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30 June, 2012

Sabbath



29 June, 2012

"The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps."

What is college really worth?  A lot of people are asking that question -- and it's the cover story of this month's Utne Reader magazine.

My older son is 30, and my younger is 17. I'm hoping my two sons escape from the consequences of graduating into this terrible economy, which is going to dampen the value of not only a college degree, but of all those graduate degrees parents are paying for (and students are borrowing on) for decades to come.

The companion piece to the Utne Reader cover story is called "The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps." It highlights the plight of adjunct professors who require food stamps to get by. Melissa Bruninga-Matteau, for example, is a 43-year-old white single mother who teaches two courses in humanities at Yavapai College in Prescott Arizona.

She never expected to be on food stamps. Somehow she imagined her Ph.D. in medieval history was a guaranteed ticket to the middle class. Another college teacher in Florida is married with two kids. He's a graduate student in film studies at Florida State University.

Somehow he hasn't yet processed that a married father of two probably should not be getting an advanced degree in film studies. I'm not sure anybody should, actually.

Utne sees this as a plea for paying college teachers even more (raising tuition prices even higher). I see it as an indictment of colleges making money by enrolling students for whom there is no plausible career path with borrowed government money.

My sons are lucky. We were able to pay for college. By "we" I do not mean just my husband and me, but my husband and me and our parents.

My older son graduated with money in the bank, not debt. He spent years as a starving artist, but once he began to make money, his economic situation was quickly transformed into a situation of building capital, human and otherwise, not paying for his college degrees until he's 40.

I'm pretty sure that if I could not afford to pay for my children's college, I would advise them to live at home, go to community college for two years and then to two years of state school. Pay tuition as you go. Parents don't charge rent. Mom will throw in doing your laundry, no extra charge.

Save the Ivy League dream for graduate school, if you've made the grades to get into an Ivy grad school. (If not, don't go to grad school.)

Since both my husband and I are Yale graduates, it's kind of shocking to me that I think this.

But the truth is that as loans have become available and every teen is encouraged to borrow money and go to college, the costs of college have skyrocketed out of proportion to the reasonable return.

The average cost of room, board and tuition at a public university is seven times what it was when I went to Yale, according to Utne Reader.

Yes, a college degree is "worth it" in general terms.  It's just not worth going $50,000 into debt at the age of 22 to achieve.

There's got to be a better way.  The culture of debt being created for college grads will affect them for years to come.

Colleges have become complicit in teaching teenagers bad financial lessons that hurt their ability to make it. According to Utne Reader, at least 700 colleges have contracts with banks to market credit cards to students. About nine in 10 students use credit cards to help pay their education expenses. The average college student now has 4.6 credit cards.

I'm 51 years old and I have two.

We are going to see a lot more generational cris de couer, like the hilarious viral YouTube music video "The Ivy League Hustle (I Went to Princeton, B----!)," youtube.com/watch?v=YDhf9qwiA34. Overlaying its sexual complaint by elite women about the men they have to date, there is an amazing riff on the anomalous position of the overeducated artist, trying to persuade himself or herself that being economically marginal is a sign of moral superiority.

Borrowing more to pay for colleges that raise their tuition so they can enroll more film studies majors?  That is madness, and it has to stop.

SOURCE





Number of British graduates in menial jobs doubles in five years with 10,000 taking posts that do not require a degree

The number of graduates forced to take menial jobs as cleaners, labourers, shelf stackers and rubbish collectors has almost doubled in five years, figures show.

More than 10,000 university leavers took posts that do not require degrees after graduating in 2010/11.

The number in so-called ‘elementary occupations’ six months after graduating in 2006/7 was just 5,460, according to data released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

Other examples in this category include caretakers, road sweepers, street vendors, odd-job workers, shoe cleaners, hotel porters and door-to-door sales people.

The figures also show 720 graduates became process, plant and machine operatives in factories in 2010/11, compared with 595 in 2006/7.

But many more fail to get even menial jobs, with 9 per cent (20,620) assumed to be unemployed six months after completing their degrees in 2010/11. This is around the same proportion as the year before, but the figure stood at 5 per cent in 2006/7.

The statistics will worry parents and students preparing to embark on degree courses this autumn, when tuition fees will rise to as high as £9,000 a year.

Universities have already experienced a 9 per cent drop in applications from UK students amid fears over spiralling levels of debt under the new fees regime.

The HESA figures also show that 20,675 graduates were employed in sales and customer service roles in 2010/11, including sales assistants, caretakers and call centre staff.

Around 47,350 graduates went into ‘associate professional and technical’ jobs, including laboratory technicians, nurses, paramedics, interpreters, police officers and the armed forces.
Pugh

Overall, around 158,000 people were in some form of employment, either in the UK or abroad, six months after graduating last year, the figures show.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said yesterday: ‘The Government should be doing more to stimulate jobs and growth.

‘While the Prime Minister continues to attack people on benefits, he is doing little to help them get off benefits and on with their lives.’

Universities minister David Willetts insisted that although the job market was challenging, graduates continued to do better than those without a degree.

He said: ‘We must ensure graduates enter the labour market equipped to succeed.’

Meanwhile, a report from the independent market research company High Fliers has warned that graduates are competing for top jobs against a ‘backlog’ of earlier university leavers.

One in three applications for this year’s graduate vacancies are from students who left higher education last year or earlier, it says.

SOURCE






Obnoxious British bureaucracy penalizes good teacher

A dedicated teacher last night claimed her  35-year career was in ruins after she lost her job for handing out her mobile phone number to a schoolgirl who was upset about her sick grandfather.

Heather Wolfson, 56, said she had been using ‘a mother’s instinct’ when she  helped the pupil, adding that political correctness meant teachers were being punished for simply showing compassion and common sense.

The mother of two was suspended from her job last year at Ysgol y Grango, in Rhos, north Wales. The school said  Mrs Wolfson had acted inappropriately by giving the girl  her number when she broke down in tears after her grandfather’s diagnosis with cancer.

The food technology and textiles teacher was also reprimanded for giving her number to a 12-year-old boy and offering to take him home after dark when no-one arrived to collect him from school.

Neither of the children’s parents complained to the school. Instead, a member of staff alerted the headteacher that the girl and boy had the teacher’s phone number.

At a disciplinary hearing Mrs Wolfson, who had been on a fixed-term contract to cover maternity leave, was handed a written warning.  Her contract expired the following day and was not renewed.

The school gave her a basic dated reference, but the experience is proving a blot on an otherwise untainted career.

Mrs Wolfson, from Weston Rhyn, near Oswestry, said she has been struggling to get a job ever since.   ‘I’ve given my life to teaching but now I’ve been rendered unemployable,’ she said. ‘Schools have fallen prey to political correctness and our careers are walking on a tightrope.’

Referring to the incidents with the pupils which triggered her suspension, she said: ‘I was just looking out for them both, it was a mother’s instinct.’ Colin Adkins, of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: ‘Heather’s case is an absolute tragedy.

‘There are no regulations to say teachers can’t text pupils, the communication should simply be appropriate, and it was entirely appropriate in  this case.

‘She was providing pastoral support. There was nothing sinister or untoward going on.’

Amanda Harrison, deputy head of Ysgol y Grango, said the matter had been resolved, adding: ‘It would be inappropriate to comment further.’  Wrexham Council also declined to comment.

Mrs Wolfson was suspended in January last year and her contract expired months later in July.

‘I would never have done anything to jeopardise my job,’ she said. ‘While I agree teachers and children need to be safeguarded, the impact often goes against your instinct which is to care for and protect the child.’

SOURCE



28 June, 2012

Too Much College

    Walter E. Williams

In President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address, he said that "higher education can't be a luxury. It is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford." Such talk makes for political points, but there's no evidence that a college education is an economic imperative. A good part of our higher education problem, explaining its spiraling cost, is that a large percentage of students currently attending college are ill-equipped and incapable of doing real college work. They shouldn't be there wasting their own resources and those of their families and taxpayers. Let's look at it.

Robert Samuelson, in his Washington Post article "It's time to drop the college-for-all crusade" (5/27/2012), said that "the college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good." Richard Vedder -- professor of economics at Ohio University, adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of The Center for College Affordability & Productivity, or CCAP -- in his article "Ditch ... the College-for-All Crusade," published on The Chronicle of Higher Education's blog, "Innovations" (6/7/2012), points out that the "U.S. Labor Department says the majority of new American jobs over the next decade do not need a college degree. We have a six-digit number of college-educated janitors in the U.S." Another CCAP essay by Vedder and his colleagues, titled "From Wall Street to Wal-Mart," reports that there are "one-third of a million waiters and waitresses with college degrees." More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, such as flight attendants, taxi drivers and salesmen. Was college attendance a wise use of these students' time and the resources of their parents and taxpayers?

There's a recent study published by the Raleigh, N.C.-based Pope Center titled "Pell Grants: Where Does All the Money Go?" Authors Jenna Ashley Robinson and Duke Cheston report that about 60 percent of undergraduate students in the country are Pell Grant recipients, and at some schools, upward of 80 percent are. Pell Grants are the biggest expenditure of the Department of Education, totaling nearly $42 billion in 2012.

The original focus of Pell Grants was to facilitate college access for low-income students. Since 1972, when the program began, the number of students from the lowest income quartile going to college has increased by more than 50 percent. However, Robinson and Cheston report that the percentage of low-income students who completed college by age 24 decreased from 21.9 percent in 1972 to 19.9 percent today.

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" (2011), report on their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at 24 institutions. Forty-five percent of these students demonstrated no significant improvement in a range of skills -- including critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing -- during their first two years of college.

Citing the research of AEI scholar Charles Murray's book "Real Education" (2008), Professor Vedder says: "The number going to college exceeds the number capable of mastering higher levels of intellectual inquiry. This leads colleges to alter their mission, watering down the intellectual content of what they do." Up to 45 percent of incoming freshmen require remedial courses in math, writing or reading. That's despite the fact that colleges have dumbed down courses so that the students they admit can pass them. Let's face it; as Murray argues, only a modest proportion of our population has the cognitive skills, work discipline, drive, maturity and integrity to master truly higher education.

Primary and secondary school education is in shambles. Colleges are increasingly in academic decline as they endeavor to make comfortable environments for the educationally incompetent. Colleges should refuse admission to students who are unprepared to do real college work. That would not only help reveal shoddy primary and secondary education but also reduce the number of young people making unwise career choices. Sadly, that won't happen. College administrators want warm bodies to bring in money.

SOURCE







Will “the Blade” Pop the Higher Education Bubble?

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announced that he will become the president of Purdue University when he leaves office in January. While fans of the cost-cutting governor had hoped he would set his eyes on a different president, the announcement should be welcome news to students and taxpayers alike. One of the nation’s most successful, reform-minded executive can now play a role in reinventing higher education.

Few sectors of the economy are in greater need of reform and have such promising solutions lurking just around the corner.

The United States spends approximately $460 billion annually on postsecondary education, or about 3.2 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. The federal government spends tens of billions annually to support college students and their colleges and universities, while state and local governments kick in another $71 billion. Families and students shoulder the rest of the burden, with many taking our gigantic loans or liquidating their life savings to pay the steep costs of college, in hopes that a degree will unlock a brighter future.

Sadly, a growing body of evidence suggests that much of this investment is a waste. A 2011 report, based on survey data of college students around the country, found that 45 percent of all students show no significant gains in learning after two years in school. Even more discouraging, 33 percent effectively learned nothing after four years. Statistics like this are forcing many American families to question whether four years of tuition and costs, which now top $40,000 and $20,000 at private and public colleges respectively, are worth it.

And those who might think the perhaps the value of having the credential itself somehow justifies these costs, even absent actual learning, keep in mind that reports show that more than half of recent college grads are either unemployed or underemployed (that means in a job that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree). Surely the parents of those twenty-somethings who have moved back in must be wondering why they invested so much money and effort in pursuit of a college diploma for junior, and have a long list of ways they wish they had used that money instead.

In his new book, law professor Glenn Reynolds, host of the Instapundit blog, argues that higher education is the new bubble. Like the housing bubble, the higher education bubble has been driven by subsidized loans and overly optimistic expectations about the future value of that investment. The housing bubble’s collapse left a shattered financial system and wiped out trillions from American families’ net worth. The higher education bubble’s explosion will leave millions of young Americans holding a degree that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on and a gigantic debt burden which will discourage entrepreneurism and family formation, both of which are critical to their—and our country’s—long-term financial health.

Our current college and university system, donned with decades worth of new high-tech labs, posh dorms, and cutting edge lecture halls, will also be rocked as new questions are raised about what, exactly, students—and taxpayers—are buying when they send these institutions so much money.

Enter Governor Daniels. Followers of education reform may know that his tenure in Indiana included the enactment of one of the nation’s largest school choice programs. But less appreciated has been Governor Daniels’s role in improving access to educational opportunities through Indiana’s partnership with the Western Governors University (WGU), a private, low-cost online university. More than 33,000 students across the country take classes online through WGU, where students are charged a flat-fee of $2,890 for a 6-month term.

By taking the helm at Purdue, Governor Daniels now has the opportunity to change higher education from within by implementing similar reforms to improve quality, drive-down cost, and expand access.

Just over the past year, schools like Stanford, MIT, and Harvard have begun offering free online courses that students anywhere can take, earning a grade and certificate of mastery, if they successfully complete the work. A MIT course on Circuits and Electronics attracted 120,000 students. Stanford’s free online class on Artificial Intelligence attracted 58,000 students.

Given Daniels’ track record in government, it would be surprising if he does not pursue similar cost-changing and quality-enhancing reforms at Purdue. Such reforms could make Purdue a leader in the new postsecondary education paradigm and serve as a model for other institutions.

Wouldn’t it make sense for the man who earned the nickname “the Blade” as OMB Director to help pop the higher education bubble?

SOURCE





Unconventional British school which lets children call teachers by first name forced to consider uniform code as parents reject relaxed rules

Its free and easy ethos was once seen as the way forward in secondary education.

But nearly 40 years after Stantonbury Campus opened, parents now seem to be less than enthused about its ‘liberal’ approach to teaching.

The comprehensive school, which has no uniform and lets pupils call teachers by their first names, is facing a boycott from families who would prefer to send their children to traditional schools.

And in an effort to win them back, governors have decided  to scrap the relaxed clothing policy and introduce a uniform from September.

The decision comes amid nationwide concern about the lack of discipline in today’s schools.

Once a successful school, Stantonbury was given a notice to improve from Ofsted last year amid concerns about underachievement and behaviour.

In a statement issued by governors, principal Chris Williams admitted parents were now sending their children elsewhere because of the lack of uniform.

He said: ‘Most primary and secondary children wear uniform for school and take pride in this – personal presentation is a part of education.

‘Heads of our partner primary schools tell us that parents are often concerned that the Campus does not have a uniform and that some choose to send their children to other secondary schools because of this.’

The school, in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, was dubbed a pioneer of the educational revolution when it opened its doors in 1974 with ‘relaxed’ rules.

But governors admit this is no longer what parents want following 500 responses to a consultation about whether to introduce a dress code for children aged 11 to 14.  The uniform will consist of a white polo shirt and jumper, with new rules for older pupils banning short skirts and offensive logos.  Pupils will also be banned from wearing anything that might be regarded as ‘party’ clothes.

The school, which has around 2,000 pupils, is split into four Halls which function independently as mini schools.  In 2006 it was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted but was downgraded to ‘inadequate’ last year.

SOURCE




27 June, 2012

Federal Student Aid and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Richard Vedder

FEDERAL STUDENT financial assistance programs are costly, inefficient, byzantine, and fail to serve their desired objectives. In a word, they are dysfunctional, among the worst of many bad federal programs.

These programs are commonly rationalized on three grounds: on the grounds that assuring more young people a higher education has positive spillover effects for the country; on the grounds that higher education promotes equal economic opportunity (or, as the politicians say, that it is “a ticket to achieving the American Dream”); or on the grounds that too few students would go to college in the absence of federal loan programs, since private markets for loans to college students are defective.

All three of these arguments are dubious at best. The alleged positive spillover effects of sending more and more Americans to college are very difficult to measure. And as the late Milton Friedman suggested to me shortly before his death, they may be more than offset by negative spillover effects. Consider, for instance, the relationship between spending by state governments on higher education and their rate of economic growth. Controlling for other factors important in growth determination, the relationship between education spending and economic growth is negative or, at best, non-existent.

What about higher education being a vehicle for equal economic opportunity or income equality? Over the last four decades, a period in which the proportion of adults with four-year college degrees tripled, income equality has declined. (As a side note, I do not know the socially optimal level of economic inequality, and the tacit assumption that more such equality is always desirable is suspect; my point here is simply that, in reality, higher education today does not promote income equality.)

Finally, in regards to the argument that capital markets for student loans are defective, if financial institutions can lend to college students on credit cards and make car loans to college students in large numbers—which they do—there is no reason why they can’t also make student educational loans.

Despite the fact that the rationales for federal student financial assistance programs are very weak, these programs are growing rapidly. The Pell Grant program did much more than double in size between 2007 and 2010. Although it was designed to help poor people, it is now becoming a middle class entitlement. Student loans have been growing eight to ten percent a year for at least two decades, and, as is well publicized, now aggregate to one trillion dollars of debt outstanding—roughly $25,000 on average for the 40,000,000 holders of the debt. Astoundingly, student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt.

Nor is it correct to assume that most of this debt is held by young people in their twenties and early thirties. The median age of those with loan obligations today is around 33, and approximately 40 percent of the debt is held by people 40 years of age or older. So when politicians talk about maintaining low interest loans to help kids in college, more often than not the help is going to middle-aged individuals long gone from the halls of academia.

With this as an introduction, let me outline eight problems with federal student grant and loan programs. The list is not exclusive.

(1) Student loan interest rates are not set by the forces of supply and demand, but by the political process. Normally, interest rates are a price used to allocate scarce resources; but when that price is manipulated by politicians, it leads to distortions in the use of resources. Since student loan interest rates are always set at below-market rates, too much money is borrowed for college. Currently those interest rates are extremely low, with a key rate of 3.4 percent—which, after adjusting for inflation, is approximately zero. Moreover, both the president and Governor Romney say they want to continue that low interest rate after July 1, when it is supposed to double. This aggravates an already bad situation, and provides a perfect example of the fundamental problem facing our nation today: politicians pushing programs whose benefits are visible and immediate (even if illusory, as suggested above), while their extraordinarily high costs are less visible and more distant in time.

(2) In the real world, interest rates vary with the prospects that the borrower will repay the loan. In the surreal world of student loans, the brilliant student completing an electrical engineering degree at M.I.T. pays the same interest rate as the student majoring in ethnic studies at a state university who has a GPA below 2.0. The former student will almost certainly graduate and get a job paying $50,000 a year or more, whereas the odds are high the latter student will fail to graduate and will be lucky to make $30,000 a year.

Related to this problem, colleges themselves have no “skin in the game.” They are responsible for allowing loan commitments to occur, but they face no penalties or negative consequences when defaults are extremely high, imposing costs on taxpayers.

(3) Perhaps most importantly, federal student grant and loan programs have contributed to the tuition price explosion. When third parties pay a large part of the bill, at least temporarily, the customer’s demand for the service rises and he is not as sensitive to price as he would be if he were paying himself. Colleges and universities take advantage of that and raise their prices to capture the funds that ostensibly are designed to help students. This is what happened previously in health care, and is what is currently happening in higher education.

(4) The federal government now has a monopoly in providing student loans. Until recently, at least it farmed out the servicing of loans to a variety of private financial service firms, adding an element of competition in terms of quality of service, if not price. But the Obama administration, with its strong hostility to private enterprise, moved to establish a complete monopoly. One would think the example of the U.S. Postal Service today, losing taxpayer money hand over fist and incapable of making even the most obviously needed reforms, would be enough proof against the prudence of such a move. And remember: because of highly irresponsible fiscal policies, the federal government borrows 30 or 40 percent of the money it currently spends, much of that from overseas. Thus we are incurring long-term obligations to foreigners to finance loans to largely middle class Americans to go to college. This is not an appropriate use of public funds at a time of dangerously high federal budget deficits.

(5) Those applying for student loans or Pell Grants are compelled to complete the FAFSA form, which is extremely complex, involves more than 100 questions, and is used by colleges to administer scholarships (or, more accurately, tuition discounts). Thus colleges are given all sorts of highly personal and private information on incomes, wealth, debts, child support, and so forth. A car dealer who demanded such information so that he could see how badly he could gouge you would either be out of business or in jail within days or weeks. But it is commonplace in higher education because of federal student financial assistance programs.

(6) As federal programs have increased the number of students who enroll in college, the number of new college graduates now far exceeds the number of new managerial, technical and professional jobs—positions that college graduates have traditionally taken. A survey by Northeastern University estimates that 54 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed or unemployed. Thus we currently have 107,000 janitors and 16,000 parking lot attendants with bachelor’s degrees, not to mention bartenders, hair dressers, mail carriers, and so on. And many of those in these limited-income occupations are struggling to pay off student loan obligations.

Connected to this is the fact that more and more kids are going to college who lack the cognitive skills, the discipline, the academic preparation, or the ambition to succeed academically. They simply cannot or do not master well much of the rather complex materials that college students are expected to learn. As a result, many students either do not graduate or fail to graduate on time. I have estimated that only 40 percent or less of Pell Grant recipients get degrees within six years—an extremely high dropout or failure rate. No one has seriously questioned that statistic—a number, by the way, that the federal government does not publish, no doubt because it is embarrassingly low.

Also related is the fact that, in an attempt to minimize this problem, colleges have lowered standards, expecting students to read and write less while giving higher grades for lesser amounts of work. Surveys show that students spend on average less than 30 hours per week on academic work—less than they spend on recreation. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa show in their book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, critical thinking skills among college seniors on average are little more than among freshmen.

(7) As suggested to me a couple of days ago by a North Carolina judge, based on a case in his courtroom, with so many funds so readily available there is a temptation and opportunity for persons to acquire low interest student loans with the intention of dropping out of school quickly to use the proceeds for other purposes. (In the North Carolina student loan fraud case, it was to start up a t-shirt business.)

(8) Lazy or mediocre students can get greater subsidies than hard-working and industrious ones. Take Pell Grants. A student who works extra hard and graduates with top grades after three years will receive only half as much money as a student who flunks several courses and takes six years to finish or doesn’t obtain a degree at all. In other words, for recipients of federal aid there are disincentives to excel.

* * *
If the Law of Unintended Consequences ever applied, it is in federal student financial assistance. Programs created with the noblest of intentions have failed to serve either their customers or the nation well. In the 1950s and 1960s, before these programs were large, American higher education enjoyed a Golden Age. Enrollments were rising, lower-income student access was growing, and American leadership in higher education was becoming well established. In other words, the system flourished without these programs. Subsequently, massive growth in federal spending and involvement in higher education has proved counterproductive.

With the ratio of debt to GDP rising nationally, and the federal government continuing to spend more and more taxpayer money on higher education at an unsustainable long-term pace, a re-thinking of federal student financial aid policies is a good place to start in meeting America’s economic crisis.

SOURCE





Failed headteachers are being 'recruited as British school inspectors', BBC investigation finds

Former failing head teachers have been recruited to become Ofsted inspectors, it was claimed yesterday.

Governors and ex-school secretaries, who despite never having taught a class themselves are also making crucial judgements on schools, an investigation has revealed.

Teaching unions yesterday reacted with fury, warning that it was essential for inspectors to be ‘suitably qualified and experienced’.

An investigation by BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme revealed two former head teachers who were forced out because their schools were failing are currently working as Ofsted inspectors.

Baroness Perry of Southwark, who was chief inspector of schools during the 1980s, also told the programme she was reliably informed some inspectors, including former school secretaries and governors, have never taught a class in their lives.

The chairman of the House of Lords backbench education committee said: ‘I’d be very interested to know how Ofsted assures itself that all the people involved in inspections do in fact meet the best of those criteria.’

The BBC also spoke to head teachers who complained of Ofsted reports riddled with factual errors and inspections conducted by staff who did not seem to understand the curriculum they were supposed to be inspecting.

Stephen Ball, principal of the New Charter Academy in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, said he suspected ‘there are few people leading inspections in secondary schools that have ever led them (as heads)’. Since January, the number of schools judged as failing has risen by 50 per cent after a major change in Ofsted classifications.

One in seven secondaries – 14 per cent – have been branded ‘inadequate’ due to poor teaching and under-achievement. Some 9 per cent of  primaries have received the lowest rating.

Most Ofsted inspectors are now freelancers employed through private contractors, the BBC reported.

In the past ‘lay inspectors’, who had no classroom experience, only examined areas unrelated to teaching. But inspections have been streamlined to focus on four key issues: teaching, results, behaviour and leadership. Critics say this means ‘lay inspectors’ are being employed to judge areas in which they have no experience.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of schools, promised to root out inspectors who had not taught or had failed as school leaders. He said: ‘When an inspector is in a classroom judging teaching I would expect them to know what good teaching looks like.’

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, added: ‘Placing teachers and schools in a position of having their future decided by inspectors who may have little or no knowledge of what works in the classroom is simply wrong.’

An Ofsted spokesman said yesterday: ‘We are putting our best people in the field and last month we announced a scheme to train outstanding head teachers to undertake a number of inspections every year.’

SOURCE






In Britain we treat children too softly to succeed. If they don't learn discipline at school, they'll never be worth hiring

Even now, he sends a chill down my spine: my old grammar school headmaster, Mr Cresswell, was a stern, black-gowned figure of such effortless authority that merely speaking to him was daunting.

Behind his back we lampooned him mercilessly — he was red-faced, portly and with a legendary temper — but the threat of being sent to see him for misbehaviour was the ultimate deterrent.

How different from today. This week we learned that more than half of secondary school teachers have never sent unruly pupils to see the head.

According to the Department of Education’s survey of 1,700 teachers, most schools prefer to use systems of rewards and praise rather than punish wrong-doers, and more than a quarter of teachers say they don’t shout.

Of course, none of us wants our children to be miserable in the classroom: we want them to succeed, and to emerge, if not exactly garlanded with prizes, then at least with a clutch of respectable exam results and a place at a decent university.

But if schools can’t instil basic discipline, what hope do our children have of ever persuading an employer that they’re worth hiring? In today’s tough times, having a degree is no guarantee of a job. Employers are looking for drive, resilience, and a ‘can-do’ attitude.

‘You may have a first from Oxford,’ Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the Association of Graduate Recruiters explains drily, ‘but if you haven’t developed as a person, you aren’t going to get the job.’

Behind this dearth of discipline, of course, is that pervasive and corrosive modern educational belief that all children are equal.

Punishment, in this twisted philosophy, has no place because it would imply that some children are less equal.

Yet this cult of self-esteem now has such a grip on child-rearing that an entire generation has been raised without ever learning what it means to fail — and more importantly, in the words of the old song, learning how to pick yourself up and start all over again.

The problem starts in the early years in primary school, when we praise a messy daub that’s been executed with no care and little effort as though it’s worthy of a place in the Royal Academy (or at the very least on the kitchen wall).

Be honest: when was the last time you heard the words: ‘I think you can do better than that — why don’t you have another go?’ Consequently, our children arrive at secondary school unable to cope with criticism.

They then go on to sit GCSEs and A-levels that are almost impossible to fail, given that coursework can account for up to 40 per cent of the final mark and can be given back to the pupil to be rewritten (by themselves or even by their well-intentioned but entirely misguided parents) until the desired standard is reached.

No one wants a return to a time when schools employed sadistic teachers who took pleasure in wreaking physical and mental havoc on terrified pupils. But, equally, we do our children no service at all unless we teach them that work is hard and failure a setback to be overcome with redoubled effort.

If a child doesn’t learn discipline at school, it’s horribly likely that he’ll never learn it — as Harriet Sergeant’s riveting recent Mail series on a Brixton hoodie gang made so devastatingly clear.

I know one thing: those teenaged boys she spoke to, facing a life with no hope and no future, and who could barely read by the age of 14, were betrayed by our education system.

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26 June, 2012

Republicans Missing Chance on Education Reform

 Star Parker
 
One area that awareness of the need for freedom from government control has penetrated black attitudes is in education.

The chronic failure of public schools to notably improve dismal test scores and high dropout rates of black children has made it clear to many black citizens of good will that there has got to be a better way.

Polls show black support for school choice. For example, in a poll done last year in New Jersey by the Rutgers-Eagleton Center at Rutgers University, 54 percent of blacks expressed support for school vouchers compared to 36 percent of whites.

Growing grass roots support among blacks for education alternatives surely influenced the Obama administration’s agreement, this past week, to ongoing support for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The administration opposes the program and would have been perfectly happy to see its funding spigot turned off.

This is a modest program, with federal funds available now for 1,615 scholarships for kids in DC’s public schools to attend private schools. Its existence and potential for growth was at stake, with House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Joseph Lieberman carried the ball for it. The new agreement will allow it to continue, with a small provision for 85 new scholarships.

But this makes even more perplexing recent incidents where Republican state legislators have turned their backs on the education hopes of blacks.

Republicans in Pennsylvania can change the political landscape of their state by helping black aspirations for education freedom. But in a state that some analysts see as conceivably swinging into the Republican column, Republicans are blowing it.

The Pennsylvania state Senate passed a bill last year that would make vouchers available to kids in the worst 5% of public schools.

The public schools serving blacks kids in cities like Philadelphia are disasters. I know from my own survey of pastors in local churches there that hopes for this voucher initiative have been high.

Yet, by all indication it’s not going to happen.

The state House, controlled by Republicans, has been sitting on the bill. With no action before the end of the session on June 30 it will be dead.

There is talk of an alternative scholarship bill financed through tax credits. But the most optimistic estimate I have heard is that the scholarship would be worth less than half what the voucher would pay and therefore insufficient on its own to pay full tuition in a private church school.

Courageous leadership by Republicans could have captured black hearts and minds in Pennsylvania’s cities that might have paved a path to a new black relationship with Republicans.

But sadly, fear of union power rather than leadership and courage seems to be motivating these legislators.

In 2010, a similar disappointment occurred in Illinois.

In a genuine breakthrough, a black Democrat in the Illinois state Senate, Rev. James Meeks, who happens to also be the pastor of Chicago’s largest Baptist congregation, introduced a school voucher bill.

The bill passed the Illinois senate and then died in the state House, with only 25 of 48 Republicans supporting it. It fell 12 votes short of the 60 it needed to pass.

This is not an across the board indictment of Republicans. Two Republican governors – Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana – have spearheaded passage of school voucher programs in their states.

In a new Gallup poll, only 29 percent, an all time low, express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our public schools.

The Republican Party is supposed to be the party of freedom and limited government. No where are these principles more needed than in education, and no community needs it more than blacks.

At a time when our country and our poor communities are hurting so badly, any failure of leadership by those in the party of Lincoln is inexcusable.

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Michelle Rhee gives Britain some advice

Britain’s system of holding schools to account for student learning has been of interest to many of us in the US education reform movement for years. So before my visit to the UK this week, I spent some time studying England’s national curriculum and examining the rich data that’s now available to parents. Without a doubt, we have much to learn from the UK when it comes to transparency, accountability and setting common standards.

But I also see opportunities to share lessons from America, particularly with regards to expanding educational options and creating a grassroots movement to transform schools so they work well for all children – not just for some.

Both our countries have enormous gaps between the academic achievement levels of disadvantaged students and their wealthier peers. And far too many students leave school without the skills or knowledge they need to succeed at university or in the workforce.

Sadly, there is no single policy or decision that will bring about the change our schools need on its own. I can, however, point to an approach to policy-making that is holding our children back. It is the tendency in schools to pursue policies that put adult interests ahead of student needs. Textbook manufacturers, testing companies and teaching unions all have tremendous resources to ensure their views are heard and priorities are met. It’s an advantage kids simply don’t have.

Among the policies that directly affect student outcomes are how we evaluate and compensate teachers. Studies prove that teacher quality is the most important factor in school that impacts student learning. Yet many of our policies simply don’t reflect the significance of the profession.

When I became the chancellor of Washington DC’s schools in 2007, a mere 8 per cent of eighth-grade students were doing maths at their proper grade level, yet 95 per cent of teachers got satisfactory evaluations. As our kids were failing, we were saying, “Well done, good job” to the adults educating them.

We managed to reform the system, though not without a fight, so teachers would be evaluated in a fair but rigorous way, based on classroom observations, student progress and other measures. We have to know who is succeeding, who needs help and who, unfortunately, is not up to the job of teaching. Removing ineffective teachers from the classroom is far too difficult in both of our systems, and we have to tackle this urgently.

Another issue we addressed involves how we pay teachers. In the US and the UK, teachers are paid in lockstep, earning increases for factors not necessarily linked to student learning, such as time served. In Washington, we were able to implement a system where excellence was rewarded.

Expanding the educational options should also be part of any reform. In the US, we have experienced an increase in public charter schools which, like free schools or academies here, operate with more flexibility and tend to serve as models of innovation. I urge policy-makers to let such models flourish.

Finally, we can’t even think about delivering a great education to children if we don’t consider how we manage our schools financially. Crucially, school leaders must be given more flexibility to manage their resources in ways they believe will work in exchange for demonstrating results.

I know change is hard, but wholesale change is what we need. Fifty years ago, America’s civil rights leaders challenged our country to create a more fair and just society. Today, their hard-fought victories are evident, even in the White House. But that story is not yet finished. Good and bad schools still exist and a child’s skin colour, post code and family income are often still predictive of their academic success.

I’m not saying progress isn’t being made. It definitely is. Witness the desire on the part of so many Americans to challenge the status quo. President Obama has pushed for policies that most other leaders in the Democratic Party have shied away from for fear of the teachers’ unions. And perhaps even more importantly, at the grassroots level, parents, students, community leaders and teachers are tackling the most difficult problems. In California, campaigners have sparked a national effort to empower parents with real tools and authority to turn around chronically failing schools. And in Cleveland, Ohio, parents, faith leaders and local officials recently banded together to insist that city schools be freed from rigid state laws that were impeding improvement.

These signs demonstrate that families and communities are tired of a system that has failed them and want to see real reforms enacted that put students first.

SOURCE






Why unruly British pupils no longer feel the wrath of the head: Half are never sent to their office when they misbehave

Half of secondary school teachers never send unruly pupils to the head’s office despite concerns over discipline problems in the country’s classrooms, a Government commissioned survey shows.

They do not force youngsters to get a reprimand from a senior member of staff and apologise for their misbehaviour - a sanction that used to strike fear into most pupils.

Seventeen per cent of primary school teachers admit they do not bother using this form of discipline.

Across both sectors, one in three teachers (32 per cent) never send students to the head’s office while sixty-four per cent only ‘sometimes’ do this.

Critics say the National Foundation for Education Research study, commissioned by the Department for Education, suggests a ‘lax’ approach to discipline is being taken by too many teachers.

They warn that some politically correct staff will not discipline youngsters because they do not want to prevent them from expressing themselves. Others are afraid of standing up to troublemakers due to repercussions.

The failure to take a hard line on discipline comes despite pressure from the Government to crackdown on badly behaved pupils.

Ofsted figures show that 21.6 per cent of maintained schools inspected between January and March this year were rated just ‘satisfactory’ or ‘inadequate’ over behaviour and safety of pupils.

The NFER surveyed over 1,600 teachers and discovered that 36 per cent never shout at pupils who misbehave - 42 per cent in primary schools and 28 per cent in secondary schools.

Sixty per cent never use detention - 94 per cent in primary schools and 13 per cent in secondary schools.

Some teachers also appear to be ignoring a new ‘checklist’ that was issued by the Government’s behaviour tsar, Charlie Taylor, last October to help crackdown on indiscipline.

In a key move, it told staff to display all school rules - and a list of sanctions - clearly in each classroom to help establish proper boundaries.

However, the survey which was undertaken in February shows that 25 per cent of teachers in primary and secondary schools only use this strategy ‘sometimes’ and nine per cent ‘never’ do this.

Other recommendations are being flouted across both sectors. Fourteen per cent ‘sometimes’ have a system in place to ‘follow through with all sanctions’ while one per cent ‘never’ does this.
Pugh

Thirty six per cent ‘sometimes’ have a plan for children who are likely to misbehave and three per cent ‘never’ come up with one.

Eighteen per cent in total ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’ use a reward system and around nine per cent are equally non-committed to praising the behaviour they want to see more of.

Thirty-four per cent ‘sometimes’ give feedback to parents about their child’s behaviour - whether good or bad - while one per cent ‘never’ do this.

Overall, 19 per cent said behaviour was ‘acceptable’ in their schools, five per cent said it was ‘poor’ and one per cent admitted it was ‘very poor’. Seventy six per cent said behaviour was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

But three out of five (60 per cent) of staff surveyed believed that ‘negative pupil behaviour is driving teachers out of the profession’.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said that some teachers remain afraid of ‘pupil power’.  He said: ‘Clearly, teachers are being lax in demanding good behaviour.

‘Many of them were taught in training colleges that they need to look at children on their own terms and see poor behaviour as just children expressing themselves.

‘Teachers have also been nervous of demanding good behaviour and imposing sanctions because they run the risk of complaints from the pupil and his or her parents.

‘They could find themselves up before the head teacher or the local authority. Even if the complaints are later dismissed, it could blight their careers.

‘As much as they have been assured by the Government that they’re right to employ sanctions, nevertheless they fear that’s not the case when it comes to day to day life in their schools.’

Mr Taylor, the Government’s expert adviser on behaviour, said: ‘Without good behaviour teachers can’t teach and pupils can’t learn.

‘We need to ensure trainee teachers are equipped with the right training in behaviour management.’

Schools Minister Nick Gibb added: ‘The Government is committed to maintaining our relentless focus on raising standard of behaviour in schools until every school is a safe and happy place in which pupils can excel academically.’

SOURCE



25 June, 2012

With Traditional Schooling Increasingly Obsolete, How To Learn Without Being Taught

I am rather sympathetic to  Jerry Bowyer on this.  I taught myself for the last two years of High School and did quite well in the final exams  -- enough to get me into university for free,  where I had a lot of fun

It’s odd how many people take my skepticism about college and try to twist it into an opposition to learning. But like the quote often attributed to Mark Twain, “I never let schooling interfere with my education.”

Here’s a radical idea worth contemplating: that school is not the best way to learn. Let me count the ways:

School fragments knowledge in the name of specialization. The problem that I run into most when advising businesses and investors is the problem of fragmentation. Economics is separate from finance; finance is separate from management; management is separate from sociology; sociology is separate from psychology. And the whole mess of the social sciences is separate from the whole mess of the humanities.

I’ve written till my face is blue and my fingertips are purple about the ways in which modern portfolio theory severs finance from economics, and the ways that Keynesian economics severs economics from productivity, but it never seems to stick. Why? Because we’re all overschooled and undereducated. Economists have to go through a long and arduous path to academic certification during which every last vestige of common sense is eradicated from their minds through a process of alternating cookies and electric shocks as they recapitulate and/or repudiate the Keynesian formulae.

Financial people go through this too, not mainly in a purely academic environment, but with the series of professional exams stuffed with material which originated in an academic environment. A friend of mine who has accumulated about as many letters after his name as any normal business card would fit, told me that when he studied for his CFA he felt like he was being forced to eat garbage.  What did he mean? He meant the academic secretion known as modern portfolio theory and its universe of non-causal randomness.

It doesn’t have to be like that. I know that it doesn’t have to be like that, because it didn’t use to be like that. Read the great classical and Austrian economists, and you’ll see that they slide easily over the artificial borders of what are usually segregated into economics, finance, sociology, religion, philosophy, political science and psychology. Doing that kind of stuff gets you killed when it comes to publishing in academic journals, but who cares about academic journals? Do you want pack membership with the prerequisite butt-sniffing? Or do you prefer to shape the world?

It’s the same among the financiers: Read Bagehot and you get finance and economics and political science and history and literature and theology. You get real life. John Burr Williams is like that too. He’s the last of the integrated financial theorists, I think. After him, it’s the rise and dominance of Keynes in the economics departments and the rise and dominance of Modern Portfolio Theory in the department of finance. The integrated thinkers were set on the ice float. The new order emerges, periodically festooned with fool’s gold from Oslo just to make sure that everyone knows that it is marching from triumph to triumph.

And out of this factory comes a lobotomized economic and financial ruling class.  Theanthropoi, godmen, who walk the earth having been apotheosized in the best schools, with power over trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of people,  but who don’t have a clue about matters slightly outside their area of specialization.

During the financial crisis of 2008, in at least a dozen conference call consultations with Ed Lazear, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, I repeatedly tried to help him and his staff understand the enormous negative effect of the mark-to-market accounting regulations. But Lazear was an economist: He didn’t understand accounting. He didn’t need to in order to get a PhD in economics from a prestigious school. He didn’t need to in order to become the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. But unfortunately, he needed to in order to deal with the problem before him.

The administration ignored the accounting issue: pushed a huge bailout plan. The plan failed economically and politically, and it wasn’t until the following spring on May 20th that Congress pressed to have the rule suspended. Interestingly enough, that was the turning point in the market. Does that mean mark-to-market accounting was the only issue? Of course not, but it was a major issue, and one to which academic specialists were blind. Steve Forbes, who is largely an economic autodidact saw it. Official Washington did not.

School is out of order. Here’s the way many people, especially natural leaders, learn best: they run into a problem. If they are motivated to solve the problem, they look for solutions. An unsolved problem is distressing to people, so they tend to remember the experience (amygdala and memory and all that). The process of searching for a solution is usually costly and painful so they remember that too. At the end of this experience, they have an emotionally bonded memory of the problem, a sense of elation at having found the solution, an answer to their question, and in addition to having learned the answer to their initial question, have also learned a little more about how to learn. What I’ve just described is real life. It’s how one  gets wisdom.

Yes, there are a few foundational skills which one must have before this starts, most notably strong reading skills, but there is a no reason to delay this struggle for real-world learning until age 23 at the youngest. The old model (or at least the ‘modern’  model of the 20th Century) which front-loads spoon-feeding into the first 16 years of ‘schooling’, lies by implying that what comes after that 16 years is even remotely like what comes after.

What we do around here (in Bowyerville) is to inject reality a lot sooner. We work on solving problems, real problems, together in the early teens. Need to learn something? Look it up. A data problem to solve? Learn some software. Where should you learn it? Look for a free on-line tutorial. If there’s nothing free, we’ll go sign up for one, or buy a book on Amazon, preferably something we can download cheap on Kindle. One of the biggest differences between school and real world is the importance of software. Want to be productive? Learn the tools. Practice them. Master them. Learn the tricks and tips. Spreadsheets, scheduling, word processing, presentation, data analysis, specialty programs: learn them all.

If you have a problem to solve which involves math which is beyond your current level of knowledge, let’s go over to Khan’s Academy and see if he has a video on that topic. If he doesn’t, somebody else will. Not sure you’ve got the concept mastered? Review it, and review it again, and work some of the exercises.

Traditional school is obsolete. It is a dead man walking. The knowledge which is available for free, or nearly free on the web is so large and abundant that for all practical purposes it might as well be infinite. For thousands of years knowledge was scarce, expensive and hoarded in a few geographically specified locations.  In our lifetime, knowledge has gone from overly scarce to overly abundant. It has gone from expensive to nearly free. My friend Rich Karlgaard‘s cheap revolution is about to destroy the reigning higher education model. The new skill set is finding needles in haystacks using Boolean algebra; the old skill set was eating haystacks. The old emotional state was compliant credulity with students in the role of baby birds gulping predigested chunks of knowledge. The new emotional state must be critical thinking, filtering, and discernment. No longer “What do I have to learn to get a diploma?”, but now “How do I know what you are saying is true?” And “Can I get this same thing someplace else for free?”

SOURCE







What kind of teacher did this? Two schoolgirls badly sunburned at field day because they were BANNED from putting on sunscreen



Teachers allowed two young sisters to get so badly sunburned that they needed hospital treatment because of a little-known law that bans students from applying sunscreen at school.

Fair-skinned Violet Michener, 11, and her nine-year-old sister Zoe were left seared from head to toe after spending an afternoon in the sun during an outdoor field day in Tacoma Washington.

Their mother, Jesse Michener, who didn't put cream on the girls in the morning because of a rain forecast, was horrified to learn that teachers refused to allow the children to apply any cream.

Public schools in all states except California are not allowed to apply or carry the product to school because - despite being freely available in supermarkets - it is deemed a prescription medication.  Yet the girls say they were forced to watch one teacher put on her own sunscreen and then explain to the burning students that it was 'just for her' when they begged her for some.

'While I can sort of wrap my brain around this in theory, the practice of a blanket policy which clearly allows for students to be put in harm’s way is deeply flawed,' Mrs Michener wrote in a blog post.

Making matters worse, the mother claims that one of her daughters has a form of Albinism - a skin condition that leads to easy burning - that her school was aware of.  'Violet is starting to blister on her face. Both children have headaches, chills and pain,' Mrs Michener wrote last Wednesday after taking the children to Tacoma General hospital.  'Two are home today as a direct result of how terrible they feel. My children indicated that several adults commented on their burns at school, including staff and other parents.'

For liability reasons, most states consider sunscreen as an over-the-counter medication requiring a prescription.

'Because so many additives in lotions and sunscreens cause an allergic reaction in some children, we have to really monitor that,' said Dan Voelpel, a Tacoma school district spokesman speaking to ABC.

Since raising awareness in her area of the SPF policy, Mrs Michener began to see some success late last week.  Receiving a call from the director of Elementary Education in Tacoma Public Schools last Thursday according to her blog, the director informed her of a new law passed allowing districts to decide for themselves what's allowed and what's not.

'He stated that how the law will actually shake-out for districts is still to be seen (the devil is always in the details), but that he hoped a policy revision could be achieved by October,' the mother wrote.

Asked by the Huffington Post on Friday the condition of the two girls, the mother replied:  "They will heal this week, but long term effects are yet to be seen.’

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The Battle of Britain? Wasn't that at sea? Half of secondary school pupils do not know battle took place in the air

It was a turning point in the war, when only the bravery of The Few who took to the skies to defend their country stood between Britain and the might of Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe.

But less than half of today’s secondary school pupils know the Battle of Britain was fought in the air, a poll has revealed.

Only 62 per cent could correctly identify a photograph of Sir Winston Churchill, it found – but 92 per cent recognised a picture of Churchill the insurance dog.

'Oh yes'? More like 'Oh no': Over 90 per cent recognised the dog from the Churchill Insurance advertisements yet only a measly 62 per cent of the students polled could identify Sir Winston Churchill

More could identify Jedward, Wayne Rooney and Katie Price than their country’s wartime leader.

Only a third of 11 to 18-year-olds know the Second World War began in 1939, according to a poll by former Conservative Party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, while only one in five knows what happened on D-Day.

The survey of 1,000 children at secondary schools across Britain was commissioned to mark the unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial in London later this week.

Its results will heighten concern about the quality of history teaching in our schools.

It found that only 34 per cent of pupils – including 45 per cent of those aged 17 and 18 – knew the Second World War began in 1939. Only 39 per cent knew it ended in 1945, again including only 45 per cent of 17 and 18-year-olds.

Forty-three per cent knew the Battle of Britain was fought in the air, 29 per cent believed it was fought on land, and 8 per cent at sea. Twenty per cent admitted they did not know.

Just 34 per cent correctly said the Battle of Britain took place in the 1940s, and only 11 per cent of these – about one in 27 of the whole sample – knew it happened in 1940.

Only a fifth of children had any idea of what happened on D-Day, with the most frequent answer being the day the war ended.

More people could identify Jedward [singers] and Katie Price [silicone enhanced woman] than Sir Winston Churchill

Eighty-six per cent correctly said there had been two world wars – but one in 20 thought there had been three.

Nearly a third were unable to give any unprompted explanation of why Britain fought in the Second World War.  And while 89 per cent identified Germany as an adversary during the conflict, only 15 per cent could name Japan unprompted.

When the children were offered four different explanations for what Bomber Command is or was, only 36 per cent correctly said it had been part of the RAF.

Lord Ashcroft, who donated £1million towards the Bomber Command Memorial, said: ‘I don’t mean to criticise the children.   'We must all take responsibility for ensuring  that what we know is passed to the next generation.  ‘These findings show we can never be complacent about our duty to remember.’

SOURCE



24 June, 2012

Compulsory education humiliation

Compulsory education today involves public school students being forced to attend classes so that they may be routinely humiliated, bullied and violated as part of their state dictated learning process.

My last post detailed the aftermath of a so-called “catastrophe award” presented by the teacher in front of the class to a little third-grader for not finishing her homework; a ninth-grader slapped in the face repeatedly by her teacher in front of her classmates because she forgot to bring her homework; and an eight-year-old boy stripped naked and washed by two female school officials because they thought he needed a bath.

Clearly, far too many public school officials in America nowadays have it in their statist minds that the children and young adults under their domination have no constitutional rights, in fact, no rights at all. They think that they can get away with treating human beings like so many domesticated animals in cages.
 
Today the news is about ten-year-old Justin Cox, a third grader at Union Elementary School in Clinton North Carolina who was strip-searched by a female assistant principal after another student accused him wrongly of theft.

A little girl classmate dropped a $20 bill. Justin picked it up off the floor and returned it to her. Evidently she lost it again and this time accused the boy of stealing it.

Female assistant principal, Teresa Holmes, in total disregard of the student’s rights, specifically his Sixth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant based upon probable cause, took it upon herself to order a strip search.
 
Justin was ordered to strip to his T-shirt and boxer shorts in front of her. Then "she came up to him and rubbed her fingers around inside of his underwear," reports his mother. "If that isn't excessively intrusive, I don't know what is."

The strip search yielded no money, no evidence – nothing. So the assailant hugged the boy and apologized to him. Later someone found the $20 bill underneath a lunchroom table.

His mother said that, with or without an apology, her son was violated.  But a Sampson County Schools spokeswoman, while admitting that mother should have been informed prior to any search, insisted that the assistant principal had done nothing wrong because a male janitor was present. "The assistant principal was within her legal authority, her legal right, to do the search," Warren said. "She may have been overzealous in her actions."

Legal authority! What legal authority?

Since when does an assistant principal at an elementary school have the authority to suspend the mandate of the United States Constitution Bill of Rights?

Since when does a female elementary school assistant principal have the authority to order a male student to strip in front of her so she can feel around beneath his underpants?

Can school administrators strip students now as long as a janitor is present?

The arrogance of these school house tyrants boggles my mind.
And some of them even want their hapless little captives to pledge allegiance to them regularly just like they are coerced into pledging allegiance to the United States government and its statist flag.

For the past decade, every Monday of the school year at Asher Holmes Elementary School in Morganville, N.J., has started with students reciting a pledge written by a fourth-grade teacher honoring the Marlboro Township School District and its teachers, who “help [students] learn” all they need to “know for the future.”

"I pledge allegiance to Asher Holmes and the Marlboro Township School District and to the teachers who help us learn all that we need to know for the future," the pledge states. "We promise to respect ourselves and others, to try our best and always be proud of our schools."

This unbelievable violation of rights would still be going on today had a parent who found out about it from her kid not complained.

So the school board voted to nix the pledge and opted instead to rewrite it as a school song instead. "Over the summer, a school spirit song will be created to replace the pledge, and will be put into effect for the 2012-13 school year," said the Marlboro Board of Education in a news release.

Compulsory education by humiliation: It never ends.

SOURCE





Race to open Britain's first new grammar (selective) school in 50 years

A race has opened up to establish England's first new grammar school in 50 years.

Two local authorities are competing to be the first to use a "back door" route to get around a legal ban on the creation of entirely new selective schools.

Croydon, in south London, which currently has no selective schools, is planning to open a 600-pupil grammar on a site it has identified.

The move follows a vote in Kent to open a similar-sized grammar school in Sevenoaks.

In each case, the school would open as an "annex" of an existing grammar elsewhere – a tactic sanctioned by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary.

Experts said the plans were likely to open the floodgates for other councils to set up grammars where there currently are none.

Mr Gove's proposal to scrap GCSEs and return to traditional O-levels, revealed last week, is also likely to fuel demand for the academic rigour grammar schools provide.

It comes as a number of comprehensive schools attempt to attract parents by introducing their own "grammar streams" for their brightest pupils, chosen through 11-plus-style ability tests.

Conservative-led Croydon council has committed nearly £15 million for a new 120-pupil secondary school in South Norwood, to be run as an annex of an existing school. Grammar schools in neighbouring authorities have been invited to take it on.

Bids will also be considered from non-selective schools, but Tim Pollard, Croydon's cabinet member for education, said he supported the reintroduction of pupil selection.

"We need more academically high-performing schools in the borough," he said. "If that means we have a partner whose admissions criteria includes selection tests to identify pupils with the highest level of aptitude, this would simply add a new dimension to the range of options available in the borough.

"Many parents move mountains to get their children into a selective school in neighbouring boroughs. Having a selective school would provide the extra choice locally which parents want."

Mr Pollard said at least one selective school was already looking at the proposal. Grammars in the neighbouring boroughs of Sutton and Bromley are popular with parents in Croydon.

Tory-controlled Kent county council gave its backing in March to a satellite campus for around 600 pupils in the town of Sevenoaks.

Children in the town currently travel about nine miles to attend the nearest grammars in Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells.

Discussions with potential "host" grammar schools were ongoing, said a Kent County Council spokesman. No site for the school has been agreed.

Only 164 grammar schools remain in England following the expansion of comprehensive education in the 60s and 70s.  It was revealed last year that as many as half of pupils who pass the 11-plus entrance exam fail to get a place in grammar school because of the sheer competition for places.

Since a change of law under Labour in the late 1990s, the construction of entirely new grammar schools has been banned.  But Coalition reforms now allow existing schools – including grammars – to expand where there is demand, even if this means opening an annex many miles away.

The Kent and Croydon proposals have been condemned by opponents of selective education who claim they will undermine local comprehensive schools and harm children who fail to win places. Supporters of selection expect a legal challenge to be mounted.

Some comprehensives are responding by creating "grammar streams" for high-ability pupils.  Knoll Academy, in Sevenoaks, has incorporated a "grammar stream" for the top 25 per cent ability range of students, with priority given to those who passed Kent's 11+ exam.

The academy also announced that it would offer the three separate sciences at GCSE rather than just the double science syllabus.

Stockwell Park High, in south London, has also brought in a "grammar school pathway" for the top set of pupils. Teenagers sit a test in English, maths and science to determine whether they are eligible.

Crown Woods College, in Eltham, moved into a new building last year and split pupils into three schools or houses. Higher-ability children, selected by a combination of test results and primary school assessments, are in Delamere house.

The other two houses, Ashwood and Sherwood, are mixed ability. Children from each "school" wear different-coloured ties and have separate lessons, teachers and lunch breaks.  For the first time this year, the school is oversubscribed with 900 applications for 270 places.

Michael Murphy, the head teacher, said his school was competing for its intake with other popular schools including grammars.

He said: "The aim is that every child of every ability makes excellent progress. And we do that by offering a tailored curriculum to each child, whether it be academic, or vocational or a mix of the two."

Nick Seaton, secretary of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "Parents everywhere will welcome these developments.  "Most existing grammars schools are vastly oversubscribed and parents should have the choice of a grammar school place if their child is eligible."

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Will the great morass of British education defeat attempts to upgrade it?

The Education Secretary’s latest plans, including the return of O-levels, confirm the scale of his ambition for our schools. But the task he has set himself defeated his predecessors

In the lobby of the Department for Education there is a long line of photographs of former secretaries of state, 30 of them in total since the war. Very few made any difference at all. Michael Gove must wonder whether he will make a bigger impression.

He has certainly been hyperactive, and has become the darling of the Conservative party as a result. His leaked plan to bring back the O-level, and ditch GCSEs, is the latest in a long line of announcements that have earned the Education Secretary full marks from Tory activists.

But what does saying there will be a “new O-Level” actually mean in practice? And will Mr Gove’s school reforms really raise standards?

In all the countries with the best schools, teaching is a much higher-status profession than in Britain. With this in mind, Mr Gove has set more demanding standards for entry into the teaching profession: they must now have at least a 2:2 degree and the bar could be raised further in future. He has encouraged the growth of Teach First, which encourages high-fliers to try their hand at teaching. And he has reformed teacher training, so that more training is on the job, rather than based on academic theory or fashionable dogma.

To make their jobs easier and less stressful, teachers have been given new powers over discipline, and rules that undermined their authority in the classroom have been pruned back.

What about the quality of management? How do we make sure that the best teachers get rewarded and keep teaching, while those who are not up to the job are either turned around or moved on? A problem with state-run services is that in the absence of market forces, managers don’t have the same incentives to weed out underperformers.

Labour had been turning around some of the worst schools by making them into so-called “academies”. This meant that the failing management would be replaced, a rich sponsor would provide some extra money, and the new academy would have greater freedom to fire bad teachers and set its own curriculum.

There is good evidence that this programme worked, and standards in the academies rose faster than in their predecessor schools. But, although it started in 2002, the academy programme had only reached about 200 schools by the end of Labour’s time in government, less than one per cent of all schools in England.

Mr Gove has continued this programme, but also hugely expanded it in a number of different ways. He has allowed good schools to turn themselves voluntarily into academies, which means they get greater freedoms over hiring, firing and the curriculum. Primary schools can now also be turned into academies. As well as trying to turn around the very worst schools, he wants to change the much larger number of “coasting” schools – the schools that are not terrible, but not good enough either. He is raising the “floor standard” – the level of performance below which schools can be handed over to new management.

The long-term goal of the academy programme is to emulate the competitive forces of the private sector within state education. Schools that are badly run will be taken over by new and better managers. The process is just beginning, but already academy schools are forming into chains.

In the past we often saw brilliant head teachers turn around individual schools. But they could not take over other schools. Now groups with a proven track record of turning around poor schools are able to replicate their successful methods on a bigger scale. Already, more than one in 10 secondary schools is part of a chain. Federations such as ARK and Harris are raising standards in large numbers of schools.

Where does the proposal for a new O-level fit into all this? It fits with Mr Gove’s determination to raise standards, and stop politicians kidding the public about how well schools are doing. Last summer, 23 per cent more youngsters had good GCSE pass rates than in 1995-96. In part, this reflects real progress but it also reflects the fact that exams have been made easier.

For years there has been a race to the bottom between different competing exam boards. To attract schools to sit their exams, boards have lowered standards. A recent Daily Telegraph investigation uncovered the full extent of the problem, with secretly shot footage of chief examiners advising teachers on future test questions and the exact wording that pupils should use to obtain higher marks.

Research by Durham University found that between 1996 and 2007, the average grade achieved by GCSE maths candidates of the same “general ability” rose by a whole grade. As part of the O-level proposal, Mr Gove is suggesting having a single exam board in England, as they already do in Scotland, which will remove one of the main causes of grade inflation.

Although Mr Gove has yet to explain his proposals for the new version, the O-levels of old were more “norm referenced” than GCSEs. In simple terms this meant that a certain proportion of pupils each year would get As, a certain proportion Bs, and so on. But GCSEs are not really anchored in this way, which has allowed politicians to say that grades are going up, even as international comparisons suggest we may be falling behind other countries.

Mr Gove is also concerned that targets set by politicians can have perverse effects. That’s why as part of the O-level proposal he plans to end the Government’s obsessive focus on the number of children getting five GCSE grades at C or better.

This measure, which formed the basis for league tables under the last government, has distorted teachers’ priorities, because getting a child from D to C helps in the league tables, but bumping up a pupil from a B to an A doesn’t.

As one teaching manual – “Boost your borderline students” – helpfully explains: “Students who achieve a GCSE grade C or above in mathematics help to boost the school’s statistics for the Department… and so show the school in a better light for Ofsted and for league tables… D/C borderline students are now an important focus for all teachers.”

The effect of this focus in recent years is clearly visible in GCSE results for English and maths. Comparing 2010 with 2002, 5 per cent more students got a C in maths, and 5 per cent fewer got a D or an E. But the numbers getting A* to B were unchanged. In other words, instead of increasing standards across the board, schools have been forced to play the league table system. In practice this means that bright children and the less able are being neglected because of government targets.

Yesterday there was a furore because of newspaper reports that the O-levels proposal could also mean a return to a two-tier system, whereby most children would study for O-levels but less academic children would study for a more basic Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE).

This looks unlikely to happen, and Deputy PM Nick Clegg was quick to rule out the idea, putting him on a collision course with Mr Gove. Yet while a simple return to the old CSE would be a mistake, something is needed in its place and the proposal raised a hugely important issue: how to cater for less academic children?

Governments of Left and Right have been right to try to get more children to go down the academic route and increase the numbers going to university. In the 21st century, there is more demand than ever for higher skills; globalisation and technological change are relentlessly pushing down the wages of the unskilled, and pushing up the premium that graduates earn.

But there will always be some pupils who are not suited to the academic route. By the age of 14, lots of my classmates were wondering why on earth they were struggling to learn quadratic equations, which they knew they would never use again in their lives. As a result they were bored, felt second rate, and were disengaged from school. We waste the talents of millions of children in this way.

Despite the success of small projects such as Young Apprenticeships, where 14 year-olds spend three days a week at school and two days in work, politicians have shown little interest in the subject. Perhaps that’s because the political class is full of people like me, with dangerously similar backgrounds (PPE, Oxford) who think that academia is the only way to go.

In Finland, which is often held up as a model by the Left, more than 40 per cent of pupils go to vocational schools from age 15. Last year, former Labour education secretary Estelle Morris suggested that children in Britain could choose to go down a vocational or academic route at age 14. This is an attractive idea in principle, but we would need to guard against the vocational track becoming a second-class, second-rate option.

Mr Gove is thinking big, and ruffling a lot of feathers along the way. His O-level proposals are another example of his radicalism, but their messy leaking also shows that the schools revolution is still a work in progress. He wants to tell us the truth about our schools, not kid us about how well we are doing.

His energy is impressive, and he is attacking the problems of educational failure from every angle. But when he contemplates the grainy colour photos of all those failed former education secretaries, he must realise that he has a mountain to climb.

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22 June, 2012

Bigoted N.C. Teacher Who Mentioned Jail Time for Students Who Insulted Obama Won’t be Fired

The Salisbury Post is reporting that a teacher who told a student back in May he could be arrested for talking badly about Obama will be returning to her job in the Rowan-Salisbury School System in the fall.

Yelling at student Hunter Rogers, who tried to defend Mitt Romney, the teacher told the class that people have been arrested for being disrespectful to the president.

In one of the more comical exchanges, Rogers pointed out that “whenever Bush was president, people talked sh*tty about him,” and the teacher responded, “because he was sh*tty.”

Superintendent Dr. Judy Grissom condemned the woman’s actions at the time, suspending her after it made national news.

“I expect all teachers to be professional during class discussion and not to force their personal or political views on students, demean students, or instruct students on what to believe…Teachers must create a positive instructional environment conducive to learning within the guidelines of our state curriculum.  Ms. Dixon-Neely’s failure to meet these standards during the recorded portion of class is the basis for my disciplinary action against her,” she said, but has significantly changed her tune in the intervening months.

Grissom is now saying that the the teacher’s actions did not reflect her usual performance, because she had received two formal classroom observations before the recording was released and both had been positive, and she therefore deserves another chance.

She did not say what exactly was being reviewed, or what the standards for review were.

“While I remain deeply concerned about the performance documented in the recording of Ms. Dixon-Neely’s classroom, I have concluded that she should have a chance to improve her teaching skills,” Grissom said. “Under these circumstances, suspension without pay for 10 work days and a requirement that Ms. Dixon-Neely complete a monitored growth plan is an appropriate resolution.”

Grissom added that the teacher has also received racist messages since the incident, and that teachers throughout the school system have been criticized.

SOURCE




More choice British teachers!

'Dear mum, don't cry but I'm dying': Fury over school's creative writing assignment that left a mother distraught

The words in her son’s homework left Vicki Walker numb with shock.

In a letter which began ‘Dear mum’, Wesley, 14, assured her he loved her, made a request for bright colours at his funeral, and listed who should inherit his most prized possessions.

Horrified, she ran to his bedroom praying he had not taken his own life.   In fact, Wesley was sleeping soundly in bed – and the death note turned out to be the result of a creative writing assignment set by his teachers.

Last night his parents demanded an apology from the school, furious that teachers could have set such a piece of work without informing them. But while the Discovery Academy in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, apologised, staff insist the task was justified as an exercise in ‘expressive art’ and an opportunity for pupils to tell their mothers that they love them.  The school said it would ‘review how we communicate to parents in the future’.

Mrs Walker, 42, and her husband Mark described the horrifying moment they read the note at their home in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent and thought their son might be about to commit suicide. Mr Walker, 52, a warehouse worker, said: ‘Wesley came down before going to bed and handed his mum this piece of paper.  ‘He said goodnight and then off he went back upstairs to bed.

‘Vicki read it – and the colour just drained from her face. She just froze stiff and handed me this paper with her hands shaking.

‘She burst into his bedroom and expected to see him hanging there – she was horrified. The poor lad almost jumped out of his skin. It really has shaken us up.’ Wesley was set the task last month in his Expressive Arts class, a subject – also offered at GCSE – which aims to ‘develop pupils’ creativity and imagination’.

Children were asked to imagine they had a terminal illness and express thanks to loved ones. Wesley said: ‘I just thought it was like any other piece of work. I just got on with it.’

In the letter, which is littered with spelling errors, he asked family and friends to wear bright colours at his funeral and apologised for being ‘a pain’ at times. ‘I don’t want you to be sad,’ it said. ‘I’m with Nan and Grandad now so I love you and goodbye.’

Pupils were then told to take the letters home but no warning was given to parents about the notes.

‘I couldn’t believe the school did not warn us they were doing such a sick exercise,’ Mr Walker said. ‘They could have written something on top of the work.’ He added that the assignment could have been harmful to vulnerable teens. ‘It could give some kids the wrong ideas,’ he said. Mrs Walker, a teaching assistant, added: ‘Wesley is a lively boy and to see this made me think there was something seriously wrong.’

Last night the school said many parents and pupils found the exercise ‘valuable’, adding that it was in line with the national curriculum.

A spokesman said: ‘The purpose was to enable young people to explore their feelings and emotions and celebrate the many good things with their loved ones that are usually left unsaid.’

SOURCE






Australia: The charter school revolution comes to Qld.

In Britain they have also recently taken off -- where they're called "academies" or "free schools" -- but the idea, as in America,  is to get them out from under bureaucratic control while remaining government-funded

QUEENSLAND state schools have been invited to apply to become independent public schools next year and qualify for an extra $50,000 in funding.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek today visited Rainworth State School in Brisbane's inner west to spruik the benefits of moving out from his department's control.  He said public independent schools would have autonomy in decision-making, face less red tape and fewer layers of management.

"Independent public schools will have the freedom to directly recruit teachers and to build a team that is able to deliver innovative educational practices and have more autonomy to manage infrastructure and financial resources," Mr Langbroek said.

"Research tells us that parent and community engagement with schools can have a powerful impact on student achievement."

He said schools that already had significant community input would be in a good position to apply, but he would not expand on other criteria for selection.

"We're not going to use the NAPLAN table as a league table to determine whether someone should become an independent school," Mr Langbroek said.

Schools will have the freedom to pull out after a year, and those that remain in the program will have their involvement reviewed after four years.

The Minister said it would not cost parents any more to send their children to an independent public schools, but there would be some opportunities for business sponsorship.

"This is not going to be a case of businesses being able to come in and plaster schools with commercial advertising simply because they're working with schools to deliver the program," he said.

In the first year 30 schools in metropolitan and regional areas will be selected to become independent public schools with that figure rising to 120 in four years.

The Queensland Teachers Union has previously raised concerns about the program, saying it will ruin the state school system, and create real concerns about job security for teachers.

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21 June, 2012

NJ: School agrees to drop “pledge to teachers”

About time.  It sounds pretty obnoxious

After receiving complaints about a New Jersey elementary school's pledge of allegiance to teachers, the school district says it has opted to rewrite the pledge as a school song instead.

"Over the summer, a school spirit song will be created to replace the pledge, and will be put into effect for the 2012-13 school year," The Marlboro Board of Education said in a news release.

For the past decade, every Monday of the school year at Asher Holmes Elementary School in Morganville, N.J., has started with students reciting a pledge honoring the Marlboro Township School District and its teachers, who “help [students] learn” all they need to “know for the future.”

The pledge was written by a fourth-grade teacher and did not replace the Pledge of Allegiance, which is recited every day and is also optional.

"I pledge allegiance to Asher Holmes and the Marlboro Township School District and to the teachers who help us learn all that we need to know for the future," the pledge states. "We promise to respect ourselves and others, to try our best and always be proud of our schools."

And until last week, not a single parent had complained about the pledge. But Valerie Kaufman, a mother of a student at the school, told the Marlboro Township Board of Education during a June 12 meeting that she found the pledge to be unconstitutional and suggested administrators “do away” with the practice.

Board member BonnieSue Rosenwald agreed with Kaufman, saying she found the practice to be “inappropriate” since students were likely saluting the flag while reciting the school pledge.

Superintendent David Abbott said Kaufman’s complaint was the first he had received pertaining to the optional pledge.

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Huge High School shakeup in Britain

Leaked documents seen by the Mail reveal Education Secretary Michael Gove has drawn up a blueprint which would tear up the current exam system as well as abolishing the National Curriculum.

From September 2014, pupils will begin studying for ‘explicitly harder’ exams in English, maths, physics, chemistry and biology.

Tough O-levels will also be drawn up in history, geography and modern languages. The new exams will ‘meet or exceed the highest standards in the world for that age group’.

Mr Gove believes the creation of GCSEs by the Tories in the 1980s was a ‘historic mistake’ that has ‘failed pupils’ and led to the collapse of standards through grade inflation and a proliferation of ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses.

Under his revolutionary plans:

  *  GCSEs will ‘disappear’ from schools within the next few years
  
*  The National Curriculum in secondary schools will be abolished
 
*  The requirement that pupils obtain five good GCSEs graded A* to C will be scrapped

*   Less intelligent pupils will sit simpler exams, similar to the old CSEs

*    O-level pupils will sit the same gold standard paper nationwide from a single exam board

The extraordinary plans will set Mr Gove on a collision course with the teaching unions, local education authorities, the Liberal Democrats and even his own civil servants.

He is set to announce the plans formally in the next two weeks. In the autumn a public consultation will run for 12 weeks. That will clear the way for them to be implemented early next year. None of the plans require an Act of Parliament.

Mr Gove’s proposal is nothing less than an attempt to reverse three decades of academic decline and create a system that Labour could not reverse if its wins power in 2015.

A leaked document seen by the Mail reveals: ‘Those starting GCSEs in 2013 are the last pupils who will have to do them.’

This means they will sit their exams in 2015. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of pupils who begin in September 2014 will be expected to take O-levels in English, maths and the sciences in 2016.

There will be individual O-levels in physics, chemistry and biology, instead of a combined sciences qualification.

In a bid to end the slide in standards, pupils will have to study complex subjects like calculus to get an A grade in O-level maths. English literature pupils will be banned from taking set texts into exams and will be expected to write longer essays.

Questions like ‘Would you look at the Moon with a microscope or a telescope?’ from science GCSEs will be a thing of the past. As well as the return of O-levels, the Government will create a new exam for less able pupils.

When GCSEs were created they were supposed to help less-gifted students.   But Mr Gove believes those teenagers have been encouraged to think that a D, E, F or G grade at GCSE is a ‘pass’ when the real world treats those grades as a ‘fail’.

From 2014, the bottom 25 per cent of pupils will study more straightforward exams in English, maths and science, so they can get a worthwhile qualification.

Questions on these papers will emphasise real life situations like counting change in a shop or reading a railway timetable.

A return to an exam like the old CSE will be controversial, but ministers will point out that 42 per cent of pupils currently fail to get five good GCSEs, the measure by which schools are judged, meaning teachers have no incentive to help them at all.

This autumn, exam boards will enter a competition to win the right to set the first new O-levels. The Department for Education will announce before Christmas which boards will set the English, maths and science O-levels, with the same exam taken nationwide.

This is expected to lead to resistance from boards like Edexcel, who could lose business unless they land the contracts.

Exam boards will also be told to devise new O-levels in history, geography and modern languages. Mr Gove hopes they will also be ready for pupils beginning study in 2014 but their introduction may take until 2015.

GCSEs will not disappear immediately and schools will be able to continue teaching the English Baccalaureate.  But a document seen by the Mail says: ‘The Department for Education expects that existing GCSEs will disappear’.

In order to persuade schools to adopt the new exams in 2014, the Government will scrap the requirement that pupils should seek to obtain five good GCSEs graded A* to C from 2016 – leaving them free to take on the new gold standard O-levels.

Mr Gove is concerned that the current system simply encourages pupils to study three ‘Mickey Mouse’ GCSE courses like food nutrition on top of English and maths in order to fulfil the requirement.

The plans will also spell the end for pupils racking up 13 or more GCSEs and ensure that they engage in rigorous study in a smaller number of subjects. Cambridge University currently sets O-levels for pupils in other countries.

In Singapore, between two-thirds and three-quarters of pupils take O-levels and the Government believes the same should be true of Britain.

Schools will now be encouraged to enter pupils for exams when they are ready. In Singapore, some pupils take O-levels at 15, while others take three years and sit them at 17.

Headteachers will also be given sweeping powers to teach what they like when they like. The leaked document says Mr Gove ‘will abolish the secondary National Curriculum and not replace it. All existing programmes of study will be withdrawn from September 2013’.

Academies, now more than half of secondary schools, can already roam off the National Curriculum. But by tearing it up, Mr Gove will prevent a future Labour government of changing the law to impose it on academies again.

A senior Whitehall source said the plans will put an end to politicians using grade inflation to make outlandish claims about rising standards. Last night a spokesman for the Department for Education said: ‘We do not comment on leaks.’

SOURCE





British exam boo-boo

Students furious with exam board for putting 'impossible' question in chemistry paper

An exam board apologised yesterday for a 'confusing' chemistry A-level question that students complain was impossible to answer.  The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance admitted that guidance given in an A2 paper sat by just under 16,000 teenagers was 'unhelpful'.

It has insisted that examiners will take into account 'the potential for confusion' when marking the question and ensure that students are not penalised.

Students have set up a Facebook page, Thechem5paperwasadisgrace, which is 'liked' by over 2,000 people, in protest over the AQA chemistry exam which was sat on Tuesday.

They argue that one question was 'impossible to answer using the data provided' while some claim there wasn't enough time to complete the difficult paper.

The contested question - worth five marks out of a potential 100 for the whole paper - asked students to make a calculation using a ratio they should have come up with in part one.

To help students who could not calculate the original ratio, the paper gave them another ratio to use to answer part two. However, it also told them in bold print that this was 'not the correct ratio'.

One student said: 'A question regarding the percentage of a certain compound required us to use a ratio from the previous question. However if one did not get that ratio, there was a 'wrong' ratio given for use to at least get method marks.  'However, the result using this ratio was more than 100 per cent which is chemically, mathematically and theoretically impossible.'

Another said: 'I know that a lot of students spent a long time trying to work out a rational answer and so ran out of time to answer other questions. I feel sorry for a lot of people who are now worried that they won't get into university because of this exam.'

A spokeswoman for AQA said: 'We expect that the majority of students will have answered part one of the question correctly, used the ratio that they have calculated and will therefore have had no problems.  'However, the alternative ratio given in A6(d) (ii) leads to an answer that is different to what students would normally expect to see.

'Although the question can still be answered, we recognise the alternative ratio given was unhelpful and it has clearly caused confusion for some students.  'We apologise to these students and accept it would have been better to use a different ratio.'

She added: 'We would like to reassure students that we have established procedures in place to deal with issues like this.  'Our examiners will take into account the potential for confusion when they mark the papers and will ensure the results of those students who used the alternative ratio are not affected.'

SOURCE



20 June, 2012

Indian Americans lead all in income, education: Survey

Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the US with Indian Americans leading them all in their levels of income and education, according to a new survey.

Seven in 10 Indian-American adults ages 25 and older have a college degree, compared with about half of Americans of Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Japanese ancestry, and about a quarter of Vietnamese Americans, according to the Pew Research Centre report released Tuesday.

Indians also have the highest median household income of $88,000 among the largest Asian-American groups. Asians as a whole have a median household income of $66,000 compared with the US median of $49,800.

On the other side of the socio-economic ledger, Americans with Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and 'other US Asian' origins have a higher poverty rate than does the US general public, while those with Indian, Japanese and Filipino origins have lower rates, the survey of six major Asian groups found.

Their geographic settlement patterns also differ. More than seven in 10 Japanese and two-thirds of Filipinos live in the West, compared with fewer than half of Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans, and only about a quarter of Indians.

There are sub-group differences in social and cultural realms as well. Japanese and Filipino Americans are the most accepting of interracial and intergroup marriage; Koreans, Vietnamese and Indians are less comfortable.

Their pathways into the US are different, the Pew survey found. About half of all Korean and Indian immigrants who received green cards in 2011 got them on the basis of employer sponsorship, compared with about a third of Japanese, a fifth of Chinese, one-in-eight Filipinos and just one percent of Vietnamese.

Compared with the general public, Asian Americans are more likely to support an activist government and less likely to identify as Republicans, according to the Pew report.

Indian Americans are the most heavily Democratic Asian subgroup (65 percent), while Filipino Americans and Vietnamese Americans are the most evenly split between the two parties.

President Barack Obama gets higher ratings from Asian Americans than from the general public: 54 percent approve of the way he is handling his job compared with 44 percent of the general public, the survey found.

SOURCE






British school coverup

This has happened beore.  They don't want anybody to know how out of control the schools are

The outraged parents of a young boy held at knife-point in his school playground were only told about the attack two weeks later by the attacker's mother.

Sean Skinner, 10, was assaulted by another pupil who held a penknife to his throat at Brooklands Primary School in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, on May 31.

But Sean’s parents Stephen and Sally Skinner were not informed about the incident until a fortnight later, and then only when they received a phone call from the mother of the pupil who had threatened their son to apologise.

Mr Skinner, 43, said it was 'diabolical' that the school had not told him what had happened.

He said: 'I was stunned when we were called by the mother of the child who had the knife.  'I checked with my son about what had gone on and when he told me about it I got in touch with the school.  'It was two weeks after the incident that we finally heard about it.'

Headteacher Shaun Thorpe has now made a formal apology to Sean’s parents for leaving them in the dark.  They were not told about about the knife incident - which is now being investigated - until June 11.

Mr Skinner said: 'The mother could not have been more apologetic and told us she fully supported any action we wanted to take.'

Sean is in year five at Brooklands Primary School, which has a 'good' rating from government inspection body OFSTED.

His father said Sean was 'shaken but unhurt'.

Mr and Mrs Skinner have two other children at the school - Dylan, six, and Isobel, four.

Mr Skinner said he had met with Mr Thorpe after discovering what had happened.  He said: 'The headteacher said that it was an oversight that we hadn’t been told.

'But if I was in their position telling the parents of the children would be my main concern. If we don’t know what is going on in the school how can we help?'

Mr Thorpe said: 'The safety of our pupils is our number one priority.  'We will not tolerate pupils bringing knives of any description into school.  'We took immediate action as soon as we knew one of our pupils was carrying a knife and had threatened another pupil.

'Normally in cases of bullying and or threatening behaviour, we would speak to the parents of all of the children involved.  'This did not happened immediately and we apologise for this.

'On this occasion our first priority was to investigate the matter fully and ensure the safety of all our pupils.

'We are doing all we can to ensure children understand the dangers of playing with knives and that they must not bring them into school under any circumstances.

'We are also asking parents for their help in reinforcing these messages and in making sure their children do not bring knives to school.'  Mr Thorpe refused to say whether the child with the knife had been suspended.  [So we know the answer to that]

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Some conservative  Concerns about the Limited Understanding Conveyed by Australia's Proposed National History Curriculum

Information without understanding?

One of my concerns is that culture is treated as a consequence, rather than a cause, of history. For example, the proposed Year 1 Content Item H1KU4 refers to considering: 'How the roles of individuals and groups have evolved over time to meet changing human needs".

The problem is that the curriculum does not seem at any stage to require considering how "roles of individuals and groups" (ie how people behave individually or corporately, as a consequence of their cultural assumptions) can affect history. For example, the ability of societies to change (socially, politically and economically) is a function of the "roles of individuals and groups" within the society, and an ability to change is in turn a major determinant a society's success or failure in terms of technological / economic advancement and influence relative to other societies (eg see Competing Civilizations). And the weak "role of individuals and groups" in dealing with change has apparently created major challenges that still need to be faced by Australians with indigenous ancestry (see The Challenge of Aboriginal Advancement).

A closely related concern is that the curriculum would not provide any depth of understanding of the way in which ideas have influenced history. The curriculum would certainly introduce various historical ideas - specifically those of: (a) Egypt or Greece or Rome (H7KU16); (b) China or India or Australasia (H7KU22); (c) Medieval Europe (H8KU13); (d) the Renaissance (H8KU19); and (e) radicals (H10KU4). However this would not lead to a coherent understanding of:

*    the particular ideas that have been the foundation of Australia's culture, institutions, society and economy. For example, a growing scientific understanding of the natural world could emerge in Europe at the time of the Renaissance and subsequently accelerate economic advancement, only because of Christendom's expectation that the natural world would be lawful. Many of the ideas that are needed to understand Australia's heritage seem unfortunately to be either absent from, or optional components in, the proposed curriculum;

*   the way in which different ideas (or the absence interest in abstract ideas) have led to different outcomes. For example, constraining the ideas that may be considered to those consistent with the world-view that Islamic scholars have elaborated around the Qu'ran arguably has significant (adverse) implications for Muslim dominated societies (see About Arabic Thought and Islamic Science). And the absence of Western societies' commitment to abstract ideas and universal values in some Asian societies (because they lack a classical Greek heritage) can lead to ways of doing things that are quite different ways to those Australians have any basis for understanding (eg see East Asia in Competing Civilizations).

Professor Stuart Macintyre, who spoke about the history component of the proposed curriculum in ACARA's Video Transcript ('Development and Consultation Overview: K–10 Draft Curriculum’, March 2010) emphasised: engaging those with diverse backgrounds; increasing understanding of Australia's regional context and of others; and promoting sustainability.

However there is a sense in which the proposed curriculum's worthy goal of encouraging acceptance of others as they are, conflicts with the need to understand what works and what doesn't work, and perhaps even the distinction between good and evil.

Moreover functionally-useful understanding of Australia's place in a region in which dominant societies lack the commitment to the abstract ideas and universal values that Western societies derived from the West's classical Greek heritage requires far more than brief references to Asia's history. Without much deeper understanding, cultural differences that are 'invisible' to those with 'Western' world views could put Australia's liberal and democratic traditions at risk (eg see Babes in the Asian Woods).

 Other observers perceived defects in the 'Asian' component of the proposed national history curriculum. For example:

*        there is a need for massive further funding to equip teachers if Asian component is introduced to curriculum - as teachers are not yet able to deliver on Asia literacy (according to Kathe Kirby - Asia Education Foundation). The draft curriculum was seen as very Eurocentric [1];

*       attempt to tell Australian story in Asia context was 'lame and impotent' according to Tony Milner (ANU) - as it fails to prepare Australians for the world they are moving into. WWII needs to focus not in Europe but on Japanese conquests in Asia. The curriculum focuses on rights / liberty / progress which does not have same impact in Asian societies [1].

A reasonable case can be made that many of the dysfunctions and conflicts that plague human societies are the unintended outcome of the failure of intellectuals to critically evaluate the consequences of differences in cultural assumptions (see Competing Civilizations) . It would not be constructive at this time to reflect this weakness in Australia's national school history curriculum.

SOURCE



19 June, 2012

Mayors back parents seizing control of schools

Hundreds of mayors from across the United States this weekend called for new laws letting parents seize control of low-performing public schools and fire the teachers, oust the administrators or turn the schools over to private management.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, meeting in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday unanimously endorsed "parent trigger" laws aimed at bypassing elected school boards and giving parents at the worst public schools the opportunity to band together and force immediate change.

Such laws are fiercely opposed by teachers' unions, which stand to lose members in school takeovers. Union leaders say there is no proof such upheaval will improve learning. And they argue that public investment in struggling communities, rather than private management of struggling schools, is the key to boosting student achievement.

But in a sign of the unions' diminishing clout, their traditional political allies, the Democrats, abandoned them in droves during the Orlando vote.

Democratic Mayors Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Kevin Johnson of Sacramento led the charge for parent trigger - and were backed by scores of other Democrats as well as Republicans from coast to coast.

"Mayors understand at a local level that most parents lack the tools they need to turn their schools around," Villaraigosa said. Parent trigger laws, he added, can empower parents to do just that.

Representatives from the two largest teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, were not available for comment Sunday.

Parent trigger laws are in place in several states including California, Texas and Louisiana and are under consideration in states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York. So far, though, the concept has never successfully been used to turn around a school.

Parents in two impoverished, heavily minority California cities, Compton and Adelanto, gathered enough signatures to seize control of their neighborhood schools but the process stalled in the face of ferocious opposition from teachers' unions. Both cases are now tied up in court.

Though it has not yet been shown to work, parent trigger has support from many of the big players seeking to inject more free-market competition into public education, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.

Major philanthropies and wealthy financiers have poured money into backing political candidates and advocacy groups, including one called Parent Revolution, that promote parent trigger, according to campaign finance records in several states.

The concept has even inspired an upcoming Hollywood film, "Won't Back Down," in which Maggie Gyllenhaal portrays a single mother who organizes parents to take control of their failing school over union opposition. The movie was financed by Walden Media, which also backed the 2010 documentary "Waiting for 'Superman,'" which advocated for another central goal of education reformers - expanding charter schools.

For their part, mayors may have jumped on the bandwagon because parent trigger fits neatly with two of their key goals, said Kenneth Wong, a political scientist focused on education policy at Brown University.

'CONSUMER ORIENTED'

"Mayors are moving in a new direction on education, one that's more consumer oriented... and focused on serving parents and giving them choices," Wong said. Facing tight budgets and huge pension liabilities, many mayors are also looking to rein in the power of teachers unions and force them to accept more austere contracts, Wong said.

Teachers unions have long been among the biggest donors to Democratic politicians, but that alliance has frayed in many cities in the past 18 months.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Villaraigosa blasted union leaders as an "unwavering roadblock to reform." In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter has backed a plan to close dozens of neighborhood schools and convert many others to charters, which are publicly funded but privately run - and typically non-union.

And in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel successfully pushed to cancel a scheduled 4 percent raise for teachers and extend the school day by more than an hour. Teachers are so angry, nearly 90 percent of union members just voted to authorize a strike if ongoing contract negotiations falter.

"We are on the path to change," said Gloria Romero, a former California state senator who now runs that state's branch of Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group that funnels donations to politicians willing to buck the teachers unions. She called the mayoral vote a "landmark" that would inspire poor and minority parents to demand change in their schools. "This is a civil rights fight," she said.

Opponents of parent trigger, however, pointed out that the mayors' endorsement was largely symbolic, since such policies typically require legislative approval.

They said they would continue to fight - in part by reminding voters that parent trigger can be a mechanism for turning public schools over to private control. Some of the private management companies that run charter schools are for-profits that do not divulge much about how they spend public funds.

"Parents don't have control once they pull the trigger," said Kathleen Oropeza, co-founder of Fund Education Now, an advocacy group that successfully fought to derail a parent trigger bill in Florida earlier this year. "Who profits? Not parents and children."

SOURCE





Sacramento "Teacher of the Year" Laid Off; Who is to Blame?

 Mike Shedlock

I have a great deal of sympathy for Michelle Apperson, the Sacramento "Teacher of the Year" who was laid off. Assuming she deserved the award, she should not have been laid off.

Sixth-grade teacher Michelle Apperson passed down a simple message to her students.

"My favorite teachers growing up were the ones who challenged me to go out of my comfort level a little bit, strive for the stars, and work hard," the veteran California educator wrote on her school's bio page.

Despite just being named Sacramento's "Teacher of the Year," Apperson was laid off as part of a massive budget cut.

"It hurts on a personal level because I really love what I do," Apperson, who taught all subjects, told KXTV-News 10. "But professionally and politically or economically, I get why it happens."

Her pink slip comes just days after President Barack Obama prodded Washington lawmakers to help cash-strapped states with education funding.

The Sacramento City Unified School District has suffered approximately $143 million in budget cuts in recent years. School spokesperson Gabe Ross told News 10 that who gets laid off is mandated by state law and is based on seniority, not performance.

"It's an awful situation," Ross said. "It's another sign of how education's funding really needs an overhaul."

According to her bio, Apperson's goal was to teach her students "how to solve problems with peers, other adults, and the world around them."

Now they know firsthand how difficult that can sometimes be.
Does Apperson Really "Get Why it Happens"?

I like Apperson's Bio, her experience, and her message to her 6th grade class.  However my sympathies end there.

She says she "gets why it happens". Does she? If so why doesn't she explicitly say so?

Who is to Blame?

Teachers' unions are 100% to blame for this mess. Unions protect the under-performers at the expense of those like Apperson. Unions even protect repeated sexual predator teachers.

From the New York Times article Give Schools the Power to Punish

In one case, a male teacher in Manhattan was accused of inappropriately touching a female student in 2010, but the arbitrator imposed only a suspension without pay. And now — after more disturbing episodes — we’ve filed charges against this individual for a third time.

As it stands, public school teachers accused of sexual misconduct enjoy protections that no other city employee has. That puts children in danger, and we cannot allow it to continue.
Rest assured there are thousands of cases like that nationwide. Want some articles?
The Huffington Post reports New York Teachers Paid To Do Nothing: 700 Of Them

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" _ off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues _ pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

Here is a Google search of Teachers Paid to Sit if you want more examples.

Now factor in incompetent teachers and poor teachers. The union protects them too.

Overhaul Needed

Yes, indeed. An overhaul is truly needed. Teachers should be hired, fired and receive pay raises based on merit, not seniority.

School spokesperson Gabe Ross told News 10 that who gets laid off is mandated by state law and is based on seniority, not performance.

Ross then whines "It's another sign of how education's funding really needs an overhaul."

An overhaul is indeed needed. It's time to get rid of collective bargaining of public unions, and it's time for merit pay for teachers.

Enormous Sense of Entitlement

With very few exceptions, public union members have an enormous sense of entitlement.

Public union members need to put themselves in the average taxpayer's shoes. Public union members also need to realize promised benefits cannot possibly materialize.

Teachers' Unions Do Not Give a Damn About Kids

Here is the deal, straight up. Teachers' unions do not give a damn about the kids.

Please read that carefully. I said "Teachers' unions" NOT teachers.

Most teachers do care about the kids. However, those teachers are sucked into believing garbage fed by union organizers. That garbage inevitably leads to cannibalization of the lowest on the seniority totem pole, regardless of skills or talent.

Union mentality is also to blame for inability of school districts to get rid of sexual predators and grossly incompetent teachers.

Time For Reflection

This is a time for serious reflection. We all need to think about what government owes us (or doesn't), what taxpayers owe public union workers (or don't), and what promises have been made by politicians at taxpayer expense that cannot possibly be met.

The problem is not a lack of education funding.

The problem is absurd expectations as to what benefits public union workers receive, coupled with inability to get rid of union workers, except on the basis of seniority, even in the face of repeated sexual predator behavior.

SOURCE




British School days could be extended to 8pm: PM  signals shake-up to improve childcare

School days could be extended until 8pm and red tape on childcare provision slashed under Government reforms.

David Cameron will today launch a commission on childcare to draw up measures to reduce costs for parents and ease bureaucratic restrictions on providers.

It will investigate whether there is red tape that could be abolished or rules – such as adult-to-child ratios for organisations offering childcare – that could be relaxed.

Childminders are generally restricted to looking after no more than three children, but this could be increased to five.

Mr Cameron also wants schools to examine innovative ways of providing after-school childcare.

For example, the Free School Norwich offers affordable childcare six days a week, 51 weeks a year. And the Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, London, operates a longer day, with some pupils staying until 8pm.

The Prime Minister wants more academies and free schools to extend their days, and others to offer after-school clubs.

Parents would generally pay a fee if they wanted their children to go to clubs, but the costs would be considerably less than other forms of childcare.

Work and pensions minister Maria Miller and children's minister Sarah Teather will lead the commission, which is to report to Mr Cameron by the autumn.

The Prime Minister, speaking at the G20 summit in Mexico, said: 'Working parents want to know that after school or in the holidays their children will be looked after in a safe, happy environment that is affordable.

'We want to do all we can to reduce the cost of childcare for parents, and make sure they can find and afford high-quality nurseries, after-school clubs and holiday schemes for their children.'

An Education Department study shows only four in ten parents believe there is sufficient  care in their areas for over-fives. And a recent survey by Save the Children and the Daycare Trust suggested working parents are spending more than a third of their incomes on childcare.

State spending on childcare is already among the highest in the world. By 2014, the Coalition will have increased investment by more than £1billion a year.

The commission will look at whether more value for money could be squeezed from some providers. Bureaucratic 'lunacy' governing the work of childminders is of particular concern. Ministers believe rules introduced by the last government helped fuel a dramatic collapse in the cheapest, most traditional form of care for working parents.

In 1997, when Labour came to power, there were 100,000 childminders catering for half of families paying for childcare.

But Labour introduced a raft of regulations, including Ofsted inspections and a 'nappy curriculum' of targets to be achieved by a child's fifth birthday. Carers said they were being required to put 'wash your hands' signs in bathrooms even though children are often too young to read, and to conduct 'risk assessments' if there were pets such as hamsters in their house.

The number of childminders has fallen to 55,000, pushing more families into using nurseries.

Tory MP Elizabeth Truss, who has led a campaign for childcare reform, said: 'Becoming a childminder is a bureaucratic process, involving registering with Ofsted, a local network and insurance provider.

'British child-adult ratios are some of the lowest in Europe – 3:1 for childminders looking  after under-fives. In the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland that ratio is 5:1.

'The UK should raise ratios  for childminders to 5:1 for the under-fives whilst improving supervision.

'This would enable higher-paid staff to be attracted to the profession, improving quality, or would make the service more affordable and widely available.'


SOURCE



18 June, 2012

TX: Parents sue school staff for forcibly bathing “dirty” child



Sounds like the teachers deserve a medal and some parents have got a lot to learn

The parents of a third-grade boy have sued two Texas school employees, alleging that they forced their son to strip and shower in front of them because he "smelled badly, was dirty and had bad hygiene."

The eight-year-old was singled out last November and taken to the nurse's office at Peaster Elementary School where he was forced to remove his clothes, the suit alleges, the Courthouse News Service reported.

The two school officials then "began violently washing his body with a washcloth, scrubbing him over a large portion of his body, stuck cotton balls in his ears, all while ridiculing and harassing him about being 'dirty,'" the complaint claims.

The child's parents, Amber and Michael Tilley, said they lodged a police report over the incident but no charges were laid.

On Thursday, the Tilleys filed their lawsuit against Peaster Independent School District and Peaster Elementary School employees Julie West and Debbie Van Rite in federal court in Fort Worth.

"It's terrible, and we don't want anything like that to happen to any other children," Amber Tilley told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.

According to the lawsuit, the incident left the boy "visibly and severely distraught," and he had to see a therapist after.

"He just kept on and on, wanting to take baths," Amber Tilley said. "You know, he just felt so disgusting."

She added that her son did not have a problem with body odour or cleanliness.

SOURCE





Do we need more education?

Krugman criticizes Romney:

    In the remarks Mr. Romney later tried to deny, he derided President Obama: “He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.” Then he declared, “It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

    You can see why I was ready to give points for honesty. For once, he actually admitted what he and his allies mean when they talk about shrinking government. Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; in reality, a majority of government workers are employed providing either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers and firefighters).

    So would getting rid of teachers, police officers, and firefighters help the American people? Well, some Republicans would prefer to see Americans get less education; remember Rick Santorum’s description of colleges as “indoctrination mills”? Still, neither less education nor worse protection are issues the G.O.P. wants to run on.

    But the more relevant question for the moment is whether the public job cuts Mr. Romney applauds are good or bad for the economy. And we now have a lot of evidence bearing on that question.

I didn’t follow the Romney narrative. But he was on to something even if he indeed did backtrack –- Obama wants to grow the public sector and so does Krugman. They both want more teachers (and police and firefighters, presumably.) The current level is never optimal. More is better. It doesn’t matter if the number has grown dramatically lately. More is better. Similarly, we never spend enough on education. So if you want to spend less on education, that means you’re against education. The fact that there is little evidence that spending more actually produces more education is ignored. Spending on education is presumed to produce more education. Similarly, adding teachers and reducing class size means more education even if there is little evidence of this effect.

Missing from Krugman’s article is any historical perspective on how many teachers, police officers, or firefighters we had five or ten years ago. The fact that employment is falling at the state and local level is seen to be a sort of exogenous bad turn of events. But my guess is that the source of the calamity was a previous increase in state and local employment that was not sustainable. The states can’t afford these workers any longer.

If someone has reliable link to time-series data on state and local, please post in the comment. I could only find 1997, 2002, and 2007 in the Census data.

The New York Times titled Krugman’s piece, We Don’t Need No Education, as if opposing increases in the number of teachers or educational spending means you want zero education. More education would be nice. Spending more or expanding the number of teachers isn’t the way to get there from here.

SOURCE




No pork sausages in British school meals



Roast pork and sausages have always been a staple of British diets.    But now hundreds of school children will be denied them for school lunches because of 'religious reasons'.

Pork, which is not eaten by devout Jews or Muslims, has been banned by councils across the country to satisfy the needs of staff and pupils who are not allowed contact with it.

However, it is thought many schools do not serve halal or kosher meat, so Jewish and Muslim children would not be able to eat it anyway.

The decision has been criticised by MPs who have said the ban will cause unnecessary resentment among pupils and religious leaders who said they never asked for a ban in the first place.

John Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said it was simply not an issue and added that Jews of a certain level would choose not to eat in non-kosher environments.

'Children at mainstream school who are bothered would probably have packed lunches,' he said to the Sunday Telegraph.

'Children who are comfortable with using the same cutlery and crockery as everyone else would choose their dishes from the options available. It is live and let live - we are certainly not calling for this.'

Muslim leaders have only ever asked that halal and non-halal meat be handled separately in an effort to avoid any cross contamination and for clear labelling when serving school dinners.

Haringey Council, north London, recently issued advice to all its schools and recommended a ban to meet the needs of staff and pupils who are not allowed contact with pork for religious reasons.

Figures supplied by school caterer Pabulum, in the south-east of England, show that around 20 of the 48 schools it supplied chose non-pork options.

In Haringey's infant, junior and primary schools, 37 out of 47 have a no pork rule. In Bradford 24 out of 160 schools choose not to have pork and in Newham, east London, 25 out of 75 opt out.

Luton has 23 out of 57 schools which choose not to supply pork to pupils and in Tower Hamlets, east London, 85 out of 90 do not offer a pork option. All schools offer a vegetarian option.

Conservative MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, Philip Davies, who has campaigned for clearer labelling on meat products said the bans were 'misguided political correctness'.

He said he fully believed that pupils should be able to choose not to have pork but added that it was unfair to deny those with no objection to the meat.

Mr Davies said decisions like these could cause resentment among pupils and added that he hoped schools would change their stance.

Stewart Houston, chief executive of the National Pig Association said the decision by schools was disappointing and added that sausages and roast pork were a staple of British diets.

SOURCE



17 June, 2012

Obama proposal to raise dropout age falls flat

President Barack Obama's call for states to raise the minimum age at which students can drop out of high school seems about as popular as a homework assignment on Friday afternoon.

Since the president urged the change in his State of the Union speech in January, only one state has raised its dropout age to 18, and that won't take effect for five years.

Even legislators in Obama's home state of Illinois wouldn't go along with his proposal, despite an endorsement from the governor. They quickly dumped the issue into the limbo of a special study commission after it became clear there wasn't enough money to support it.

One of the biggest concerns is the cost. If states simply force unwilling students to spend an extra year or two in school, many teens could stay until they are 18 but still leave without a diploma because of poor grades. And extra counseling and remedial courses to help are expensive.

"Where are we going to get the money?" asked state Sen. Kimberly Lightford, a Chicago Democrat who heads the Illinois Senate's education committee.

Twenty-nine states let students leave school before they turn 18. Obama urged lawmakers to require them to stay in school until graduation or age 18.

"When students aren't allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma," the president said in the speech.

But since then, only Maryland has approved a plan to raise the dropout age, first to 17 in 2015 and then to 18 in 2017.

At least 13 states considered legislation this year to raise the age, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, although the bills weren't necessarily introduced in response to Obama.

Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky made raising the dropout age a major goal for the last few years but hasn't found enough support among state lawmakers. In Wyoming, there was a short-lived suggestion to raise the age and deny driver's licenses to students who drop out before 18.

Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois embraced Obama's proposal, immediately calling for legislation but without proposing additional funding or programs. The measure never made it out of committee, and lawmakers wound up approving a watered-down version that creates a commission to come up with recommendations on the issue by November.

The White House has not made the idea a public priority. Asked for details about the proposal nearly a week after the State of the Union, spokesman Jay Carney said he didn't have any. And the president himself has hardly mentioned it since.

Neither the White House nor the U.S. Department of Education would discuss the slow response to Obama's call for action or address objections raised by critics. White House spokeswoman Caroline Hughes issued a statement saying the president "continues to believe that when students stay in school, they are more likely to succeed in today's economy."

About three out of every 10 students leave high school without a diploma, according to a report from Education Week. Research shows high school dropouts are more likely to spend time in jail, endure unemployment and earn lower wages.

Legislators and education experts welcomed the emphasis on education and the dropout age but say it's not a simple fix.

"It can't just be 'tie them to their chairs until they are 18.' It has to be giving them a meaningful education," said Lily Eskelsen, an elementary teacher from Utah and the vice president of the National Education Association.

With many students facing disadvantages such as poverty, learning disabilities or weak English skills, the effort to keep them enrolled has to be wide-ranging.

"How do we catch them before they are falling behind? If you don't do all of it as a system, it won't work," Eskelsen said.

In Maryland, the state expects to spend $35 million more on education when the age rises to 17 and $54 million more when the age reaches 18 in 2017.

Proponents argued the state will save money in the long run by having a better-educated workforce that will pay more taxes.

Aisha Braveboy, a Democratic delegate who sponsored the measure, also noted that people without a high school diploma are eight times more likely to end up in the state's criminal justice system.

"From a financial perspective, it makes absolute sense to invest in education instead of incarceration," Braveboy said.

In Illinois, Democratic state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia sponsored the House legislation to raise the dropout age but now says it was the wrong move.

While calling the Democratic governor a good "team player" for backing the president's proposal, she said raising the age is not realistic considering the state's budget cuts. This week, lawmakers voted to cut $495 million from education, 3.9 percent of the state's funding for schools.

The governor still supports raising the dropout age, spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said.

More than 18,000 Illinois high school students dropped out in the 2010-11 school year, out of a total of 636,000 students. Legislative staff said they could not reliably estimate the cost to the state if those students were kept in school until 18.

But one group has taken a stab at calculating the cost of allowing those students to drop out. The Chicago-based Alternative Schools Network estimates that each dropout costs Illinois a net lifetime average of about $70,000, while high school graduates contribute a net amount of about $236,000.

For some Illinois lawmakers, the idea of raising the dropout age isn't even worth sending to a commission for study. Sen. David Luechtefeld, a former teacher and high school coach, said he's never talked to a school administrator who thinks raising the age is a good idea.

"Most of the time," Luechtefeld said, "a kid who doesn't want to be in school is a problem for the kids who want to be there."

SOURCE






Litigation almost a given with education reform

Critics of Gov. Bobby Jindal's education legislation, passed by the Louisiana Legislature in April, already have filed lawsuits against it, citing violations of the state constitution and other matters.

"It's almost a given that education reforms will be challenged by someone when you have a statewide voucher piece," said Kathy Christie, vice president of knowledge, information management and dissemination for the Education Commission of the States in Denver.

The Louisiana Association of Educators and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the education package, which among other things spends public school funds on tuition at private schools and alters the public school funding formula.

Louisiana Superintendent of Education John C. White, the architect of the legislation, is confident the state will prevail in court.

"It's for the courts to decide, but the constitution is clear that it gives the Legislature the authority to enact such systems," White said. "I just think it's sad that the lawsuit is about adult issues and not child issues. It's sad that people would want to get in the way of choosing what's right for their kids."

Adam Emerson, director of parental choice for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy group based in Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, said voucher programs like Louisiana's often undergo closer legal scrutiny than programs such as the one in Florida.

That one is funded by tax credits given to donors who contribute to scholarship funds issued by nonprofits. When the money for vouchers comes directly from state coffers, as it does in Louisiana, the legal battle can be more difficult to win.

"Any private option like this is going to start off with a lawsuit," Emerson said. "There is always going to be a challenge to this, and legislatures already know that. The U.S. Supreme Court has already given a few rulings in favor of tax-credit scholarships, but at the state level, not all voucher programs have fared very well."

More HERE





British school inspectorate to tackle 'anti-school culture' in poor areas

Generations of white working-class boys are being consigned to the scrapheap because of an "anti-school culture" in deprived areas, according to the head of Ofsted.

Hundreds of thousands of poor children are growing up with little hope of a good education or career after being raised by families that fail to set proper boundaries or fully understand the difference between right and wrong, Sir Michael Wilshaw warned.

He said problems were particularly acute among disadvantaged white boys who perform worse than almost every other group at the age of 16.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Sir Michael said that old-fashioned values such as “self-help” and support for education had been eroded in many communities, particularly those in post-industrial cities with high levels of unemployment.

He said teachers from the best schools in these areas were now expected to act as “surrogate parents” – escorting pupils to bus stops, helping with homework, providing meals and giving them advice – in place of families “who can’t or won’t support their children”.

The comments were made as Ofsted prepared to launch a major inquiry on Friday intended to tackle the gulf between rich and poor pupils in the English education system.

Experts from schools, social services and higher education will sit on a panel established to assess the scale of underachievement in deprived communities and make sweeping recommendations designed to “close the gap”.

The programme – due to be concluded next year – comes two decades after a landmark study from Ofsted, Access and Achievement in Urban Education, raised major concerns over the issue. A follow-up report was published in 2003.

Sir Michael said: “We still have this long tail of underperformance in our state education system and we’re not closing the gap between the best and the worst, the richest and the poorest. We still have failure which largely resides in the poorest communities.

“Schools in these areas have to counter generations of failure and a culture which is often anti-school and anti-learning. We must show how that is tackled.”

According to figures, children from the poorest homes – those eligible for free school meals – fall behind wealthier classmates throughout compulsory education.

Last year, just a third of these pupils gained five good GCSEs, including the core subjects of English and mathematics, compared with some 62 per cent of other children.

White British boys eligible for free meals officially performed worse than any other group – aside from gypsy and traveller children – with fewer than 29 per cent gaining good grades.

Speaking before a major address to the National College for School Leadership in Birmingham on Friday, Sir Michael said the report would outline how outstanding schools in tough areas gained good results.

He also said it would tackle underperformance among certain groups, with white working-class boys being seen as a “big issue”.

Many of these children were surrounded by “generations of worklessness” following the demise of industries such as coalmining and shipbuilding, he said.

He added: “We need to look back as well as forward. By that I mean, working-class communities in the past valued education, with that spirit of working men’s institutes and technical colleges and so on. Those communities thought long and hard about the future of their children and supported schools and were very much into self-help. We need to bring that back.”

Sir Michael, former head of Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, east London, also said that school leaders had to “understand that they are not going to close the gap unless they act as surrogate parents in place of those families who can’t or won’t support their children”.

“A lot of children will depend on the school to help with homework, to come in at weekends and to work in extension programmes,” he said. “Often these youngsters come from unstructured environments where there are few boundaries and few social, cultural and family norms.

“It is really important that school, from the very word go, introduces those boundaries; behaviour boundaries, understanding the difference between right and wrong, talking to children in the way that you expect good families to do.”

SOURCE



15 June, 2012

Teachers Union Rides First Class on Philadelphia Schools’ Gravy Train

 Every pay period, the Philadelphia school district puts $155 per union member into a special fund that helps educators pay their personal legal bills, which includes everything from routine legal advice to estate planning.

That single perk, nestled deep within the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ union contract, cost taxpayers $2.6 million during the 2010-11 school year. It also contributed to the district’s financial woes, which led to 2,200 teachers being laid off last year.

The “PFT Legal Services Fund” is just one example of Philadelphia public schools’ extravagant spending practices, which are the focus of EAGnews.org’s latest investigative report, “Sucking the Life Out of America’s Public Schools: The Expense of Teachers Union Contracts.”

Using figures from the 2010-11 school year, EAG’s report details how the local teachers union –the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers – has larded up the district’s budget with expenditures that benefit the adult employees, but have no demonstrative impact on student learning.

For example, Philadelphia taxpayers spent $165 million on health insurance for PFT members; union employees contributed less than 1 percent toward their insurance costs, according to documents obtained via open records laws.

But low-cost health insurance is just the beginning of the goodies given to PFT members. The Philadelphia school district also contributed $66 million to the union-controlled “Health and Welfare Fund,” which provides PFT members with dental, vision and prescription benefits.

Despite such generous health benefits, PFT members were absent a lot during the 2010-11 school year. Approximately 11,850 teachers took a combined 137,104 sick or personal days, which averages to 11.5 days per teacher in a 188-day work year.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has roughly 16,000 members (not all of them classify as teachers), and during the 2010-11 school year they took a combined 236,863 days off – including 36,830 days for “wage continuation,” 3,122 days for “jury duty,” 1,419 days for “unauthorized leave without pay,” and 9 days for “religious mourning.”

The “wage continuation” benefit protects employees against “wage loss in the case of an illness, non-work related injury or other short-term disability which extends beyond an individual’s available sick leave,” according to PFT’s teacher contract. This extra layer of cushion cost taxpayers $7.1 million during the previous school year.

Retiring PFT members were allowed to cash out their unused sick days and leave time, costing the district $15.3 million in “severance pay.”

All told, EAGnews.org found a total $135 million in questionable expenditures, money that could have prevented many of the 2,200 teacher layoffs.

The remaining PFT members are still enjoying a smooth ride on the public education gravy train, but it’s about to run out of track. If they refuse to make contract concessions, their train is going to derail, and the first class cabin may bear the brunt of the impact.

SOURCE






British Children go back to basics in maths

Children will be introduced to times tables, mental arithmetic and fractions in the first two years of school as part of a back-to-basics overhaul of the National Curriculum.

Ministers will this week announce key tasks pupils are expected to master at each age under wide-ranging plans to counter more than a decade of dumbing down in schools.

A draft mathematics curriculum suggests that five and six year-olds will be expected to count up to 100, recognise basic fractions and memorise the results of simple sums by the end of the first year of compulsory education.

In the second year, they will be required to know the two, five and 10 times tables, add and subtract two-digit numbers in their head and begin to use graphs.

The proposals are intended to ensure that children are given a proper grounding in the basics at a young age to prepare them for the demands of secondary education and beyond.

It represents a dramatic toughening up of standards demanded in English state schools in a move designed to benchmark lessons against those found in the world’s most advanced education systems, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and parts of the United States.

At the age of nine, pupils should know all their times tables up to 12x12 and confidently work with numbers up to 10 million by the end of primary school, the Government said.

Currently, children only need to know up to 10x10 and familiarise themselves with numbers below 1,000 by the age of 11.

The disclosure is made as part of a sweeping overhaul of core subjects in primary schools, with the new curriculum expected to be introduced by 2014.

Under the proposals:

– Science lessons will place a greater emphasis on early physics and ensure children learn about the solar system and galaxies. They will also be expected to cover the biographies of scientists such as Charles Darwin and promote more practical experimentation, with pupils weighing and comparing objects at seven and wiring basic circuits by the age of nine.

– In English, pupils will be expected to spell a list of almost 240 advanced words by the end of primary school, master grammar and punctuation and read more novels and poems, with children reciting simple poetry in front of classmates at the age of five.

– Foreign languages will be made compulsory from the age of seven – instead of 11 at the moment – with schools given the freedom to teach French, German, Spanish and Mandarin, or ancient languages such as Latin.

The planned overhaul of primary subjects will be put out to a public consultation to be launched this week. Proposals to reform other primary subjects – as well as lessons in secondary schools – will be outlined later this year.

The move is expected to be criticised by teachers who fear that the proposals give them less freedom to dictate the content of their own lessons.

Repeated revisions of the National Curriculum introduced by Labour stripped out swathes of lesson content, including a controversial move to remove Winston Churchill from secondary history lessons.

Last night, a government source said: “Labour and the unions devalued the curriculum and exam system and pointed to rising results to make themselves look good.

“In reality it was a lie that damaged children’s lives and saw us fall behind other countries. The new curriculum will raise standards for all and equip children better to do advanced work at secondary school.”

The changes come amid fears that rising numbers of pupils are leaving school unfit for the demands of the workplace.

A study published today by the Confederation of British Industry discloses that four in 10 companies were forced to offer young employees remedial lessons in English, maths or computing because of poor levels of basic skills.

Simon Walker, the director-general of the Institute of Directors, backed the new curriculum, saying: “International comparisons with high-performing countries have made it manifestly clear that we need to raise the bar.

“We must be more ambitious about the level of achievement we expect from young people, particularly in the core subjects of English, mathematics and science.”

The National Curriculum is compulsory in most English state schools. Academy schools — independent state institutions run free of council control — can ditch the curriculum, although research shows the vast majority follow it.

In the draft document, some of the toughest demands are placed on pupils in maths lessons.

In the first year, pupils are expected to count to 100 using multiples of one, two, five and 10, recognise even and odd numbers and write simple fractions such as a half and a quarter.

In the final two years, pupils will also be introduced to prime numbers, percentages, ratios, long division and probability.

They will also be expected to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions — a task currently left to secondary school.

SOURCE





Greater autonomy for schools leads to better academic results

Bt Kevin Donnelly, writing from  Australia

The NSW Teachers Federation and public school advocates such as Trevor Cobbold argue that there is little, if any, evidence to support the benefits of increased school autonomy.

If true, their claims undermine the argument that choice and diversity in education, represented by autonomous government and non-government schools, is a good thing and suggest that moves around Australia to empower schools at the local level are misdirected.

But there is increasing international evidence that freeing schools from centralised and bureaucratic control is beneficial.

A 2007 paper commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development analysing the characteristics of stronger performing education systems argues that school autonomy is an important factor.

The paper's authors say: "Various forms of school accountability, autonomy and choice policies combine to lift student achievement to substantially higher levels."

They clearly argue autonomy is beneficial when they say: "Students perform significantly better in schools that have autonomy in process and personnel decisions."

The 2007 OECD paper also puts the lie to claims that autonomy exacerbates disadvantage, concluding that "there is not a single case where a policy designed to introduce accountability, autonomy, or choice in schooling benefits high-SES students to the detriment of low-SES students, ie, where the former gain but the latter suffer". (SES refers to a student's socioeconomic status.)

A second paper, written by Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann and commissioned by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, also argues that autonomy helps to strengthen education. "Students perform significantly better in schools that have autonomy," the authors write.

A third paper, involving researchers at Britain's University of Buckingham and published in 2008, also argues that one of the reasons non-government schools achieve such strong results is because decisions are made at a local level. The authors argue non-government schools generally outperform government schools because such schools enjoy "more autonomy than do those in state schools".

Such is the growing consensus that school autonomy leads to stronger results that a 2008 Australian budget paper, Statement 4, Boosting Australia's Productive Capacity: the Role of Infrastructure and Skills, argues school autonomy is "likely to have significant positive impacts on student performance".

The benefits of freeing schools from centralised control are also endorsed in Britain's The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper 2010. "Across the world," it argues, "the case for the benefits of school autonomy has been established beyond doubt."

While not directly addressing the impact of autonomy, Gary Marks from the Australian Council for Educational Research has also argued that non-government schools consistently outperform government schools in literacy and numeracy tests and year 12 results - even after adjusting for a student's socioeconomic status.

Implied in this is that school autonomy is beneficial since Catholic and independent schools, unlike government schools, have greater freedom over areas such as staffing, curriculum focus and academic environment.

It is true that some studies are equivocal about the benefits of school autonomy, as Cobbold noted in the Herald this week. A 2010 paper titled Markets in Education notes that while there are some positive effects related to a more market driven approach to education, they "are very modest in size".

But what Cobbold fails to acknowledge is that the same paper suggests one of the reasons the evidence is less than clear is because schools, as a result of government micromanagement, are not truly autonomous.

"Complicating the ability to give a clear answer is the fact that many policies attempting to introduce market mechanisms in education do so simultaneously with increased accountability," it says.

Australian schools are being micromanaged in this way and all roads lead to Canberra - best illustrated by the Rudd/Gillard education revolution, where schools are forced to follow government dictates in national curriculum, national testing and teacher standards, even though the rhetoric is about autonomy.

Positive student outcomes are not just related to test results. Pioneering work in the US by James Coleman argues that empowering schools at a local level leads to increased social cohesion and stability too.

In the Catholic school system, it is known as subsidiarity - where decisions are made at the level of those most affected by them. Subsidiarity strengthens community ties and values such as reciprocity and a commitment to the common good.

SOURCE



14 June, 2012

Schools: What kind of reform?

Now that Governor Scott Walker has won the recall election, Wisconsin is pushing through the education reforms that were part of his 2010 legislative agenda. Like most education reform initiatives, Wisconsin’s contains some form of merit-based teacher pay and a voucher system. Indiana has proposed similar reforms, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have made national headlines with education reform plans that in some ways resemble Wisconsin’s.

The proposals are pushed by Republicans who tout them as free-market solutions to the education problem in their respective states. But what they don’t say, or perhaps don’t see, about their proposals may make the system worse than the one we have.

Teachers object to having their pay tied to student performance. But this is what happens all across the private sector. If a manager’s employees are not doing what the company demands, the manager will be replaced. Likewise, if a high school coach’s team doesn’t win enough games, the coach will be replaced. Teachers must be held accountable if their students are not learning, and be rewarded if they are. It is time they were held to the same standard as everyone else.

The practical problem isn’t whether teachers should be assessed, but how they should be assessed. Yet that means there’s still a problem.

Standardized tests are the primary measure by which we judge a student’s level of achievement, and changing our measure of achievement must be among the first reforms enacted. Standardized testing prohibits experiential learning and diminishes the value of differentiated instruction. As an educator, I have found that certain topics are more attractive to students than other subjects, and those topics change from year to year and class to class. For instance, in 2001 my ninth-grade world history class we dedicated significantly more time to world religions, particularly Islam, than had originally been planned — because of what happened on 9/11. Had there been a standardized history exam I would never have been able to capitalize on the students’ interest, and we all would have missed out on a teachable moment.

So whatever measure states use to evaluate teachers must not limit their flexibility or autonomy. This goal is doubly difficult to achieve, however, when government enters the picture, even in the form of a school voucher system.

Supporters of school choice ground their argument in free-market principles. Opponents object that tax dollars will be siphoned away from already cash-strapped schools. The reply is: “If you want the money, you must earn it.” Where there is a monopoly, providers become inefficient and weak. Where there is competition, we see innovation and greater progress. A school voucher program works to break the monopoly to allow free market mechanisms to enter the education system. Ironically, however, it is the government that is seeking to instill this aspect of the free market.

We should be wary of that. If the government begins, indirectly, to fund private schools through vouchers, the schools will not have to be as competitive when trying to secure funding either from student tuition or from donors.

Any time government takes action there are unintended consequences, and there are at least two educational consequences that we can see looming on the horizon already. The first is an undermining of free market principles. The second is the opportunity for government to regulate private schools, with vouchers being construed as funded mandates. If private schools begin to depend on indirect government funding, then the government can gain leverage over what these schools teach and how they teach it.

There is no easy solution to our education problems. Problems with education have been documented for more than two millennia. No reform or policy will be the final solution, for education is a process, and improving it should be seen in the same way. Which is why, in the end, we should advocate reforms that promote the greatest amount of flexibility and accountability.

SOURCE





British government declares war on inept Leftist teacher-training colleges

Graduate teachers will be offered an extra £5,000 to train in schools under reforms aimed at reducing the ‘damaging’ influence of teacher training colleges.

Education Secretary Michael Gove will today unveil a training ‘revolution’ designed to decrease the influence of Left-wing courses and give schools a bigger say in how teachers learn their craft.

More than half of student teachers will be trained by schools within three years, as under-performing colleges are denied funding and shut down.

Graduates who go directly to the toughest schools will be eligible for tax-free awards of up to £25,000. By comparison, bursaries for graduates who train on traditional courses will be capped at £20,000.

The move will sideline training colleges, which have expounded fashionable teaching theories – particularly in reading – instead of giving students a rigorous grounding in classroom practices.

In a speech today, Mr Gove will say: ‘The idea is a simple one: take the very best schools, and put them in charge of teacher training and professional development for the whole system.’

From September, more than 900 teacher training places will be available on a new ‘school direct’ scheme, in which schools themselves choose the trainees they want to train. This route will be dramatically expanded over the next few years, Mr Gove will tell the annual conference of the National College for School Leadership in Birmingham.

There are currently about 30,000 training places for teachers, mostly at colleges. Mr Gove will say his ‘revolutionary’ proposals will lead to ‘well over half’ of these places being moved to schools by the end of this Parliament.

A Government source said: ‘For too long, Left-wing training colleges have imbued teachers with useless teaching theories that don’t work and actively damage children’s education. The unions should back more training in schools – by teachers, for teachers.’

Those with a first-class degree in key subjects who train in schools where more than 25 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals will receive a bursary of £25,000. Smaller sums will be available for those with lesser degrees or who wish to teach in primary schools or non-priority subjects.

In addition, training colleges that are deemed to ‘require improvement’ by Ofsted in two consecutive inspections will be shut, while a new paid scheme for those switching careers to be a teacher will offer 5,000 places from next year.

Professor Alan Smithers, an expert in teacher training at Buckingham University, said: ‘School-led training has a lot to recommend it because schools will be recruiting the people they want and who they have to live with. They are likely to apply more stringent criteria than universities, who have to fill their places.’

He added that ‘we train about twice as many teachers as we need’ – but thousands survive only a short time in the [chaotic] classrooms before dropping out.   ‘If we can drive up the quality of training, the process will become less wasteful and our children will benefit but also the taxpayer will benefit.’

SOURCE  





Thousands of British teachers go back to school to learn basic maths and grammar so they can deliver tough new lessons

Tough?  I learned all that stuff in primary school  -- as did others in my class

Tens of thousands of teachers will be forced back to the classroom to study grammar and maths because they lack the knowledge to deliver tough new primary school lessons.

Ministers yesterday unveiled an overhaul of England’s ‘substandard’ primary curriculum in an attempt to reverse more than a decade of dumbing down.  English lessons will contain tougher grammar and spelling, while maths classes will put greater emphasis on times tables, fractions, mental arithmetic and long division.

But experts warn many teachers will need intensive retraining to deliver the new lessons.

A requirement on schools to teach a foreign language to all seven to 11-year-olds will entail even more extra lessons.

Under a proposed new curriculum for English, pupils as young as seven will be introduced to conjunctions, prepositions, adverbs and subordinate clauses.  Eight-year-olds will study ‘fronted adverbials’ – clauses at the start of a sentence that modify a verb, for example: ‘Later that day, I heard the bad news.’

Nine-year-olds will learn about relative clauses and modal verbs such as can, could, shall and should, and ten-year-olds will cover the use of the subjunctive, the active and passive voice, as well as subject and object.

Ian McNeilly, director of the National Association for the Teaching of English, said: ‘The focus and emphasis on grammar in primary schools will mean that potentially a whole generation of teachers will need some quite intensive training.  ‘It’s a big move from what some teachers have been used to.’

Many teachers may not have been taught grammar at school, having been educated in the 1970s and 1980s.  They will need tuition in grammar as well as how to teach it by 2014, when the new curriculum is intended to be introduced.

Mr McNeilly said: ‘Unless there’s a change in Government policy, they are not going to be paying for it. It’s going to be individual schools and maybe teachers that are going to have to pay.’

Similar problems are expected to arise in maths as several concepts taught at secondary school are being moved to primary level, such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions.

And some schools are ill-equipped to meet the demand to make study of a foreign language compulsory for seven-year-olds.

Kate Board, head of languages strategy at the education charity CfBT, said: ‘There’s quite a job to be done both increasing the confidence of teachers to teach languages but also to improve their linguistic competence.’

Details of changes to other primary subjects – and proposals for reform at secondary level – will follow later in the year.

As part of the reforms, the system of national curriculum levels – the eight-point scale that has been used to measure children’s progress since 1988 – will be scrapped, Education Secretary Michael Gove confirmed.

A new grading system will be drawn up for national curriculum tests at age 11, which is expected to mark out more clearly which pupils are falling behind.

In a letter outlining the reforms, Mr Gove said: ‘We will work closely with the teaching profession....  to determine exactly how the new National Curriculum will be enhanced and assessed.’

SOURCE



13 June, 2012

Parents defend Boston teacher's 'you're not special' speech

A HIGH school teacher's blunt graduation address, in which he told students they were not "anything special" is being defended by some parents.

"It's a speech people are going to remember because he said things that everyone knows, but no one dares say," said Cynthia Ballantyne, whose son Ian was among the graduates at Wellesley High School, near Boston. "Our kids have lived rather charmed lives."

Mr McCullough, who teaches English at the school, told students they had been "fawned over and called 'sweetie pie'" during their "helmeted, bubble-wrapped" existences.  "If everyone is special, then no one is," he continued. "If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless."

Another parent, Paul Rolincik, said that his initial reaction to Mr McCullough's address was "Where are you going with this?" He realised, he said, that the teacher "was just giving kids a reality check".

The speech "got people thinking", his wife Anne said.

Wellesley Superintendent Bella Wong said no parents have complained to the school district about Mr McCullough's address.

SOURCE






Number of British schools judged to be failing increases by 50% as inspectors get tougher

The number of failing schools has leapt 50 per cent under a back-to-basics inspection regime.  One secondary school in seven has been branded ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted because of poor teaching and under-achievement by pupils.

Nearly one primary in ten has also been given the watchdog’s lowest rating.

The schools were inspected under a tough regime introduced in January to stop weak head teachers bumping up ratings by concentrating on ‘peripheral’ areas such as pupil well-being, spiritual development and community cohesion.

After Coalition reforms, schools are now judged on just four key areas – teaching, pupil results, behaviour and leadership.

Figures on 1,964 inspections in the first three months of the year show more than half of secondaries – 53 per cent – missed out on a ‘good’ rating.  Thirty-nine per cent were merely ‘satisfactory’ – and considered to need improvement – and 14 per cent were ‘inadequate’.

Nearly half the inadequate schools were put into immediate ‘special measures’, forcing them to take action to improve or face closure. The rest were given ‘notice to improve’, requiring them to agree a schedule for significant progress to avoid a ‘special measures’ verdict.

The picture contrasts with inspections during the last three months of the old regime, when 9 per cent of secondaries and 6 per cent of primaries were judged inadequate.

Just 6 per cent of secondaries and 5 per cent of primaries inspected since January were given the highest rating of ‘outstanding’, with 41 per cent of secondaries and 51 per cent of primaries judged ‘good’.  Thirty-four per cent of primaries were rated satisfactory.

The latest results are partly down to more frequent visits to under-performing schools.

But Ofsted said inspectors were also paying closer attention to the core work of schools, ‘spending more time in classrooms observing the quality of teaching and looking in detail at the difference schools are making for pupils’.

Previously, schools were judged against an array of more than 20 politically correct targets, such as ‘the extent to which pupils adopt healthy lifestyles’.

Heads were required to rate themselves against the targets by filling in a ‘self-evaluation’ form.

Pressure on schools will intensify in September with further reforms to inspections being ushered in by Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw.

The satisfactory grading will be rebadged as ‘requiring improvement’ and outstanding judgments will be harder to achieve.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: ‘We are now in our sixth inspection regime, with a seventh due this September .  ‘Every change introduces new mistakes as inadequately trained and ill-prepared inspectors make hasty judgments.’

Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said: ‘All schools should be providing an outstanding education.’

SOURCE





Australia:  Education review leader Professor Brian Caldwell claims teacher quality remains key to improving student outcomes

And because there aren't enough good teachers to go around,  larger class sizes are needed.  That's heresy but decades of evidence support it

EDUCATORS have warned teacher quality remains the key to improving student outcomes amid concerns about the basic literacy and numeracy knowledge of aspiring primary school teachers.

The Courier-Mail revealed yesterday about 40 per cent of higher education students who sat a trial Pre-Registration Test for Aspiring Primary Teachers failed one of three components of the exam.

The exam tested basic literacy, numeracy, science content and teaching strategy knowledge in the three areas required for a primary school level.

Third and final-year teaching students from around Queensland sat the trial, although the test was designed for graduates.

However, it is understood there was a high failure rate on some basic questions primary school students would be expected to know.

The LNP has postponed the pre-registration test over cost concerns despite saying the trial results were "concerning".

Professor Geoff Masters, who recommended the former Bligh government run a pre-registration test and whose organisation helped developed the exam, said the trial results were the reason a test was needed.

"It just underlines the importance of moving ahead and using this in practice to see what percentage of the entire graduating cohort is not meeting the standards that the QCT (Queensland College of Teachers) is setting," Prof Masters said.

Professor Brian Caldwell, who co-led a review of teacher education in Queensland, said teacher quality remained the key to improving student outcomes.

"If one was looking for a single factor that would make an impact on outcomes for students and closing the gap between higher and low-performing students, we would be doing everything we can to raise the academic standard of those entering the teaching profession," he said.

"Around the country we are accepting many students of low academic ability and then teacher education faculties proceed to pass more than 90 per cent of them.

"And that is not the kind of profession teaching is now - it is a highly sophisticated profession that calls for a high capability to analyse complex data about students and diagnose the kind of teaching support that they need."

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said he would work with universities and higher education to ensure quality teachers entered the classroom.

SOURCE



12 June, 2012

As student loan debt hits $1 trillion mark, many struggle with payments

When Patrick Dungan finished law school at the University of South Carolina in 2011 he was married with a baby and owed more than $166,000 in student loan debts.

“I kept telling myself ‘it will all be worth it, you can pay it off,'” said the 30-year-old Dungan, a practicing attorney in Fairhope who is still paying off student loans. “I never thought it would be that much.”

Dungan is among thousands of recent college graduates in the U.S. who are grappling with the realities of life after college -- overwhelming student debt and a weak economy that makes it difficult to find high-paying jobs. Overall, student loan debt has surpassed the $1 trillion mark nationally, and student loan debt exceeds credit card debt in U.S. households. A heated battle is under way between Republicans ad Democrats over student loan interest rates.

For Dungan and his wife, the couple lives “from paycheck-to-paycheck.” He pays $430 a month on his student loan, which is only one-fourth of the total debt. The couple is also paying about $200 monthly on his wife’s loan, which was around $20,000.

Dungan said he has multiple outstanding loans covering the $166,000, including federal and private.  “I was a little older, already married and living on two salaries when I decided to go to law school,” said Dungan.  He said they couldn’t survive off his wife’s salary alone, so he got a job waiting tables part time while attending law school.

In February 2012, he found a job as an attorney, but still struggles to pay off his student debt.  “Really, the only way we could live comfortably with this debt is if my income was somewhere around $120,000, which seems impossible to me now with the current status of the legal job market,” said Dungan.

Roughly 93 percent, or $111 billion, of the student loans projected to be made for the 2011-12 academic year are federal student loans, according to the Consumer Bankers Association.

Less than 7 percent -- approximately $7 billion to $8 billion -- of the total is private student loans, the association reported.

“Those federal loans are made without regard to creditworthiness,” said Wade Peterson, vice president of Wells Fargo Education Finance. “Almost anyone can get one.”

Education loans come in three major categories: student loans, Stafford and Perkins loans; parent loans, or PLUS loans; and private student loans, also called alternative student loans, according to FinAid.com, a website that provides information on financial aid.

Peterson said that up until 2010, banks were making federal loans as well as private loans. But a couple of years ago, lenders “were taken out of the picture and the Department of Education started making all federal loans.”

“With regard to private loans we offer, we believe private loans are a vital part of the future student loan market,” said Peterson.

“They offer a choice and option to shop competitively and based on circumstances.”

Peterson said that student loan debt is a “fairly serious” problem in the U.S.

In 2007, Congress cut the student loan interest rates in half, from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent.

Now, there’s a heated battle between Republicans and Democrats over whether to raise the rate back to 6.8.

“Based on the family’s income level, some lower- and middle-income students currently pay 3.4 percent for federal student loans, while students from families with higher incomes pay 6.8 percent,” said University of South Alabama spokesman Keith Ayers.

“The pending change would move all undergraduate federal Stafford loans to the 6.8 percent rate, which would increase the total payback cost for families who previously benefited from the interest rate reduction subsidized by the government.”

If Congress doesn’t act by July 1, the interest rates on student loans will double to 6.8 percent for more than 7 million undergraduates, records show.

“We all recognize that a dramatic increase in interest rates on new student loans would be devastating to millions of young Americans just entering the work force,” said U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile.

Bonner said that on April 27, the House passed the Interest Rate Reduction Act to prevent interest rates on new federally subsidized Stafford Loans from increasing next month.

He said that under the House bill, the nearly $6 billion in costs associated with the one-year extension of the student loan rate would come from unused money in the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

“Unfortunately, President Obama has threatened to veto our student loan rate extension because he would rather score political points than solve this pressing problem,” said Bonner.

The White House maintains that “Senate Republicans still have not proven that they’re serious about resolving this problem.”

“For the second time this month (May), they voted to ask millions of students to pay an average of $1,000 each rather than close a loophole that allows the very wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” according to a statement last week from the White House press secretary’s office. “Now is not the time to re-fight old political battles, and certainly not the time to cut preventive health care measures.”

Ayers said the important message to students and parents “is that federal student loans remain readily available for students who desire to attend college but don’t have the resources.”

“The best advice we can offer is for students and parents to research the loan options available to them during school and the payback options available after graduation to make the very best decision for their personal circumstance,” said the USA spokesman.

Matt Mathis, who works for an insurance company, has been out of college a decade, and says he “can’t even make a dent into paying” his loan debt.

“It was way too easy to get the student loan and as an 18-year-old I had no idea the amount of stress these loans would cause me,” said Mathis, who is 33.  He graduated from the University of Alabama in 2004 and is still paying on the loan, which now amounts to $22,434.

Even when Mathis went to take out a loan to buy a house and a car, he said his student loan debt was an issue.  “It affects everything,” said Mathis. 

SOURCE





More pseudo-universities for Britain

Look forward to the University of Basket Weaving

Small specialist colleges will be given new powers to become universities in the biggest expansion of higher education in 20 years, it was revealed today.

Institutions with just 1,000 students – including 750 taking degree courses – will be able to win the right to full university status under new plans, the Government announced.

Previously, colleges could only apply for the title if they had at least 4,000 students, with 3,000 taking degrees.

The move – outlined by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – is expected to lead to the biggest expansion of the sector since the early 90s when the Conservatives converted dozens of polytechnics into full universities.

But the reforms prompted fears that ministers may be diluting the university brand.

Prof Michael Farthing, vice-chancellor of Sussex University and chairman of the 1994 Group, which represents research universities, said: “There should of course be scope for new and emerging institutions to gain the title of university, but we should resist moves to devalue the title through indiscriminate use.

“Not only would this let down institutions that work hard to develop the research and teaching traditionally associated with university status, it could damage the global reputation of UK higher education as a whole. “

The plans were confirmed in the Government’s formal response to the Higher Education White Paper, which was published last summer.

Ministers insisted that tight controls would be imposed to ensure that the new title only applied to specialist institutions with a strong track record of good teaching.

It is believed the university name would only apply to a small number of colleges, some of which specialise in areas such as agriculture, teacher training and the arts.

Institutions given new powers to apply include Norwich University College of the Arts, the Arts University College Bournemouth, University College Falmouth, Newman University College in Birmingham, Harper Adams University College in Shropshire and the Royal Agricultural College in Gloucestershire.

The move comes just months before tuition fees are due to almost triple to a maximum of £9,000 a year.

Ministers are keen to create a more diverse higher education sector to coincide with the change – giving more people access to institutions with the full university title.

David Willetts, Universities Minister, said: "It is right to remove the red tape stopping good quality, smaller higher education providers calling themselves a university."

Andy Westwood, chief executive of GuildHE, which represents a number of smaller specialist institutions said: "The Government's reduction in the qualifying threshold for university title represents the correction of a long-held anomaly.

"Smaller institutions have long offered greater agility, smaller classes, stronger graduate employment and better retention rates.”

The document also confirms that plans for further education colleges and private institutions to be subject to tight controls on the number of students – funded through Government-backed loans – that each one can recruit.

SOURCE




Australia: Not much multiculturalism in Sydney's elite schools

FEW children of recent migrants are entering Sydney's high-fee private schools, which remain the preserve of Australians from English-speaking backgrounds.

At many of the city's high-fee independent schools less than 10 per cent of students have a parent who speaks a language other than English. Trinity, MLC and Meriden - all in the inner west - are the only high-fee privates where more than half the student body comes from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

Nearly half the private high schools in Sydney enrol more than 80 per cent of their students from English-speaking backgrounds, according to an analysis of figures published on the federal government's My School website.

Monte Sant' Angelo, Wenona, Kambala, St Ignatius, Queenwood, Redlands and Ravenswood are among those schools where fewer than 10 per cent of students state that they or their parents speak a language other than English.

A number of private schools, catering for specific religious, ethnic or cultural groups, are almost exclusively attended by students from language backgrounds other than English.

In stark contrast to the elite private schools, public selective high schools are dominated by children of recent migrants. James Ruse, regarded as the highest-achieving school in Australia, draws 96 per cent of enrolments from other language backgrounds [mostly Chinese]. Only Auburn Girls, with 98 per cent, attracts more students from other language groups.

The map of school ethnic diversity parallels much of Sydney's cultural complexion. Although government high schools educate far more of the students from other cultures, public schools on the city's fringes, the north shore and southern suburbs also enrol few students from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Helen Proctor, a lecturer in the faculty of education and social work at the University of Sydney, said it was not clear whether the ethnic mix of private schools was the result of enrolment policies, geography or parental choice.

"Parents are broadly in favour of multiculturalism but alarmed about any concentrations of ethnicity, other than Anglo ethnicity, in a school," said Dr Proctor, a co-author of a book on school choice.

Schools such as Monte give direct preference to children of former students, while other private schools require students to be enrolled within the year of their birth to guarantee entry.

But Vicki Steer, the principal of Ravenswood, which has 9 per cent of students from other language backgrounds, acknowledged independent schools faced a challenge to win favour from migrant communities, most particularly those from Asia.

"For many families, having a child accepted at a school such as James Ruse is something they would perceive as a higher honour than an academic scholarship to Ravenswood," she said.  Ravenswood has introduced Chinese into its language offerings in part to make the school more attractive to Chinese Australians.

"We are committed to a multicultural society and promoting an understanding of other cultures and ways of life," Ms Steer said.   "We are very conscious of the fact that our girls live on the upper north shore, that for many of them their experiences can be limited and we have to try and create experiences for them."

Dr Paul Burgis, the principal of PLC Sydney, where 34 per cent of students are from other cultural backgrounds, said there was a huge level of exposure to, and acceptance of, other cultures at the school.

"It would almost be offensive if I, as a principal, was to talk about it: 'Why do you have to raise it as an issue? We're past that now, we're just friends'," he said.  "At a school like PLC it's almost an invisible question."

SOURCE



11 June, 2012

'Schindler's List' Producer Claims Graduation Speech Censorship by bigoted school principal

Who has now "moved on"

Gerald Molen won a best picture Oscar for co-producing Schindler’s List with Steven Spielberg and has produced such Hollywood blockbusters as the first two Jurassic Park films and Twister. He’s a former U.S. Marine and is a sought-after motivational speaker.  So he’s not accustomed to being shunned.

Such was the case, though, when he was invited to speak to the graduating class at a Montana high school. But upon arriving, was told by the principal he would not be allowed to deliver the speech he had prepared.  The reason, he believes, is politics.

Molen is one of those rare conservatives in Hollywood (he’s even making a documentary called 2016, based on the Dinesh D’Souza book The Roots of Obama’s Rage) and because of that, he says, Ronan High School principal Tom Stack decided to disinvite him -- and he didn’t tell him so until after Molen made the 90-minute drive from his home in Bigfork, Mont.

Unlike Hollywood, Ronan isn’t exactly a hotbed of liberalism (its state representative is a Republican), still, Molen says that Stack told him straight up that he wouldn’t be allowed to address the students because he was “a right-wing conservative.”  “He said some callers didn’t want the kids exposed to that, despite not knowing what my message would be,” Molen told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stack did not return several calls seeking comment, nor did representatives from the Ronan School District.

Molen has spoken at dozens of schools and never accepts a fee. When one is offered, he asks that it be donated to the Shoah Foundation, the nonprofit organization founded by Spielberg and dedicated to the remembrance of the Holocaust.

When speaking to students, Molen’s presentations usually invoke Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust and is the subject of the Oscar-winning 1993 film that Molen co-produced with Spielberg and Branko Lustig.

For the Ronan students, Molen planned to use Schindler as an example of what courageous individuals could accomplish, and he also planned to ask them to “imagine your future is a movie. Forty years from now, you’re writing a script about your accomplishments. What would that script look like?”  "It was a totally apolitical speech," Molen said.

Molen wrote about being disinvited, and his story was published in the Montana newspaper, The Daily Inter Lake. Now, several Ronan citizens are demanding details.  “It’s shocking,” said Colleen Adler, a resident with three children in the school district who has been trying, unsuccessfully so far, to get an official explanation for the cancellation. “It’s very frustrating.”

“I’m pissed off,” said Chuck Lewis, an occasional volunteer at the school. “Why would a school dishonor a man who served his country?”

Lewis, also a former Marine, posted Molen’s story on his two Facebook pages and asked his 3,000 “friends” to contact the school board to demand it apologize to Molen and invite him to speak to next year’s Ronan High School graduating class.  “They should have never censored him like that,” said Lewis.

It’s unknown how many phone calls have been placed, but one e-mail to the school board that was made public read: “I would like to know the process and people who canceled Gerald R. Molen’s talk to the Ronan Senior Class. I would like to also have a list of other speakers who have addressed the high school in the past five years.”

UPDATE: The incident as described by Molen "did, in fact, occur," superintendent of schools for the Ronan district Andy Holmlund told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday.

"It is my understanding that the high-school principal made the decision based on his point of view. It is not the view of the district. That's not the expectations that the district maintains. That principal will not be serving in this school district for the upcoming school year."

Holmlund said Stack has accepted a position with a school in Clinton, Mont., though he refused to say when or why that decision had been made. Residents say it was likely unrelated to Stack's decision to disinvite Molen.  Asked why Stack had not responded to several phone calls, Holmlund said: "I can't speak to the fact that Mr. Stack isn't talking."

Asked about the public's response to the sudden, nationwide pubicity to the controversy, Holmlund said: "Oh, it's on fire, sir. Justifiably so. We don't expect people to be treated poorly."

SOURCE




British employers forced to take the role of schoolteacher

More than four in 10 employers are being forced to provide remedial training in English, maths and IT because school-leavers and college students lack basic skills when they start earning a living, it is shown in research published today.

Companies say they have little option but to set up classrooms to teach core subjects and equip young people with the basic knowledge to help them function in the workplace.

Almost two-thirds of the 542 companies surveyed by the CBI and Pearson Education complained that too many school-leavers were failing to develop vital skills such as self-management and timekeeping at school.

They struggled to write to the necessary standard, employ basic numeracy or use a computer properly.

The shortcomings identified in the report will add to growing concerns that the education system is failing to equip children for the demands of university and the work place. The findings show that the level of dissatisfaction among employers remains at around a third, the same level as a decade ago.

More employers are now trying to adopt a hands-on approach by forging closer links with schools to help students and teachers understand what skills are needed for working life. Almost 60pc now have ties with secondary schools and further education colleges.

Employers are also anticipating a drop in the intake of graduates because of the increase in tuition fees. More than a third expect to expand their recruitment of school-leavers with A-levels to provide an alternative to graduate-level training.

John Cridland, CBI director-general, said: “The UK’s growth will depend on developing a wider and deeper pool of skills so that our economy can prosper in the face of fierce international competition for business.”

The report suggests the current discontent among employers is likely to increase as companies look to increase workforce skills. In the next three to five years, employers expect they will need more people with leadership and management skills and fewer lower skilled.

Many employers believe primary schools should focus on the basics – reading, writing and maths – while secondary schools should prioritise developing the skills pupils will need for the world of work, as well as advanced literacy, numeracy and technology.

They also feel the none of the current education qualifications addresses the combination of literacy, numeracy and employability effectively and they want to see more emphasis on vocational subjects because of their importance in the workplace.

The CBI also wants a higher priority given to teaching foreign languages, one of the issues being addressed by Michael Gove, Education Secretary, in planned changes to the school curriculum. The UK is bottom of the foreign language proficiency league in Europe.

SOURCE





Australia: Student teachers fail primary school-level tests

Another indication of how low educational standards have sunk

ALMOST half of aspiring primary school teachers failed parts of a landmark test featuring literacy and numeracy questions that Year 7 students should be able to answer.

The results have reignited concerns about the quality of teaching graduates entering Queensland classrooms.

The Courier-Mail last week revealed that about 12 per cent - almost one in eight - high-school leavers who began a teaching course this year had an Overall Position of 17 or worse.

Figures released by the Queensland College of Teachers reveal about 40 per cent of third or fourth-year teaching students who sat the trial Pre-Registration for Aspiring Primary Teachers Test failed the literacy, numeracy or science component.

Educators defended the results saying the test was aimed at graduates and some students may not yet have been exposed to some of the test material.

However, The Courier-Mail understands there were high failure rates on some basic content questions.

The test was introduced by the former Bligh government after principals raised concerns that some graduate teachers lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills.

It contained questions on teaching strategies and basic primary school level content which they will have to teach.

Professor Geoff Masters, who recommended the teacher test, said the results gave weight to principals' concerns.  "Some of the questions are fairly straightforward tests of literacy and numeracy," Prof Masters said.  "It does raise a question about whether some students who are getting through their initial teacher education programs have the levels of personal literacy and numeracy and the knowledge of how to teach literacy and numeracy that we require in our schools."

The test, which has cost more than $2 million to develop, has been shelved under cost-savings measures.

The Queensland College of Teachers, which conducted field trials in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Toowoomba and Cairns in March last year, said 483 students took part.

"The outcomes of the trials indicated 72 per cent of the participants would have met the benchmarks set for the literacy instrument, 82 per cent for numeracy and 81 per cent for science respectively," a QCT statement said.

"If the test proceeds, candidates will be required to meet the benchmarks set in all three areas. Approximately 40 per cent would have been required to re-take at least one of the instruments. The results of the trial should be considered as indicative."

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the results were concerning.  "The trial test was conducted on less than 10 per cent of the entire cohort of third and fourth-year teaching students to assess the validity of the possible test questions and the logistics of implementing the test itself, rather than the quality of teaching graduates," Mr Langbroek said.  "However, the results are still concerning which is why I plan to work with universities to ensure that they are producing quality graduates to teach Queensland children."

Queensland Deans of Education Forum chair Professor Wendy Patton agreed that the results were cause for concern.

But she said variables had to be taken into account, including the fact that third-year students had been given "graduate" tests, and it was still unknown what the trial test questions were.

She said individual students were not provided with their marks, with an assurance those wouldn't be published.  "We have to acknowledge that these were not students at the end of their program," she said, adding that she hoped they would be able to answer the questions by the end of their course.

Under QCT guidelines, higher-education institutions are required to provide extra tuition to any student who needs support in literacy or numeracy. Prof Patton said that was being done.

SOURCE



10 June, 2012

How one family avoided the College Tuition Bubble

    Jerry Bowyer

Investments get to be bubbles partly because investors widely believe there is no alternative on which to spend their money. Dotcoms were seen as the only real growth play, so shareholders hung in there even after it had become clear that the pricing was uncomfortably high. Housing possessed a supposed unique level of riskless-ness as did the loans used to finance it.  Many investors have figured out that U.S. treasuries are deep into bubble territory, but, they ask ‘What other haven asset is there?’

It’s the same with the college tuition bubble.  Look at the comment section of any of the articles I’ve written about this topic during the past three years and you’ll see something like this: “Yes, most diplomas are from second rate schools in second rate disciplines and they are nearly worthless. And tuitions are sky high. But what alternative do we have? How do you get an education without it? More importantly, how do you get a job?”

It’s a legitimate question, one that I’ve been wrestling with for quite some time.  You see, I’ve been writing about the college bubble hypothesis for three years, but I’ve been living it for ten.

My oldest son, Christopher, was not college material. You probably have the wrong idea: it’s not that Chris isn’t smart. Chris is brilliant. But brilliance is not enough to make you college material. Something else is needed: at least an average level of compliance. Pliable personalities find it much easier to sit through the lectures, take the exams, write the papers, amass the pre-formulated proportions of certain credit hours in certain prescribed order, and fill out an enormous volume of paperwork for the privilege of entry into all of the above.

Some people find all of that to be easy; in fact, many like being told what to do. It gives them a sense of security. Other people find it all difficult, but do it anyway. The latter often seek release from the sense of institutional claustrophobia by embracing a life style of sexual and chemical anarchy in those enclaves of rebellion known as fraternities.

Chris just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t contort his mind into the arbitrary exercise known as SAT Prep. It was not that he didn’t want to learn. On the contrary, he was a voracious reader. It’s not that he didn’t want to work. On the contrary, he had not only worked for various family businesses from radio production to economic analysis and publishing since he was about 9 years old, but had also started a few micro-businesses of his own; web sites which he was able to sell at a nice little profit.

I understand Chris; I’m the same way. I barely graduated from high school. I would routinely skip class so I could go to the library and read my way through Mortimer Adler’s Great Books collection. College was similar. After an initial two semesters of compliant Dean’s list performance. I started blowing off classes which I didn’t like, dropping out of them, often after the drop out date. But while all that was going on, I was working my rear end off busing tables in the cafeteria, mopping floors, and scrubbing pots…and sitting in the library reading voraciously. A few professors took the trouble to let me learn my way. Mostly, they didn’t get me, and I didn’t get them.

Eventually, I gritted my teeth, switched to a business school, Robert Morris, focused like mad, got good grades and graduated two years later with a degree in accounting. I hated every moment of it. My hair went grey. I got a good corporate job with a solid salary. I hated that too.

After some dues paying I got funding to start an economic think tank. It worked: the foundation rapidly grew in influence and 9 years after graduation, I was invited back to Robert Morris not as a student, but as its commencement speaker. My career since then has been anything but normal and my work and learning style has been anything but compliant.

There are a lot of guys like that out there, and young women too. Christopher was one of them, and he was permitted to go his own way. Only two things were required of him: character and productivity. College, not being essential for either of those, was optional. And he agonized over the options. Lots of people told him that he absolutely must go to college. His mother, my ex-wife, was mortified by the idea that he would not go. But then again, Chris noticed that she had dropped out of a prestigious school half way through and nevertheless had a successful career as a professional proofreader/editor who was so much in demand that she was turning clients away.

Chris talked to lots of people about this, but the clincher for him was the advice he got from Ron Morris. Ron is a highly successful serial entrepreneur whose latest venture is an entrepreneurial talk radio network. Having sold his business for a tidy pile of cash, Ron was constantly receiving pitches from entrepreneurs looking for start-up investments. Many of those came from kids who had just graduated from prestigious universities. He told Chris that if he had a choice between betting on a 23-year old who had just graduated from a top school, or betting on a 23-year old who had worked for a small business, all other things being equal, he would choose the latter. Better still if the 23-year old had founded a small business—even if the business failed. Chris had his answer.

Now, this isn’t fairy tale stuff. He didn’t throw away his SAT prep materials, found Facebook and become a billionaire. He simply did his work for the family business which is largely producing this television program. He also owns and maintains a few websites which generate modest revenue streams (like this), and builds on a sub-contracting basis some sites owned by other people like this. He’s a frequent guest on Ron’s radio show and an occasional guest on Cornerstone Television Network.

He got a lot of flak from friends and acquaintances for his non-college decision, chiefly because he and his brother, Jeremy, during their college-aged years moved in a social circle of college students from Chatham University. They just couldn’t fathom it.

A couple of years ago, Chris married a Chatham girl, and a lot of their friends are her school friends. This provides a lot of helpful data about the school vs. school of hard knocks decision.

At age 27, Chris has no consumer debt, no school debt (obviously), no car debt and only a small mortgage. He has a small retirement account which he started with the proceeds from a web site he built in his teen years. He and his wife are homeowners. While some of their college friends are apartment dwellers, many are boomerang kids who have returned home to live with their parents. Almost none of the ones who are employed are employed in their chosen field of study. Income-wise, Chris is at about the same level as the subset of his college-grad friends who are employed. Asset/liability wise he is well ahead of the pack.

He has enormous personal freedom, which he loves. He is a man of good character, and he is productive. That’s all that is required. Everything else is optional – including college.

SOURCE




The Trap of Minority Studies Programs

Posted by John Ellis

When Naomi Schaefer Riley was fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education for her trenchant remarks on Black Studies programs, most of those who criticized the firing saw in it a display of the campus left's intolerance. Fair enough, but this episode also has a much broader meaning.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large populations of poor immigrants arrived in the U.S.--Irish, Italians, and Jews from Russia and Poland. Their extreme poverty placed them at the bottom of the social ladder, and they were often treated with contempt. Yet just a few generations later they were assimilated, and their rapid upward social mobility had produced mayors, senators, judges, and even Presidents from among their ranks. None of this could have happened without first-rate public education.

To be sure, they worked hard to get ahead, but they were not obstructed by something that afflicts the have-nots of today: as they walked through the school gates they were not met by people intent on luring them into Irish or Italian Studies programs whose purpose was to keep them in a state of permanent resentment over past wrongs at the hands of either Europeans or establishment America. Instead, they could give their full attention to learning. They took courses that informed them about their new land's folkways and history, which gave them both the ability and the confidence needed to grasp the opportunities it offered them.

When we compare this story with what is happening to minority students today, we see a tragedy. Just as Pinocchio went off to school with high hopes, only to be waylaid by J. Worthington Foulfellow, minority students are met on the way to campus by hard-left radicals who claim to have the interests of the newcomers at heart but in reality prey on them to advance their own selfish interests. Of course, what black students need is the same solid traditional education that had raised Irish, Italians, and Jews to full equality. But that would not serve the campus radicals' purpose. Disaffected radicals wanted to swell the ranks of the disaffected, not the ranks of the cheerfully upward mobile. Genuine progress for minority students would mean their joining and thus strengthening the mainstream of American society--the mainstream that campus radicals loathe.

Faculty radicals worked hard to put the kind of coursework that had served others so well out of the reach of minority students. They stigmatized those courses as Eurocentric, oppressive, and dominant-class oriented, and they worked successfully to remove them from curricular requirements. The very idea of upward mobility was made to appear a capitulation to the corrupt value system of the dominant class.

As thinkers, campus radicals are poor role models for students. Their ideas are simple and rigid, and they rely heavily on conspiracy thinking that infers far too much from too little. They are powered by emotional commitments that are highly resistant to the lessons of experience. As a result, their cherished ideas are now virtually obsolete, and strike any reasonably well-informed observer as downright silly. The minority students that they attract into their orbit are dragged down to this low intellectual level.

This background is the key to the fury that Naomi Schaefer Riley¹s criticisms of Black Studies dissertations unleashed. Radical leftists have achieved considerable influence on campus in part because they were able to add substantial numbers of incoming minorities to their numbers. They need those students in self-destructive Black Studies courses that keep them resentful and under-educated. But that is only possible if they can maintain the illusion that they help and support black students, rather than exploiting them. Ms Schaefer Riley was a threat to that illusion, and that is why she was attacked so vehemently.

Black Studies does have one thing right: black students are indeed oppressed. What they have wrong is who is doing the oppressing. People of good-will on both sides of the political aisle should join together to insist that black students be given the same chance that other groups got to join the mainstream. This latest version of the plantation ought to be abolished.

SOURCE





Personality testing to screen out British teachers who lack social skills or cannot cope under pressure

Such tests are not very reliable but may be better than nothing

Trainee teachers face personality tests to weed out those who lack social skills or cannot cope under pressure.  Students will be asked to fill in questionnaires before they can begin training courses in a drive to boost the calibre of staff.

The tests are designed to gauge applicants’ abilities to manage their time, relate to pupils and handle pressure and criticism.

The new checks – introduced from September – are part of an overhaul of teacher training with the aim of raising standards in state education.

An estimated £68million is spent each year by the Government on training teachers who quickly move on to other jobs.

Officials said ‘easily measurable competencies’ are already assessed during recruitment to teacher training courses.  But the ‘more difficult competencies’ which are ‘also deemed essential to becoming a successful teacher’ are not covered.

From September, training providers will be supplied with an approved list of ‘non-cognitive assessments’ to use during the recruitment process. The tests will be used to ‘complement’ existing procedures such as interviews and group exercises.

Tests used in trials assessed criteria such as interpersonal skills, time management and emotional resilience, including the ability to ‘perform when under pressure’, ‘keep emotions in check’ and ‘handle criticism and learn from it’.

Sample questions included ‘Which of the following best describes you?’, with candidates asked to tick one of six boxes on a spectrum between ‘methodical’ and ‘flexible’.

About 35,000 students are accepted on to teacher training courses each year, but around one-third drop out of teaching soon afterwards.  While some quit for personal reasons, many are simply ill-suited to the job.

Earlier this year, the Department for Education demanded ‘better testing of candidates’ interpersonal skills’ before teacher training.  Following trials, the Government this week announced that screening tests will be available to all recruiters for training courses.

While the personality tests will not be compulsory, most course leaders are expected to insist their candidates take them.

Ofsted will for the first time be inspecting teacher training providers for the quality of their selection processes.

Further measures already announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove include a toughening up of literacy and numeracy tests for trainee teachers.

Ministers are concerned that existing tests are too easy and allow trainees with a poor mastery of English and maths to slip through.

A spokesman for the Government’s Teaching Agency said: ‘By screening applicants for a  range of attributes and behavioural competencies that are considered essential to good teaching, we will reinforce what is already a rigorous selection process.’  He added that the testing would ‘help select and recruit the most suitable, high-quality trainee teachers’.

SOURCE



8 June, 2012

Going to college? Watch out for political correctness and impractical degrees

Here’s a fine book I enjoyed reading written by my friend Ari Mendelson, which talks about the dangers of political correctness on the university campus, and especially in the humaninities. It’s a work of fiction, but it’s based on actual cases from a variety of college campuses.  Here’s a snippet from Ari’s web page about the book:

    Lured by brochures promising limitless intellectual freedom, Jeff Jackson arrives at picturesque Tinsley College, eager to experience college life to the fullest. He does not know that the freedom he has been promised is in short supply at Tinsley, a college so dedicated to leftist ideals that the administration changed the name of the anthropology department to “anthrogynology” in order to make the name more “gender inclusive.”

    Jeff makes the mistake of believing that the renowned Professor Bancroft Tarlton would be willing to debate the left wing politics that the professor advocates in his classes. Not realizing that there are just some questions one does not ask on a college campus, Jeff submits an essay outlining his provocative theories about happiness and human sexuality.

    Professor Tarlton is not the only one furious at Jeff for his lack of devotion to left wing norms. Calling himself a “pomosexual” and believing Jeff to be not only a homophobe, but a “pomophobe” as well, Carl Fitzgerald, Jeff’s classmate, begins a feud with Jeff. The battle escalates from insults, to vandalism, to shattered love affairs and a dorm room inhabited by a fainting goat. In a college obsessed with political correctness, a clash between the writer of a “homophobic” essay and the “pomosexual” victim of a college prank can only end one way: with a showdown in a campus courtroom.

You can click the link to learn more about the book. It’s a nice little introduction to parents and college-bound students about what really goes on in the liberal arts departments of most universities. I resonated with the hero of the story who chose to study liberal arts, even though I studied computer science for my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I knew that political correctness dominated in the liberal arts. My first choice of career was actually to be a lawyer and then an English teacher. I sat in on a criminal law course at one local university and then an English course at another while I was a senior in high school. That’s when I changed my major to computer science based on my experiences. Now that the economy is the way it is, I think it was the right thing to do.

University is a fine thing as long as you go there to learn math, science, technology or engineering. If you go there to study anything else, all you will learn is how to parrot the opinions of your professor. Any dissent will be met with bad grades, and possibly expulsion. There is no focus on producing value outside of the STEM departments. Not only is it a waste of money to be indoctrinated, but it destroys your ability to think critically and independently. You want to learn valuable skills in your time at university – all the better to pay back those enormous student loans. In case you would like to read a good book on the importance of choosing a major in STEM fields, here is a book authored by Captain Capitalism which makes the case for that, with all the facts and figures you would expect from an economist.

Here’s a blurb from his blog:

    The amount of money they (or you) are going to spend on tuition, not to mention the sheer volume of their youth they will spend pursuing a degree, can NOT be wasted simply because nobody had the courage to tell the kids the truth about economics and the realities of the labor market.

    But you don’t have to.  The book will do it for it you.

    “Worthless” explains first and foremost to the reader that the reason somebody got them this book is because that person really cares about them.  And while it may not be what they want to hear, they will end up appreciating it in the future.  “Worthless” also goes into detail and explains in clear, understandable language the economics behind the labor market, showing the reader how and why some degrees are worthwhile and others are literally worthless.

Sometimes, people just seem to go off to university and choose a major without really thinking about it. Both of these books will help a college-bound student to think a second time about why they are going to college and what they hope to achieve there. It might even be a good idea to just choose a trade school and learn some practical skills. In this economy, the first priority is to find a job. You can always study the really interesting fields like philosophy in your spare time once you are gainfully employed.

SOURCE





Whining teachers in Australia too

Teachers are Prima Donnas worldwide.  Check Wisconsin, NYC  and Britain, for instance

TEACHERS have rejected a pay deal from the Queensland Government and are planning to rally outside State Parliament in a fortnight.

The Queensland Teachers Union issued a newsflash yesterday telling its members they had rejected an enterprise bargaining package, which included a 2.7 per cent pay rise per annum over the next three years.

The union has raised concerns over what the Department of Education, Training and Employment "requires" to be removed from its current certified agreement as part of the enterprise bargaining offer.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said classroom teachers would earn up to $90,238 a year, graduate teachers up to $61,636 a year and principals up to $147,981 a year under the agreement.

Graduate teachers would be kept at the same classification for three years before being eligible to access annual increments.

The QTU warns pay progression "would require certification by principals of teachers' satisfactory conduct, diligence and efficiency rather than increments being held by exception as is currently the case".

Mr Langbroek said: "The salary increase of 2.7 per cent a year promises an increase in real wages with the annual national inflation rate currently just 1.6 per cent (CPI year to march quarter 2012).

"It is a fair offer in the current economic climate, particularly given the job security that teachers enjoy."

But the QTU has warned beginning teachers would lose more than $6000 over the life of the agreement, while "items" like class sizes they had fought for would be removed and "considered matters of policy to be determined by the department".

"Examples of items suggested by the department which are better determined by policy are: class sizes; remote area incentive scheme ... workload management and work/life balance; job security; conversion to permanency of temporary teachers ... policy can be changed at any time by the government and department without consultation with teachers and principals.

"These issues have been included in agreements over the past 18 years as a protection against unilateral change by government or department. The entitlements won over six EB campaigns and more now become uncertain."

The QTU newsflash states it will be seeking a permit for an after-school rally outside Parliament on June 19 or 20.

SOURCE





Dumb teachers in Australia

ABOUT one in 10 high school graduates who took up teaching courses this year had an OP 17 or worse.  Overall Positions (OPs) range from one, the highest, to 25, the lowest, and are used to rank students wishing to be admitted for tertiary education.

The revelation follows concerns new teachers are graduating without basic numeracy and literacy skills and that universities are churning out too many graduates despite an oversupply of primary school teachers in Queensland.

A report this year revealed more than 12,000 primary school and 4000 other teachers were seeking work with Education Queensland in January.

In submissions to the Productivity Commission for a Schools Workforce report released in April, the Department of Education, Training and Employment said it had concerns about the imbalance of graduate primary school teachers, while the Queensland Catholic Education Commission said it was concerned the oversupply could lead to "a decrease in the quality of teaching graduates".

Figures released to The Courier-Mail by the Queensland College of Teachers revealed 11.8 per cent of high school graduates who entered teaching courses this year had an equivalent of an OP 17 or worse, and about 3.6 per cent had an OP of 20 to 25.

QCT director John Ryan said higher education institutions providing teacher education "must provide extra tuition to any student who needs support in literacy or numeracy".

But he said the Queensland school-leaver figures were better than those nationwide.  "As a percentage, Queensland had more students with higher entry scores and less people at the lower end of the scale than the rest of Australia entering teacher education.  "This data only applies to school-leavers and accounts for approximately 50 per cent of people entering teacher education."

The revelation came as recommendations to introduce a pre-registration test aimed at improving the quality of teaching graduates has been postponed for a second time because of concerns over cost.

Controversial recommendations made to the Bligh government aimed at lifting teacher standards, including enforcing a better alignment between demand and supply by limiting practicum (practical experience) places, are also in limbo, with their fate yet to be decided by the Newman Government.

SOURCE



7 June, 2012

Teacher's Unions Earn "F" for Wisconsin Recall Abuse

 Michelle Malkin
 
They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker's budget and pension reforms. Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war against fiscal discipline.

To kick off the yearlong protest festivities, the Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive "sickout" of educators and other government school personnel. The coordinated truancy action -- tantamount to an illegal strike -- cost taxpayers an estimated $6 million. Left-wing doctors assisted the campaign by supplying fake medical excuse notes to teachers who ditched their public school classrooms to protest Walker's modest package of belt-tightening measures.

When they weren't ditching their students, radical teachers steeped in the social justice ethos of National Education Association-approved community organizer Saul Alinsky were shamelessly using other people's children as their own political junior lobbyists and pawns. A Milwaukee Fox News affiliate caught one fourth-grade teacher dragging his students on a "field trip" to demonstrate against Walker at the state Capitol building.

The pupils clapped along with a group of "solidarity singers" as they warbled: "Scott Walker will never push us out, this house was made for you and me."

Hundreds of high school students from Madison were dragooned into marches. When asked on camera why they had skipped school, one told a reporter from the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute: "I don't know. I guess we're protesting today." Happy for the supply of warm young bodies, AFSCME Local 2412 President Gary Mitchell gloated: "The students have been so energized."

"Energized"? How about educated, enlightened and intellectually stimulated? Silly parents. Remember: "A" isn't for academics. It's for "agitation" and "advocacy." Former National Education Association official John Lloyd's words must not be forgotten: "You cannot possibly understand NEA without understanding Saul Alinsky. If you want to understand NEA, go to the library and get 'Rules for Radicals.'"

Against a rising tide of rank-and-file teachers who oppose their leaders' extremist politics, the national offices of the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers shoveled millions in forced union dues into astroturfed, anti-Walker coffers. According the WisconsinReporter.com, strapped state affiliates also coughed up major sums to beat back Wisconsin's efforts to bring American union workers into the 21st century in line with the rest of the workforce:

"The Ohio Education Association made a $58,000 in-kind contribution May 30, followed a day later by a $21,000 contribution from the Pennsylvania State Education Association. New York State United Teachers gave $23,000 on June 1, the Massachusetts Education Association gave $17,000 on May 31, and a group of unions based in Washington, D.C., poured in $922,000 during the past week." Even the Alaska NEA affiliate pitched in $4,000.

Back in the Badger State, the Education Action Group Foundation caught Milwaukee teacher's union head Bob Peterson on tape this week bragging about how his school district organized bus runs and stuffed flyers into every K-8 student's backpack urging them to vote in the recall election. No, this wasn't a civic, nonpartisan get-out-the-vote effort. It was a purely partisan self-preservation campaign. Peterson preaches that educators must be "teachers of unionism. We need to create a generation of students who support teachers and the movement for workers rights, oppressed peoples' rights." Because, you know, asking teachers to contribute more to their pension plans is just like the crushing of freedom fighters in Iran, Egypt and China.

The progressives' blatant exploitation of bureaucratic authority over the nation's schoolchildren -- at the expense of classroom achievement and fiscal sanity -- isn't sitting well with the public. A new Marquette University Law School poll released on the eve of the Wisconsin recall election showed that "only 40 percent of those surveyed said they had a favorable view of public-sector unions, while 45 percent viewed them unfavorably." In addition, "three-quarters of respondents said they approved of the law Walker signed requiring public employees to contribute to their own pensions and pay more for health insurance, while 55 percent approved of the new limits on collective bargaining for state employees that Walker signed into law."

Uncertainty reigned over Wisconsin as both sides braced for a possible recount on Tuesday night. But from their first unhinged salvos 16 months ago in the state Capitol and right up until Election Day, the union bosses have made one thing clear as a playground whistle: It's not about the children. It's never about the children. It's about protecting the power, perks and profligacy of public employee union monopolies.

SOURCE







The New York Times Needs a School Choice Reality Check

A recent New York Times article spilled a lot of ink insisting tax-credit scholarships funnel public funds to private schools. It barely mentioned a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that dismissed this argument out of hand, along with the faulty logic behind it. Moreover, it reflects an out-of-date perspective on education policy: The public isn't concerned about bureaucratic turf wars; they want education programs that work and efficiently use taxpayer dollars.

Far from a radical new invention, the first tax-credit scholarship program was enacted in Arizona back in 1997. In the last fifteen years, eleven additional programs have been created across the country, benefitting approximately 82,000 students nationwide.

Under tax-credit scholarship programs individuals and/or businesses receive a credit against their state income taxes for donations to charitable organizations that award scholarships so children can attend the private schools of their parents' choice. Critics like those quoted by the Times , call tax credit scholarships a "shell game", or "neovouchers."

Yet vouchers and tax-credits vary in important ways. Both programs enable students to attend public or private schools of their parents' choice, but unlike tax-credit scholarships, vouchers are publicly funded, paid for with government appropriations.

It's also worth noting that college students have used "vouchers" for decades, including Pell grants and GI Bill scholarships. And the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of vouchers for school-age children a decade ago in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris , ruling that public funds may support private educational choices so long as parents, not state governments, are doing the choosing.

The constitutionality of tax-credit scholarships is even clearer. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a decisive blow to opponents' nearly 15-year-old crusade to end Arizona's - and the country's - oldest tax-credit scholarship program. Similar to the Times critics, opponents of Arizona's programs insisted that private donations for scholarships are actually government funds, which of course belong to public schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn that assuming “all income is government property, even if it has not come into the tax collector’s hands… finds no basis in standing jurisprudence ."

Taxpayers should rejoice. The idea that government knows best how to tackle every public problem should be soundly rejected not just in the Courts, but by the court of public opinion. It’s exactly this approach that has left our education system in the sorry condition that we see today. Empowering taxpayers and education consumers to direct education dollars to different providers isn’t a threat to education quality. On the contrary, it bolsters better quality through the true accountability that comes with choices and competition.

The claim that more education options hurt public schools also has no basis in reality. Research by Northwestern University professor David Figlio found that in response to competition from private schools for students, Florida public-school math and reading performance improved—something the Times failed to mention.

Tax-credit scholarship programs also save money for states, school districts, and taxpayers. The typical American public school spends more than $12,000 per student, while private-school tuition averages $8,500 nationwide. When students use tax-credit scholarships to attend private schools, there is more money for public schools to educate fewer students, which more than offsets the upfront general fund revenue loss from donors claiming tax credits.

Florida’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government, for example, found that the state’s tax-credit scholarship program saves $1.49 for every dollar it reduces state revenue. When was the last time an education program actually helped raise student achievement and generate a 49 percent return on investment?

Parental choice opponents will likely seize on the Times' article to block adoption of tax-credit scholarship programs in other states—including New Jersey, which is currently considering enacting the Opportunity Scholarship Act (OPA) program for low-income children in failing schools.

Fifteen years of experience shows that tax-credit scholarship programs are constitutional. They help improve student achievement. They save money. Most important, tax-credit scholarships offer a lifeline to students trapped in schools that aren’t working for them. That’s the real story of this important education innovation. Shame on the so-called paper of record for trying to keep it from voters.

SOURCE





British university 'malaise' forcing bright students to US

Growing numbers of bright teenagers are rejecting British universities in favour of those in the United States amid claims they no longer represent value for money, a leading headmaster has warned.

Students are being forced to seek courses on the other side of the Atlantic because institutions in this country are stuck in a “malaise”, according to Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College, Berkshire.

He said cash-strapped British universities provided less contact time with lecturers and displayed only a “perfunctory interest” in sport and the arts.

The comments – in a new book published by The Good Schools Guide – come as figures show a surge in the number of pupils applying to study in the United States.

According to data, the proportion of students taking the US college entrance exam in Britain increased by a third last year compared with 2008. In all, more than 10,000 applicants sat the main admissions test, it was revealed.

The rising interest is believed to be driven by pupils from independent and grammar schools seeking to escape annual tuition fees of up to £9,000 in Britain from September.

But writing in the new book, Uni In The USA, Dr Seldon said the exodus was “down to far more than economics”.  “American universities in particular celebrate breadth of achievement far more than those in Britain, where only a perfunctory interest is shown in sporting or artistic prowess, or whether one held positions of responsibility and contributed to charitable activities,” he said.

Dr Seldon said that one-in-10 Wellington students were now applying to universities outside Britain compared with just the “occasional pupil” a few years ago.  Other independent schools have reported a similar increase in recent years.

According to the Fulbright Commission, which promotes links between US and UK universities, demand is highest for places at elite Ivy League institutions.

Applications to Pennsylvania University jumped by 50 per cent last year, while demand for Harvard was up 41 per cent and Yale reported a 23 per cent rise, the Commission said.

Dr Seldon, writing in the foreword of the book alongside Wellington's head of sixth-form, Matt Oakman, added: “The concerns we hear from British students about poor contact time with UK lecturers and a lack of genuine engagement with them is more than media scaremongering.

“There’s a malaise in British universities, which have received too little money for far too long. Spending per head on students in American universities can be as much as twice that spent on British students.”

The new guide includes reviews of more than 65 US universities, as well as information covering the applications process, entrance exams, fees, scholarships, visas and lifestyle issues.

It says that most students in England will face annual tuition fees of £9,000 from September – on top of the cost of living.

US universities traditionally charge the equivalent of £9,800 to around £35,800 a year, it is claimed, although some provide generous scholarships and grants.

Alice Fishburn, the book's editor, said: "The rise of tuition fees in England is slowly forcing people to look across the Atlantic. The excellent financial aid and bursary programmes in place at most American universities ensure that many British students can afford to go, regardless of their educational background or economic status.

"The recent slide of the dollar puts living expenses within reach. Most students will graduate with less debt than their British contemporaries."

SOURCE



6 June, 2012


A Failure of Vision

The United States has been making education policies based on false assumptions

The second half of the twentieth century was a time of great prosperity and growth in the United States. Our nation’s natural bounties—physical, cultural, moral, and intellectual—were enough to mask any fundamental errors committed by our leaders. Between enormous advances in technology and wide-open world markets, we could quickly turn around any ill effects caused by bad policies.

A consensus vision of the future formed based on this temporary good fortune. The vision featured the United States maintaining its position atop the world economy permanently by focusing on the highest levels of employment: research, design, and development, as well as finance. Lower-skilled functions such as manufacturing and resource-extraction could be left to less-developed nations—what we need to do was pump up our scientific and technical labor force through education and immigration.

Under the vision’s spell, our leaders have poured money into education, and continue to do so. Considered especially important is increasing the numbers of college graduates in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines.

But our era of economic invulnerability is over, and that vision of permanent technical superiority is proving to be false.  The prolonged recession is revealing big cracks in the foundations of the big government, Western welfare state model that subsidizes education at unsustainably high levels. Developing nations, such as China and India, are not content to perform just low-skill functions, but are producing their own highly educated researchers who can replace U.S. engineers and scientists.

Yet, even as the vision’s fundamental flaws and lack of sustainability grow more painfully obvious, much of our leadership cannot let go of its basic tenets. It continues to prime the STEM pump as a cure for high unemployment, when there are already gluts in many STEM fields.

Our leaders ignore the fact that such traditional industrial activities as manufacturing and resource extraction are the very activities that produce huge numbers of good jobs, and instead burden them with onerous regulations and tax structures. Accordingly, China surpassed the United States as the world’s leading manufacturing nation in 2010; U.S. employment in manufacturing has been shrinking rapidly for over a decade:

A key element missing from the vision is the understanding that far more engineers can be employed to perform routine operations such as supervising production in traditional industries than our country will ever be able to employ doing meaningful research. Despite decreasing employment in the manufacturing sector, and despite our emphasis on producing researchers, only 4.8 percent of all engineering positions today are in research and development, according to Leonard Lynn of Case Western Reserve, Daniel Kuehn of American University, and Hal Salzman of Rutgers and the director of the J.J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development.

The pharmaceutical industry, which at one time hired large numbers of chemistry and biology majors, has been struggling due to burdensome government testing regulations and difficulty enforcing patents overseas and is dismantling much of its research capabilities. A Forbes article, citing consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, revealed that between 2000 and March of 2011, the pharmaceutical industry cut 297,650 jobs.

The energy sector—which hires lots of engineers and scientists—has had its hands tied as well by environmental opposition.

This drop in wealth-producing employment may portend a drop in future innovation: the vast majority of innovation comes from industries that are already working in the specific area of the innovation. They’re the ones who are closest to the existing technology, the needs of customers, and have the most at stake.  As innovation guru Peter Drucker suggested, the “mundane and unglamorous” tends to provide the most fertile ground for innovation.

It may be that America loses its global technical edge, not because we lack sufficient scientists and engineers to man our industries, but because other countries that are now eager to undertake “mundane and unglamorous” pursuits for material gain will increasingly innovate as a routine function of their operations.

For now, we must focus on putting our resources toward their most efficient use, not trying to make the real economy match failing theories. In two previous articles, I presented statistical arguments that clearly show the presence of labor supply gluts that exist or have existed recently in some of the most important STEM disciplines, such as chemistry, engineering, and computer science. Continuing to overproduce graduates in these subjects will only make employment in these fields more difficult, lower wages, and is a terrible use of human resources.

Of course, just because STEM careers are not as promising as advertised and more investment in innovation is not the way to the Promised Land does not mean we should ignore science and technology. There are still many reasons why we should continue to educate people in STEM fields, including:

Bright, inquisitive minds will naturally be drawn to the study of the physical world and to practical applications of science.
Scientific exploration and innovation will continue to be extremely important. (We just shouldn’t expect to solve non-technical problems with technology.)

There will always be some jobs opening up that require knowledge in these disciplines. In many of them, particularly computer science, employers may prefer recent graduates trained in the most up-to-date technology rather than more experienced workers whose skills are growing obsolete.

These subjects also provide the rigor and habits of mind all too often absent from other college majors. Many of the skills are transferrable to other careers; if you learn how to differential equations to earn a physics degree, you can certainly apply them to economics. Training in the scientific method will enable graduates to apply their powers of experimentation and analysis to many different endeavors.

But while having young people study science and technology is important, such activities’ ability to change the economy should not be exaggerated. The solutions of the establishment vision simply won’t work anymore.

So how do we get out of this conundrum?

It won’t be by doing what we have already done for decades. Pushing more students into fields where there are shrinking opportunities is not the solution; an end to government meddling is. Only by the government getting out of the way can we allow the market to make the proper adjustments and restore our productive capacity.

We must also stop treating rising wages as a disease that needs immediate treatment via immigration, and recognize them as a sign of a healthy industry as well as a signal to people to enter that field.

Conversely, academia must stop pretending that labor supply and demand don’t exist and stop encouraging students to study for careers that are on the decline. University officials must allow departments to shrink and quit trying to solve their enrollment and graduate assistant labor problems with foreign students.

It must be understood that economy-changing innovation is unpredictable, and according to Drucker, innovation from scientific research is the most risky of all. Investing in innovation is not the same as investing in a factory—you can predict when the factory will produce goods, but you can’t predict when researchers will discover a fundamental breakthrough.

More fundamentally, it means a change in visions. Pipe dreams of a future technological paradise, populated strictly by visionaries, innovators, and other assorted creative types, may be fine for entertainment purposes, but they are not a firm foundation for our economy. Such futuristic fantasies are already leading us to a downward spiral by avoiding the present reality. What is needed now is a new pragmatic vision of using our currently available technology and human capital to restore our actual prosperity. In doing so—by concentrating on what we can do now—we will not only put people back to work, but we will again create a demand for potential innovators who, given the opportunity, will create a brighter future.

SOURCE





Students' pushy parents must cut the umbilical cord, say Oxford dons, as demands for exam remarks soar

After the family purse pays for GCSE and A-Level resits, students are taking their overdependency on home to university, says bursar.

They believe their sharp elbows and pushy nature have helped to smooth the path for their children into one of the country's oldest and finest universities.

But parents of a new generation of Oxford students are causing consternation among dons, who claim they are responsible for the number of appeals doubling in the past year.

Some parents refuse to “cut the umbilical cord”, it is argued, and after paying for remarks and resits “at every stage” of the A-level and GCSE process, they see nothing wrong with encouraging their children to appeal against their university exam marks as well.

Of the 224 appeals received in the past year, only one case of incorrect marking was found.

Students who had attended private schools and whose parents had paid for GCSE and A-level resits were more likely to question Oxford examiners’ decisions, according to David Palfreyman, bursar of New College and director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies.

The university’s proctors, who act as ombudsmen for the students, have sent guidance to colleges reminding them of the strict rules surrounding appeals in an attempt to cut down the amount of time dons spend checking marks.

Mr Palfreyman said parental influence was leading to more students appealing against their finals grades.  “Mum and dad have paid for a re-mark and a resit at each phase of the A-level process. The students just carry on that mentality at university and so do mummy and daddy,” he said.  “The family is investing in it so it is not surprising if mum and dad work out that there is this appeals process.

“Compared with my day, when you had to go out of your way to get to a phone box to ring mum and dad once a week, with the mobile phone mum can track you down any time but equally you can ring mum because you don’t know how to open a tin of beans.

“It is more difficult to sever that over-dependency if you can contact them so easily. If you are not careful, the child will march into their interview with their mother. It is infantilisation.”

Of the 224 appeal complaints, almost 90 per cent related to examinations. About 70 of these appeals involved students requesting marks checks, but only one paper was found to have been inaccurately marked. A handful of complaints related to other matters, such as harassment or maladministration.

Brian Rogers and Laurence Whitehead, the university’s proctors, said some students were having difficulty “negotiating the transition from adolescence to adulthood”.  Speaking to Congregation, Oxford’s “parliament of dons”, Prof Whitehead said: “In many ways they are highly sophisticated, but many have also grown up more protected and with less experience of the world than almost any of their predecessors.”

In his oration, Prof Whitehead said “the widespread use of complaints procedures” in school exams could be a cause of the rise in GCSE and A-level resits.

“Some colleges forward requests for marks checks where the only basis appears to be that the candidate is disappointed with the mark they have received,” he said.

Prof Rogers, a psychology tutor at Pembroke College, said: “Many colleges, including my own, actively welcome parents to come up with their students at the beginning of their first year. I would never have been seen dead with my parents, I’m afraid – I would have been totally embarrassed. But they like to inspect us and are more involved.”

SOURCE





British University applications drop by 50,000 amid rising fees

University applications have plummeted by 50,000 as growing numbers of students are put off by annual tuition fees of up to £9,000, it emerged today.  Figures show that demand for degree courses across Britain is down by almost nine per cent in just 12 months.

Students from England – who face paying the highest fees – are being hit hardest by the new student finance regime, it was revealed.

In total, demand from English students has dropped by 10 per cent so far this year – almost five times the fall seen among those from Scotland, who receive free tuition.

The data – relating to applications lodged by late May – represent further evidence that students are being deterred from university by a near tripling in the cost of a course.

It was also revealed that demand for arts-based courses, which traditionally lead to relatively poorly-paid jobs, is down quicker than those for other degree subjects.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents lecturers, said: “These latest figures highlight yet again the government’s recklessness in raising tuition fees to as much as £9,000 a year.

“It should come as little surprise that applications in England are hardest hit as a result of the government making it the most expensive country in the world in which to gain a public degree education.”

Figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) show some 597,473 people have applied to British universities so far this year. It is down by 49,535 – or 7.7 per cent – in 12 months.

But the data masks significant differences between countries, with overall applications being largely propped up by continuing high demand from foreign students living outside Europe.  The number of students applying from mainland Europe has dropped from 45,727 to 39,966 – a fall of almost 13 per cent.  Among British students alone, applications are down by almost nine per cent – from 550,147 in 2011 to 501,267 this year.

From this autumn, universities in England will charge up to £9,000-a-year in tuition fees – almost three times the current maximum.

Institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can charge the same amount, although devolved governments will provide generous subsidies for their own students. Scottish students receive free tuition while those from Wales have fees capped at current levels.

According to Ucas, students from England are being put off in far higher numbers than in other countries, with demand down by a total of 10 per cent. Among 18-year-olds coming to the end of their A-levels, applications have dropped by 4.1 per cent.

By comparison, applications from Scotland are down by just 2.2 per cent, while those from 18-year-olds have actually increased by 0.3 per cent.

It comes after an analysis by the Government’s Higher Education Funding Council for England last year suggested that families may consider moving from England to Scotland to avoid the fees rise.

Today's figures also reveal sharp differences between courses, suggesting that students are being driven away from subjects that are less likely to lead to a highly-paid job.

Demand for creative arts and design courses is down by 16.4 per cent and subjects such as media and film studies have seen drops of 14 per cent. At the same time, applications to study medicine and dentistry are down by just 2.6 per cent, while engineering has seen a two per cent fall.

SOURCE



5 June, 2012

Bill introduced to reshape higher education in New Jersey

Gov. Christie lent guarded support to a bill introduced by Democratic legislative leaders Monday that would dramatically reshape higher education in New Jersey by drawing Rutgers-Camden closer to Rowan University and by breaking up the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

The legislation, introduced by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), would establish a board to govern Rutgers-Camden and Rowan and sever many of Rutgers-Camden's administrative links to the larger university.

The bill is not exactly along the lines of Christie's January proposal, but he called it "a critical and positive step," adding that he "looks forward to working together to achieve this reorganization by June 30."

The Republican governor's plan, especially his proposal to merge Rutgers-Camden into Rowan, has stirred months of protests from Rutgers students, alumni, and officials, and led to closed-door negotiations among political leaders on a possible compromise.

The legislation is cosponsored by Sens. Donald Norcross (D., Camden) and Joseph F. Vitale (D., Middlesex). Among its highlights:

All UMDNJ's assets in Newark and New Brunswick, except University Hospital, would be moved to Rutgers. University Hospital, in Newark, would become independent. UMDNJ, a sprawling network of eight campuses, employs 14,000 people across the state.

Rutgers-Camden would be "granted autonomy" and operate under a seven-member board of trustees. The school would receive funding directly from the state.

Rowan would be designated a research institution, ensuring greater state funding.

The joint Rowan/Rutgers-Camden board would be able to "approve or disapprove" decisions by each school's board of trustees.

That Rutgers-Camden would have "autonomy" but exist under a complex governance structure in which it is subject to oversight by a joint board overseeing it and Rowan raised suspicions among many Rutgers faculty.

"This a merger with Rowan in everything but name," said Andrew Shankman, a history professor at Rutgers-Camden. "It seems we've been completely cut off from Rutgers, despite the fact we would somehow retain the name of Rutgers."

In a statement, Sweeney said: "No one will get everything they want, but everyone will get something they want."

Rutgers-Camden chancellor Wendell Pritchett, who had staunchly opposed the merger at a campus meeting earlier this year, issued a statement that "I am deeply gratified that Senate President Sweeney recognizes the importance of Rutgers-Camden and wants to see us continue to flourish." He added: "I look forward to working with legislative leaders to refine this proposal."

The legislation comes at a critical juncture in the governor's efforts, backed by key legislative leaders, to remake the state's university system.

It comes less than 30 days from the legislature's vote on next year's budget, which Christie has set as a deadline for the university plan, which he introduced saying it would boost the universities' national competitiveness.

It is also only days ahead of votes scheduled for Wednesday by Rutgers' current boards of trustees and governors on a statement opposing any drastic restructuring of the university.

Norcross, a brother of powerful Democratic leader George E. Norcross III, has opposed Christie's plan to merge Rutgers-Camden into Rowan. But he said Monday that his legislation avoided the pitfalls of that plan.

In a statement Monday, Donald Norcross said: "We have worked very hard over the last several weeks to listen to all sides of the debate and incorporate their ideas into this plan. Real change will be achieved only through respectful collaboration."

For many in the political establishment, the legislation represented a starting point.

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, who last week helped draft a contentious list of demands for higher education in Newark, was among legislators who, while praising Sweeney's efforts, withheld endorsing his proposal.

Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D., Bergen) said: "This is not some idea that is not allowed to be questioned. It is another step in the legislative process."

Questions of cost continue to hang over the proposal. The cost of a similar restructuring proposed under former Gov. Jim McGreevey was estimated at $1.3 billion.

The legislation follows months of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving members of Rutgers' board of governors and some of the state's top political figures, including Sweeney, George Norcross, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

The bill also would grant Rutgers-Newark its own board of governors, with authority to "propose" capital projects and budgets to the larger university.

In an interview, George Norcross, a managing partner in The Inquirer's parent company and a supporter of Christie's plan, said the legislation would "create a new research university of over 20,000 students with a medical school, a law school, an engineering school, and two great universities in Rowan and Rutgers-Camden."

The question now is whether Rutgers' boards of trustees and governors will support the legislation when they meet Wednesday. According to the university, Rutgers, unlike other state universities, has the power to block legislative decisions in regard to its campuses.

Rutgers president Richard McCormick said in a statement that "overall the bill appears to advance the goals of enhancing medical education across the state, boosting Rutgers' standing among its peer institutions."

Whether the university's boards will go along was unclear. Last month, the trustees issued a statement opposing any deal that gave up Rutgers-Camden.

Jeanne Fox, a Rutgers trustee and vocal opponent of the Rowan merger, said the legislation was a setback.

"It seems clear that we need to work out a compromise, and this isn't a compromise," said Fox, chairwoman of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. "I'm hopeful we'll be able to work one out, but I thought it would be sooner rather than later."

Spokesmen for UMDNJ and Rowan declined to comment, saying officials were still reviewing the bill.

SOURCE





Private Muslim schools told to promote British values

Private Islamic schools face being required to promote “British values” as part of a new Government drive to combat extremism, it emerged today.

For the first time, they will be forced to meet new rules introduced to ensure schools respect the criminal and civil law, present political issues in a balanced way and promote tolerance of other faiths.

The change – applying to all independent schools in England – comes amid concerns that the curriculum in some schools may encourage the development of radical beliefs.

In a report, the Department for Education said reports from a range of sources suggest that “extremism may be more of a problem within some independent schools rather than state-funded schools”.

Although the duty applies to all fee-paying schools, particular concerns have been raised in the past over more than 100 private Muslim schools.

A report by the think-tank Civitas in 2009 found anti-Western views promoted on some school webites. A separate study by Ofsted, the education watchdog, revealed that one-in-five independent faith schools were failing to teach children about other religions.

The DfE is now proposing changes to official regulations for independent schools in England that toughen up requirements surrounding the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils.

A consultation document into the plans suggests that schools should “enable pupils to distinguish right from wrong and to respect the civil and criminal law”, while providing children with a “broad general knowledge of public institutions and services in England”.

Schools will also be expected to "preclude the promotion of partisan political views" and ensure that children “respect fundamental British values including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”.

The new regulations represent a tightening of existing rules, which merely require independent schools to respect "the law", encourage pupils to contribute towards community life and tolerate different cultures. It will be used by Ofsted and other official watchdogs during inspections of independent schools.

The report – which is open to consultation until Tuesday – said the changes would “help ensure that extremism, intolerance and teaching that undermines democracy and the rule of law are challenged within independent schools”.

“Inspectorates will in future be better able to identify and report on extremism if these changes are made,” it added.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “We are consulting on whether we need to add additional requirements for independent schools to bring them into line with maintained schools.

“These requirements include the promoting of fundamental British values, respecting the civil and criminal law and presenting political issues in a balanced way.”

SOURCE


   
   
   
       

Australia:  If they're happy and they know it . . .  "Positive education"

CRITICS deride it as "happyology", but positive education is taking hold from the gleaming halls of Geelong Grammar to the classrooms of hardscrabble public schools across the country.

The brainchild of an American psychologist, positive education aims to help students cultivate positive emotions and character traits, improving their behaviour and fighting depression before it sinks in.

Teachers faced with the challenge of teaching adolescents in the 21st century have embraced it with fervour, led by the elite Geelong Grammar and its team of specially trained staff.

"If our investment saves one kid from committing suicide in 10 years' time it's worth every single penny," said vice-principal Charlie Scudamore.

"This is not about kids walking around with a smile on their face, ignoring critical human emotion.

"It's about a flourishing person who is in control of their emotion, who can deal with adversity, knows that adversity is going to hit them and there will be sad times and bad times, but they can bounce back from that."
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Geelong Grammar has pioneered the spread of positive education over the past four years, incorporating it across the whole school as well as running specific Year 7 and 10 classes and seeking donations from parents to run courses on the concept for other school teachers.

Nathan Chisholm, principal of Altona College in Melbourne's western suburbs, said the adoption of positive psychology had produced a remarkable change in student and staff attitudes at his battling public school.

"We have shifted the culture from one of welfare to one of wellbeing, and that's a really important thing," Mr Chisholm said.

South Australia has appointed positive psychology founder Martin Seligman as its latest thinker in residence, using a pilot program in the Adelaide Hills to help determine whether rollout of positive psychology should occur across the state system.

While the growing number of schools involved, and support from prominent psychologists, has lent weight to positive education, Sydney psychologist Vera Auerbach warned it would not help children with serious mental health issues.

"I think it's flavour of the month; I think it's like a fad," she said. "If you're a well-adjusted individual and you've got no issues in life, positive psychology might help by just putting something on top of it.

"If you are deeply depressed and suicidal, if your boyfriend has broken up with you and you don't want to live any more, then I don't think this positive-psychology stuff works at all."

SOURCE



4 June, 2012

Student Loans Held by the U.S. Federal Government

The current bubble in the number of people attending college is mostly the result of government-backed student loans. In an effort to make college education more affordable, Congress passed a bill in 2007 to temporarily reduce the interest rate for federally subsidized loans to 3.4 percent. This law is set to expire at the end of June, but the Obama administration now wants to extend the cut in interest rates. In addition, the administration effectively federalized student loans in March 2010 when President Obama signed legislation to expand college access. Under the measure, private banks would no longer receive fees for acting as intermediaries in federal student loans. The government would use these savings to increase Pell Grants to make it easier for students to pay back their loans.

Using data from the Federal Reserve, this week’s chart shows a dramatic three-fold increase in the number of student loans held by the federal government in the past four years alone. When the law was passed in 2007, student loans held by the government totaled about $100 billion. The loans increased to $111 billion in 2008; $186 billion in 2009; $316 billion in 2010; and $425 billion in 2011.

In 2008 the interest rate was 6.8 percent and was reduced in stages over the next four years to 3.4 percent. The data show a notable rise in the number of loans taken out between July 2009 and July 2010, when the interest rate was reduced to 5.6 percent. A similar spike is apparent in the July months of the following years. We also see a noticeable change shortly after the adoption in March 2010 of a law to overhaul student loan programs, which has effectively run private banks out of the student-loan business.

Historically, federal loan programs have been the main source of federal credit assistance for higher education. Since the recession hit, private lending has remained stagnant, growing at a much slower pace. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the size of the private student loan market was about $22 billion in the 2007-2008 academic year, implying that the private market was about one-quarter the size (by dollar value) of the market for federal student lending. According to the Wall Street Journal, non-revolving consumer lending by commercial banks (privately held) — a measure tracked by the Federal Reserve that includes student loans as well as auto and other personal credit — is up less than 11 percent since December 2007. Over the same period, total consumer loans owned by the federal government — a measure that includes loans originated by the Department of Education under the Federal Direct Loan Program — has more than quadrupled.

SOURCE





Education the Finnish way

With some comparisons to Australia

Finland — with 5.4 million people, a population similar in size to Victoria's — is a superstar in school education. It consistently ranks among the world's top countries in international tests of student capabilities in reading, maths and science, known as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The group of 22 Victorian primary and secondary school leaders went to Finland to investigate what they could learn from the Nordic nation's successful track record in education.

The international testing program of 15-year-olds and national studies show Australia's student literacy and numeracy results have slipped in recent years and fallen behind the world's best performers, according to the Productivity Commission's report on schools.

The study group of representatives from the Victorian Principals Association and the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals found striking structural differences between Australia's schooling system and Finland's, especially when 15-year-olds in year 9 sit the international PISA test.

In Australia, research shows year 9 has become a danger zone for student boredom. Many schools have introduced specialist camps and programs designed to reduce the risk of student disengagement.

Year 9 in Finland is a much more competitive year. It marks the end of junior secondary school when the school assesses the grade point average achieved by every student to determine which upper secondary school they can go to in years 10 to 12.

"While students are working hard to get a good grade point average to get into their preferred upper secondary college, the PISA test comes along at the same time," Mr Blunt says.

Students enter either vocational upper secondary schools, academic upper secondaries or others specialising in music, language or sport. More than 50 per cent of students choose vocational senior secondary schools, according to Mr Blunt.

All upper secondaries are well resourced and lead on to university or polytechnic colleges, with students able to switch between the two streams if they want to change course. In some municipalities, vocational colleges are harder to get into than the more mainstream academic schools.

"If you have agreement that there needs to be courses for kids' individual talents then you can't neglect the talents of kids who want to be tradespeople," Mr Blunt says. "It's unfortunate that Victoria doesn't have the same sort of support for kids who want to follow that path.

"We want to get to the level that we witnessed in Finland where year 10 students are aspirational about going into trades and it's not just seen as somewhere to end up because you're not good at school."

Mr Blunt has set up a similar pathway for year 10 students at Sunshine College. Four years ago, in partnership with Victoria University, the school established Harvester Technical College on one of its campuses.

The arrangement allows more than 150 students to stay at the school and study TAFE courses delivered by the university as they progress through years 10, 11 and 12.

"Some young kids find it too hard to go directly to TAFE and start a course on their own," Mr Blunt says. "They end up dropping out. So we're trying to do this on campus with the security of the school environment to support them."

Unlike Australia, Finland does not have a national student testing system. However the study group found all schools had more frequent classroom testing than found in Victorian schools.

"Kids were tested a lot more than they are here," says Frank Sal, president of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals.

"At the end of each unit of work they're given tests devised by their teacher or school."

In Finnish secondary schools, teachers give students grade points based on the tests, which they record on a national computer database. The education authority reviews each school's grade points assessment system every four years to ensure teacher judgments on the gradings are nationally consistent.

Mr Sal says Finland's student assessment system is backed by a strong, ongoing intervention program for all students found to be struggling either academically or behaviourally. All schools have teams of special education teachers who usually work in pairs with a maximum of 12 students in a group.

About 50 per cent of all Finish students use the special needs teachers to get extra tuition.

Schools also have a nurse who works with students and their families on health problems. National principal organisations in Australia have been campaigning for a similar approach to early intervention and welfare services in their schools.

"Almost from birth the Finnish school system ensures there are constant supports in place for students as they go through primary and secondary school," Mr Sal says. "It's very much part of their beliefs and policies. Seven per cent of their education budget goes into special needs support, compared with 1 per cent of our education budget."

Finland's national curriculum is reviewed every 10 years. Mr Sal says the 10-year cycle gives teachers and schools the autonomy to implement the curriculum and add to it without bureaucratic interference or interruptions from policy changes.

"It means education doesn't become a political football . . . All political parties support the country's education system and the processes that are in place."

In November, a group of Finnish school principals will visit Victorian primary and secondary schools to investigate the use of information technology in classrooms and ways to cater for students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Australian students have the world's second-highest levels of digital reading literacy, according to the latest PISA results released last month in a report by the Australian Council for Educational Research.

They ranked second behind Korea in the international test, which assessed the ability of 15-year-olds to read, understand and apply digital texts. All other industrialised countries, apart from New Zealand, performed on average at a much lower level than Australia.

Finland's homogenous culture — where most citizens come from Nordic Lutheran backgrounds — is cited by educators as one of the reasons for the nation's outstanding results in student achievement.

Mr Sal says he and his colleagues saw how Finland's predominant Lutheran culture, which emphasises a strong work ethic, has shaped attitudes to learning and helped schools deliver good results.

But the nation's school principals are facing challenges in catering for a more multicultural student intake, as rising numbers of migrants and asylum seekers from Europe and Africa settle in Finland.

"Our Finnish counterparts want to see how we deal with multicultural school populations because they're starting to get worried about how to deal with cultural differences," says Mr Sal, whose organisation will host the visit with the Victorian Principals Association. "They're concerned about some of the changing attitudes in children in years 8 and 9 to schooling, particularly in boys.

"About 6000 children seem to disappear from their schooling system at the end of year 9. Many of them are boys. They lose track of them and they're putting a lot of effort into getting these disengaged youth back into the school system."

SOURCE





British Primary school pupils who can't even catch a ball because schools and parents are neglecting physical skills

Thousands of children are unable to throw and catch a ball because schools and parents are neglecting basic physical skills, an expert warned yesterday.

Poorly trained primary school teachers are failing to give effective physical education lessons, according to Dr Jeanne Keay, of Roehampton University.

They allow pupils to play ‘adult games’ such as football without first helping them to build movement skills, such as throwing, catching, jumping, hopping and even walking in a straight line.

Dr Keay, a former PE teacher, said parents also often failed to encourage children. She is demanding changes to the curriculum for PE to give a better grounding in key skills. She said: ‘We’ve seen that some young people are incapable of even the most basic of movement skills, like throwing or catching a ball and walking in a straight line. This is a huge concern.’

Research among more than 500 teachers by Dr Jon Spence, also of Roehampton, found that 47 per cent had been given ten hours or less of training in teaching PE. Dr Keay added: ‘The quality of training for teachers in primary schools is not even close to where it needs to be if we’re to ensure our children learn and develop well and so enjoy physical activity.’

SOURCE



3 June, 2012

Louisiana's bold bid to privatize schools

 Louisiana is embarking on the nation's boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.

The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others.

Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

"We are changing the way we deliver education," said Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who muscled the plan through the legislature this spring over fierce objections from Democrats and teachers unions. "We are letting parents decide what's best for their children, not government."

The concept of opening public schools to competition from the private sector has been widely promoted in recent years by well-funded education reform groups.

Of the plans so far put forward, Louisiana's plan is by far the broadest. This month, eligible families, including those with incomes nearing $60,000 a year, are submitting applications for vouchers to state-approved private schools.

That list includes some of the most prestigious schools in the state, which offer a rich menu of advanced placement courses, college-style seminars and lush grounds. The top schools, however, have just a handful of slots open. The Dunham School in Baton Rouge, for instance, has said it will accept just four voucher students, all kindergartners. As elsewhere, they will be picked in a lottery.

Far more openings are available at smaller, less prestigious religious schools, including some that are just a few years old and others that have struggled to attract tuition-paying students.

The school willing to accept the most voucher students -- 314 -- is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

"We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children," Carrier said.

Other schools approved for state-funded vouchers use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don't cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that vouchers can be used for religious education so long as the state is not promoting any one faith but letting parents choose where to enroll their children.

In Louisiana, Superintendent of Education John White said state officials have at one time or another visited all 120 schools in the voucher program and approved their curricula, including specific texts. He said the state plans more "due diligence" over the summer, including additional site visits to assess capacity.

In general, White said he will leave it to principals to be sure their curriculum covers all subjects kids need and leave it to parents to judge the quality of each private school on the list.

That infuriates the teachers union, which is weighing a lawsuit accusing the state of improperly diverting funds from public schools to private programs of questionable value.

"Because it's private, it's considered to be inherently better," said Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. "From a consumer perspective, it's buyer beware."

To date, private schools have not had to give their students state standardized tests, so there's no straightforward way for parents to judge their performance. Starting next year, any student on a voucher will have to take the tests; each private school must report individual results to parents and aggregate results to the state.

The 47-page bill setting up the voucher program does not outline any consequences for private schools that get poor test scores. Instead, it requires the superintendent of schools to come up with an "accountability system" by Aug. 1. Once he does, the system cannot be altered except by legislative vote.

White would not say whether he is prepared to pull vouchers from private schools that do poorly on tests.

He pointed out that many kids applying for vouchers are now enrolled in dismal public schools where two-thirds of the students can't read or do math at grade level and half will drop out before they graduate high school. Given that track record, he argues it's worth sending a portion of the roughly $3.5 billion a year the state spends on education to private schools that may have developed different ways to reach kids.

"To me, it's a moral outrage that the government would say, 'We know what's best for your child,'" White said. "Who are we to tell parents we know better?"

That message resonates with Terrica Dotson, whose 12-year-old son, Tyler, attends public school in Baton Rouge. He makes the honor roll, but his mom says he isn't challenged in math and science. This week she was out visiting private schools. "I want him to have the education he needs," she said.

The state has run a pilot voucher program for several years in New Orleans and is pleased with the results. The proportion of kids scoring at or above grade level jumped 7 percentage points among voucher students this year, far outpacing the citywide rise of 3 percentage points, state officials said.

Studies of other voucher programs in the U.S. have shown mixed results.

In Louisiana the vouchers are available to any low- to middle-income student who now attends a public school where at least 25 percent of students test below grade level.

Households qualify with annual income up to 250 percent of the poverty line, or $57,625 for a family of four.

Statewide, 380,000 kids, more than half the total student population of 700,000, are eligible for vouchers. There are only about 5,000 slots open in private schools for the coming year, but state officials expect that to ramp up quickly.

Officials have not estimated the price tag of these programs but expect the state will save money in the long run, because they believe the private sector can educate kids more cheaply than public schools.

Whether those savings will materialize is unclear.  By law, the value of each voucher can't exceed the sum the state would spend educating that child in public school -- on average, $8,800 a year. Small private schools often charge as little as $3,000 to $5,000 a year.

Yet at some private schools with low tuition, administrators contacted by Reuters said they would also ask the state to cover additional, unspecified fees, which would bring the cost to taxpayers close to the $8,800 cap. The law requires the state to cover both tuition and fees.

In the separate mini-voucher program due to launch in 2013, students across Louisiana, regardless of income, will be able to tap the state treasury to pay for classes that are offered by private vendors and not available in their regular public schools.

White said the state hopes to spur private industry to offer vocational programs and apprenticeships in exchange for vouchers worth up to $1,300 per student per class. Students can also use the mini-vouchers to design their own curriculum, tapping state funds to pay for online classes or private tutors if they're not satisfied with their public school's offerings.

State officials will review every private-sector class before approving it. They are still working out how to assess rigor and effectiveness.

The state has not done a formal fiscal analysis, but public school advocates say subtracting the costs of vouchers from their budgets is unfair because they have the same fixed costs -- from utilities to custodial services -- whether a child is in the building four hours a day or six. White responds that the state is not in the business of funding buildings; it's funding education.

While public schools fear fiscal disaster, many private school administrators see the voucher program as an economic lifeboat.

Valeria Thompson runs the Louisiana New School Academy in Baton Rouge, which prides itself on getting troubled students through middle and high school. Families have struggled to pay tuition, she said, and enrollment is down to about 60 kids.

"We're a good school," Thompson said, "but we've been struggling fiscally."

The vouchers have brought in a flood of new applicants and the promise of steady income from taxpayers. Thompson enrolled 17 new students in two days last month and hopes to bring in as many as 130. "I'm so grateful," she said. "You can't imagine how grateful."

SOURCE






Hundreds of British prep schools to break free from Labour's 'nappy [diaper] curriculum'

Hundreds of private schools may ditch Labour’s controversial ‘nappy curriculum’ amid a proposed overhaul, it was revealed yesterday.  Around 500 prep schools are likely to opt out of the early years foundation stage (EYFS) which sets out what should be expected of preschool and reception youngsters.

They believe that the imposition of a compulsory, national framework is a ‘fundamental breach of human rights’ which denies parents’ choice over the kind of education they want for their youngsters.

Ministers have undertaken a consultation on changes to the exemption system that would allow independent schools to discard the learning and development requirements of the EYFS if inspectors judge them to be ‘good’ or better.

The Government is also proposing to allow groups of schools, such as the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) to apply to be exempt from these goals, according to the Times Educational Supplement.

However, maintained schools, academies and free schools would not be allowed to apply for an exemption.

The EYFS has been a compulsory requirement for all nurseries, pre-schools and childminders since 2008.

Under the system, every nursery, childminder and reception class in England has had to monitor children’s progress towards 69 centrally set ‘early learning goals’ up to the age of five.

The EYFS was recently reviewed by Dame Clare Tickell and a slimmed down version is due to come into force in September.  The Tickell review recommended that the framework should continue to apply to all providers, but suggested that the Government review the exemption process for independent schools.

Private schools have long argued against the compulsory nature of the EYFS which they believe is a contradiction of Government policy.  This is because independent schools do not have to follow the national curriculum from Year One onwards.

David Hanson, chief executive of the IAPS, told the TES: ‘For our schools, it is a principle that is at stake, and that principle is parental choice.  ‘It has never been about the EYFS per se.

‘Our fundamental concern was that the Government imposed a methodology on all schools. We believe that it is a fundamental breach of human rights: parents should be able to choose the education they want for their child.

‘Undoubtedly the EYFS has improved the poorest settings, but at the same time it has frustrated the best practitioners.’

Mr Hanson added: ‘We represent 500 high-quality schools. I think the vast majority of schools will technically opt out but still continue to use the best parts of the EYFS.

‘We don’t have an argument in terms of the principle of developing emerging literacy and numeracy and the goals themselves make sense.  ‘But it’s to do with professional autonomy. We want teachers to be able to use their professional discretion rather than being compelled to follow a Government strategy.’

But Megan Pacey, chief executive of charity, Early Education, insisted that exemptions ‘do very little to support overall quality improvements’.

And Bernadette Duffy, head of the Thomas Coram Centre in London and a member of the Tickell review’s expert panel, added: ‘The framework is really good for focusing on how children learn and that seems as appropriate for children in the independent sector as any other sector.’

SOURCE




Thousands of middle class British students WILL lose out in university equality drive, warns official

Thousands of deserving middle class students face missing out on university places in a drive to widen the social mix of students, the head of the admissions service has suggested.

Mary Curnock Cook raised a series of concerns over the so-called social engineering of university admissions.

Under the policy, universities are expected to make background checks on applicants and use the information to reduce entry grades for poorer students.

But Mrs Curnock Cook, chief executive of UCAS, warned that ‘somebody has to lose out’ unless the total number of university places increases.

‘I don’t really know if anybody has identified who they think that should be,’ she said.

Despite the Government’s ‘push on widening participation’, the overall number of funded places ‘is not increasing’, she added.

Her remarks suggest that wealthier students would be squeezed. The UCAS chief went on to admit she had ‘real concerns’ over the quality of official data supplied to universities on pupils’ backgrounds.

The system could result in discrimination against deprived pupils who received bursaries to go to private schools while giving an advantage to wealthy pupils at under-achieving schools, she suggested.

The UCAS chief is the most senior higher education official to question the use of so-called contextual data.

Her remarks to a conference came on the day Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg launched a major social mobility drive aimed at breaking the grip of middle-class families on top jobs and sought-after universities.

The strategy backs the use of  contextual data  – information on applicants’ school, family background and postcode – to help universities decide who to admit.

UCAS already supplies universities with data on the performance of an applicant’s school and average levels of free school meals in their area.

Questions on the standard university application form ask candidates whether they have ever been in care and whether their parents have any history of attending university.

Some may consider separate information, such as levels of higher education in an applicant’s postcode.

But Mrs Curnock Cook admitted that ‘to be honest...we can’t access high enough quality information to be really sure that that contextual data service is serving its purpose’.

She added: ‘I have some real concerns, anyway, about whether the contextual data is sophisticated enough, even were it accurate.’

The UCAS chief went on to warn that poorer youngsters were effectively being asked to declare publicly ‘you live in a poor area, you go to a rubbish school, that your parents are very poorly educated’.

Some may be embarrassed at being considered a ‘widening participation applicant’, she suggested. Addressing the Westminster Higher Education Forum, she quoted Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, who took part in a BBC radio discussion on university admissions.

‘This is what Claire Fox said on the Moral Maze recently – “I’m very glad nobody took account of my accent, my social background, or investigated my parents’ lack of education to do me a favour, because I never would have been taken seriously”.’

Mrs Curnock Cook told her audience of university officials: ‘It is worth bearing that in mind when you are thinking about how to handle widening participation and contextual information.’

SOURCE



1 June, 2012

When Schools Are Like Jails — Or Worse

A 17-year-old Texas honor student has been jailed for missing too much school. Diane Tran works both full-time and part-time jobs, in addition to taking advanced and college level courses, and her parents have split up and moved away, leaving her in charge of younger siblings, making it hard to keep to the exact school day. Judge Lanny Moriarty was not sympathetic: “If you let one run loose, what are you gonna do with the rest of ‘em?” [CBS Atlanta].

As one commenter noted, “The judge’s thought process is so primitive it’s just gut wrenching. His response is literally, ‘If you let one of them loose, What are you gonna do with the rest of them?’ What are humans? Animals? How on earth does that justify the fact of detaining a 17-year-old girl working overtime to support her sister and brother?”

If she were an adult college student, no one would fault her for occasionally missing class in order to earn a living or take care of relatives. (At Harvard Law School, I missed virtually every class in my secured transactions course, but still received a “B.”) Indeed, it would be deemed praiseworthy for her to earn academic honors despite juggling shouldering such heavy, competing burdens and responsibilities.

But Diane Tran, who has been forced to grow up fast and assume the mantle of adulthood, gets sent to jail for doing so. Why? Because the age of compulsory school attendance has been increased from 16 to 18 in many states. Most recently, “answering a call from President Obama,” Maryland increased the mandatory school attendance age from 16 to 18. Increased mandatory attendance ages deprive some impoverished students who are old enough to work of the needed flexibility to earn a living or care for siblings or sick relatives.

They also increase risks to school safety by forcing bored underachievers who are not interested in learning to keep attending school even after age 16 — resulting in some of them acting out, disrupting class, or even committing acts of violence.

In reality, 17-year-old students forced to stay in school seldom learn much; their learning is “typically quite low,” says a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Forcing students to attend school longer creates jobs for teachers’ unions that seek to require schooling of some sort until age 21, and leads to truancy prosecutions against parents unable to get their stubborn, fully-grown offspring to school.

In Florida, a 17-year-old student with asthma nearly died after a school nurse denied him the use of his own inhaler, because his mother hadn’t signed a form. Then the nurse locked the door and watched him lose consciousness while refusing to call 911. There is absolutely no reason a 17-year-old student who is old enough to drive or join the military cannot be trusted to use his own inhaler as prescribed by a physician. The school district defends the nurse’s outrageous actions.

If a parent had withheld an inhaler like this, it would be considered child abuse. If a prison did it to a prisoner, it would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment. But school officials, who cite the doctrine of in loco parentis when they want to restrict students’ free-speech and privacy rights, hypocritically refuse to accept any responsibility for the lives of their students even when the risk to the student’s life is created by the school’s own rules (like rules forcing students verging on adulthood to leave their inhaler with the school nurse).

SOURCE






‘Meaningful Work’: Elites harm low-income people and society by denigrating “menial” work

By Thomas Sowell

‘Education” is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.

When I saw signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour.

No one would have had to tell that illiterate farmer’s daughter not to stand by the side of a highway, trying to hitch a ride with strangers, as too many college girls have done, sometimes with results that ranged all the way up to their death.

The dangers that a lack of realism can bring to many educated people are completely overshadowed by the dangers to a whole society created by the unrealistic views of the world promoted in many educational institutions.

It was painful, for example, to see an internationally renowned scholar say that what low-income young people needed was “meaningful work.” But this is a notion common among educated elites, regardless of how counterproductive its consequences may be for society at large, and for low-income youngsters especially.

What is “meaningful work”?

The underlying notion seems to be that it is work whose performance is satisfying or enjoyable in itself. But if that is the only kind of work that people should have to do, how is garbage to be collected, or how are bedpans to be emptied in hospitals, or jobs with life-threatening dangers to be performed?

Does anyone imagine that firemen enjoy going into burning homes and buildings to rescue people trapped by the flames? That soldiers going into combat think it is fun?

In the real world, many things are done simply because they have to be done, not because doing them brings immediate pleasure to those who do them. Some people take justifiable pride in working to take care of their families, whether or not the work itself is great.

Some of our more utopian intellectuals lament that many people work “just for the money.” They do not like a society where A produces what B wants, simply in order that B will produce what A wants, with money being an intermediary device facilitating such exchanges.

Some would apparently prefer a society where all-wise elites would decide what each of us “needs” or “deserves.” The actual history of societies formed on that principle — histories often stained, or even drenched, in blood — is of little interest to those who mistake wishful thinking for idealism.

At the very least, many intellectuals do not want the poor or the young to have to take “menial” jobs. But people who are paying their own money, as distinguished from the taxpayers’ money, for someone to do a job are unlikely to part with hard cash unless that job actually needs doing, whether or not that job is called “menial” by others.

People who lack the skills to take on more prestigious jobs can either remain idle and live as parasites on others or take the jobs for which they are currently qualified, and then move up the ladder as they acquire more experience. People who are flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s on New Year’s Day are seldom flipping hamburgers there when Christmastime comes.

Those relatively few statistics that follow actual flesh-and-blood individuals over time show them moving massively from one income bracket to another over time, starting at the bottom and moving up as they acquire skills and experience.

Telling young people that some jobs are “menial” is a huge disservice to them and to the whole society. Subsidizing them in idleness while they wait for “meaningful work” is just asking for trouble, both for them and for all those around them.

SOURCE





Free pre-school education for poorest toddlers 'to give them fair crack of whip', British Liberal leader  says

That such schemes have never worked either in Britain or the USA is a lesson that "sound-good" liberals are incapable of learning

Free pre-school education is being extended to two-year-old children in the poorest areas of the country to boost their chances in life.

Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, will also say today that parents of children on free places can drop their children earlier and collect them later.  Mr Clegg said the changes were designed to help children from the poorest backgrounds get the best start in life.

More than 800,000 three and four year olds nationally are currently eligible for 15 hours per week of free early education.

The plan had been to extend this to 150,000 two year olds from the poorest families from September 2013, rising to around 260,000 in the following year. However, Mr Clegg said that a £3million trial – affecting around 1,000 children - will now start in September in 10 trial areas.

The time when parents can pick up and drop children is also being increased from 8am to 7am, and from 6pm to 7pm, to suit better parents work commitments.

Parents will also be able to spread their free nursery places over two, rather than three, days, which will allow them to leave their children for longer on individual days.

Mr Clegg said: “Every child should have a fair crack at the whip from the start and be able to go on to fulfil their potential. “By getting things right from the off we’re making sure our youngsters are ready to learn when they start school so that they get the most out of their education.”

The news came as a Government review is expected to say that people from poorer backgrounds from the North are least likely to get ahead in their careers in Britain.

Some professions – such as politics and the law – were becoming more elitist, and were virtually shut off to people from working class backgrounds.

SOURCE






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


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


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


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray