they would like to do," he says. "It is something many of them would never have even considered before."

So these are the keys: early intervention to stop bright children tailing off before they reach school; high expectations from teachers to keep them on track when they get there; and initiatives such as IntoUniversity to replicate the home environment that middle-class children enjoy.

These things can work wonders. The introduction of really good universal childcare in Denmark in the 1970s doubled the odds of children with ill-educated parents completing the equivalent of A Levels. And a US programme, aimed at disadvantaged mothers while they are still pregnant and sends a nurse to visit them for the first two years of their child's life, has been shown to give the child a larger vocabulary and a higher IQ. A similar scheme is being piloted here.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron can argue over whether the State or the voluntary sector should be helping poor children to aim high. But they both want to extend opportunity more widely. And they must agree that - while they can't buy an Eton education for everyone - the great start in life that they enjoyed as children is a boon that is still spread far too unevenly in Britain.

Source




La. Senate OKs school vouchers for New Orleans

In a major legislative success for Gov. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Senate voted 25-12 Wednesday for a bill that would let up to 1,500 low- to middle-income students in New Orleans attend private schools at taxpayer expense. Already approved by the House, the school voucher bill by Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, needs one more routine vote in that body on Senate language changes before it goes to Jindal for his signature.

Backers say the bill will help at least some New Orleans children escape a struggling school system, widely known for corruption, bad management and poor student performance before and after Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. Opponents point to recent improvements in New Orleans public schools that have been realized since the state and various charter organizations began running them after the hurricane. They say the $10 million would be better spent on public schools.

Opponents also said the cost is likely to balloon as the first-year students progress and more students enter the program. "When we get to the end how much is this program going to cost?" asked Sen. Joe McPherson, D-Woodworth.

The plan would cover children in kindergarten through third grade in the 2008-09 school year, with subsequent grades added each year thereafter. Children from families earning up to 2.5 times the current federal poverty level (or about $53,000 for a family of four) would be eligible. If there are more applicants at a school than there are available seats, the school would choose participants randomly.

Although the bill is aimed at up to 1,500 students, backers say there may be only a few hundred slots available at private schools in the city next year. "I think we all have the same goal," said Sen. Ann Duplessis, who urged support for Badon's bill in the Senate. "How do we create a process that begins to move our kids out of failing systems?"

In a state with a long history of voting down voucher plans, the Senate vote provided Jindal with a major victory on an issue dear to his conservative base at a time when his star is rising in national Republican politics and he is being mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate.

Other than an a limited pre-kindergarten program approved several years ago, Louisiana's Legislature has routinely defeated voucher programs despite the state's long history of Catholic education in the south and strong religious conservatism in the north.

Until now, influential teacher unions and public school administrators have been able to fight off voucher bills as harmful to public education. And resistance remains strong as evidenced by a proposed amendment to make the voucher plan apply statewide. It was defeated 5-29.

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The immigration non-debate on campus at UCI

Conservatives encounter deeply entrenched bigotry and hostility

Allison Daley is a third-year UC Davis student, double-majoring in political science and international relations. She also spent the past year as chairwoman of Davis College Republicans. Daley says the DCR has about 30 active members and 450 "on paper." In an e-mail exchange, she described what it's like to fly a straight flag in a city known for the freaky.

Is it lonely being a College Republican in Davis? What's the climate like for you guys on campus?

Being a College Republican in Davis is lonely in a way, but maybe it is because we are in such a minority, we have a tighter group of friends. We also obviously have many friends in apolitical circles. The climate for us on campus ranges from dismissive to hateful. The more active we become, the more hostile the climate gets. It seems that many people would prefer that we not be heard at all.

What has been the most challenging protest or event you've attended?

Without a doubt, the one we put on in response to last year's May Day protests-our often-misquoted "Illegal Immigration Capture the Flag" (not "Capture the Illegal Immigrant"). Our perspective was completely misunderstood, and people's attitudes became extremely combative, borderline dangerous. I received probably a hundred e-mails, more than one of which threatened me physically. Afterwards, I realized just how hard it is to get our message heard in a place that is unaccustomed to an actual debate.

Is there anything you do differently since then?

Since our capture-the-flag game, we have learned that unfortunately, perception can be more important than reality. While we know we were not being racist, many people believed that we were, and our message was in large part lost as a result. With that in mind, this May Day for our counter-protest, we had a more nuanced Socialist Career Fair, in which we satirically promoted a number of jobs that can be had in socialist societies, such as union boss, member of the secret police and gulag commandant. And while it was much lower-key, we think the event was overall a greater success.

Name an aspect of Davis political culture that makes you roll your eyes. Why?

The political culture in Davis is supposedly diverse and inclusive, but in reality, it does not appreciate dissent. Certain political and ethnic groups are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want, which creates a breeding ground for political radicalism. Other groups, like DCR and sometimes Christian groups, get no help whatsoever from the campus bigwigs. The double standard is so blatant that frequently, we are at a loss for words.

What's one aspect of Davis political culture that you value/appreciate (it's OK if there aren't any)?

How involved people are. I tend to disagree with their activism, and I don't like how some dip into radicalism, but overall, it is nice to not live in a politically apathetic community.

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14 June, 2008

LEFTIST CONTEMPT FOR LITERACY

Three current articles from Australia below

Grammar guide for English teachers 'full of basic errors'

Amazing illiteracy. A "postmodernist" displays her utter ignorance of her subject. She tries to portray the points mader by Prof. Huddleston as peculiar to him but the reverse is the truth. What he says has been basic to English grammar for hundreds of years -- basic in fact to an undertstanding of any European language (with the possible excerption of Euskara). What hope is there for the kids when this twisted soul is teaching them? -- JR

A teachers' guide to grammar circulated by the English Teachers Association of Queensland is riddled with basic errors, leading an internationally respected linguistics professor to describe it as "the worst published material on English grammar" he has seen. A series of articles on grammar published in the ETAQ's journal intended as a teaching resource is striking for its confusion of the parts of speech, incorrectly labelling nouns as adjectives, verbs as adverbs and phrases as verbs.

University of Queensland emeritus professor Rodney Huddleston, one of the principal authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, said it took the association about one year to correct the errors, and even then it confined most of the corrections to its website rather than in the journal and did not republish the guide. "These articles contain a huge amount of error, inconsistency and confusion," he said. "They constitute, without question, the worst published material on English grammar by a native speaker that I have come across. "(The author) clearly does not know enough about English grammar in general to take on work of this kind. "Anyone who analyses 'won't' and 'capable of' as adverbs, 'a pair' and 'set of' as adjectives, or 'Sam's' as a possessive pronoun has no business to be preparing a resource on English grammar for teachers."

The articles, published with the general title Grammar at the Coalface, were prepared by Lenore Ferguson, the editor of the ETAQ journal Words'Worth and published over a series of months last year. Dr Ferguson printed three examples of the errors in the March edition, saying they were "the result of the usual mishaps with work that undergoes several drafts and is proofed and edited by the original writer".

Last night, she told The Australian the points Professor Huddleston identified were differences of opinion rather than mistakes. "They weren't all mistakes as he described but differences of opinion and that's the way of the world," she said. Dr Ferguson said Professor Huddleston did not follow traditional grammar but had invented his own type, called the Cambridge grammar, which was unique and had reclassified terms, such as calling prepositions conjunctions. "It's a totally different perspective and a totally different way of organising and thinking about language," she said.

Dr Ferguson is an education consultant, a former president of the association and has worked as a senior education officer for English in the Queensland Education Department. A CV included with a paper presented at a conference by Dr Ferguson says she has taught in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and has a long history of involvement in curriculum development and professional development at state and national levels.

ETAQ president Garry Collins said the mistakes were "relatively minor" and the association had published an article on grammar by Professor Huddleston in the journal and alerted readers through a newsletter to his longer critiques published on the website. "Ideally the errors wouldn't have been there but these things occur in the best-regulated households," he said. "If coming upon these couple of minor inaccuracies caused teachers to be having conversations about grammar in staff rooms then I would see that as not a bad thing."

Mr Collins accused The Australian of reporting educational issues with a particular slant, representing minority views, and said highlighting the Words'Worth articles would hamper teachers' engagement with grammar. "It would be useful if the paper didn't seize on minority views but try to report in ways which are relevant to what really does happen in classrooms," he said.

Professor Huddleston provided The Australian with a list of 20 defects that summarised the errors in the ETAQ teachers' guide, which take 10 pages of explanation in his reply article on the ETAQ website. "A lot of them are very elementary," he said.

In Dr Ferguson's first article, The Structural Basics, published in March last year, she says "won't" in the sentence "The small boy won't eat his lunch" is an adverb when, in fact, it is a verb. "Sam's" in "Sam's folder" is classified as a possessive pronoun when it is the possessive form of a proper noun; "what" in "They saw what lay before them" was called a conjunction but it is a pronoun; and "a pair" is classified as an adjective instead of a noun group comprising a determiner "a" and a noun "pair". In the sentence, "The small boy is capable of eating his lunch", the term "capable of" is called an adverb when it is not a grammatical unit of any kind but an adjective followed by a preposition.

Similarly, in "a set of bowls", Dr Ferguson calls "set of" an adjective when it consists of the noun "set" and preposition "of". Syntactic constructions such as "have a peep" are classified as verbs, while "something" is classified as a pronoun and "everything" as a noun.

Professor Huddleston said he believed teachers would be discouraged from reading his corrections because it was described in the journal as being "complex, requiring readers to have extensive knowledge of traditional, structural and functional grammars". It also repeatedly refers to traditional grammar as "his grammar".

Source




Class-hatred invades English grammar

The debacle surrounding the resources developed by the English Teachers Association of Queensland, designed to "help teachers to defend and explain the place of grammar in the school curriculum and in our classrooms", underscores our dumbed-down education system. In the words of Rodney Huddleston, a retired professor in linguistics, the material contains "a huge amount of error, inconsistency and confusion. They (two of the resources) constitute, without question, the worst published material on English grammar by a native speaker that I have ever come across." The errors Huddleston uncovers include confusing adverbs with verbs, adverbs with adjectives and conjunctions with pronouns.

That the material is flawed is partly because of the priority given to a functional linguistics approach to grammar. Functional grammar, similar to critical literacy, is imbued with the view that language has to be analysed in terms of power relationships. Students have to be taught how standard English is used by more powerful groups in society to oppress others. With functional grammar, children are no longer taught things such as parts of speech or how to parse a sentence; instead, the focus is on so-called real meaning and real contexts where language is defined as a socio-cultural construct.

Nouns become participants, verbs are described as process and adverbial clauses and phrases are changed to circumstances. Such is the dense and arcane terminology associated with functional grammar that former NSW premier Bob Carr had it banished from the curriculum. Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford boasted last year in relation to the new English syllabus: "Curriculum waffle is out, clear English is in." It's a pity, however, that he didn't follow Carr's example.

The in-service training for English teachers organised by Education Queensland, while mentioning traditional grammar, gives priority to a functional linguistics approach. In notes titled Getting a Grip on Grammar, verbs, clauses, phrases, nouns, subject and predicate are secondary to descriptions such as processes, participants, circumstances, mood, modality, cohesion and theme. The result? Not only are teachers bamboozled but parents are unable to help with their children's work.

Many of those responsible for training English teachers and writing syllabuses are committed to a progressive, cultural-left approach to English as a subject, represented by functional grammar and critical literacy. As a consequence, not only do most Australian syllabuses fail to include a systematic treatment of formal grammar but many teachers lack the knowledge to deal with thesubject.

No wonder thousands of primary school children start secondary school illiterate, many Year 12 students enter university incapable of writing a lucid essay and employers complain about the language skills ofworkers. In The Literacy Wars, Monash University academic Ilana Snyder condemns me and The Australian for promoting a "manufactured crisis" in English teaching. One wonders what she will make of the latest incident.

Source




Silencing grammar

A mocking editorial from The Australian below:

The precision of our language must be preserved. The "arguability of a text", the English Teachers Association of Queensland told its members in its journal last year, "can vary according to the degree to which the speaker/writer closes down the dialogue to suppress or limit divergence, or opens it up to divergent positions."

Regardless of whatever discourses are foregrounded, marginalised or silenced, however, it cannot be argued, after a dominant or resistant reading of any text, that an adverb is a verb. And while not wanting to privilege traditional grammar rules over a sociocultural critical appraisal model, no amount of licence can turn a pair into an adjective instead of a noun.

Such elementary mistakes, unfortunately, are among the string of errors in articles published in the ETAQ journal last year. Written by consultant Lenore Ferguson, "Grammar at the coal-face" was presented to help when "colleagues, parents, employers and politicians ... accuse us of not knowing or teaching grammar."

Retired University of Queensland professor Rodney Huddleston, one of two principal authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, said it was the worst material on English grammar by a native speaker he had seen. He identified "a huge amount of error, inconsistency and confusion". "Set of" in "a set of bowls" was classified wrongly as an adjective, instead of a noun and preposition. The word "what" in "They saw what lay before them" was described as a conjunction. And "Sam's", in "Sam's folder", was labelled a possessive pronoun instead of a possessive noun.

ETAQ president, Garry Collins, is unconcerned about such "relatively minor" mistakes, and derides The Australian for reporting the matter. However, parents - tired of school handouts dotted with bad spelling and confusing "there" and "their" - will take a more serious view. They and their children will not be surprised at the erudition of some of the learning activities proposed in the articles. These suggest that students identify nouns and verbs by analysing newspaper previews for Home and Away and Neighbours. Pathetic.

Regrettably, what is "silenced" in the ETAQ material is the lifelong importance, for their wellbeing and career advancement, of students from all backgrounds learning to write and speak correctly. Preserving the precision of our language is important, regardless of the ravages of texting, slang and even critical literacy jargon. While language evolves, it needs to do so within acceptable parameters of semantics and rules. "Alternative readings" of what is acceptable risk English degenerating into woolly and imprecise meaninglessness.

If the ETAQ magazine reflects grammar and English teaching generally in Queensland, the state's Education Minister, Rod Welford, should instigate remedial classes - for teachers. Suitable instructors, however, might prove thin on the ground. The ETAQ journal, Words'Worth, would be the last place he should advertise.

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Islam in America's Public Schools: Education or Indoctrination?

by Cinnamon Stillwell

With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the educational realm. Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the "soft jihad" into America's classrooms and children in K-12 are the first casualties. Whether it is textbooks, curriculum, classroom exercises, film screenings, speakers or teacher training, public education in America is under assault.

Capitalizing on the post-9/11 demand for Arabic instruction, some public, charter and voucher-funded private schools are inappropriately using taxpayer dollars to implement a religious curriculum. They are also bringing in outside speakers with Islamist ties or sympathies. As a result, not only are children receiving a biased education, but possible violations of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause abound. Consider the following cases:

* Last month, students at Friendswood Junior High in Houston were required to attend an "Islamic Awareness" presentation during class time allotted for physical education. The presentation involved two representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization with a record of Islamist statements and terrorism convictions. According to students, they were taught that "there is one God, his name is Allah" and that "Adam, Noah and Jesus are prophets." Students were also taught about the Five Pillars of Islam and how to pray five times a day and wear Islamic religious garb. Parents were not notified about the presentation and it wasn't until a number of complaints arose that school officials responded with an apologetic e-mail.

* Earlier this year at Lake Brantley High School in Seminole County, Fla., speakers from the Academy for Learning Islam gave a presentation to students about "cultural diversity" that extended to a detailed discussion of the Quran and Islam. The school neither screened the ALI speakers nor notified parents. After a number of complaints, local media coverage and a subsequent investigation, the school district apologized for the inappropriate presentation, admitting that it violated the law. Subsequently, ALI was removed from the Seminole County school system's Dividends and Speaker's Bureau.

* As reported by the Cabinet Press, a school project last year at Amherst Middle School transformed "the quaint colonial town of Amherst, N.H., into a Saudi Arabian Bedouin tent community." Male and female students were segregated, with the girls hosting "hijab and veil stations" and handing out the oppressive head-to-toe black garment known as the abaya to female guests. Meanwhile, the boys hosted food and Arabic dancing stations because, as explained in the article, "the traditions of Saudi Arabia at this time prevent women from participating in these public roles." An "Islamic religion station" offered up a prayer rug, verses from the Quran, prayer items and a compass pointed towards Mecca. The fact that female subjugation was presented as a benign cultural practice and Islamic religious rituals were promoted with public funds is cause for concern.

* Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a charter school in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., came under recent scrutiny after Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten brought to light concerns about public funding for its overtly religious curriculum. The school is housed in the Muslim American Society's (the American branch of the Egyptian Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood) Minnesota building, alongside a mosque, and the daily routine includes prayer, ritual washing, halal food preparation and an after-school "Islamic studies" program. Kersten's columns prompted the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to issue a press release expressing its own reservations about potential First Amendment violations. An investigation initiated by the Minnesota Department of Education verified several of Kersten's allegations and the school has since promised to make the appropriate changes. In a bizarre twist, when a local television news crew tried to report on the findings from school grounds, school officials confronted them and wrestled a camera away from one of its photographers, injuring him in the process.

* The controversy surrounding the founding of New York City's Arabic language public school, Khalil Gibran International Academy, last year continues. Former principal Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser was asked to step down after publicly defending T-shirts produced by Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, an organization with whom she shared office space, emblazoned with "Intifada NYC." But KGIA has other troublesome associations. Its advisory board includes three imams, one of whom, New York University Imam Khalid Latif, sent a threatening letter to the university's president regarding a planned display of the Danish cartoons. Another, Shamsi Ali, runs the Jamaica Muslim Center Quranic Memorization School in Queens, a replica of the type of Pakistani madrassa (or school) counter-terrorism officials have been warning about since 9/11. Accordingly, several parents founded Stop the Madrassa: A Community Coalition to voice their contention that KGIA is an inappropriate candidate for taxpayer funding.

Equally problematic are the textbooks used in American public schools to teach Islam or Islamic history. Organizations such as Southern California's Council on Islamic Education and Arabic World and Islamic Resources are tasked with screening and editing these textbooks for public school districts, but questions have been raised about the groups' scholarship and ideological agenda. The American Textbook Council, an organization that reviews history and social studies textbooks used in American schools, and its director, Gilbert T. Sewall, have produced a series of articles and reports on Islam textbooks and the findings are damning. They include textbooks that are factually inaccurate, misrepresent and in some cases, glorify Islam, or are hostile to other religions. While teaching students about Islam within a religious studies context may be appropriate, the purpose becomes suspect when the texts involved are compromised in this manner.

Such are the complaints about "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond," a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, to the point where parents in the Scottsdale, Ariz., school district succeeded in having it removed from the curriculum in 2005. TCI is based in Mountain View, and the textbook is now being used in the state's public schools, where similar concerns have arisen. A Marin County mother whose son has been assigned "History Alive!" has been trying to mount an effort to call school officials' attention to the problem. Similarly, a San Luis Obispo mother filed an official complaint several years ago with her son's school authorities over the use of Houghton Mifflin's middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been widely criticized for whitewashing Islamic history and glorifying Islam. Its recent approval for use in Montgomery County, Md., public schools is likely to lead to further objections.

But the forces in opposition are powerful and plenty. They include public education bureaucrats and teachers mired in naivete and political correctness, biased textbook publishers, politicized professors and other experts tasked with helping states approve textbooks, and at the top of the heap, billions of dollars in Saudi funding. These funds are pouring into the coffers of various organs that design K-12 curricula. The resultant material, not coincidentally, turns out to be inaccurate, biased and, considering the Wahhabist strain of Islam promulgated by Saudi Arabia, dangerous. And again, taxpayer dollars are involved. National Review Online contributing editor Stanley Kurtz explains :

"The United States government gives money - and a federal seal of approval - to a university Middle East Studies center. That center offers a government-approved K-12 Middle East studies curriculum to America's teachers. But in fact, that curriculum has been bought and paid for by the Saudis, who may even have trained the personnel who operate the university's outreach program. Meanwhile, the American government is asleep at the wheel - paying scant attention to how its federally mandated public outreach programs actually work. So without ever realizing it, America's taxpayers end up subsidizing - and providing official federal approval for - K-12 educational materials on the Middle East that have been created under Saudi auspices. Game, set, match: Saudis."

Along with funding textbooks and curricula, the Saudis are also involved in funding and designing training for public school teachers. The Saudi funded Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University now offers professional development workshops for K-12 teachers. The workshops take place at the hosting institution and provide teachers with classroom material. They are free of charge and ACMCU throws in lunch to boot.

But this generosity likely comes with a catch, for the center is known for producing scholars and material with a decidedly apologist bent, both toward the Saudi Royal Family and Islamic radicalism. It's no accident that ACMCU education consultant Susan Douglass, according to her bio, has been "an affiliated scholar" with the Council on Islamic Education "for over a decade." Douglass also taught social studies at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Va., where her husband still teaches. ISA has come under investigation for Saudi-provided textbooks and curriculum that some have alleged promotes hatred and intolerance towards non-Muslims. That someone with Douglass' problematic associations would be in charge of training public school teachers hardly inspires confidence in the system.

While groups such as People for the American Way, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the ACLU express outrage at any semblance of Christianity in America's public schools, very little clamor has met the emergence of Islam in the same arena. An occasional press release, such as the one put out by the Minnesota chapter of the ACLU regarding TIZA, will surface, but by and large, the arbiters of separation of church and state or in this case, mosque and state, have gone silent. The same can largely be said for the federal government and, in particular, the State Department. No doubt, Saudi dollars and influence are part of the problem.

Probably the single greatest weapon in the arsenal of those trying to fight the misuse of America's public schools is community involvement. As noted previously, a number of parental coalitions have sprung up across the country in an effort to protect their own children from indoctrination. The Stop the Madrassa Coalition has expanded its efforts beyond New York City by working on policy ideas for legislation and meeting privately with members of Congress. Also providing hope are Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), whose 10-point "Wake Up America" agenda includes a call to reform Saudi-provided textbooks, and the bipartisan Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus she co-chairs. Its focus on "jihadist ideology" demonstrates an all-too-rare governmental understanding of the nature of the current conflict.

The power to educate the next generation is an inestimable one and a free society cedes control at its peril. The days of the "silent majority" are no longer tenable in the face of a determined and clever enemy. The battle of ideas must be joined.

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13 June, 2008

Putting Children Last

Democrats in Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate. And wouldn't you know, it's one that actually works and helps thousands of poor children. We're speaking of the four-year-old Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers to about 2,000 low-income children so they can attend religious or other private schools. The budget for the experimental program is $18 million, or about what the U.S. Department of Education spends every hour and a half.

This fight has nothing to do with saving money. But it has a lot to do with election-year politics. Kevin Chavis, the former D.C. City Council member who sits on the oversight board of the scholarship program, says, "If we were going to do what was best for the kids, then continuing it is a no-brainer. Those kids are thriving." More than 90% of the families express high satisfaction with the program, according to researchers at Georgetown University.

Many of the parents we interviewed describe the vouchers as a "Godsend" or a "lifeline" for their sons and daughters. "Most of the politicians have choices on where to send their kids to school," says William Rush, Jr., who has two boys in the program. "Why do they want to take our choices away?"

Good question. These are families in heavily Democratic neighborhoods. More than 80% of the recipients are black and most of the rest Hispanic. Their average income is about $23,000 a year. But the teachers unions have put out the word to Congress that they want all vouchers for private schools that compete with their monopoly system shut down.

This explains why that self-styled champion of children's causes, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Congressional delegate from the District of Columbia, is leading the charge to kill the program. Ms. Norton contends that vouchers undermine support and funding for public schools. But the $18 million allocated to the program does not come out of the District school budget; Congress appropriates extra money for the vouchers.

The $7,500 voucher is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50% more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools. And we use the word "educate" advisedly because D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation. In 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Opponents claim there is no evidence that the D.C. scholarship program is raising academic achievement. The only study so far, funded by the federal Department of Education, found positive but "not statistically significant" improvements in reading and math scores after the first year. But education experts agree it takes a few years for results to start showing up. In other places that have vouchers, such as Milwaukee and Florida, test scores show notable improvement. A new study on charter schools in Los Angeles County finds big academic gains when families have expanded choices for educating their kids.

If the D.C. program continues for another few years, we will be able to learn more about the impact of vouchers on educational outcomes. The reason unions want to shut the program down immediately isn't because they're afraid it will fail. They're afraid it will succeed, and show that there is a genuine alternative to the national scandal that are most inner-city public schools. That's why former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and current Mayor Adrian Fenty, both Democrats, support the program.

"Hopefully," says Mr. Chavis, "Congress will focus on the kids, not the politics here." Barack Obama might call that the audacity of hope, if he finally showed the nerve to break with the unions on at least one issue and support these poor D.C. students.

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AAUW education report minimizes boy crisis in our schools

Boys have trailed girls in most indices of academic performance for at least two decades. In recent years, boys' educational struggles have finally been acknowledged and explored in the mainstream media. This has resulted in an unfortunate backlash from misguided women's advocates. The latest example of these advocates' efforts to minimize or deny the boy crisis in education is the American Association of University Women's highly-publicized new report "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education."

The AAUW says its report "debunks the myth of a `boys crisis' in education," but the study provides little evidence to support this contention. According to the Report's own data, girls get much better grades than boys, are far more likely to graduate college, and are on the good side of a longstanding "literacy gap."

It is also true that girls are much more likely than boys to graduate high school, and boys are far more likely than girls to be disciplined, suspended, held back, or expelled. The vast majority of learning-disabled students are boys, and boys are four times more likely than girls to receive a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although more girls than boys enroll in high level math and science classes, boys do score a little better in math. However, girls' advantage in reading is several times as large.

Most of the AAUW report's claims are superficial and unconvincing. The Report tells us "the crisis is not specific to boys; rather, it is a crisis for African American, Hispanic, and low-income children." Of course-low income and minority children do not fare as well as children from more advantaged groups. But the boys of any cohort are still behind the girls in most indices.

The Report reassures us that both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade. This isn't the point-the gender gap isn't new, but has existed for well over a decade.

The AAUW says the report's "results put to rest fears of a `boys' crisis' in education, demonstrating that girls' gains have not come at boys' expense." This is another irrelevant point. Nobody claims the boy crisis exists because of girls' gains-the issue is that boys' performance fell significantly behind girls', and has remained behind because we've failed to address boys' problems.

This is not the first time a highly-publicized study has claimed to debunk the boy crisis. In 2005, Duke University announced its study on child wellbeing by telling the media "American boys and girls today are faring almost equally well across key indicators of education, health, safety and risky behavior." Press reports followed suit, with headlines such as "Boys, girls fare equally in U.S.: Study debunks both sides in long debate" and "Boy-girl gender gap? Not so fast."

Yet the study showed nothing of the sort. Boys and girls fared equally in six of the 28 categories studied by the researchers - and girls fared better than boys in 17 of the remaining 22. Even the few advantages the study found for boys were modest. By contrast, many of girls' advantages were very large.

The new AAUW report, unable to dispel the boy crisis, falls back instead on the alleged wage gap, claiming, "Perhaps the most compelling argument against a boys crisis is that men continue to out earn women in the workplace." They explain that among all women and men working full time, year-round, median annual earnings for women were 77 percent of men's earnings in 2005.

It has been amply demonstrated that the wage gap is largely caused by the career sacrifices mothers make to care for their children and the primary breadwinner role most fathers assume when their children are born. The wage gap is very questionable in and of itself, and certainly is of no relevance when discussing gender and school performance.

The boy crisis is real. England has widely acknowledged a similar crisis in its system, and has taken steps in recent years to address the problem. The U.S. has not. Instead of giving credence to the AAUW's unfortunate sophistry, we instead need to focus on how to change our educational system to address boys' problems.

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Australia: A nasty education bureaucracy tries to get revenge on someone who stood up to them

Reinstated teacher given a difficult job for which she is not trained. What does it say about a bureaucracy that fills positions with unqualified people? Someone needs to crack down on these petulant sulkers

A WOMAN who won back the right to teach after being suspended for posing nude for a magazine says she cannot take the position she has been offered because she is not qualified to do the job. Lynne Tziolas, 24, was last month dismissed from Narraweena Public School on the Northern Beaches after she posed naked with 45-year-old husband Antonios for a feature in Cleo magazine.

She has since successfully fought her case for reinstatement, but received an email on Tuesday informing her she would be offered a new temporary position - at a Northern Beaches school for children with learning difficulties and behavioural problems.

Mr Tziolas yesterday said his wife, who was due to take up her new role today, planned to instead inform the Department of Education and Training that it was unacceptable. "It's quite unsatisfactory really - I think they've tried to offer her a job that's not in the mainstream school system to basically get her out of the way," he said. "Teaching at this school is something she's not qualified to do. It's not why she became a teacher. There are teachers out there who have studied specifically for learning difficulties and behavioural problems. These kids require a very specific and formalised type of teaching."

Mr Tziolas said his wife's decision to take part in the Cleo feature, in which she revealed intimate details of her marriage, had resulted in her being asked by the department to prove why she did not belong on a prohibited employment list. "That list includes paedophiles, child pornographers, convicted drug dealers and incompetent teachers. It's pretty much like a criminal record as far as teaching or working with children is concerned," Mr Tziolas said. "That was sorted out and the response was that she had been reinstated but reinstatement, to my mind, means putting you back in your previous position. "She hasn't lost her teaching approval but they suspended her from Narraweena Public School, so it's really not clear to us what her status was or is. It's still pretty confused."

While they did not regret the decision to take part in the feature, for which the couple was paid $200, Mr Tziolas said the matter was blown out of proportion. "It seems like it's just dragging on. It's difficult to be motivated as a teacher with all this scrutiny," he said.

NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Bob Lipscombe yesterday said the Department of Education needed to fill the position with a suitably qualified candidate. "One would hope that the teachers at the school in question had appropriate qualifications and training and experience to teach," he said. "The federation would have some concerns if a teacher was being compelled to work in a school such as the one she has been appointed to. We wouldn't see that as fair, either to the teacher or the students involved."

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12 June, 2008

Good enough for you, but not for the Benns

Comment from Peter Hitchens in Britain

The great infuriating unpunished scandal of socialist school hypocrisy never ceases. They take for themselves what they deny to others, just like the old Kremlin Politburo. And they have no shame about it. The late Caroline Benn, wife of Tony, was the most fervent campaigner for comprehensive schools in Britain. Mr Benn - consistent with his principles - withdrew his two sons from their private school to send them to a comprehensive. One of those sons, Stephen, then tried to become a Labour councillor and worked for the fanatically egalitarian Inner London Education Authority.

He married Nita Clarke, another career Leftist (one-time Press officer for Glenys Kinnock, later a Blair adviser at Downing Street). Now we find that their 18-year-old daughter, Emily, has been attending... selective grammar schools. These are the schools her family opposed for decades. Labour still hates them so much that its last Education Act (backed by the Useless Tories) banned the creation of any more.

Apparently unbothered by this ridiculous contrast between her private advantage and her public views, Emily Benn is now trying to become a Labour MP. `I care more about the people that aren't in grammar schools,' she trills. I bet she does.

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Britain: Labour 'has failed state pupils' despite investing billions of pounds in schools

Billions of pounds spent on state schools has failed to give parents greater choice over their children's education, a report claimed today. Instead of funding new school places, ministers have spent the money propping up under-performing primaries and secondaries. Despite Labour promises to harness 'parent power' to drive up standards, places at good schools are decided by rigid catchment areas and admissions lotteries, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Many pupils are forced to accept the schools they are given because the Government allows councils to maintain only tiny numbers of spare places. And this lack of competition for places has allowed poorer schools to survive.

The damning verdict emerged as ministers prepare to unveil a blueprint to force the country's 638 lowest-performing schools to shape up or face closure. Some schools face immediate intervention amid concerns they have been allowed to fail for too long. The IFS researchers found the schools budget exceeded 40billion pounds in 2006-07 - up from less than 30billion in 1998-99. But billions have been channelled into keeping open poorly performing schools, while a 9billion school refurbishment fund will be concentrated on existing schools rather than giving new providers a foothold in the education system. Meanwhile only half the extra money intended to help disadvantaged pupils is actually spent on them - 3,670 at primary level against 5,950 allocated. The rest is wasted on bureaucracy or given to schools that are already well-funded.

The report, funded by independent education provider the CfBT Education Trust, says ministers must be prepared to allow surplus places to give parents and pupils a real choice. 'The Government's wish to encourage a diversity of school providers is undermined by a funding regime which, with a view to controlling costs, aims to avoid creating surplus places,' said Neil McIntosh, CfBT chief executive, in a foreword to the report.

The report claims that Tony Blair's vision for increased parental is far from being realised. 'The current system does not live up to the 'school choice' programme enthusiastically described in the 2005 White Paper, in which successful schools expand, new entrants compete with existing providers, and weaker schools either improve their performance or else contract and close,' it says. The report also found that the worst-performing primary schools were still 93 per cent full and the worst secondaries 89 per cent full. 'Schools that are all-but-guaranteed to fill their capacity, facing little or no threat of entry from new providers even if their performance is below the national average, do not face sharp incentives to improve their performance,' it said.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: 'We have made it easier for anyone, including parents, to set up new schools and by law, local authorities have a duty to encourage new providers to come into the system.

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More Insanity from Columbia University

Columbia University has more than its share of intellectual hacks, and high on the list is Joseph Massad. Professor Massad's controversial beliefs invite mockery. He believes the Iraq war stemmed from the sexual prowess of the American male ("In such a strategy, Iraqis are posited by American super-masculine fighter-bomber pilots as women and feminised men to be penetrated by the missiles and bombs ejected from American warplanes."); he condones terrorism against Israel ("This can be done by the continuing resistance of Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories to all the civil and military institutions that uphold Jewish supremacy"); and lastly, he attempted to exile a student from his class who had the gall to disagree with him.

Massad's most recent work further supports the idea that Massad belongs on a psychiatrist's couch, not behind a podium. In Desiring Arabs, Massad asserts that the West "produces homosexuals as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist." But for colonialism, Massad contends, there would be no gay people in the Middle East for the tyrannical governments of Egypt and Iran to persecute. Although Massad says he opposes hanging gay people, he shifts the blame from the hooded executioners to the United States.

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Columbia last fall and made a similar claim ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country."), students laughed and booed. They recently, however, elected to award Massad the Lionel Trilling Book Award for making the nearly identical claim. Last year, Marty Peretz reported some good news: Columbia University had declined to give Massad tenure. Apparently, Peretz spoke too soon. After cries from the Middle Eastern Studies Department, the Provost agreed to appoint a second ad hoc committee this year. Will Columbia have the good-sense to banish him once and for all?

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11 June, 2008

Equality has made dunces of British children

The bid to iron out differences by imposing one kind of school, one class and one syllabus has been tragically wrong

Education, education, education? For shame, for shame, for shame. New Labour's failure to rescue state education, let alone improve it, will be its most disgraceful legacy. The Conservatives should not crow; when in office they also failed to take on the forces destroying education.

Each week the news is full of reports of stagnating standards, more university dropouts (one in seven students, despite government "investment" of 1 billion pounds since 2003), a shortage of teachers, particularly in maths and science, and a majority of underqualified teachers. However, two dismal stories stood out last week, both as symptom and explanation of what is wrong.

One of the three leading universities in the country, Imperial College London, announced that in 2010 it would introduce an entrance exam for applicants because it cannot rely on A-level results. Sir Richard Sykes, the college's rector, suggested that grade inflation in A-levels made them almost "worthless" as a way of choosing between candidates: "Everybody who applies has got three or four As."

That is hardly surprising, since it isn't difficult to get an A; last year 25% of all A-level papers were given a grade A. Oddly enough, there are people in the education world who still deny that A-levels and GCSEs have been debased. They must be wilfully blind to the evidence; last week, for instance, many newspapers printed a comparison of an old maths O-level exam paper with the contemporary GCSE one. The fall from rigour was lamentable.

Also last week, Professor John White of the notoriously progressive Institute of Education told us that traditional lessons were too middle class. Instead, he said, schools should teach skills such as "energy saving and civic responsibility" through "theme or project-based learning".

At a conference on the national curriculum he argued that while private schools historically focused on the classics and elementary schools for the working classes concentrated on the three Rs, middle-class schools taught academic subjects such as English, science, history, geography, modern languages and Latin as "mere stepping stones to wealth" via university, which "fed [sic] into the idea of academic learning as the mark of a well-heeled middle class".

This, he feels, was the basis of the Conservatives' attempt to impose middle-class values by introducing a national curriculum of traditional subjects in 1988. Subject-based education like this, he thinks, favours the middle class and alienates many children, especially the disadvantaged. White specialises in the philosophy of education and, readers may be irritated to know, was recently a member of a committee set up to advise ministers on the secondary school curriculum.

It is hard to say which of these two stories is more infuriating. The rector of Imperial College is right. Contemporary A-level results, debased as they are, reveal little about a student's suitability for serious study at a top university, but they never did, even at their most rigorous. When I was a teenager, top marks at A-level, although difficult to achieve, were considered irrelevant to getting into Oxford or Cambridge. Passes at A-level were required but what mattered were the entrance exams that both universities set. These were much harder than A-levels - and different.

It was considered at the time too obvious to mention that this was suitable only for the brightest academic children. All this was hard for teenagers who couldn't get into Oxbridge and automatically excluded gifted children from poor schools and deprived backgrounds.

However, if you want a world-class university, attended by students who are not only bright but also well prepared for study as undergraduates, with a well stocked memory and well trained habits of thinking, reading and writing, there is no substitute for selection, however harsh.

At 18, sadly, it makes little difference why a particular teenager is not a good candidate - whether her bog-standard comp or her family or her natural ability failed her. It is not the proper role of a university to do anything about any of that - for one thing it is too late. It's not the role of a university to experiment with social engineering, although the government forces it on them. It's not the role of a university to offer remedial teaching, although plenty do. Maddening though it is to see people reinventing the wheel, Imperial College is right.

So too, oddly enough, is the infuriating White, at least in one way. Beneath his old-fashioned class hatred and his atavistic loyalty to discredited progressive teaching, lurks an awkward truth. An academic school education - a traditional grammar school education - is not suitable for most people.

It was never a good idea to impose a grammar school-style curriculum on all children in the state sector and subject them to it in large, mixed-ability classes. That served neither the few who were suited to it, nor the many who were not. It has indeed alienated the disadvantaged. Plenty of them would be better served, as White says, by practical vocational subjects. That was the vision of the old secondary moderns and the technical colleges. Can it be that the progressive White is trying to reinvent this regressive wheel?

Behind the rector's story and the professor's story lies the obstinate folly of generations of teachers and theorists of education. Obsessed with equality and social engineering, they refused to recognise the simple truth that children and students vary. Children are born with different abilities, into different environments, which exaggerate those differences: ignoring those differences is no way to help them all, nor is clumsy social engineering.

Imposing one kind of school, one class and one syllabus on everyone, in an attempt to iron out those differences, has been tragically wrong. Encouraging everyone to think they can get a university degree is unforgivably discouraging to the majority of young people who can't and don't.

The result has been a school system that suits almost nobody and public exams that mean almost nothing. As these two stories demonstrate, quality has been sacrificed to the pursuit of equality. It is shameful.

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Australian school English too hard - principal

There's NOTHING that is "too hard" in today's dumbed-down schools. Let them try learning Latin, as we all once did

The head of one of the nation's elite private schools has questioned whether English should be compulsory for the senior years, saying the courses being taught are beyond the intellectual ability of most students. The headmaster of Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore) in North Sydney, Tim Wright, told a symposium on a national curriculum in English at the weekend that parents felt alienated from the English syllabus and were deeply cynical about it.

In his speech, Dr Wright said the NSW English course for Years 11 and 12 was a major challenge for many students. "The intellectual challenge is, in fact, beyond many students," he said. "It is seen as arbitrary and from time to time the anguished cry comes: 'Why can't we just read the book?' "I question whether it (English) ought to be compulsory ... at senior level. It is not enough to simply say that like cod liver oil, English is good for you."

The symposium, hosted by the University of Sydney's Arts English and Literacy Education Research Network in the education faculty, was opened by NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca and also heard from the NSW representative on the National Curriculum Board, Tom Alegounarias. Mr Alegounarias said the content of any national curriculum had to capture what the community -- not teachers -- thought was essential for students to learn. "The test for inclusion of content will not be what the teaching profession wants, or teacher educators or bureaucrats for that matter," he said. "Its contents should be measured against its purposes, which are to meet the community's interests. It is an expression of the community's intent and expectations."

Mr Alegounarias dismissed the idea of a curriculum as a technical document or specialised product for teachers alone.

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10 June, 2008

British Universities ‘inflate degrees’ to boost status

UNIVERSITY academics claim they are under pressure to upgrade degrees to at least a 2:1 to boost their institutions’ position in league tables. Liverpool was named as one of the alleged culprits by one leading academic, while another senior don claims league tables were “a key factor” in increasing the numbers of firsts and 2:1s awarded at one of Britain’s top 10 universities.

Other lecturers said they were also coming under strong pressure to upgrade degrees from students paying tuition fees who were worried that their career prospects would be blighted if they failed to achieve a 2:1.

Jonathan Bate, professor of English at Warwick University, said that before he left his previous job at Liverpool in 2003 he was told that improving the university’s league table position depended on increasing the number of firsts and upper second class degrees awarded.

In The Sunday Times University Guide league table about 10% of a university’s score depends on its proportion of top degrees. Rankings can have a strong effect on, for example, the calibre of applicants to universities.

Bate, speaking in today’s News Review, says: “There are universities where instructions go round to staff reminding them that awarding more top-class degrees will push their institution up both the national and international league tables. When I was a professor at Liverpool University heads of departments were given exactly this message.”

Universities have complained repeatedly about “grade inflation” at A-level making it increasingly difficult to choose between candidates with three As, but new figures show that the same phenomenon has occurred with degrees. At Liverpool the proportion of firsts and 2:1s has risen from 50% to 73% during the past decade. Since 2000, the university’s ranking has risen from 35th to 27th.

In the past decade only one of the top 30 universities – Cambridge – has reduced the proportion of firsts and 2:1s. Liverpool University denied pressure had been exerted to lower marking standards. Bill Rammell, the higher education minister, has warned universities against introducing “tests for tests’ sake” in case they harm the prospects of pupils from poor schools.

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Australia: Another Leftist attack on school discipline

Teachers warned for 'shouting'

TEACHERS have launched legal action against the NSW Education Department after being put under scrutiny for shouting while trying to control students. NSW Education Department officials are investigating teachers for shouting at students to "put that down'', "leave him alone'', "sit down'' or "pick up those papers'' and demanding to know, "who told you that you could go there?''

The Sunday Telegraph has obtained letters sent from the department to teachers, asking them to explain their actions. One letter stated: "It is alleged that while you were employed as a teacher you engaged in unreasonable conduct towards students, contrary to the Code of Conduct 2004, in that on unspecified occasions in class you unnecessarily yelled at students''.

Teachers have launched legal action against the department, claiming the investigations are eroding their authority and affecting discipline. The situation has resulted in 750 school principals signing statements of concern. Teachers Federation deputy president Bob Lipscombe said the investigations were a consequence of a decision by the department in December last year to cut back on the number of investigators who hold teaching qualifications.

"A number of teachers have been investigated for yelling in the classroom,'' he said. "These sorts of investigations can undermine their capacity to maintain reasonable discipline in their classes and the prolonged investigations often cause significant harm to teachers' wellbeing.''

Independent Education Union secretary Dick Shearman said the problem was a result of over-zealousness, with some teachers being accused of abuse after raising their voice. "It's been a battle to distinguish between what might be normal discipline or genuine psychological abuse,'' he said. "In some schools, there's overzealousness of this approach. If someone raises their voice on one occasion, this can be interpreted as child abuse. "You can harm a child without physically harming them. "It's not the notion we have a problem with, it's the interpretation of it. "We're not criticising child-protection legislation.''

Despite the letters ordering teachers to explain why they yelled at students, the department denies it investigates them for shouting. "A teacher raising their voice at a student will not prompt an investigation by the department,'' a department spokesman said in a statement. "The Employee Performance and Conduct Unit investigates staff for serious misconduct and poor performance.'' Almost 1000 teachers and other staff are currently listed on the department's not-to-be-employed list.

Opposition education spokesman Andrew Stoner said teachers were left to deal with ill-behaved children who were not being disciplined at home. "I certainly got the cane at school a lot because I was a little bugger,'' he said. "I don't suggest we bring it back, but let's say discipline was a lot tougher in former years. "The Government has taken away a lot of teachers' powers to discipline children in the classroom. It's no wonder teachers sometimes end up yelling at unruly and difficult students.''

Sarah Redfern public school principal Cheryl McBride said the investigations had resulted in an erosion of discipline. "A normal disciplinary action to prevent dangerous or threatening behaviour is being interpreted as something that needs to be reported as a child-protection incident ... whereas that might be very appropriate discipline for the child,'' Ms McBride said."

Source





9 June, 2008

UK's trainee maths teachers are bottom of the class when it comes to basic sums

Many trainee maths teachers cannot do basic sums, say researchers. They struggle with reasoning and thinking logically, despite the fact that they will be responsible for passing on these skills to youngsters. Schools across the country are already having trouble recruiting and retaining high quality maths teachers.

The researchers from Plymouth University said it was alarming that so many trainees can get 'very basic' questions wrong. Their study compared English final-year maths teacher trainees with their counterparts in seven other countries. These were China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Japan, Russia and Singapore. All these countries have good reputations for maths education.

The continuing research, which is funded by the Centre for British Teachers, found that only 21 per cent of English trainees correctly answered a question about the chance of picking different sweets out of a bag. This compared with 97 per cent of Russians, 63 per cent of Hungarians and 60 per cent of Chinese maths students. And a simple question about square roots flummoxed half the English trainees but was answered correctly by more than 90 per cent of their Russian, Chinese and Hungarian colleagues.

The English candidates were weak on algebra questions, but they performed well on shape and space questions about trigonometry and geometry and data handling questions covering statistical techniques. Singapore and Japan have yet to provide results.

Professor David Burghes, director of the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching at Plymouth University, said he was worried by the results, which are being analysed further. He said: 'We are far behind other countries and the international average in terms of logic and rigour. 'That worries me because it almost feels like we have gone for numeracy rather than mathematics in our schools, particularly primaries - and I think mathematics counts.'

The research comes as a report from the Reform think-tank claimed that GCSE maths has become little more than a 'tick box test' in comparison with the old O-level. It called for a major shake-up of the exam system and a reversal of a trend towards splitting exams into bite-size modules.

A National Audit Office report yesterday highlighted the problem of young people leaving school without good skills in literacy and maths. In 2006-07, 45 per cent of pupils leaving school had not gained Level 2 maths (GCSE grades A*-C) and 40 per cent had not achieved Level 2 English.

Source




Australian schools encouraging childhood obesity

Lack of exercise is a major factor in weight gain and kids are being denied their normal activities

TRADITIONAL playground games such as kick-to-kick footy, chasey, hopscotch and even marbles are being banned in schools across Victoria. Games using tennis balls and running on school property have been axed and some schools have prohibited footy, cricket, soccer and netball during lunch breaks. The increasing number of bans on games are because of a fear of injury and subsequent litigation from parents. But parents groups, education experts and some teachers have hit back, saying play is a vital part of a child's development. A Sunday Herald Sun survey of schools found:

CARLTON Gardens Primary School has banned cricket bats and removed its monkey bars and climbing equipment.

ST MICHAEL'S Primary School in North Melbourne has banned children playing football and soccer in the schoolyard.

ASCOT Vale West Primary School has banned games deemed "too rough".

ST PETER Chanel Primary School in Deer Park has outlawed tackling in football and soccer to avoid injuries.

Melbourne University researcher Dr June Factor said a primary school banned marbles because of "arguments". "But for goodness sake how do children learn to resolve arguments if they don't have any?" she said. Dr Factor said the perception parents would threaten litigation if a child was hurt wasn't based on fact. "There have been very few such cases in Victoria," she said. Victorian Principals Association president Fred Ackerman said playgrounds had become more restrictive as parents and teachers had become more anxious and over-protective.

A school not opting for the draconian approach to play is Preston West Primary School. Principal Mark Ross said play was "part of a child's normal development". "As long as there is no safety issue, we encourage kids to engage in play," he said. [Goodbye to football, then, I guess]

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education and Early Childhood said: "This is a school-by-school decision and we encourage all students to be active and healthy."

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8 June, 2008

Availability of welfare encourages kids to leave school: Canadian report

Teens as young as 13 are more likely to stay in school and proceed to the next grade when access to welfare is restricted, says a University of B.C. researcher. Bill Warburton had observed that the dropout rate for children at risk of receiving income assistance rose with B.C.'s welfare caseload through the early 1990s and fell when a substantial package of welfare reforms was introduced Jan. 1, 1996, which removed about 100,000 people from the welfare rolls. "We wondered if that was a coincidence," wrote Warburton, executive director of the Child and Youth Development Trajectories Research Unit at UBC.

Using data from the B.C. ministries of education and employment and income assistance, Warburton found that when the New Democrats began a program of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, high school dropout rates began to fall and continued to fall for several years. Dropout rates had been rising through the early 1990s as access to welfare expanded and was liberally extended to minors, but the change in policy quickly reversed that trend, he explained in an interview and a written response to a query from The Vancouver Sun. The effect was stronger the older the student and the closer the student was to being eligible for welfare, he said. But it was also significant in students as young as 13. "I was surprised at how young the kids were that responded [to the change]," said Warburton. "We found strong evidence that it wasn't a coincidence."

Warburton worked for the B.C. income security renewal secretariat in the mid-1990s and for the research branch of the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance through 2004. He was aware that some regions of the province were "more on board" with welfare reform during the late 1990s. By comparing data between regions, he was able to determine that the effect was strongest - that is, kids tended to do better in school - in areas that put the tightest controls on income assistance for people under 25.

The teens' expectations about the availability of welfare is at the heart of the effect, according to Warburton. "I would have guessed that their decisions would be influenced more subliminally than consciously," he said. But the data showed that teens who left school and went on to collect welfare tended to come from the same schools, suggesting that localized welfare cultures had developed.

The kids talk to each other about how to apply, they see their older friends getting welfare. The data suggests that kids are communicating with each other about the system and how it works, he said. "When you hear the anecdotes about kids walking out of school and into the welfare office it seems pretty clear," Warburton said. The study employed all B.C. educational records for Grades 6 through 12 linked to all welfare records for the province for the years 1991 to 1999.

Warburton will speak about his findings todayat the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Hundreds of lectures and academic papers are being presented this week to more than 9,000 academics at the congress, which is hosted by UBC. "I think the paper is important because it shows how tricky social policy can be," wrote Warburton. "When we try to help some people by providing them with financial support, we can unintentionally hurt others by inducing them to drop out of school."

The welfare expectations study and his research on the antecedents of income assistance have led Warburton to the conclusion that early intervention is essential to reducing the likelihood that a young person will end up collecting welfare. Identifying the factors that push people down that path is the very work that Warburton and fellow researcher Clyde Hertsman do at the Trajectories unit at UBC. "I found it depressingly easy to predict which Grade 8 students would end up on welfare: those who came from [income assistance] families, those who had contact with child protection services and those who were already having trouble academically," he wrote. "We have to intervene even younger."

Source




Australia: Muslim school fakes it

They send their dumber kids to TAFE so that their results do not show up as attributable to the school

YEAR 12 students at a private school in Sydney are forced to complete HSC subjects at TAFE if it appears they will not score high marks. Malek Fahd Islamic School, in Greenacre, joined the top 10 HSC performers in the Herald's league table for the first time last year, ranking ninth - a jump from 15th position the previous year. Malek Fahd students, who pay fees to attend the school, make up close to half the free HSC chemistry class at Bankstown TAFE this year.

Ken Enderby, who co-ordinates the Bankstown TAFE HSC program, said in recent years students had told him they had to take HSC subjects at TAFE because they could not sit them at Malek Fahd. He said one Malek Fahd student who was asked to leave the school achieved a lowest score of 60 per cent and a highest score of 72 per cent at TAFE. "I have had parents in tears because their children have not been allowed to sit subjects at the school," he said. "I'm happy to have those kids here. These are very good students - well behaved and a pleasure to teach."

Twenty-one year 12 students from Malek Fahd enrolled at Bankstown TAFE this year to complete studies in subjects including physics, mathematics and chemistry, all offered at the school. Of the 24 students enrolled in the Bankstown TAFE HSC chemistry class, 11 are from Malek Fahd. Mr Enderby said eight students from Malek Fahd were taking legal studies at the TAFE.

The principal of Malek Fahd, Intaj Ali, said yesterday his school offered 11 HSC subjects, including advanced English and mathematics, biology, business studies, chemistry, physics, studies of religion, and legal studies. Dr Ali denied that he had encouraged poorer performing students to study at TAFE. "No, no, no," he said. "There is no such thing. It is only when they want to change a subject." The 71 students who completed the HSC at the school last year achieved 126 results in band six, which are marks of 90 per cent or more.

Dr Ali said the school had gradually increased its subjects and its student numbers. Since the school was established by Australian Federation of Islamic Councils in October 1989, the student population has grown from 87 children from kindergarten to year 3 to more than 1700 children from kindergarten to year 12.

The school has rapidly improved its performance in the Herald's HSC results league table, which is based on the number of student scores of 90 per cent and above divided by the number of examinations attempted. Malek Fahd only receives credit for the subjects that are completed at the school. TAFE colleges receive credit for Malek Fahd students who sit their examinations at TAFE.

Mr Enderby said 13 Malek Fahd students were at Bankstown TAFE last year. The HSC co-ordinator at Granville TAFE, Dougal Patey, said some Malek Fahd students also studied at his institution.

Year 12 students at Malek Fahd pay about $1600 in fees for the year. The school received $3.6 million in state funding and $9.3 million in federal funding in the 2006-07. The funding had increased 14 per cent over four years. It earned $2.4 million from fees and recorded a surplus of $3.4 million for the year ending in December 2006, $500,000 more than the previous year.

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7 June, 2008

"Diversity" And Political Correctness At Brown U



Some info about the deeply embittered Prof. Hoodoo Heart of Brown U. Pic above. She is of Chinese origin but American educated. She has been given all sorts of honours so there is no doubt that bitterness and hatred pay off in academe. Post below recycled from Discriminations. See the original for links

In a recent post I discussed a speech criticizing college "diversity" officials by Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart of Brown, whose point was that they only gave their colleges the appearance of caring about "diversity" when in fact they weren't doing nearly enough. In an UPDATE to that post I quoted a long and somewhat harsh criticism of my comments from Prof. Hu-DeHart, and added some additional responses of my own. That exchange was read by a recent graduate of Brown, who sent me the following email and has graciously allowed me to reprint it.

I'm a recent graduate of Brown University....

At the beginning of my freshman year, we eager young students (the vast majority of whom were reflexively very liberal on racial issues) were herded into the school Athletic Center for a speech on ending racism and embracing diversity from who we were told was an extremely respected professor of "Ethnic Studies." Not having heard of the term and not yet cynical about the ivory tower, I remember sitting down with my new friends towards the front of the sea of plastic folding chairs and being genuinely excited about having my horizons broadened.

The arrogant and intolerant 45-minute screed that followed, from one Evelyn Hu-DeHart, obliterated my good will and kickstarted my disillusionment with the campus left, especially dogmatic post-modernists who think that saying "truth is relative" automatically makes any of their kneejerk opinions valid. Hu-Dehart's speech was thick with self-important condescension and could be summarized as "We must have a safe space for discussion, and anyone who disputes my views on race and gender is an intolerant bigot who is destroying that safe space, and all white people (and most heterosexuals) are conscious or unconscious racists/sexists/homophobes who must be reeducated by those of us who are sophisticated and have known oppression." Her lecture was followed by "break-out sessions," in which carefully-chosen "discussion leaders" would pressure and cajole white students into confessing their personal bigotry and their shame to be part of a racist culture before those of minority background, who were implictly granted de facto moral superiority and assumed to be powerless victims.

Even some of my most liberal friends were shocked and disheartened by the shallowness and extravagant pettiness of it all, and Hu-DeHart was the target of much derision - none of it racially based, though she would surely insist that it was "unconsciously" so. I wish I could say that her speech was the low point of this kind of nonsense, but in four years at Brown the propaganda and indoctrination are simply unavoidable; even asking questions of the conventional wisdom can get one tarred with all sorts of vicious accusations....

I think this statement is both an eloquent statement of the current, sorry state of political correctness on campus as well as an encouraging reminder that pockets of sanity remain.

UPDATE

Prof. Hu-DeHart objected to the editor of a mailing list to which I (and she) subscribe distributing a copy this post, with the former Brown student's communication, to the list. And she also objected to my quoting her criticism of my original post, which I did in the UPDATE to my original post linked in the first sentence of this post. Oh well, here I go again. Here are her objections and my response:

John: Why do you guys circulate unsigned diatribes like this? Right after you talked about ad hominen attacks! Why don't you practice what you preach? And John, did you ask my permission to post my comment on your blog, as you so kindly asked this anonymous student? Another double standard for those who agree with you and those who challenge you?

Ed: this is absolutely the last time I am going to weigh in on any issue, and this is exactly why so few of your readers dare to make any comments, for fear of their comments being widely circulated in such irresponsible ways!

Who exactly are "you guys"? In any event, I did not and do not regard the email by the former Brown student who related personal reactions to an indoctrination session at Brown to be a "diatribe," but I can understand why you wouldn't want it widely distributed. And it was not "unsigned" when I received it. The sender, now working for a politically correct employer, wanted to remain anonymous, and I honored that request.

My original blog posting discussing your criticisms of "diversity" as practiced today was sent by the editor to readers of this list. Your response was sent to this list - a list, by the way, that includes a number of journalists - which suggests to me that you did not regard your comments about what I said to be privileged and confidential.

Silly me: I would have thought that you'd want your objections to what I wrote to be read far and wide. Since you had sent your comments to a widely distributed list (a list, by the way, that may well have more, and more influential, readers than does my blog), it simply didn't occur to me that you would object to my sharing your objections to my original post with others who had read that post on my blog but who do not have access to the list. Indeed, the only "double standard" here would have been refusing to share with my readers the public criticisms of someone "who challenge[d] me."

Finally, I find it odd that you see a "double standard" in my belief that forwarding a personal communication to a public list must be treated with more care than quoting a communication to a public list on another public forum. But then, as I wrote in the UPDATE to my original post - diversiphiles such as yourself "think a number of odd things."

Tennessee Fights to Keep Open Charter Schools

Tennessee is fighting an uphill battle to save public charter schools from being rolled back, even though a recent survey shows the education option to be popular with parents statewide. House Bill 3935, sponsored by state Rep. Richard Montgomery (R-Sevierville), would remove a sunset on new charter school authorization currently set to take effect July 1. The legislation, still pending at press time, would also expand student eligibility for charter enrollment.

By law, only students from failing public schools in Tennessee's four largest cities--Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville--may enroll in charter schools. The state currently has 12 charter schools, all located in Memphis or Nashville. HB 3935 would allow any student in the state's four largest cities who meets the federal poverty definition to attend a charter, regardless of their current school's status.

The defeat of HB 3935 not only would prevent new charter schools from forming but also could further reduce the pool of eligible students, if failing schools improve or shut down. "If this bill doesn't pass, and charter schools are not reauthorized, then charter schools in Tennessee will die," said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

The director of one of Tennessee's most successful charter schools agrees. "As schools get off the failing list, that means fewer and fewer kids and parents get to make choices about where they go to school," said Randy Dowell, school leader for KIPP Academy Nashville. Opened in 2005, KIPP Academy Nashville serves an overwhelmingly poor and African-American student population in grades five through seven. Despite this disadvantaged student body, KIPP Academy had math and reading proficiency testing rates at or above state averages in its first year. "We have really high and very clear expectations for what we want students to accomplish, both for learning and for their character development," Dowell said.

Allowing charter school authorizations to sunset would come at a time when evidence of Tennesseans' support for the public education option is remarkably high. According to a survey of 1,200 likely voters released in March by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, 46 percent of Tennesseans favored allowing charter schools. Support was even higher, 55 percent, among respondents aged 36 to 55. "That's the age group that tends to be the most emotionally and financially invested in schooling," said Paul DiPerna, the Friedman Foundation's director of partner services.

With no exposure to charter schools in many parts of Tennessee, only 34 percent expressed familiarity with the public education option. But of that group, 63 percent had a favorable view of charters. "It suggests that the more people know about school choice options, the more favorable they are," DiPerna said.

Johnson said the primary obstacle to offering parents more choice is the Tennessee Education Association (TEA), which he said is responsible for placing the sunset provision in the 2002 charter school legislation. "The teachers union in Tennessee wants to prevent any sort of option for students because they essentially don't want the competition that would show how badly they are doing," Johnson said. The TEA did not respond to a request for comment.

More than half of Tennesseans in the Friedman survey described their state's public school system as either fair or poor. "Parents are displeased with the current education being offered to their kids in Tennessee's public schools," Johnson said.

Given the choice between four different types of education--traditional public, charter, private, and homeschool--nearly twice as many people chose charters (28 percent) as other public schools (15 percent). The response rate for charters was higher in Tennessee than in Idaho, Illinois, and Nevada, the other three states in which Friedman has sponsored surveys.

DiPerna hopes the survey results will awaken state policymakers to the growing demand for real educational options. "I think legislators, through no fault of their own, can have a misperception of what the public thinks about school choice," DiPerna said. "But this kind of polling can show them their constituents are open to charter schools, vouchers, and tax-credit scholarships."

The Friedman Foundation plans to release survey results from Oklahoma in June, and from Maryland later this year.

Source





6 June, 2008

Inner-city kids CAN be reached

By Andrew Klavan

I visited a fourth-grade class in a slum school recently. Since I'm a storyteller by trade, the teacher asked me if I'd tell the kids a story. Now I'm a good storyteller and an all-around charming guy, no doubt, but I wasn't prepared for the degree of fascination I inspired. Rambunctious mischief ceased on the instant and resolved itself into riveted attention and awestruck stares. I was awfully pleased with myself by the time I was done. "Don't take it personally," the teacher told me brusquely. "It's just that they've never seen anyone like you before. A man--obviously tough--who's not a gangster."

I don't know how tough I am--they were fourth-graders; I guess I could've taken most of them in a fair fight one-on-one--but that's not what she was getting at. Her point was that you have to take just one look at me to see what, in fact, I am: an unapologetic, because-I-said-so, head-of-household male. They used to call us "husbands" and "fathers" back in the day. That's what these kids had never seen.

The teacher told me that she once had to explain to the class why her last name was the same as her father's. She dusted off the whole ancient ritual of legitimacy for them--marriages, maiden names, and so on. When she was done, there was a short silence. Then one child piped up softly: "Yeah . . . I've heard of that."

I've heard of that. It would break a heart of stone. Beating poverty in America nowadays is largely a matter of personal behavior. Get a high school diploma, don't have kids until you're married, don't get married until you're 21, and you probably won't be poor. It also helps if you work hard, show up on time, act courteously, and avoid anything felonious.

But where are these kids going to learn such things? It's the stuff you just sort of absorb in a healthy, traditional, two-parent home, and that's exactly what they're missing. If they learn what they've lived, they're done for--the girls too likely to "come out pregnant" like their mothers, the boys to be underemployed and maybe even do time. You can't legislate responsibility, either. Personal behavior in a free society has to be a matter of choice--choice without which there is no virtue--virtue without which a society can't be free.

It seems to me that leaves these kids only one recourse: the culture. Where the institution of family is broken, only the surrounding culture can teach people the inner structures required for a life of liberty. Many conservatives often seem to have given up on culture or not to care. There's a strong strain of philistinism on the right. When we talk about "culture wars," we usually mean preventing the courts from redefining marriage or promoting abstinence instead of birth control: culture, in other words, as the behavioral branch of politics.

Culture, in the true sense, is more than that. It's the whole engulfing narrative of our values. It's the stories we tell. Leftists know this. These kids get an earful from the Left every day. Their schools serve up black history in a way guaranteed to alienate them from the American enterprise. Their sanctioned reading list denies boys the natural fantasies of battling villains and protecting women from harm. Any instinct the girls might have that their bodies and their self-respect are interrelated is negated by the ubiquitous parable of celebrity lives. And I hardly need mention the movies and TV shows that endlessly undermine notions of manly self-discipline, feminine modesty, patriotism, and all the rest.

Conservatives respond to this mostly with finger-wagging. But creativity has to be answered with creativity. We need stories, histories, movies of our own. That requires a structure of support--publishing houses, movie studios, review space, awards, almost all of which we've ceded to the Left. There may be more profitable businesses in the short run. The long run, as always, depends on the young. If you want to win their hearts, you have to tell them stories. I have reason to believe they'll listen.

Source




Drop 'middle-class' academic subjects says British schools adviser

Children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are "middle-class" creations, a Government adviser will claim today. Professor John White, who contributed to a controversial shake-up of the secondary curriculum, believes lessons should instead cover a series of personal skills. Pupils would no longer study history, geography and science but learn skills such as energy- saving and civic responsibility through projects and themes. He will outline his theories at a conference today staged by London's Institute of Education - to which he is affiliated - to mark the 20th anniversary of the national curriculum.

Last night, critics attacked his ideas as "deeply corrosive" and condemned the Government for allowing him to advise on a new curriculum. Professor White will claim ministers are already "moving in the right direction" towards realising his vision of replacing subjects with a series of personal aims for pupils. But he says they must go further because traditional subjects were invented by the middle classes and are "mere stepping stones to wealth". [And who would want that?]

The professor believes the origins of our subject-based education system can be traced back to 19th century middle-class values. While public schools focused largely on the classics, and elementary schools for the working class concentrated on the three Rs, middle-class schools taught a range of academic subjects. These included English, maths, history, geography, science and Latin or a modern language. They "fed into the idea of academic learning as the mark of a well-heeled middle- class", he said last night. The Tories then attempted to impose these middle-class values by introducing a traditional subject-based curriculum in 1988. But this "alienated many youngsters, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds", he claimed.

The professor, who specialises in philosophy of education, was a member of a committee set up to advise Government curriculum authors on changes to secondary schooling for 11 to 14-year-olds. The reforms caused a row when they were unveiled last year for sidelining large swathes of subject content in favour of lessons on issues such as climate change and managing debt.

Professor White wants ministers to encourage schools to shift away from single-subject teaching to "theme or project-based learning". Pupils would still cover some content but would be encouraged to meet a series of personal aims. The curriculum already states some of these but is "hampered" by the continued primacy of subjects. The aims include fostering a model pupil who "values personal relationships, is a responsible and caring citizen, is entrepreneurial, able to manage risk and committed to sustainable development".

Critics claim theme-based work is distracting and can lead to gaps in pupils' knowledge. Tory schools spokesman Nick Gibb said Professor White's view was "deeply corrosive". He added: "In the world we are living in, we need people who are better educated, not more poorly educated, more knowledgeable about the world, not less so. "This anti-knowledge, anti-subject ideology is deeply damaging to our education system. It is this sort of thinking that has led to the promotion of discredited reading methods, the erosion of three separate sciences and the decline of mathematics skills. "I just find it astonishing that someone with his extreme views has been allowed to advise the Government on education policy."

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5 June, 2008

Top British university ditches meaningless government High School diplomas and sets its own entrance exam

One of Britain's leading universities is to introduce an entrance exam for all students applying to study there from 2010 because it believes that A levels no longer provide it with a viable way to select the best students. Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College, London, suggested that grade inflation at A level meant that so many students now got straight As that it had become almost "worthless" as a way of discriminating between the talented and the well drilled. Last year one in four A-level marks was a grade A and 10 per cent of A-level students achieved at least three As.

"We can't rely on A levels any more. Everybody who applies has got three or four As. They [A levels] are not very useful. The International Baccalaureate is useful but again this is just a benchmark," Sir Richard said. He added: "We are doing this not because we don't believe in A levels, but we can't use the A level any more as a discriminator factor." The move will make Imperial, which specialises in science and engineering and ranks third in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge in The Times Good University Guide, the first university to introduce a university-wide entrance exam since Oxford scrapped its own version in 1995.

Some universities, including Imperial, use entrance tests to select students for medical schools and both Oxford and Cambridge use specific subject-based entrance tests for certain degree courses. But there is no other institution in the UK offering a university-wide test.

Sir Richard said that the test would be piloted this summer for use in selecting students for entry in 2010 to Imperial, which has 12,000 full-time students. Apart from candidates for medical degrees, who must sit an entrance test called the BMAT, all Imperial applicants will sit the same exam regardless of which subject they intend to study.

The tests would seek to examine students for their innate ability and problem solving skills rather than subject knowledge. "We are going to have entrance exams that will test ability. We are looking for students who really will benefit from an IC education. The examination will look for IQ, intelligence, creativity and innovation and will not be too dependent on rote learning," Sir Richard said. But he added that students would not be able simply to stop doing A_levels, as the university would still require evidence that they had studied their chosen subjects in depth. Sir Richard said that Imperial had been in talks with other universities about the entrance test and suggested that eventually it may be introduced nationally.

He also told the Independent Schools' Council annual conference in London that many students in state schools were short-changed by the state education system, which educated 93 per cent of pupils. He suggested that the Government should offer scholarships to enable the brightest pupils to attend fee-paying schools. "We have got to do something radical if we are to save the children in our schools who are just not getting the education they deserve. We have in this country one of the best secondary educations in the world, but only a few percentage of people benefit from it," he said.

Imperial's new exam is bound to increase pressure for the introduction into Britain of American-style scholastic aptitude tests (SATs) as the key qualification for university entrance.

Source




Government money failing to get British children to play sport

Can this stupid socialist government do ANYTHING useful? Many schools do not even OFFER the target amount of sport!

Special measures to get children to do two hours of sport each week are failing, Government figures indicate. One in three pupils over the age of 14 does not do the recommended amount of exercise in school each week according to figures released by the Liberal Democrats.

The Government and the National Lottery have dedicated 1.6 billion pounds to combat childhood obesity by boosting PE lessons since 2003 but over half of secondary schools still do not provide time for children to exercise for two hours a week. Gordon Brown recently pledged a further 100 million to get children to exercise for up to five hours during the school week.

Up to 900,000 pupils are missing out on the correct amount of sport causing fears about the future health of the nation the Liberal Democrats say. In 2002 Tony Blair's government recommended that all children should do at least two hours of exercise each week at school.

Don Foster, Liberal Democrat spokesman for Culture, Media and Sport, said: "Billions of pounds of taxpayers money have been pumped into school facilities, so parents are entitled to expect that their children are given a decent opportunity to use them. "With the 2012 Olympics on their way we should be encouraging the next generation of athletes. But these figures suggest the Government is set to squander the sporting legacy it could offer."

The new figures, released in response to a Parliamentary Question posed by the Liberal Democrats suggest that 33 per cent of all school children aged 14-16 do not do two hours of sport a week. Sixty five per cent of secondary schools and 32 per cent of primary schools fail to offer the required amount of sport each week.

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4 June, 2008

Can't-do attitude to mathematics has cost the British economy big

A "lost generation" of mathematicians has cost the economy 9 billion pounds, while GCSE maths has become a "pick `n' mix" test rather than the key staging post it once was, according to a report. The decline in standards threatens the future of the economy, say the authors, and is having a devastating impact on the City [financial district], with some firms recruiting most of their maths graduates from overseas.

The report, by the Reform think-tank, accuses the Government of marginalising the interests of employers, teachers and students. It claims that ministers are focusing on exam results, rather than educational outcomes, and are trying to get pupils to pass any five GCSEs to meet targets, rather than concentrating on the core subjects of English and maths.

A culture shift is needed so that people no longer boast about their lack of maths skills but are instead embarrassed, the authors say. "The UK remains one of the few advanced nations where it is socially acceptable, fashionable even, to profess an inability to cope with maths," they add. "Society needs to build on its new interest in maths-based puzzles such as Su Doku to expel the myths about maths and change the image of the subject from geek to chic."

Holders of an A level in maths earn, on average, 10 per cent more, or 136,000 pounds, over a lifetime than those without it, Reform claims. About 440,000 people have been put off taking A-level maths since 1989, at a cost to the economy of 9 billion.

Explaining this downturn, the report said: "Concerns over poor teaching in the 1970s led to a massive extension of government involvement in the subject since the mid-1980s. "The unintended consequence has been demotivation of teachers, less enjoyment on the part of students and the distancing of employers and universities from education policy." The highest maths achievers are "at the pinnacle of the City hierarchy, making them the new `masters of the Universe' ", the report said, but these are increasingly recruited abroad. China and India are producing hundreds of thousands of science and maths graduates each year.

Maths exams are much easier now than 30 years ago, Reform says, because of efforts to make them more relevant to the workplace. This means that children are not being taught key skills such as problem solving. As a result, it is "now possible to achieve a grade C in GCSE maths having almost no conceptual knowledge of mathematics" and by scoring less than 20 per cent in the top paper. "A coherent discipline has changed to `pick `n' mix', with pupils being trained to answer specific shallow questions on a range of topics where marks can be most easily harvested." The report calls for independence of the examination system and a reversal of the trend towards modularisation.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary, said: "Our education system is too often failing to get the basics right, which risks damaging the national economy."

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: "GCSE and A-level maths are rigorous qualifications [What bullsh!]. Standards are carefully monitored by a watchdog, which is independent of ministers, and they tell us maths is a nationally important priority."

Source




A Diversiphile Dumps On The "Diversity" Industry

Post below recycled from Discriminations. See the original for links

About a year ago, in a post discussing a blistering speech the Chronicle of Higher Education's Peter Schmidt delivered to a gathering of education apparatchiks concerned about "diversity," etc., I noted that "I would like to have had the Tums or Rolaid concession outside the door to that luncheon." Recently Schmidt reported on another blistering speech delivered to another august gathering of education diversiphiles at Disney World's Animal Kingdom.

In a move befitting this wild locale, one of the nation's leading proponents of diversity in higher education turned on her audience in a biting speech delivered on Thursday. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, director of Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, suggested that colleges let people attend this annual conference-typically held in family-friendly tourist destinations-to reward them for not making waves by pushing for more equity and black and Hispanic representation on campus.

Calling herself "a hard-nosed critic from the inside," Ms. Hu-DeHart said, "Let's face it: Diversity has created jobs for all of us. It is a career. It is an industry." "We do what we need to keep our jobs," she said. "But as long as we keep doing our job the way we are told to do it, we are covering up for our universities." "You all are covering up," she said. "You all are complicit in this."

I'm not sure about the hardness of Prof. Hu-DeHart's nose, but in any event its sniffing ability was insufficient to smell anything fishy about the infamous Ward Churchill, his academic credentials, or the "diversity" that he allegedly brought to the University of Colorado, where as chairman of the ethnic studies program at the time she was influential in securing his tenured appointment.

Prof. Hu-DeHart's problem with the "diversity industry," of course, is that it wasn't engineering enough "diversity." Whether or not one agrees with her about that, it's hard to disagree with her point that "diversity" has indeed become an "industry," employing increasing numbers of academic bureaucrats and accounting for (or not) untold millions of dollars to a largely unaudited and hence unknown effect. As I noted over a year ago (here),

Whether or not "diversity" as practiced on college campuses today has any tangible educational payoffs is unclear, but there can be no argument about the fact that it pays very well indeed

As a mere drop in a bucket example, I referred to Daisy Lundy, alleged victim of a "hate crime" at the University of Virginia five years ago that many suspected, and still suspect, was a hoax. (Search "Lundy" here for my numerous posts on that event.) Hoax or not, the claim secured Ms. Lundy's election as student body president and, after graduation, a plum job as an assistant to William Harvey, the University's Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity, at a 2007 salary of $54,500.

Harvey's position itself was created largely as a result of the Lundy affair, and at an annual salary (in 2007; no doubt higher now) of $315,000, "diversity" is doing quite nicely for Harvey. Thus it is clear that the "diversity industry" is thriving in Virginia. Whether or not the taxpayers of Virginia are receiving a worthwhile return on what must be the millions of dollars their University is spending on "diversity" is another matter entirely.

UPDATE

Via a mailing list that reprinted my post, Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart sent the following response:

John: If only you were there, so you would have gotten the full measure of my critique. Neither Peter Schmidt nor I used the word "dump," or even implied it; that is an irresponsible inference based on Peter's very brief write-up of a long (almost 2-hour long lively discussion) , but obviously deliberately chosen to put a negative slant on what was a constructive critique on my part. If only critics of diversity like you were not so cynical and sarcastic, and see evil around every corner, we can conceivably have a productive exchange of views some day! You see, unlike most "diversiphobes," I am not a kneejerk "diversiphile," as you derisively label me. I am able to critique the diversity project in higher education if I perceive corruption. You however, cannot see past your deep-seated biases, so you mock everything about diversity and your reactions are totally predictable. The NCORE organizers at Oklahoma are open-minded, and invited Roger Clegg to keynote a major sesssion. Maybe you should make an effort to attend the conference some day. Prof. Vivian Louie of Harvard was also invited to talk about her research on Asian Americans and on immigrant students in general.

You also do not seem to know how tenure is awarded at research universities; it is NOT awarded by the chair of any department, but by several layers of committees and peer review on the home campus as well as by many external referees who are experts in the candidate's field. If you want to take cheap shots, you should at least inform yourself better. I don't know if you have ever held an academic position or gone through the tenure process at a major research university--you should try it sometimes if you haven't had the pleasure.

Of course I wasn't there, and so of course I didn't get the "full measure" of Prof. Hu-DeHart's critique. Perhaps Prof. Hu-DeHart's telling her audience of diversity officials and others concerned about race and ethnicity in higher education that "Diversity has created jobs for all of us," that "We do what we need to do to keep our jobs," but that "as long as we keep doing our job the way we are told to do it, we are covering up for our universities," that "You all are covering up ... You all are complicit in this,"

that those who attend the conference-and work in college offices dealing with diversity and minority issues-help their institutions create the impression that they are far more concerned with diversity and equity than is actually the case

- perhaps all this and more really was not a dump but a "constructive critique." Maybe the diversity officers et. al. even thought this critique was constructive; after all, they think a number of odd things. And of course "dumps" is my characterization, not Prof. Hu-DeHart's or Peter Schmidt's. Did my post leave any reasonable doubt about that?

In any event I'm impressed by Prof. Hu-DeHart's powers of observation. She's never met me, but from afar she can somehow tell that I'm "cynical and sarcastic, and see evil around every corner." This is news to me. Sarcastic? Maybe. But cynical? I don't think so. And I certainly don't see evil around every corner, even in the diversity offices of which she is so fond. I disagree with the existence and practices of what she so aptly (even if "constructively") called the "diversity industry," but I don't think those who are feeding at its teat are evil.

Prof. Hu-DeHart says that she is "not a kneejerk `diversiphile'" because she is "able to critique the diversity project in higher education if I perceive corruption." By her own admission, in other words, the only thing about the "diversity industry" to which she is capable of objecting is "corruption," which does indeed make her a "kneejerk diversiphile." She wholeheartedly accepts "diversity's" premise and its method, i.e., the necessary practice of racially preferentially treatment.

As for myself, I am happy to confess to my own "deep-seated biases" - for colorblind racial equality, treating all individuals without regard to their race or ethnicity.

Moving on, I'm sure the NCORE organizers are indeed "open-minded"; close or even loose readers of my post will find no hint that they aren't, making this a curious observation. Roger Clegg writes, however, that he was invited to appear on a panel, not to deliver a "keynote."

Prof. Hu-DeHart's calling into question my knowledge of "how tenure is awarded at research universities" is also curiously irrelevant, since my only comment about the tenure process was to mention - quite carefully, I thought - that Prof. Hu-DeHart "was influential in securing [Ward Churchill's] tenured appointment" at the University of Colorado when she was head of ethnic studies there. I did not say or imply that she acted alone in awarding him tenure, and in that I was a bit more circumspect than she herself has been on occasion. For example, the Brown Daily Herald has written (April 25, 2005):

Before coming to Brown, Hu-DeHart was head of CU's ethnic studies department at the time Churchill received tenure in the department. She told The Herald that Churchill was "her hire" at CU. She said he went through the standard hiring process, and no special considerations were made on the basis of diversity, but she declined to comment further.

Although I neglected to cite it in my post, I based my observation that Hu-DeHart was "influential" in Churchill's receiving tenure on the following information from the University of Colorado Daily Camera:

In 1988, Kaye Howe, then vice chancellor for academic services, urged that Churchill be given a faculty position despite his lack of a Ph.D. "Ward does not have his doctorate and I fear that may deny him the place his talent, work and quality of mind should give him in the academic community," she wrote to Evelyn Hu-DeHart, then director of CU's Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America.....

Faculty members for the ethnic studies center were required to be housed in an academic department, and Michael Pacanowsky wrote then that Hu-DeHart had asked him to consider rostering Churchill in his communications department with tenure. The sociology and political science departments had rejected the idea, he said.

Pacanowsky expressed his own concern about whether Churchill fit in communications but wrote that "on the plus side, we would be helping out another unit on campus (CSERA), and making our own contribution to increasing the cultural diversity on campus (Ward is a Native American)."

Less than a month later, on Feb. 1, 1991, CU officials granted Churchill a tenured associate professorship in communications with a salary of $45,000.

Prof. Hu-DeHart may or may not be proud of her role in securing a tenured appointment for Ward Churchill, and I can certainly understand her wanting to take what comfort she can from the fact that she didn't act alone, from the "several layers of committees and peer review" of which her influence was a part, but her evident desire to minimize her own role does not give her license to refer to my calling attention to the influential role she played as an uninformed cheap shot. Although it might have been cheap (posting on one's own blog doesn't cost much), it was not uninformed.





3 June, 2008

Unintended Consequences of State Merit-Based Aid

It is by now well-established that the high profile and expensive merit-based financial aid programs that numerous states have established to keep their best and brightest in college within state borders are far from the panacea their supporters envisioned. While the programs have often accomplished the goal of encouraging top-notch high school students to attend local colleges and making college more affordable for state residents, they have been criticized for disproportionately favoring higher-income students over those from low-income backgrounds and doing relatively little to encourage students who might not otherwise have gone to college to do so.

A study presented this week at the annual forum of the Association for Institutional Research suggests that, at least in one case, a state merit-based financial aid program may be working directly at odds with another priority that is near the top of concerns of most state and federal policy makers and educators: increasing the flow of Americans into scientific and technological fields.

The study, by Shouping Hu, associate professor of higher education at Florida State University, looks at his state's "Bright Futures" program, which is one of numerous state programs designed in the image of Georgia's Hope Scholarship Program, the first of its kind. Bright Futures, the second largest such program in the country, provides full-tuition scholarships at public colleges and comparably sized grants to private institutions to students who achieve certain minimum grade point averages in high school, and requires recipients to keep their college GPAs at certain minimum levels to sustain their awards.

Using Florida’s Education Data Warehouse, which is among the most inclusive data systems in the country for tracking the flow of students throughout a state’s educational system and into its work force, Hu examined the distribution of enrollments in various college disciplines before and after Bright Futures took effect in 1997.

What he found is that in 1995 and 1996, the two years before Bright Futures took effect, 47.5 percent of students who enrolled in degree programs at Florida's public colleges did so in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In 1998 and 1999, the two years after Bright Futures took effect, 38.5 percent did, and the numbers appeared to be dropping, from 39.2 percent in 1998 to 37.7 percent in 1999.

Recipients of the Bright Futures scholarships were more likely than other students to enroll in STEM fields; in 1999, 29.3 percent of non-recipients of the merit-based scholarships enrolled in scientific and technological disciplines, compared to 34.2 and 45 percent of students who received the two types of Bright Futures grants, known as Florida Academic Scholars and Florida Medallion Scholars awards. But even the Bright Futures recipients were less likely to enter STEM fields than the average student was before the program began.

What explains the decrease in enrollment in science and math fields? "One plausible explanation," Hu writes, is that students may have sought to "bump up" their college grades to try to qualify for, or increase the size of, their merit awards. "That is, merit-based financial aid using college GPA as a criterion for renewal could provide incentives for students not to choose degree programs in science and engineering" - which are generally seen as more difficult, Hu notes - "so that they have a better chance to qualify for the merit-based financial aid."

Given the intense concern among state and federal policy makers about a perceived undersupply of American scientists and engineers, which has prompted significant new federal financial aid programs and many efforts at the state level, "some modifications of the current merit aid programs may be warranted," Hu concludes.

When 84% Isn't Good Enough

Many a public university might rest on its laurels when 84 percent of its undergraduates earn degrees within six years. But while that graduation rate puts Pennsylvania State University in the upper tier of public universities, its institutional researchers have been immersed in a multiyear project aimed at figuring out why one group of students - those from low-income backgrounds - are so much less likely to graduate. [They couldn't be less intelligent, could they? Oh no!] Only 20 percent of the students who come from the bottom quintile of family income and have low grade point averages in their first semester at Penn State go on to graduate, while comparably performing students from high-income backgrounds graduate at a rate of 36 percent and high-performing, high-income students graduate at a rate of 89 percent.

"Even though we have a really high graduation rate, we realize there's a big disparity for lower-income kids," says Michael J. Dooris, director of planning research and assessment at Penn State and a co-author of the paper, with Marianne Guidos, a quality and planning research associate. "There's a tendency for some faculty to say, `Geez, how much better can [our graduation rate] be?' But when you show them the data, they say, `Yeah, there's a problem here for some of our students.' "

To try to get at that problem, Dooris and his colleagues sought to compare the 20 percent of low-income students go on to graduate after struggling in their first semester with the strong majority who don't, with the hope that the analysis might provide some clues for what Penn State might do to improve the odds for all of them. It's not that Penn State is abandoning its efforts to try to increase access to college for low-income students - far from it, Dooris notes, it has been steadily increasing its financial aid budget - but as many college officials are concluding, "we have to focus on what happens to the kids who come here."

The overall picture that emerges from the comparison of the survivors to those who don't get through is not terrifically heartening, Dooris acknowledges. There are some bright spots: There is "no statistical evidence" that the 20 percent of low-income students who go on to graduate have stronger academic skills than those who do not, which means that "skills deficiencies can be overcome." "The ones who graduate are probably going in and taking remedial English or math and it works for them," Dooris says. While "some faculty believe that some of these kids are hopeless, when you look carefully at it, there's no evidence of that."

Among other characteristics, students with single parents were half as likely as peers with married parents to graduate, and students at Penn State's main campus - where admissions standards are higher - were three times likelier than those at its many branch campuses to earn degrees. Family income was generally not a determining characteristic, suggesting that "while affordability is clearly an issue in general for students at this university, there is not much difference (other things being equal) in the chances of earning a degree between the relatively low-income and the lowest-income students."

In terms of characteristics that appeared in the data to point the way to success, students who participated in work study and the passed most of their first semester course work seemed were more likely to graduate than were their peers. "These are clues, at least, that summer orientation programs, good advising, first-year seminars and similar mechanisms for students to successfully transition to college might be especially valuable for students who are most at risk," the authors write - consistent, they note, with prevailing wisdom in scholarly research on student success.

So far, at least, says Dorris, the research, while useful, has not produced any magic bullets. "We're not solving this problem by a longshot," he acknowledges. "There's a real problem, and to some extent, it's a social and a cultural problem. But this kind of study suggests that if we keep working at it, we can make a difference, and we have no alternative but to do that."

Source




NH Middle School Celebrating `Open Tent' Day - Kids Dress Like Arabs

Only in the west can one see a school that hosts a day when school children are encouraged to dress like, act like, and "learn about" those trying to kill them and all in a day that the country is in the midst of war. And only in the west would the media help celebrate such an outrageous example of support for what, in truth, are our enemies.

On May 9, the kids of the Amherst Middle School in Amherst, New Hampshire, were forced to parade about their school dressed as "Saudi Arabians" so that they could "learn from people around the world" in a happy day of multiculturalism. But, what they ended up being taught was the wholly sanitized version of how wonderful Saudi society is instead of the truth.

Sadly, the Milford (NH) Cabinet, a small newspaper group in the Granite State, is full of uncritical praise and wonder at the multicultural extravaganza forced upon these children unawares. Worse, they didn't do any reporting on how this day of appeasement came to be held.

For one night, on May 9, the quaint colonial town of Amherst, New Hampshire, was transformed into a Saudi Arabian Bedouin tent community, with the help of 80 seventh-graders at the Amherst Middle School. The weather cooperated, providing 85 degree temperatures to give an authentic Saudi feel to the evening.

And what was this exercise in sympathy for our enemies supposed to do for the community?

The "open tent" was created to encourage participants to reach out and learn from people around the world, and to promote curiosity and cultural understanding.

One wonders if Amherst Middle School dressed up their kids like Imperial Japanese soldiers and had them learn about Shintoism during WWII? Somehow, I'd bet not. So, what did everyone learn? They learned that being a Saudi was fun and that it is cool to act like one. But, they didn't really learn much of any use and they certainly didn't learn anything in context. Still, even what they did learn is disturbing. Here are a few of the things the paper outlined.

* During the check-in, guests selected a traditional Arabic name for their name badge and completed an actual Saudi customs form, which warned in bold letters "Death for Drug Trafficking " at the top.

*..as the traditions of Saudi Arabia at this time prevent women from participating in these public roles.

* Seventh-grade girls hosted the hijab and veil stations, where other female guests learned how to wear the required head covering and veils. An antique trunk full of black abayas worn by women, and white thobes worn by the men, were available for guests to try on.

* An Islamic religion station included a Muslim prayer rug with a compass imbedded in it to locate Mecca, readings on the Islamic faith, call to prayer items and prayer beads.

So, this school taught these children to be accepting and tolerant of excluding women, forcing them to hide behind a veil, and were told that the Muslim religion was something they should try on for fun? Wonderful.

I can't help wondering if these middle school kids learned of the honor killings and the female genital mutilation called "female circumcision" that women are forced to go through in Saudi Arabia? Were these innocent American kids told that the Saudis have thuggish, pseudo "police" that roam the streets that beat people up who seem to be breaking their strict religious dress codes that religious zealots in government force upon the people? Did they learn of the oppressive laws that prevent people of other religious faiths from practicing their religions? Also, did they learn that the Saudis export bin Laden's style of terror all across the world? Did they learn that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis? I wonder, did these impressionable American kids lean any of these facts? Not according to the Milford Cabinet they didn't.

I also wonder where the idea for this obscene multicultural event came from? Were any local Muslim groups responsible for this? Why didn't the paper do any reporting on that? If it was just a wayward teacher's idea, why didn't the paper report that? Why are we left in the dark about who is responsible for this outrageous event? Of course, we do know why. It's because the paper thought the event was a great idea and didn't want to report any info that might cause someone to be exposed to public questioning.

Like I said, only in the weak willed west can we mollycoddle an enemy directly engaged in killing Americans, only in the west can we encourage "understanding" of a people out to see us harmed. Only in the west can we see oppressive cultural ideas that are antithetical to freedom and liberty promulgated as a fun thing for our children to learn about. Only in the west can we sit back and allow our schools and media abuse our children like this. Only in the west can we think nothing of undermining our own basic principles of freedom, equality, and liberty for all and supplant that with the ideas of one of the most oppressive regimes of the world.

So, thanks for helping destroy our culture and country and thanks for helping Americans lower their guard goes out to Amherst Middle School and the Milford Cabinet newspaper. It's so wonderful to "understand" and celebrate people who want us dead.

Source





2 June, 2008

British universities' witch-hunt against the Jews

Today, the Universities and Colleges Union is discussing whether universities should single out Israeli and Jewish scholars for active discrimination. Yes, you read that correctly. The UCU is debating a motion which not only raises the spectre yet again of an academic boycott of Israel but demands of Jewish and Israeli academics that they explain their politics as a pre-condition to normal academic contact. The motion asks colleagues

to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating... the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions... Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.

The implication is that, if they don't condemn Israel for the `occupation', or practising `apartheid', `genocide' or any of the other manufactured crimes laid at Israel's door by the Palestinian/Islamist/neonazi/leftwing axis, they won't be able to work. Their continued employment will depend on their holding views which are permitted. The views they are being bludgeoned into expressing as a condition of their employment are based on lies, distortion, propaganda, gross historical ignorance, blood libels and prejudice. And this in the universities, supposedly the custodians of free thought and inquiry in the service of dispassionate scholarship.

What makes it all the more appalling is that it is Israelis and Jews alone who are being singled out for this treatment. No other group is to be barred from academic activity unless they hold `approved' views; no state-run educational institution controlled by any of the world's numerous tyrannies is to be `grey-listed'. The UCU's own rules state that it actively opposes all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination.

Well, various Jewish groups in the Stop the Boycott campaign have obtained a legal opinion from two QCs which states that today's motion constitutes harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination on grounds of race or nationality. It says:

If the Motion is passed it would expose Jewish members of the Union to indirect discrimination... Additionally, the Union faces potential liability for acts of harassment on grounds of race or nationality. The substance of the Motion may also involve the Union in becoming accessories to acts of discrimination in an employment context against Israeli academics...No doubt, if such Israeli academics speak in favour of the Palestinian viewpoint they will be immune from further action; if they are against it or possibly even non-committal they and their institutions are to be considered potentially unsuitable subjects for continued association...

The Union will accordingly be adopting a provision, criterion or practice which will put Jewish members at a particular disadvantage compared to non-Jewish members. That is because Jewish members are much more likely to have links with Israeli academics and institutions than non -Jewish members. To require Jewish members to act consistently with the Motion (if passed) would be to impose a professional detriment upon them as Union members which is based on their race. If they acted inconsistently with the Motion, we infer that they would also be subject to disadvantage or sanction under the Union rules or practices -- an alternative detriment. We do not see how any such detriment would be justified as pursuing a legitimate aim. No proper Union purpose is promoted by imposing this detriment on certain members. Thus the Motion will have the effect of indirectly -- and unlawfully -- against Jewish Members of the Union.

The opinion is thus unequivocal. Today's motion breaks the law; it breaks the UCU's own rules; it is prejudiced, discriminatory and unjust towards Israelis and Jews. But the motion also notes

legal attempts to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions; and legal advice that such debates are lawful

In other words, two fingers to the Jews. Such is the disgusting and terrifying state to which Britain's intelligentsia has now descended.

Source




Britain's UCU: where is your boycott of academics from Cuba, China, Sudan.or the USA?

This sickening tripe, as reported by the Guardian, shouldn't be worth commenting on.

A lecturers' union was last night accused of launching a new academic boycott of Israel after it agreed a policy to call on its members to "consider" their links with Israeli institutions.

The University and College Union voted overwhelmingly at its Manchester conference to call on colleagues to "consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating"..

Academics argued that it was not a new boycott, but a show of their right to debate the issues facing Palestinian colleagues and, separately, links with Israeli institutions. Tom Hickey of the NEC and Brighton University, which proposed the motion, told delegates: "Being a student or teacher in Palestine is not easy . we are talking about not just impediment but serial humiliation and that's the order of the day in Palestine... In the face of accusations of anti-semitism and legal threats we refused to be intimidated. We will protect the union from legal threats but we will not be silenced.".

In a statement, the vice-chancellors' umbrella group, Universities UK, said: "We believe a boycott of this kind, advocating the severing of academic links with a particular nationality or country, is at odds with the fundamental principle of academic freedom."

...but we have to.

For the sake of brevity, we'll leave aside the obvious: that the double standards in not pursuing a boycott of Chinese, Sudanese, Zimbabwean, Cuban, etc academics shows a tendency to hold said peoples in lower moral and ethic regard than Israelis - i.e. Judeo-Christians.

No, what's interesting is that, when we look at the premise - accusations of human rights abuses of Palestinian-Arabs - for the boycott, we see an emptiness in their beliefs. You see, the repercussions to the threats to boycott products and academics from tiny, almost-friendless Israel, are small in consequence to the boycotters than were they to follow through on their principles. Were they to (a) continue to ignore the aforementioned list of genuine and disgraceful human rights abusers, and (b) aim their anger at some Big Boy offenders, who would they be forced to boycott?

The USA.

After all, who so these same people claim have killed, what, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghans, etc. - numbers that shrink even the most fabulously inflated number of slaughtered Palestinian-Arabs by Israel.

Are they going to live in a world without products, academic papers, medicines, technological innovations, Green Cards, UN funding - not to mention military help every time the peace-loving EU can't handle a field battle in their own back yard involving a country the size of an average sitting room? That, our lovely readers, that is why these moral cowards pick on tiny Israel.

Source




Australia: Government schools falling apart at seams

One-in-three schools across NSW has a serious maintenance problem, despite repeated State Government pledges to address the backlog of repairs. The State Government will this week unveil plans to spend a record $267 million on public school and TAFE maintenance this financial year. The figure represents an increase of $11 million on last year - or just over four per cent, which is almost the same rate as inflation.

A NSW Teachers Federation survey conducted in May and obtained exclusively by The Sunday Telegraph showed 34 per cent of teachers ranked the situation in their school as "very serious". Another 33 per cent saw maintenance issues as "serious".

The State Government will on Tuesday reveal plans to spend a capital works program of up to $15 billion to improve roads and transport infrastructure. Facing growing criticism over the state of NSW hospitals, trains and roads, the Iemma government is desperate to showcase tangible improvements in time for the 2011 election. However, The Sunday Telegraph has learned the move will not be without casualties, with a senior Labor source claiming the State Government plans to cut recurrent spending over the next few years to fund the ambitious works project.

Treasurer Michael Costa is understood to have told Cabinet last week that the increased spending on capital works will mean ministers will be required to cut spending on services. The Government is also relying heavily on securing the estimated $10 billion it wants from the sale of its power industry to pay for the works. Many infrastructure works will also be delivered through partnerships with the private sector.

In education, three new schools in Elderslie, Middleton Grange and Rouse Hill will be built under the arrangement. Mr Della Bosca said a record $733 million would be spent on building and upgrading schools and TAFE facilities - an increase of $116 million on previous years. Among the 16 schools to benefit from new building works will be Carenne School at Bathurst, Casino Public School, East Hills Boys', East Hills Girls' and Kempsey High School. Granville, Hamilton, Macquarie Fields and Temora TAFE will be upgraded as part of 12 major building improvement projects.

The works will also fund the construction of 20 new school halls and gyms and 52 upgrades to school toilets. Food technology units at eight schools would also be improved.

Mr Della Bosca said the spending commitment would vastly improve the state of public schools and TAFE facilities in NSW. School maintenance has been an ongoing issue for the State Government since the damaging Vinson report released in 2003, which found many schools to be in Third World conditions. A follow-up survey by the teachers' union to 5000 principals found the situation had failed to improve. Teachers were asked to rank the seriousness of maintenance issues on a scale of one to five.

The cost of clearing the maintenance backlog is estimated at around $82.6 million. Of the $267 million to be spent on school maintenance, $13.5 million would go towards 1300 urgent repairs. The repairs on the so-called accelerated maintenance program include painting works, new carpeting, playground and roof upgrades.

Source





1 June, 2008

Fire the bitch!

Right and wrong. That's what kids are supposed to learn in kindergarten aren't they? That's what their teachers need to understand if they are to lead by word and deed. So explain this one to me. Forget about politics for one minute. Let's talk about common sense.

A five-year-old kid has a disability. An illness. He hums and eats his homework, not because he's naughty, not because he's trying to hurt or harm anyone, but because he has something called Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. The school knows this. They tell his mother. It's not as if they don't understand what's going on, or think that he's acting out for no reason.

What's the job of the local public school in these circumstances? Easy. Even a five-year old could answer this one. To teach him. To make sure he is safe. To help him, and his classmates, learn to live in this world, with respect, and kindness, and tolerance, for all, especially for those who are different.

There are teachers who have no common sense, no decency and no shame. If the news reports of how Wendy Portillo treated Alex Barton are even partly right, if they contain even a grain of truth, this is a woman with no business in a classroom. What the reports, and his mother, are saying is that Ms. Portillo kicked the five-year-old boy out of the classroom for being himself, and then turned her classroom in Port St. Lucie, Fla. into the set of "Survivor," where the kids got to vote on whether to let their classmate back in. By a 14-2 vote, they gave him the thumbs down.

Here's the amazing part, though. She hasn't been fired yet. You and I are reading about this, but she's still on the payroll. "Ms. Portillo has been reassigned outside of the classroom at the district offices until any further action may be determined," the St. Lucie County School District is reported to have said in a statement. Come again. Tell me what further action needs to be determined. Tell me why it takes them longer to vote thumbs down on her than it did for her to organize the vote against her own student. Tell me what job she could possibly be doing in the district office that can be capably done by a person of such total and complete lack of intelligence, judgment, decency and compassion.

Now, could a mistake have been made? Could all these news accounts be wrong? Could the boy's mother and the school district and all the reporters covering this story have missed some essential point - like it didn't happen, this is all a hoax, there is no such kid as Alex Barton and no such teacher as Wendy Portillo? I'd like to believe that.

But as bad as the media can be, as many mistakes as all of us can make, this has a certain smell about it. The smell of the line between entertainment and education disappearing. The line between teaching a class and hosting a show, between educating and amusing your charges, between standing up for what's right when you're in front of the room and indulging your own fantasies and foibles.

I don't disrespect teachers. Quite the opposite. It's what I do, what I've been doing for decades, and while I'm lucky enough, at the college and law school level, to be paid better than kindergarten teachers are, it is because I realize just how important what we do is that I have no patience at all for those who abuse the privilege of teaching.

Teaching is a sacred responsibility. Public school teachers (the good ones, and most of them are) don't get paid enough, and they don't get enough respect, but one thing you do get, whether you want it or not, is power. You have the power to make a difference in the lives of those who are stuck listening to you, whether they want to or not, for hours on end. You have the power to influence how they think about themselves and each other. You have the power to lead, for good and for ill.

Those who use that power well garner enormous rewards, if not in dollar terms, in the personal satisfaction that comes from doing something important, changing people's lives, forming relationships that last and make life worth living. Those who abuse that power deserve to be fired. Thumbs down. Over and out. WE who are teachers have our fingers on the buttons, not of weapons but of lives. We make mistakes, all of us, but some mistakes are inexcusable, and some wrongs cannot be forgiven.

If what is being said today about Wendy Portillo is true then there are no explanations, no justifications, no second acts for her. She does not have what it takes to be a teacher. She does not deserve the power, or the respect. Let her go work for a game show. Kindergarten is real life.

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Skipping Science Class, Continued

Three years ago, I posted about some disturbing trends in UK science education:

Instead of learning science, pupils will "learn about the way science and scientists work within society". They will "develop their ability to relate their understanding of science to their own and others' decisions about lifestyles", the QCA said. They will be taught to consider how and why decisions about science and technology are made, including those that raise ethical issues, and about the "social, economic and environmental effects of such decisions".

They will learn to "question scientific information or ideas" and be taught that "uncertainties in scientific knowledge and ideas change over time", and "there are some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot address". Science content of the curriculum will be kept "lite". Under "energy and electricity", pupils will be taught that "energy transfers can be measured and their efficiency calculated, which is important in considering the economic costs and environmental effects of energy use".

A couple of days ago, the Telegraph had an article about the Government's new national science test and the unbelievably simplistic questions it contains. For example:

In a multiple choice question, teenagers were asked why electric wires are made from copper. The four possible answers were that copper was brown, was not magnetic, conducted electricity, or that it conducted heat.

This question can of course be answered without knowing anything at all about either electricity or copper. Demonstration:

Why is unobtanium used to summon the Gostak?

1)Unobtainum is purple

2)Unobtanium is not magnetic

3)The Gostak has a strong affinity for unobtainum

4)Unobtanium is attractive to gnomes

It's pretty clear that the desired answer is (3), even if you don't know what unobtainium is or what (who?) the Gostak might be. The question on the U.K. "science test" might be a test of the ability to read and perform very simple logic; it has nothing to do with the measurement of scientific knowledge or the understanding of scientific methods. In my 2005 post, I wrote:

At least in the U.S., the vastly-increased spending on education over recent decades has been driven in large part by the conviction that we are living in a more scientific and technological society, and that schools must provide students with appropriate knowledge in order for them to be able to succeed in the job market and to fulfill their roles as citizens. I feel fairly sure that the same kind of reasoning has been used to justify educational expenditures in the U.K. So, the schools have taken the money on pretext, and are now failing to perform the duty that should go with it.

Melanie Phillips, in her post criticizing the new U.K science program, said "The reason given for the change to the science curriculum is to make science `relevant to the 21st century'. This is in accordance with the government's doctrine of `personalised learning', which means that everything that is taught must be `relevant' to the individual child." To which I responded in my post:

"There are so many things wrong (with the U.K.'s new approach to science education) that it's difficult to know where to start. First of all: it's a natural human characteristic to be curious about the universe you live in. Schools should encourage this curiosity, not smother it in the name of a fake "relevance."

In A Preface to Paradise Lost, C S Lewis contrasts the characters of Adam and Satan, as developed in Milton's work:

Adam talks about God, the Forbidden tree, sleep, the difference between beast and man, his plans for the morrow, the stars and the angels. He discusses dreams and clouds, the sun, the moon, and the planets, the winds and the birds. He relates his own creation and celebrates the beauty and majesty of Eve.Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace `all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.' Satan has been in the heaven of Heavens and in the abyss of Hell, and surveyed all that lies between them, and in that whole immensity has found only one thing that interests Satan. And that "one thing" is, of course, Satan himself.his position and the wrongs he believes have been done to him. Satan's monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament.

One need not believe in a literal Satan, or for that matter be religious at all, to see the force of this. There is indeed something Satanic about a person who has no interests other than themselves. And by insisting that everything be "relevant" and discouraging the development of broader interests, the educational authorities in Britain are doing great harm to the children put in their charge.

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