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31 May, 2011

N.J. Senate Republicans discuss strategy following state Supreme Court education funding decision

New Jersey Senate Republicans have been asked to consider taking a unified position on public education that includes removing the Supreme Court from school funding decisions and granting the Legislature the power to determine what it means to provide a "thorough and efficient" education in public schools.

A Republican strategy memo, laid out in an e-mail from Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union) to his caucus Friday and obtained by The Associated Press, asks fellow GOP senators for feedback on a three-pronged education plan in wake of a Supreme Court order requiring the state to invest $500 million more in 31 poor school districts.

"The purpose of this e-mail is to put forth what I believe to be the strongest course of action for the caucus as a whole and solicit your feedback and/or approval or disapproval," Kean wrote.

The plan includes supporting a constitutional amendment ending judicial interference in school funding decisions and giving the state wiggle room to reduce education funding in lean budget years. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Steven Oroho of Sparta and co-sponsored by the other 15 members of the GOP caucus, was introduced in January but hasn't gained traction. It would require voter approval.

"It was meant as a framework for discussion within the caucus in light of the latest Supreme Court decision," Adam Bauer, communications director for the Senate Republicans, said of the e-mail. "It's a proposed plan for discussion — nothing's formalized, nothing's finalized."

Many Republicans, including Gov. Chris Christie, have disagreed with prior Supreme Court rulings on school funding, which have repeatedly ordered more funding for poor districts, known as Abbotts, in cities lacking a sufficient tax base to fully fund public education. Most recently, the court determined that Christie's education cuts were too deep to provide poor children with the "thorough and efficient" education the constitution requires. The order scrambled the state budget-making process weeks before a balanced budget must be adopted by June 30 and left some clamoring for the Legislature to assume a stiffer posture against the activist court.

"I have a plan for the Republicans, keep the funding formula intact," said Senate Democratic Leader Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex), an advocate for public education funding. "And we need to build in models of successful school districts. The great equalizer is having a quality educational system that is accessible for all."

Besides pushing the Oroho amendment, Kean's approach includes advocating a change in the school funding formula so it allocates more money to suburban districts without shortchanging city schools, and embracing Gov. Chris Christie's education reform agenda, including ending traditional teacher tenure, tying teacher evaluations to student achievement and establishing merit pay.

Kean suggests a push to make the Abbott districts more accountable for the money they receive, but he doesn't specify where additional funding would come from for 174 other districts the court says are inadequately funded. "This course of action stays true to Republican principles, complies with public opinion, removes the court from school funding decisions, and requires accountability within the education system," Kean said in the memo. "It satisfies the sentiments expressed at our last caucus without alienating large swaths of the public."

Kean cites recent polling data to build his case to the caucus, saying solid majorities of women, independent and Republican voters all oppose education cuts in suburban and poor districts. "Cuts to education are deeply unpopular, even among Republicans; beating up on Abbotts isn't wildly popular with Republicans, let alone anyone else; everyone understands that money isn't the best way to improve education, but they're not willing to give it up; and reform proposals put forward by Gov. Christie and GOP senators dealing with tenure, merit pay, and salary caps are stone cold winners," Kean wrote.

Kean's memo doesn't suggest possible support for other proposed constitutional amendments sponsored by Republicans in the Senate or Assembly that allowing certain court orders to be defied or giving the Legislature final authority over public education. It also doesn't mention an amendment proposed by Sen. Michael Doherty, R-Oxford, that would do away with extra funding for poor children, and would provide equal school aid for each student no matter where they live.

SOURCE




Perry's higher education policy taking on a tea party flavor

Rick Perry had been governor of Texas for all of 13 days when he announced in January 2001 that higher education would be his top legislative priority. He called for voucher-style funding, an expansion of online learning and a dramatic increase in student financial aid.

More than 10 years later, reinventing public higher education remains a work in progress for the state's longest-serving governor.

That effort has taken an unusual turn lately, with prominent alumni, donors, business leaders and university officials questioning Perry's initiatives and those of his appointees to university governing boards. The governor, for his part, has accused critics, whom he did not name, of lying.

"The big lie making the rounds in Texas is that elected or appointed officials want to undermine or de-emphasize research at our colleges and universities," Perry wrote in a recent column in the American-Statesman. "That disinformation campaign is nothing more than an attempt to shut down an open discussion about ways to improve our state universities and make them more effective, accountable, affordable and transparent."

The GOP governor's higher education message has long had a populist tone, but it has taken on a tea party flavor of late. That's not surprising inasmuch as he has cultivated a political profile since the early days of the last gubernatorial campaign that emphasizes smaller, cheaper and more economically minded government, said James Henson , director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.

At a time of declining state funding for colleges and universities, for instance, Perry has urged governing boards to develop $10,000 bachelor's degree programs and freeze tuition for four years.

"From a political point of view, the governor is on fairly safe territory being critical of the status quo in higher education," Henson said, adding that his approach appeals to his voting base more than to traditional Republicans, some of whom have been critical of the Perry administration on higher education.

Perry's pronouncements could mesh with a strategy to position him for a presidential or vice presidential candidacy, Henson said. The governor said last week that he would think about running for president.

"Conservative think tanks, which I think he listens to and trusts, have been very suspicious of the tenure system and the research mission of a lot of tier one universities," said Daron Shaw, a professor of government at UT. "It's not bad politics (to challenge the status quo), given his constituency and perhaps long-term interests."

Debate over the future of public higher education in Texas reached a full boil in March when Gene Powell, Perry's choice for chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, hired a $200,000-a-year adviser who had written dismissively of much academic research. The adviser, Rick O'Donnell, was dismissed after charging that officials were suppressing data on professors' salaries and workloads.

O'Donnell previously worked for charitable foundations run by Jeff Sandefer, a Perry donor and architect of several Perry-endorsed recommendations, including bonus pay for teachers based solely on student evaluations. When the Texas A&M University System adopted such a bonus system, the Association of American Universities called it a simplistic approach.

Some of the governor's appointees to the UT board, including Alex Cranberg and Brenda Pejovich , have pressed the nine UT academic campuses to pull together extensive data on faculty salaries, workloads, research grants and other measures of productivity — an exercise that UT President William Powers Jr., the Ex-Students' Association and others have faulted because it does not account for the quality and impact of professors' work.

Powell has both defended the regents' right to request such information and criticized an analysis of the draft data by an Ohio University researcher, who concluded that 20 percent of UT-Austin professors instruct most of the school's students.

The broad outlines of Perry's higher education policy, with an emphasis on affordability, access and accountability, first emerged on Jan. 3, 2001 , when he began crisscrossing the state to promote proposals from his Special Commission on 21st Century Colleges and Universities, a panel he established in 1999 while he was lieutenant governor.

The most important recommendation called for overhauling the way public colleges and universities are funded. Instead of appropriating money to schools, the state would place it in the hands of students.

More HERE




British School reprimands seven-year-old boys for playing 'army game'

A primary school has been condemned by parents for disciplining two seven-year-old boys after teachers ruled playing army games amounted to "threatening behaviour". Staff at Nathaniel Newton Infant School in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, reprimanded the two boys after they were seen making pistol shapes with their fingers.

Teachers broke up the imaginary classroom shoot-out and contacted the youngsters’ parents, warning them that such behaviour would not be tolerated. The school, which caters for around 180 pupils aged four to seven, said the gun gestures were “unacceptable” and were not permitted at school.

However, parents have described the reaction as “outrageous”, while family groups warned that “wrapping children in cotton wool” damages their upbringing.

Defending its policy, a spokesman for Nathaniel Newton Infant School said: “Far from stopping children from playing we actively encourage it. “However a judgement call has to be made if playing turns into unacceptable behaviour. "The issue here was about hand gestures being made in the shape of a gun towards members of staff which is understandably unacceptable, particularly in the classroom."

A father of one of the boys who was disciplined said: "It’s ridiculous. How can you tell a seven-year-old boy he cannot play guns and armies with his friends.

"Another parent was called for the same reason. We were told to reprimand our son for this and to tell him he cannot play 'guns' anymore. "The teacher said the boys should be reprimanded for threatening behaviour which would not be tolerated at the school.”

The community primary school was rated as “good” overall in an Ofsted report published last year, but warned that children oughtt to have greater freedom to play. The inspectors praised pupils’ behaviour as “outstanding”, telling them in a letter: “Your behaviour is excellent and you work very well together.” They added that they had asked teachers to “make it easier for the children to play and learn outside”.

Parenting groups condemned the school’s reaction to the children’s game of soldiers, warning that it risked causing a rift between the school and parents.

Margaret Morrissey, founder of the family lobby group Parents Outloud, said: “It is madness to try to indoctrinate children aged seven with political correctness in this way. “Children have played cowboys and Indians like this for generations and it does them absolutely no harm whatsoever. “In my experience, it is the children who are banned from playing innocent games like this who then go on to develop a fascination with guns.

“We cannot wrap our children in cotton wool. Allowing them to take a few risks and play games outside is an essential part of growing up. “By reprimanding these youngsters at this age, the school makes a very big issue out of something trivial, which will divide the parents and teachers.”

The case follows a string of similar incidents in which children’s playtime activities have been curbed by overzealous staff over health and safety concerns. Earlier this year, a Liverpool school banned youngsters from playing football with anything other than sponge balls amid fears youngsters might get hurt.

Research last month also found that one in six British schools had banned conkers over concerns of pupils being hit in the face. Other traditional playground games such as British bulldog and even leapfrog are prohibited at 30 per cent 10 per cent of schools respectively, a study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union found.

Marcus Jones, the Tory MP for Nuneaton, said: “It is quite apparent that the seven-year-olds would be playing an innocent game. "This is political correctness gone mad. When I was that age that type of game was common place and I don't remember anyone coming to any harm from it."

SOURCE



30 May, 2011

Why College is Not For Everyone

Katie Kieffer

Peter Thiel is rocking the boat of higher education. The libertarian entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and co-founder of PayPal is sending liberal college administrators into a tizzy with his latest push to encourage young innovators to ditch college for two years and pursue entrepreneurship.

Last week, Thiel awarded 20 young people with “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellowships: $100,000 and two years of mentorship to develop entrepreneurial ventures in science and technology.

Thiel’s dismisses conventional wisdom, which says that college is the necessary next-step for success after high school. He understands that conventional wisdom is conventional ignorance now that the American university system is broken.

Today’s students pay bloated prices so universities can hire a fleet of non-academic staff to monitor student speech codes, distribute cookies in campus lounges and court elites like Bill Clinton to speak on-campus and warn young people never to believe: “There is no such thing as a good tax…”

Tuition is rising and debt loads are mounting while students at institutions as prestigious as Stanford’s Graduate School of Business are failing to learn basic skills. When Stanford graduate students rely on private coaches outside the classroom to teach them how to write for business, you know higher education is deteriorating.

I took a hybrid route for my own higher education. I went to college and started an entrepreneurial venture at the same time. My path was unique and challenging, so I understand first-hand that Thiel is offering young entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime.

In college, your liberal arts professors may provide you with tips on how to outline your thoughts, but they generally expect that you already know how to give a 10-minute presentation or write a 15-page paper. Meanwhile, your business professors do not teach you how to run a business. Rather, they lecture you on business models, assign you to read case studies and tell you to look for an internship.

Looking back, I realize that I really did not need college. I think many young people do not need college to become successful. The real world lessons I took away from my college experience came from running a conservative student newspaper on a shoestring budget out of my dorm room and from the experience I gained during my internship in commercial real estate.

Today, historic numbers of high-school graduates are going to college. More than ever, parents are pouring their hard-earned savings into college educations for their children.

Venture capitalist, author and parent James Altucher argues that it is irrational for parents to blindly pay for their child’s higher education. New York Magazine reports Altucher as saying: “What am I going to do? When [my daughters are] 18 years old, just hand them $200,000 to go off and have a fun time for four years? Why would I want to do that? … The cost of college in the past 30 years has gone up tenfold. Health care has only gone up sixfold, and inflation has only gone up threefold. Not only is it a scam, but the college presidents know it. That’s why they keep raising tuition.”

It is not cruel and unusual punishment to expect an 18-year-old to finance his or her own higher education. In fact, forcing them to do so could help them decide whether they even need college. My parents told me, “You’re on your own for college.” So, I chose to be a college student and an entrepreneur simultaneously because I had a boatload of self-motivation, I was blessed with an academic scholarship that allowed me to graduate debt-free, and, because I had developed a growing network of accomplished mentors who generously coached me along the way.

Parents, before you feel tempted to write out that six-figure tuition check, consider doing yourselves and your child a favor by honestly assessing the skills that your child demonstrates. If your child thrives within structure or if they want to pursue law or medicine, then college is likely the right path. However, if your child thrives in a creative environment, is self-driven and is constantly innovating, you should consider offering them your own version of Thiel’s 20 Under 20 fellowship as an alternative to subsidizing their college tuition.

Thiel contends that many parents shy away from even thinking about a nontraditional path for their children because they view college as an insurance policy. “I think that’s the way probably a lot of parents think about it. It’s a way for their kids to be safe … an insurance policy against falling out of the middle class. …Why are we spending ten times as much for insurance as we were 30 years ago?”

That’s a good question. More high-school students and their parents should consider whether there is an entrepreneurial, Thiel-style alternative to success before they impulsively jump into college debt.

SOURCE





Crying Rape

Mike Adams

People often assume that self-described liberals are more supportive of due process than self-described conservatives. That certainly isn’t the case when we talk about the illiberal bureaucrats who run the United States Department of Education.

The notion that an adult charged with a felony should be put on trial using the same standard of evidence used for someone who has been issued a parking ticket is absurd. In fact, it is more than absurd. It is offensive to well-established principles of due process and fundamental fairness.

Recently, however, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced new guidelines that will force due process to take a back seat to political correctness. These guidelines will apply to sexual harassment and felony sexual assault cases.

The OCR has decided to teach universities something they already know; namely, that sexual assault and sexual harassment are serious offenses. In the process, however, they are putting innocent students at risk of being wrongly convicted of offenses that could potentially destroy their careers and reputations.

According to the new OCR guidelines, any college that accepts federal funding or federal student loans (close to 100% of our nation’s colleges) must now employ a "preponderance of the evidence" standard of proof in sexual harassment and sexual assault cases. This lowered standard replaces the traditionally accepted standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which, according to most triers of fact, is close to 100% confidence of guilt. In contrast, “preponderance of evidence” means the campus judiciary only needs to be 50.01% confident that a person is guilty of a given offense – even if that offense is rape, which, regardless of degree, is always a serious felony.

This mandate from the federal government will have profound real-life costs for real students. If we learned anything from the infamous Duke Lacrosse case it is this: Academia is quick to blame people for creating a “rape culture” on campus and slow to take responsibility for false accusations.

Unfortunately, Duke was not an isolated case. At Stanford, student jurors in sexual misconduct cases are actually given "training materials" that say things like, "Everyone should be very, very cautious in accepting a man's claim that he has been wrongly accused of abuse or violence” and “An abuser almost never 'seems like the type.'"

In other words, even highly respected universities like Stanford try to create unfair and partial juries prior to rape adjudications – in clear violation of the spirit of the 6th Amendment (Do you remember when liberals cared about the “spirit of the law”?). Adding a mere “preponderance” standard to such a toxic environment would be a recipe for disaster – disaster in the form of wrongful felony convictions.

The OCR mandates are not merely confined to actions. They apply to students' speech, too. Columbia University already lists "love letters" as a form of sexual harassment. The University of California, Santa Cruz, classifies using "terms of endearment" as sexual harassment. (Who could have ever imagined that one could be endeared and harassed at the same time?). At Yale, "unspoken sexual innuendo such as voice inflection" is considered sexual harassment. The absurdities are seemingly endless in 21st Century “hire” education.

Shortly after the evidence revealed that the accuser in the infamous Duke Lacrosse case was lying, I wrote a letter to Duke Professor K. Holloway. She was the ringleader of the “Duke 88” – a bunch of professors who publicly accused the Duke Lacrosse players of both rape and racism before they had their day in court. In my letter, I urged her to take responsibility for damaging the reputations of innocent students at her own university. Her response is printed below in its entirety:

“Mr. [sic] Adams: You have made the error of anticipating that I have some interest in what you have to say. I do not. K. Holloway.”

Professor Holloway may not be a rapist. But she is clearly a racist. Nonetheless, she has inspired me to write to the OCR with a modest proposal for handling sexual assault cases on college campuses.

Under my plan, any time a collegiate man is charged with rape his accuser is automatically charged with criminal libel. Is she fails to prove her case then she is automatically convicted and expelled.

I plan to write to Professor Holloway because I anticipate that she has some interest in what I have to say. My anticipation might be in error. But, unlike sanctimonious feminists, I’m prepared to face the consequences if I’m wrong.

SOURCE




British parents are choosing smaller preparatory schools

There’s not a trace of Hogwarts about Belhaven Hill, a small boarding prep school on the East Lothian coast, which is exactly the way headmaster Innes MacAskill likes it. The house itself looks and feels like a large family home, and at weekends MacAskill and his wife, Sandy, take a bunch of boarders down to the local supermarket to buy ingredients for the “come dine with the headmaster” contest.

The traditional values and homely atmospheres of small prep schools such as Belhaven seem to appeal to the post-credit crisis generation of parents. While the recession has prompted a fall in pupil numbers across the independent sector as a whole, Belhaven has grown by 5 per cent over the past year – to a grand total of 118 pupils. Figures from the Independent Schools Council show that almost 75 per cent of its 154 small prep schools are either maintaining their numbers or expanding.

In terms of fees, the ISC’s small prep schools (with a maximum of close to 150 pupils) are cheaper than their larger counterparts. Average day pupil fees at an ISC small prep school total just over £2,700 per term compared to £3,464 at a larger ISC prep school (with an average of just under 300 pupils).

But according to Henry Knight, headmaster of Woodcote House School in Surrey, which has 100 pupils, parents feel they’re getting even more value for money from the individually tailored approach offered by smaller prep schools, than from the one-size-fits-all style of larger establishments. His school has grown by more than 10 per cent in two years. “We know every boy, and understand exactly what it is that makes them tick,” he says.

Marcus Peel, who heads Malsis School in Yorkshire, which has 120 pupils and is maintaining numbers, believes that smaller prep schools offer more opportunities for pupils to participate. “In a small community such as ours everybody is somebody,” he says. “There are boys in our 1st XV who would never get near a first team in a bigger prep school and it’s the same for musicals and theatrical events.”

Mark Pyper, until recently headmaster of Gordonstoun in Moray, Scotland and himself an alumnus of a small prep school, observes that the quality of individual pastoral care is generally better at smaller, more intimate schools. “The experience of personal development in a family-type environment is something which the small prep school is uniquely placed to offer,” he says.

But if you want your child to go to a top ranking senior school, should you not be considering a larger, high-flying prep school? Richard Brown, headmaster of Dorset House, prep school in West Sussex, whose pupils go on to, among others, Winchester, Harrow and Wellington, insists that size has little impact on the quality of education. “There is no lack of rigour in a small school,” he says. “Results can be attained much more effectively when children are happy. It is about inclusivity, partnership and preparing children for today’s challenges – not wrapping them in cotton wool.”

Leadership is an intrinsic part of life in a small prep school, according to Knight, and this sets pupils up for the rough and tumble of senior school. “Everyone will be given the chance to lead at some level,” he says. “Not just as prefects and sports captains but also as tuck, chapel and dormitory monitors.” At Hanford School, a full-boarding establishment for 100 girls in rural Dorset, there are four committees of sixth formers who carry out roles around the school and look after homesick juniors.

Barnaby Lenon, headmaster of Harrow School in North West London, notes that smaller schools instil a sense of duty and self-confidence: “We find that boys from small schools have an ingrained confidence and sense of responsibility which comes from having had leadership roles at prep school,” he says.

The down side of a smaller prep school is usually the facilities – or lack of them. There’s a good chance the sports centre and theatre will be less sophisticated than at a larger prep school. But Richard Brown, whose school has grown by 12 per cent this year to 144 pupils, believes the smaller schools make up for this by offering an “authentic” childhood experience instead. “Small prep schools provide an antidote to a world where children grow up too quickly,” he says.

Malsis School is dotted with dens, with trees to climb and a stream to dam, while Hanford School has ponies, dogs, cats, chickens and large kitchen gardens. In summer children are taken riding through the countryside by “galloping matrons” before jumping into a (chilly) outdoor swimming pool.

Tom Dawson, headmaster of the 100-place Sunningdale School in Berkshire, which featured in a BBC Two documentary last autumn and has grown by 10 per cent this year, believes that flashy facilities can be a red herring. “If parents want a £5 million sports hall and a 50 metre pool, bedrooms with en suite facilities and plasma screens then they will go to a big school which can offer all that,” he says. “But if they want a school where every member of staff really knows all the children, where there is a real family atmosphere, where they won’t be lost in a crowd, then they will choose a small school.”

SOURCE



29 May, 2011

Perpetuating Federal Spending on Education

The tea partiers are demanding that Congress not raise the debt ceiling but instead avoid default by cutting spending dramatically. Federal spending on education emerges as the discretionary item in the federal budget most available for the knife, and a House bill is being introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., that lists 43 education programs to be cut.

We've spent $2 trillion on education since federal aid began in 1965. The specified goals were to improve student achievement, eliminate or narrow the gap between upper-income and low-income students, and increase graduation rates from high school and college.

We have little or nothing to show for the taxpayers' generosity. Even Education Secretary Arne Duncan admitted that 82 percent of public schools should be ranked as failing.

So how will the army of educrats, whose jobs depend on billions of dollars of federal handouts, save their jobs? They've come up with an audacious plan that pretends to be useful in enabling them to discover what works and what doesn't, but it is so large and complicated that it would take years and require a huge computer-savvy payroll and billions of taxpayers' dollars.

And incidentally, it would be illegal because it's based on using executive branch regulations to override federal statutes.

This plan calls for a computerized system to track all Americans from cradle to grave by cross-linking all their school and college academic and extra-curricular records, including tests and appraisals by supervisors and peers, with health, welfare, employment and income data. The data gatherers used to talk about collecting K-12 data, and then they moved to Pre-K-16, and now their lingo is pre-birth to entry into the workforce.

States already collect a lot of data that have nothing to do with students' academic achievement, including Social Security numbers, family income, medical exams, and criminal and administrative penalties. Now the plan is to enter additional data on preschool experience, prenatal care, daycare, early childhood education and after-school activities.

This plan would computerize and combine information not only from the Department of Education, but also from the Department of Health and Human Services (which would include Head Start, WIC, Parents as Teachers and after-school programs) and from the Department of Labor. The goal is to give the government access to a giant computer data warehouse with personal information on all children.

This data-gathering plan is another example of the overreaching dictatorial bureaucracy trying to restrict parents' rights over the care and upbringing of their own children. The liberals really mean it when they say they want the village (i.e., the government) to raise and teach children, control their school curriculum and ultimately decide what adult job they can get.

The people who seek to control the lives and education of our children should be restrained from implementing this plan by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), formerly known as the Buckley Amendment, which passed in 1974. FERPA states that school and college records cannot be disclosed, or transferred to other agencies, without consent of the parents of kids under age 18 or the student if over 18, unless the information is not personally identifiable or other exceptions apply.

Both the No Child Left Behind law, which applies to elementary and secondary schools, and the Higher Education Act, which applies to colleges, reaffirmed FERPA's prohibition on the government developing a national or interagency database of personal information on students. But the Obama administration is now trying to get around FERPA by the subterfuge of having the states build the databases and assign each child a different ID number.

States are bribed to participate in this vast data collection by grants from a pot of federal money and by the threat of withholding other federal grants if states don't comply.

The Obama administration looks upon schools and colleges as giant reservoirs of young people who can be indoctrinated with "social justice" (i.e., America is somehow an oppressive, unjust society), multiculturalism instead of patriotism, and diversity in moral and immoral behaviors.

The people and groups working to achieve national control of education curriculum view the collection of enormous amounts of personal information about every student on a longitudinal basis, with tracking from "pre-birth" and preschool through postgraduate experience and into the labor force, as the essential path to achieve control of school curriculum and to guide kids' opinions about America.

This type of collection of personal information on all children is the mark of a totalitarian state, not a free America. It is reminiscent of the notorious "dangan" or dossier that Communist China maintains on every citizen (in folders stacked in giant warehouses in the pre-computer age), with complete information on every child through his years of school, which is then available to his employer when the kid goes into the labor force.

SOURCE





Teachers' children 'prioritised' in British school admissions overhaul

Schools will be able to prioritise places for the children of teachers, cooks, cleaners and caretakers under a Government reform of admissions rules, it emerged today. They will be given new powers to prioritise sons or daughters of staff members for the first time as part of a plan to give more power to individual schools. Ministers insisted the change would allow heads to attract the best candidates and ease the burden on parent teachers.

But the move is likely to raise fears it could lead to a further reduction in the number of places available for other families in local catchment areas.

The Coalition’s draft school admissions code also requires all schools to admit children from Armed Forces families before other pupils and gives flagship academies and free schools the power to prioritise poor youngsters eligible for free school meals.

In another new development, the document will allow twins and other multiple birth children to be admitted to infant classes – even if means pushing them above to 30-pupil legal limit – to stop brothers or sisters being separated at a young age.

Teaching unions warned that the move could also lead to a rise in class sizes, undermining children’s education.

But the Government insisted the new code meant more parents would be able to get their children into the best state schools. It was also revealed that all schools – including selective state grammars – would be able to expand to take in more pupils.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said: “The school system has rationed good schools. Some families can go private or move house. Many families cannot afford to do either.

“The system must change. Schools should be run by teachers who know the children’s names and they should be more accountable to parents, not politicians.

“Good schools should be able to grow and we need more of them.”

But Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the number of special interest groups awarded reserved places could lead to unsustainably large classes in some schools.

Since 1997, primary schools have been banned from squeezing more than 30 infants into the same lesson.

“The idea that primary class sizes could go beyond 30 for whatever reason is a backward step,” she said. “This is of no benefit to anyone, least of all children.

“Large class sizes will increase the dependency upon teaching assistants who, while providing very useful support and back up in the classroom, have been shown to have little effect on attainment.

“We need to see class sizes reduced to at least 20 to ensure pupils get the maximum support and attention from their teacher.”

The measures announced today form part of the Government's plans to slim down the admissions code, amid concerns that it had become too unwieldy.

The code - which will go out to consultation before being introduced for children starting school in 2013 - is around 50 pages long, compared to the old version which stretched to around 130 pages.

In one controversial development, schools can decide to prioritise staff during the admissions process. They must set out their own definition of "staff" - possibly widening it out beyond teachers to include all support workers, including cleaners and caretakers.

The new proposals also include:

* Increasing the number of places available in good schools by making it easier for popular establishments to take more pupils;

* Banning local authorities from using area-wide "lotteries";

* Giving parents more time to appeal after being rejected from the school of their choice, with the current 10-day deadline being extended to 30 days;

* Reducing bureaucracy by requiring schools and local councils to consult on admissions arrangements every seven years, rather than every three years, if no changes are proposed;

* Simplifying transitions from one school to another when families move to a new area during the school year.

SOURCE





Teaching assistants 'fail to improve British school results'

Hundreds of millions of pounds spent drafting teaching assistants into schools has failed to improve pupils’ performance, according to research. A rise in the number of support staff in the classroom has had “no impact” on standards, said a report published by the Sutton Trust charity.

The study suggests that assistants can “positively affect” pupils’ attitudes towards education but may undermine lessons when used as a substitute for proper teachers.

It comes despite a sharp hike in the number of classroom assistants hired under Labour, with 213,900 employed this year – almost three times the total a decade ago.

In the latest study, academics from Durham University analysed the different ways English schools could spend additional cash pledged by the Government to improve standards among poor pupils. The so-called “pupil premium” – worth an extra £430 per child each year – is being introduced in September.

The study found no benefit to hiring teaching assistants. Setting classes by ability and imposing a hard-line policy on school uniform could actually have a negative impact on pupils’ results, it was claimed.

Researchers found only minor benefits associated with the introduction of school uniforms, reducing class sizes, introducing performance-related pay for teachers and running after school clubs.

They said setting more homework had a “moderate impact” on standards, equivalent to a maximum of five months’ extra education over the course of a year.

But the study said the most effective techniques included providing pupils with feedback on their work and encouraging them to think about their own studies.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: "The key to improving the attainment of disadvantaged pupils is not necessarily how much money is spent in schools, but how much is spent on what is proven to work in the classroom.”

Labour encouraged a dramatic increase in the number of classroom assistants as part of a landmark deal to give teachers at a least one half-day a week to plan and prepare work. Under the move, teachers are no longer expected to do a series of administrative tasks, such as photocopying and putting up displays.

But unions have claimed that many schools are simply using support staff as cheap labour, often leaving them in full charge of lessons.

A Government-funded report in 2009 found that assistants were used as temporary cover in more than 80 per cent of schools.

One-in-10 state primaries and 40 per cent of secondaries admitted regularly turning to support staff to fill in for absent teachers for more than three days at a time. Some used assistants for a whole term.

SOURCE



28 May, 2011

Calif. School Tells Elementary Students There Are More Than 2 Gender ‘Options’

Who says elementary school is too early to start discussing gender issues?

This week, educators at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland, California, are teaching young children all about the complicated world of “gender diversity.” The school has designed curriculum for every grade level. Amid the resulting controversy, Principal Sara Stone is defending the initiative, claiming that it is in line with what parents want:

“If we don’t have a safe, nurturing class environment, it’s going to be hard to learn. Really, the message behind this curriculum is there are different ways to be boys. There are different ways to be girls.”

A gender expert and trainer was brought in to speak to the children:

“[There's] a lot of variation in nature. Evolution comes up with some pretty funny ways for animals to reproduce. It turns out that there are not just two options.”

The trainer also told the children that this diversity applies to human beings as well. It is this rationale — that gender is pliable and that there are “more than two options” — that has some people frustrated. The San Francisco Chronicle has more on the curriculum:

A one-hour elementary school lesson on gender diversity featuring all-girl geckos and transgender clownfish…fourth- and fifth-grade students learned about the crazy world of gender within the animal kingdom with lessons about single-sex Hawaiian geckos, fish that switch genders and boy snakes that act “girly.”

Naturally, this has created an outrage. The idea that the school district would cover such complex issues with young children has led the conservative Pacific Justice Institute, among other groups, to get involved. According to The Washington Post:

“Conservative legal defense organizations are providing counsel to parents who oppose the teaching at Redwood Heights by a gender spectrum trainer.”

SOURCE





CT: Group would end seniority-based teacher layoffs

Leaders and supporters of a Connecticut group seeking education law changes are pushing lawmakers to stop school districts from using seniority to determine which teachers could face budget-related layoffs.

Leaders and supporters of Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, including the superintendent of Hartford’s schools, have criticized “last in, first out’’ seniority-based layoff policies for years and reiterated their opposition yesterday in a gathering at the state Capitol.

They say this year’s state and local budget constraints make layoffs a real threat to talented new teachers, who are first in line for cuts in many districts while seniority shields other teachers even with well-documented ineptitude.

“We’ve got to find a way to factor in teacher performance to the layoff process, and that’s what we’re here today calling on the General Assembly to do,’’ School Superintendent Steve Tracy of Derby said Tuesday.

Derby’s Teacher of the Year is among those facing possible layoffs because, despite her skills, she has only three years of seniority, the superintendent said.

However, representatives of the state’s largest teachers union say four-fifths of the districts where they represent educators already have factors beyond seniority to determine layoff decisions.

Those procedures are best set at the local level in collective bargaining rather than by legislative mandate, they said.

“In districts that have negotiated this, it works,’’ said Mary Loftus Levine, policy director for the Connecticut Education Association union. “We think we need a reality check here. What we need are solutions, not scapegoats.’’

Any legislative changes to prohibit seniority-based layoffs in Connecticut would have to be approved by June 8, when the General Assembly adjourns.

A bill died in the Legislature’s Education Committee this spring, so the item could be revived only if the coalition persuades lawmakers to tack on the measure to another active bill.

Coalition chief executive officer Alex Johnston would not say whether specific legislators have promised to push the measure, but said Tuesday that they “wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t think there was a real chance of passing this.’’

State law requires school districts to notify nontenured teachers by April 1 if there is a possibility they could be laid off, but in stable budget years, those notices are later rescinded as budgets are settled.

This year, education officials say job cuts are inevitable in some districts because Connecticut’s state aid to districts is not increasing and one-time federal stimulus grants for education are running out in many communities.

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The Drug of Choice for Public Schools

Dependency on government

Dependency on government is as detrimental to a society as drug addiction is to an individual. A situation in Pennsylvania — likely similar to situations in other states — reflects a continued unhealthy dependence on the federal government.

Briefly, Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed 2011–2012 budget had $1.1 billon less for education. That’s the same amount of money the state didn’t get from the federal government for education. The Parent Teacher Organization moms want the governor’s political head.

During a multi-district meeting, the parents from 12 different school districts gave an earful to legislators from eight different senatorial and legislative districts in parts of Chester, Delaware, and Lancaster counties. It’s an area of the state where the elephant rules, and has ruled for generations. To say the region is predominantly Republican is an understatement. So naturally, these parents, most of whom are registered Republicans, want more taxes on Marcellus shale, corporations, cigarettes, and gasoline, more taxes all around for public education.

True, some of them might be RINOs and a few others are Democrats, but most talk a straight Republican line. Yet, they want largess from government, state and federal. They’ve grown so dependent on largesse from the state and the feds that they give up on their own traditional values.

Some of the state budget cuts are steep, but steeper on some districts than others. The Coatesville School District will lose $8.5 million in one year while the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District — in a more affluent area — loses $1.1 million. All the districts are laying people off and cutting programs.

PTO moms and dads, and school board members as well, can only see one thing: Get more money from Harrisburg and Washington so the districts don’t have to pare back anything and the board members won’t have to make those types of tough decisions. Indeed, they want more money so they can build new and larger schools and have sports fields that are as immaculate as those in the professional ranks.

Few of them think outside the box, of sending their kids to a private or parochial school or homeschooling or, heaven forbid, even contemplating the idea of completely ending all government involvement in education and letting the free market provide educational services. Some do pursue other alternatives, of course. One artistic 7-year-old home-schooled girl taught herself Abobe PhotoShop and Illustrator simply by watching videos on YouTube.

Another family transferred their daughter from the Chadds Ford Elementary School to a private school in Delaware after comparing a third-grade English class. The public school kids were writing book reports based on cereal boxes — with the ingredients as characters — while the same age group in the private school was reading Supreme Court decisions. Using Cap’n Crunch as a school teacher may be a novel way to approach reading and writing, but which group of kids stand a better chanced of understanding the world around them, the first group or the second?

What government-hungry folks fail to look at are historical facts. The United States became the leading industrial nation on the planet and raised the standard of living for more people than any other country long before the federal government ever got involved in education. The Department of Education didn’t come into existence until 1980 under the Jimmy Carter administration.

And long before that, the United States came into existence because of such men as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin who were never forced into a mandatory 13-year, K-12 sentence of government-controlled and government-programmed education. They had a few years of formal education, learning to read, write and do math, but beyond that they were mostly self taught or worked with tutors or family members. They read history and philosophy, much of that on their own. They weren’t strapped to a school desk for six hours a day.

A government-provided education is not necessarily an education at all. It works well for some, but in all too many cases it’s just a way to socialize kids, teaching little more than obedience to authority or simply acting as a babysitter who is boring kids half to death.

What has happened during the past decades of government intrusion into education is that people know more about reality TV shows than they do about the Constitution. Worse yet, they care more about those TV shows than they do about the Constitution or their own liberty.

SOURCE



27 May, 2011

More destruction coming for British schools

Poorer pupils to get priority access to good schools over those living nearby.

In the absence of significant discipline, pupil behavior is a major determinant of how good a school is. Pupils from poor backgrounds are often unruly so will simply destroy any school into which they are inserted. It will not benefit the poor kids but it will destroy the educational chances of all the kids. No kid will learn anything much in a chaotic environment.

One hopes and imagines that few school heads will take the "opportunity" that has been handed to them. Would any head want to preside over a behavioral sink?

Poor pupils can be taught perfectly well in a well disciplined environment but that is not an option in Britain today

Ministers will today signal an end to ‘selection by mortgage’ by allowing the most popular schools to discriminate in favour of the poorest children. A new admissions code will let academies and free schools prioritise children on free school meals – whose parents earn less than £16,000.

Currently, only pupils with special needs, in the care of local councils or with siblings at the school can be given such priority when it is oversubscribed.

The move, criticised as an assault on the middle classes, has prompted allegations that the Coalition Government is attempting to socially engineer secondary school admissions.

It will spell an end to well-off parents buying a home in the catchment area of a popular secondary school to secure places for their sons or daughters. In future, even living right next door to an oversubscribed school may not guarantee a place for a pupil. In London, property prices can be inflated by as much as £400,000 close to the best institutions.

The announcement today from Education Secretary Michael Gove is likely to trigger a backlash from many Conservative MPs and the party’s traditional middle-class supporters, who are already angry that the Coalition has ruled out any return to selection by ability.

At present, one third of all secondary schools – 1,070 – are either an academy or in the process of becoming one. Two secondaries become academies every day and the Government wants all schools to convert eventually.

And with many academies heavily over-subscribed – some by ten applications for every place – competition is fierce. This year one in five pupils in England missed out on their first choice of school.

Mr Gove’s proposal will be seen as an attempt to appease Liberal Democrat members of the Coalition, who have pushed existing plans to boost funding for underprivileged children. The Education Secretary believes the change will provide a vital boost for social mobility.

Whitehall sources close to Mr Gove yesterday stressed any change would not be ‘prescriptive’, and schools would simply be permitted to admit children entitled to free school meals in preference to others if they wished to do so.

However, Mr Gove is also introducing incentives for schools to select more poor pupils – the pupil premium and a new performance measure. Under the pupil premium, schools will receive extra funding based on the number of pupils on free school meals. And a new league table performance measure will rank schools on the achievements of their most disadvantaged youngsters.

These incentives will encourage in-demand schools to select poorer pupils over those from wealthier backgrounds who may live on the doorstep.

But schools wishing to prioritise disadvantaged children will have to consult the community first, as is the case with any changes to admissions criteria.

In addition to the controversial new criteria, today’s code will give priority to the children of serving troops – of which there are some 35,000. These children will be able to queue-jump during the application process and will be accepted at ‘full’ primary schools.

The code will also enable selective schools to expand, by removing caps on the number of places they can offer. Many grammars are intending to increase their capacity by as much as 50 per cent by 2015, which will make a selective education more accessible.

Mr Gove’s move follows a report by the Sutton Trust which found England had moved from ‘selection by ability’ to ‘selection by mortgage’.

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Mind-boggling Increase in Tuition Since 1960 Even as Students Learn Less and Less

There has been a truly mind-boggling increase in college tuition since 1960. For example, law school tuition has risen nearly 1,000 percent after adjusting for inflation: around 1960, “median annual tuition and fees at private law schools was $475 … adjusted for inflation, that’s $3,419 in 2011 dollars. The median for public law schools was $204 … or $1,550 in 2011 dollars … in 2009 the private law school median was $36,000; the public (resident) median was $16,546.”

Due to market distortions like the proliferation of unnecessary state licensing requirements that require useless paper credentials, and financial aid that directly encourages colleges to raise tuition, colleges can raise tuition year after year, consuming a larger and larger fraction of the increased lifetime earnings students hope to obtain by going to college. As George Leef notes, “long-term average earnings for individuals with BA degrees have not risen much and in the last few years have dipped.”

Meanwhile, college students learn less and less with each passing year. “Thirty-six percent” of college students learned little in four years of college, and students now spend “50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows.” Thirty-two percent never take “a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”

People thought college was too expensive back in 1960, when tuition was just a tiny fraction of what it is today. For example, they worried about the rising cost of a law school education, and the resulting increase in student loans and debt: “The cost of attending law school at least doubled in the [past] 16 years,” “raising the question whether able, but impecunious, students are being directed away from law study … schools reported that students were reluctant to take out loans owing to ‘fear of debts, particularly during the low income years immediately after graduation.’” They could never have imagined what a monumental rip-off college tuition would be today.

Cultural factors may also have contributed to students’ willingness to pay exploding law school tuitions. Too many people have gone to law school in recent years thanks to the romanticization of the legal profession in shows like “Ally McBeal” and “L.A. Law” that make law look sexy and exciting. (Legal shows also falsely suggest that most judges are wise and that the legal system is swift and just, rather than conveying the unpleasant reality: that our legal system is a slow, costly, inefficient mechanism for enforcing often-arbitrary legal norms that are invented by judges and lawyers or enacted by legislators who frequently do the bidding of special-interest groups.)

For a fascinating discussion of how the country has been harmed by legal norms invented by law professors who dislike free markets, and by massive lawsuits launched by law school litigation clinics, read Walter Olson’s book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America, which got good reviews from some law professors and the Wall Street Journal.

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Fast-track teaching program gets green light for West Australian schools

A version of "Teach for America" -- but anything that exposes the usual ludicrous four-year "teacher training" courses is welcome. I was a successful High School teacher without one minute of teacher training

A program that launches top-ranking university graduates into teaching positions within months will be rolled out across WA next year, addressing shortages the state government has struggled to fill.

The Teach for Australia program is in its second year in Victoria and the ACT, with dozens of graduates placed in low socio-economic and disadvantaged schools across the states.

The program has previously drawn criticism from the State School Teachers Union of WA, which claimed the fast-tracked program was undermining those who had completed traditional teaching degrees, and would place the already-disadvantaged students into a further vulnerable position.

However, the founder of the program has defended the high quality graduates accepted into TFA, which only places its graduates in schools where teachers refuse to go.

It had previously been reported that the TFA graduates would not have the authority to teach in local schools, but the WA College of Teaching has confirmed that they can work in WA after being issued with a Limited Authority to Teach.

This permits the graduate to work in a particular area, only when there is no registered teacher for that position, and where no teaching graduates will go.

Successful applicants will be placed in schools in term one next year, after completing a six-week intensive course through the University of Melbourne. This will mark the start of a two-year degree at the school, through which they will continue to teach at an 80 per cent load, allowing one day per week for studies.

TFA chief executive officer Melodie Potts-Rosevear said that ideally there would be between 25 and 30 new graduates in the program next year who would be ready to be placed in a WA school.

With the aim of the program to put the graduates where no other teachers want to go, she said it is a balancing act ensuring the school was big enough to accommodate at least two graduates, and that there was adequate support in the form of a mentor based at the school.

"We'll recruit as many as we think that are suitable and can fill genuine vacancies," she said. "We just respond to what the school's needs are, and it just becomes a bit of a matching process. "The school really has to be big enough to have two vacancies that we can fill, along with a mentor that can support them on a day-to-day basis. "Schools where there's only two or three classrooms are probably not suitable to the program."

She said they tried to get a minimum of two graduates at a school, and that they tried to "cluster" the graduates among schools in a close vicinity so that they have a support network.

TFA has been a success in its short two-year history in Victoria, with dozens of graduates among the best in their field choosing to take up the program.

SOURCE



26 May, 2011

Reflections on gifted programs

Full disclosure: The idea of schools without gifted programs fills me with visceral meritocratic outrage. In junior high and high school, tracking was the only thing that made my life bearable. In my memory, normal classes were a combination of Waiting for Godot and Lord of the Flies. So I thought it best to mellow out a few days before commenting on Arnold's recent posts on gifted programs.

The basic approach of the research Arnold discusses - compare the subsequent test scores of kids just above the gifted threshold to the test scores of kids just below the gifted threshold - seems reasonable to me. But how should we interpret the results?

1. The study measures the effect of gifted programs on standardized test scores, not educational attainment, college attendance, college rank, income, or occupational success. So while the research is good as far as it goes, it doesn't measure the long-run benefits that proponents of gifted programs really hope for. And if you know the Transfer of Learning literature, you'd shouldn't expect gifted classes to have much effect on test scores unless they teach to the test.

2. You might think that if gifted programs don't boost test scores, they can't boost educational or financial success. But that's wrong. In a human capital model, gifted programs could work by boosting non-cognitive skills. And in a signaling model, gifted programs could work by weeding out and scaring off lower-quality students.

3. At least according to the most knowledgeable person I've talked to, higher-ranked colleges give their graduates a substantially higher rate of return than lower-ranked colleges. The analogy between gifted and regular classes seems strong enough that we should expect the same result - and be suspicious if we don't find it.

4. Yes, it's easy to object, "The marginal and the average effect are different." But in the case of gifted programs, the marginal and the average effect probably are different. I knew many marginally gifted students growing up. The classes moved too fast for them. Their choices were: do well in regular classes or poorly in gifted classes. I can easily believe that gifted classes didn't help their marginal students get better diplomas or better jobs. But it's hard to believe that gifted classes didn't help their good students get better diplomas and better jobs.

5. The marginal/average distinction is especially relevant when there's censoring. The highest possible grade is usually an A. But all A's are not created equal. An A in a gifted class looks a lot better to selective colleges than an A in a regular class. If you can earn A's in gifted classes, you benefit: selective colleges will give you a chance. If you can't earn A's in gifted classes, though, the benefit is harder to see.

One last thought: Some libertarians want government enterprises to run as poorly as possible to expose the evil of the system. Others want government enterprises to run as well as possible to give taxpayers the maximum value for their money. When Arnold writes...

Either you believe your bright kids should experience going to class with students who are not so bright, or you don't. If you don't, then pay for private school. G&T allows you to send your kids to private school while claiming they are still in public school.

... he at least sounds like the first kind of libertarian. Suppose for the sake of argument that gifted classes have zero long-run benefit. Even so, what's wrong with giving young nerds a classroom of their own to spare them thirteen years of boredom and peer abuse?

SOURCE




Virginia Court Upholds Student's 'Spitwad' Expulsion

A county court in Virginia ruled Tuesday that high school overreached by expelling a student for firing so-called "spitwads" at three classmates in December, but the court would not order the school to reverse the expulsion.

Andrew Mikel, 14, a freshman at Spotsylvania High School, was charged under the school’s zero tolerance police with “violent criminal conduct” and weapon possession for using the body of a pen to blow small, hollow plastic balls at three other students.

John W. Whitehead, the student's lawyer, may be the ideal representation for Mikel. Whitehead admits to shooting spitballs well into high school. He says if laws were as binding as they are today, he'd be "guilty about 500 times" for spitball infractions. He called the teen an "ideal student" with a 97 average and a desire for military service.

“He wanted to be a Navy SEAL,” Whitehead said, pointing out that Mikel’s father served in the Navy. He called Mikel another “victim in a long line of victims of school zero tolerance policies whose educations have been senselessly derailed by school administrators.”

Although Mikel was first threatened with felony charges, he was instead charged with three counts of criminal misdemeanors. Hoping to put the incident behind him, Mikel offered to mow the lawns of his victims’ house, Whitehead said. But the school “would have none of it.”

The appeal was to be reinstated and have his record cleared, but this is the first step of many in the court process. And despite the fact that the court did not reverse the expulsion, Whitehead said the fact that the court agreed that the school overreached is a positive step for his client.

One of the main reasons for the legal push is to clear Mikel’s name because he had hoped to attend the U.S. Naval Academy after graduation and can no longer be considered as an applicant after being charged with misdemeanor assaults. "We're going to fight this until his record is cleared," Whitehead said.

School officials were divided on the issue at the time of the incident. Principal Russell Davis called it a "clear-cut case" for a minimum "365 day expulsion," in an email to Assistant Principal Lisa Andruss and Spotsylvania's coordinator of school safety, John Lynn. The email was one of several documents secured by the Mikels through a Freedom of Information Act request.

"We have an obligation to protect the students in our building from others who pose a threat to the over-all safe learning environment," Davis wrote.

Lynn, on the other hand, wrote in the same string of emails that he was "not at all comfortable expelling or suspending this student for the remainder of the year," recommending instead that Mikel be allowed to return to school after his initial 10-day suspension.

SOURCE





School discipline on agenda among Australian conservatives

Discipline in Victoria's public schools, the rising cost of construction for major projects and federal Labor's carbon tax will be under the spotlight at the Liberal State Council meeting this weekend.

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will address the meeting at the Melbourne Convention Centre on Saturday, while Premier Ted Baillieu on Sunday will thank party members for their contribution to the coalition's state election victory.

There is likely to be an air of celebration at the event, the first official Victorian Liberal Party gathering since the coalition swept to office six months ago.

There is also optimism about the party's prospects federally, as opinion polls have consistently shown the coalition in an election-winning position and Mr Abbott closing in on Julia Gillard as preferred prime minister.

Motions on the agenda include setting up a tribunal to toughen up discipline at public schools. The Waverley North branch, which is moving the motion, says there is a discipline crisis in many state schools, with teachers under siege from unruly pupils.

It wants teachers to have the power to report serious breaches of discipline to the tribunal, including physical and verbal assaults and intimidation.

In its motion, the branch says almost 14,000 students were suspended in state schools last year and a lack of discipline in public education is the reason many parents send their children to private schools. "Parents want more confidence to choose a government school," the motion reads.

A call from the Geelong branch to have speed camera revenue directly invested in road safety initiatives is also on the agenda. "The loss of public confidence in the validity of speed cameras as a tool to reduce road trauma requires attention," the motion reads. "To not address these issues would mean the party risks the same voter backlash which the Labor Party received in the lead-up to the last election."

Auditor-General Des Pearson is investigating the state's speed camera system and is expected to report to government in about August.

Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said it was wrong to suggest only government school students had behavioural issues. "I ... get offended by the notion that these issues are only issues for government schools," she told AAP. "In terms of bullying and physical altercations, it's hardly a government school issue only."

Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals president Frank Sal said he welcomed more support from the Department of Education in dealing with abuse or violence from students and parents.

But he denied there was a lack of discipline in government schools. "The notion that there is a discipline crisis in government schools is a real furphy," Mr Sal said.

SOURCE



25 May, 2011

The Miseducation of America

Back in the ‘good ole days’ (which usually tend to have occurred exactly one hundred years before the phrase is uttered), doing business in America was simple. Entrepreneurs completed deals using only back of the envelope calculations and a firm handshake. They didn’t need any of those Wall Street wizards with their fancy forecasting and analysis methods. Big Government wasn’t looking over your shoulder or strangling you with red tape. You didn’t need a fancy college degree to make something of yourself. All you needed to achieve wealth were willingness to work hard and a spark of inventiveness.

A profile of the typical millionaire in the United States seems to confirm this narrative. Most millionaires, according to the seminal book, The Millionaire Next Door, didn’t make their money in some highly complex business. In fact, it was usually some ordinary business – say construction or dry cleaning – that vaulted them into the ranks of the wealthy. Although fairly educated – almost 80% have a college education – education was not the distinguishing factor that accounted for their wealth. Nor was it above average performance in the marketplace, inheritance, or even the type of profession they occupied. The single biggest factor among them was their propensity to save.

Wealthy people, on average, save a far higher percentage of their income than their non-wealthy counterparts. Some would argue that of course the wealthy save more, because they do not need as much of their income to cover living expenses as ordinary people. But the data refute this. The propensity to save is a precondition, not a result of wealth. On the other hand, in some professions which demand a higher ‘appearance’ of status – say doctors or lawyers – people tend to live at or above their means. They save a relatively small amount of their income, and have fewer investments in stock, real estate and other productive assets.

Although highly educated and respected in their fields, they are also some of the most highly leveraged in terms of debt. Interestingly, their education seems to play a part in their failure to accumulate wealth. By delaying their entry into the work force through long educational careers, and accumulating consumption-related debt, many of today’s professionals start out in a hole that they never – despite their high intelligence – seem to dig themselves out of. It is telling – and a bit shocking – that even President Clinton (one of the most successful politicians in modern history) – says he did not have a cent to his name before he left the White House after two terms as President. How could this be? Here you have a family with two Yale law degrees and a Rhodes scholarship between them, years of working in Government and private practice – and they could not accumulate any wealth?

It is not uncommon to meet these types – the highly pedigreed professionals who, at mid-life resign themselves to dying with their student loans outstanding. While it is common for ex-Presidents to give speeches and receive honoraria, the Clintons seem to have created a cottage industry out of paid media appearances and book advances. In the respect, they are somewhat reminiscent of the aging baseball stars who earn a living by signing autographs and memorabilia at trade shows. Trading one’s popularity as a sports star however, seems slightly less degrading than spending ones’ post-White House years as a permanent campaigner. But when you’ve got your student loans and your children’s student loans to pay, what are you going to do?

Paradoxically, those self-made millionaires that earned their wealth over a lifetime of work and savings – tend to want something different for their children. The parents of an immigrant Indian family that saved enough from working at a 7-Eleven to eventually acquire their own franchise do not want their children to follow in the family business. They want their kids to get an elite education and become doctors and lawyers. In a sense, these are not strictly economic aspirations – they are status symbols. Education, like fancy cars, homes, and jewelry is not always an investment. Sometimes it’s a form of consumption.

What’s the difference? The true test of whether an education is an investment or merely a form of conspicuous consumption is whether the degree or skills one learns is likely to increase one’s earning ability by more than the (time and monetary) cost of the education. This seems like a simple process to gauge – much like a back of the envelope computation – but it is something that many college graduates fail to clearly consider before incurring huge debts and spending years collecting degrees. While college graduates earn on average more than non-graduates, they tend to enter the work force later with more debt. This is especially the case with people that spend on ‘name brand’ educations. It is increasingly clear that there is a disconnection between the price and the value of higher education.

It’s obvious by now that the latest collapse of the U.S. stock market and the ensuing recession was spearheaded by experts – those same people who received fancy degrees from Ivy League institutions. They sold the public on their complex mathematical models purporting to show huge profits – all the while masking the risk of a total blow up. In many respects, this is the societal effect of a miseducated population. It is the result of an over-reliance by many people on the advice of experts, and the reliance of those experts on theoretical constructs that have little bearing on the real world. It is a classic case of mistaking the map for the territory. Popular writer and educator Nassim Taleb, when describing the cause of the market collapse, was blunter. He aptly describes it as a case of “scholarship without erudition.”

Taleb’s argument is simple yet nuanced. By concentrating for a long time on complex problems, experts tend to become experts in solving known problems -- such as the probability of winning a casino game (where all of the possibilities are known). But this tunnel view prevents them from considering the broader factors that account for real world events in which there is no complete information – be it business performance, the stock market, or the riskiness of complex financial derivatives. In part, it is the level of education that deludes them into believing that they can manage the complexity of making large bets for small gains.

Under conditions of uncertainty that entrepreneurs confront in real word business situations – tunneling (or focusing on known problems) – is far less effective than remaining open and widening one’s perspective. Remaining open requires the ability to suspend belief about what’s happening, to get out of the textbook and into the decision under imperfect information. This type of perspective is becoming a lost art in today’s world of hyper-specialized experts.

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NYC Teacher Claims She Was Harassed, Then Fired Over Her Christian Faith

Anita Wooten-Franci, an assistant special education teacher at PS 224, claims that she was teased, harassed and then wrongfully terminated last June. While the school claims she was fired for allegedly grabbing a child, Wooten-Franci denies this charge and insists that her firing was based on her Christian beliefs.

When it came to public displays of faith, the former assistant teacher says that she was careful not to influence her students, but that she did appropriately pray, listen to Christian music and lead a worship group during “non-instructional hours.”

Wooten-Franci claims that the school’s principal — George Andrews — was vocal and often offensive about his dislike for her Christian beliefs. She says that Andrews would frequently make negative comments and that he told her, “You can’t be praying in my school.”

The New York Post has more:

In one instance, [the principal allegedly] criticized the disabled woman for using the elevator and told her to take the stairs. When she protested, he allegedly said, “Why don’t you just pray?” Then he laughed.

At the same time, she says, the school was going to hell in a handbasket, with school administrators charging students for bake sales “even though no charity received the proceeds,” and using money from the school’s Special Needs Funds to pay for lunches and parties, the suit claims.

It was after she complained about these issues that Wooten-Francis says she was slapped with a false charge (that she laid her hands on a child). Following this allegation, she spent time in a “rubber room” and was subsequently fired. Now, she is suing the Department of Education and is confident that “…the truth will come out.”

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Weak teachers will be removed from British classrooms in just one term as heads get new powers to fire

Radical plans to fast-track the sacking of almost 20,000 incompetent teachers have caused fury among unions. Education Secretary Michael Gove yesterday unveiled proposals to enable heads to axe bad teachers within a term, rather than the current average of more than a year.

He will also stop the ‘dodge’ of teachers putting off disciplinary proceedings by going on sick leave with full pay, by allowing hearings to be held during this absence.

And incompetent teachers will no longer be able to move from school to school as heads will be granted access to the ‘performance data’ of potential staff.

Under the proposals, the time it usually takes schools to remove poorly performing teachers will be cut from a year or more to one term, the equivalent of a few months.

Restricting the time a headteacher can formally observe a class teacher, known as the 'three-hour observation rule', will be scrapped. Complex and prescriptive 'capability' procedures for dealing with performance will also be overhauled.

Ministers say the system 'fails to respect the professionalism of headteachers and teachers'. Around 60 pages of 'unnecessary' guidance will be axed, the Department for Education (DfE) said, and it will be made clear that staff illness need not bring disciplinary action to a halt.

But while school leaders welcomed the moves, one teaching union said the measures will give headteachers 'a licence to bully'.

NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said: 'Not content with subjecting teachers to a significant two-year pay cut, assault on their pension provision and savage cuts to education budgets causing job losses, ministers today have added insult to injury by effectively proposing that teachers will be on a permanent capability procedure.'

She added: 'Stripping away safeguards to ensure that teachers are treated fairly and professionally will not deliver high performance. 'These proposals will give headteachers a license to bully.'

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), said: 'Society places a great deal of faith in teachers. 'It's vital for all concerned that systems are in place to ensure performance is managed and poor performance is addressed resolutely.

'This will mean that those who place their trust in the profession can be reassured. 'There are really very few weak teachers in the country but we must be able to help those that are to move on quickly, fairly and respectfully. 'This is only right for the vast majority of dedicated and skilled teachers in our schools, as well as for pupils themselves.'

Mr Gove said: 'Heads and teachers want a simpler and faster system to deal with teachers who are struggling. For far too long schools have been trapped in complex red tape. 'We must deal with this problem in order to protect the interests of children who suffer when struggling teachers are neither helped nor removed. Schools must be given the responsibility to deal with this fairly and quickly.'

According to figures from the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE), 15 teachers were struck off for incompetence between 2001 and the beginning of last month, and there have been 81 competence hearings in that time.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: 'The Government's proposals to merge the regulations for managing teachers' performance and objectives with those dealing with under-performing teachers are unfair, unjust and unworkable. 'The proposals turn performance management on its head. Instead of helping teachers become even better at teaching, it will give heads an easy way to get rid of teachers that they dislike.'

Ministers have already announced other reforms to boost teaching standards, including moves to raise the degree requirements needed to start a teacher training course, and a review of the professional standards teachers are judged against.

They are also considering allowing grammar schools to expand. Although the Coalition has refused to increase the number of selective schools in England - currently 164 - it is likely to allow existing ones to increase their intake. At present the number of places they can offer is restricted by local councils, which fear their expansion will make other schools in the area less attractive.

However, Education Secretary Michael Gove is ready to scrap the rule with the publication of a revised schools admissions code this summer.

The most sought-after grammar schools, which dominate league tables for GCSE and A-levels, have up to ten applications for every place. Many are looking to boost their intake by at least a sixth from 2012, and as much as a half by 2017.

Grammar school war

Mr Gove’s move is likely to reignite the bitter row over grammars within Tory ranks. David Cameron was accused of a ‘humiliating climbdown’ after ditching policy backing their return – and now faces calls to come to the aid of two long-established grammar schools in Reading.

Michael Fallon, Tory MP for Sevenoaks, Kent, has fought for a new grammar school in his constituency. He said the Education Secretary’s plans will be a step forwards but stressed the need for more selective schools.

‘Many places at grammars are taken by pupils from outside the county they are in,’ he said. ‘Expansion of existing grammars will at least take some of the pressure off places. But what we really need is more grammars.’

There are 158,000 pupils currently at grammar schools – nearly five per cent of the school roll. Heads predict that the move could boost this figure by 50 per cent within the next five years – the equivalent to each grammar taking on three additional years of entry.

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24 May, 2011

Commencement Season Disconnect

Like millions of families this month, we attended a commencement ceremony this past weekend, at Mills College, a liberal arts college for women in California. Mills was founded as the Young Ladies’ Seminary, and a few years later was bought by missionaries Cyrus and Susan Mills, who relocated it to Oakland and directed its educational emphasis to the training of young ladies as missionaries. Saturday’s ceremony was notable, therefore, for the complete and total absence of any mention of God.

The gods of today’s “progressive” education were regularly invoked throughout the ceremony, however, including those at the top of the pantheon, “Social Justice” and “Diversity.”

Predictably, the graduate student representative’s presentation culminated by her quoting the high priest of progressivism, FDR.

Immediately following that address, an honorary degree was conferred on a lively lady of 89, whose Japanese ancestry had resulted in her being forcibly removed from Mills in 1943 and interred in a “War Relocation Camp,” together with her family and neighbors, until she was able to later attend college on the East Coast and pursue a career in nursing. The great sorrow of her long life had been having her hope of being—in her words—a “Mills Girl” dashed, and receiving the honorary degree clearly meant a great deal to her.

While she made mention in her talk of her internment and shattered dreams having resulted from “Executive Order 9066,” no one seemed to make the connection between the Executive issuing that order—FDR—with the Great One quoted not five minutes prior.

Which makes Bob Higgs’s recent presentation at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala even more refreshing: “Societies flourish when they permit a million flowers to bloom, each in its own time, and its own way.”

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Scottish schoolgirl wins right to use her iPod in exams as she can't concentrate unless she's listening to music

A schoolgirl has won the right to use an iPod while sitting her exams - after claiming she can only concentrate while listening to her favourite music. The girl won the unprecedented concession after threatening legal action against her school and examination authorities.

The Mary Erskine School for girls in Edinburgh, where boarders pay nearly £18,000 a year, has been forced to buy a new iPod that is loaded with the girl's choice of music by a teacher - to ensure no exam answers are hidden among the tracks.

Staff had initially refused the request, fearing it would open the door to the possibility of cheating. The girl's parents then took her case to the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) examination board, which also ruled it out.

However, it was forced to back down after reportedly being threatened with legal action under the Equalities Act because the girl, a year six pupil, (equivalent to year 13 in England) often struggles to pay attention in class.

SQA bosses have allowed the pupil, who is in the middle of her Higher exams, to listen to the iPod as long as it can be 'proved not to contain any prompts'.

School staff are understood to be unhappy with the decision but were forced to comply as the SQA is the governing body for Higher examinations.

The pupil has to sit in a separate area to prevent the noise from her headphones distracting other students.

The move has been allowed under what the SQA calls 'special arrangements'. Now, SQA chiefs are bracing themselves for a flood of similar claims. Exam invigilators are also furious because loading the iPod has added to their workload.

They fear traditional exam invigilation will be severely disrupted because hundreds of other pupils' iPods may have to be checked.

One insider said: 'Everyone is very angry that this has been allowed to happen. The implications are massive. Once this girl has been allowed to do this, there's nothing stopping all pupils bringing in their iPods.

'The amount of manpower it will take to put music on every student's iPod and check they don't contain study notes will be overwhelming. 'It will also present quite a logistical challenge to ensure those who do not have them are not interrupted by the noise.'

Nick Seaton, spokesman for the Campaign for Real Education, said: 'I would have thought the whole idea of using an iPod, or any other portable music device, in an exam would be ridiculous. 'Exams are a serious matter and they lose their integrity when some pupils are treated differently from others.'

Thousands of Scottish schoolchildren are in the middle of their Standard Grade, Intermediate II and Higher exams at the moment. All other schools have a blanket ban on iPods inside the exam hall.

Linda Moule, deputy head at The Mary Erskine School, confirmed that the pupil has been allowed to use an iPod.

The SQA said the ruling would not automatically open the floodgates for other pupils. A spokesman insisted: 'This decision sets no precedents. We receive many requests for "special arrangements" to be made every year and each is treated on its individual merits. 'In this case the iPod is new and the music is loaded by the school and given to the candidate in the hall. It is removed by staff once the exam is over.'

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British teacher who challenged rowdy pupil sacked after 30 years in schools

A teacher with 30 years’ experience told yesterday how he was sacked after a rowdy pupil claimed he grabbed his arm and left four small scratch marks.

Ronnie Lane, 56, admitted confronting the unruly 15-year-old boy, who had special educational needs, after he had repeatedly wandered the classroom ‘scrunching up’ other boys’ GCSE art coursework. The married teacher agreed that during the lesson in July 2009 he did touch the boy’s arm while asking him to release another pupil’s painting, to stop it being damaged.

But a tribunal in Liverpool heard how ‘minutes’ after leaving the room to find a colleague, the boy claimed Mr Lane had grabbed his right forearm so hard it left nail marks. Despite a retired senior police officer saying the injuries could have been self-inflicted, Mr Lane was sacked from West Derby School – even though the boy later refused to assist investigators.

Yesterday Mr Lane, from Wallasey, Merseyside, said he had only just returned to work that month after spending eight months off suffering from stress. He was teaching art to more than 20 GCSE students when the boy – referred to only as Student J – started disrupting the lesson.

‘He was getting out of his seat and walking round the room. This went on for 25 minutes. ‘He went to the other side of the room and grabbed another student’s coursework. When I asked Student J to return it, he did – but he then took it again. ‘I went over to Student J to take the work but he also grabbed hold of it, saying “Go on, rip it”. ‘I placed my hand momentarily on his wrist but he said “Get off or I’ll stab your eye out!”

I handed the work back to Student SR who thanked me, and asked Student J to leave the room but he refused so I left to summon help.’

The tribunal heard that on Mr Lane’s return, Student J complained to the other teacher, telling her: ‘Look at the marks on my arm.’

The tribunal was told that two days later Mr Lane was suspended and after several hearings, including an unsuccessful appeal, he was sacked for gross misconduct.

Vice chairman of governors Jonathan Jones told the hearing that a disciplinary panel had reached the opinion Mr Lane had ‘failed to control a challenging class’ and his conduct in grabbing the teenager ‘was not acceptable’. Mr Jones admitted that despite requests by Mr Lane’s union representative that all the boys in the class make witness statements, it was never done.

Instead only a handful of students’ statements were considered. Student JP wrote that Mr Lane merely ‘touched’ the pupil and claimed Student J ‘embellished the story’.

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23 May, 2011

IL Tea Party Activists Expose Alleged Gift Cards-For-Votes School Scam

One thing I love about tea party activists is their commitment to government transparency and accountability. When they see the media speaking no evil, hearing no evil and seeing no evil, they do the media’s job for them. Citizen journalists are quickly showing the media to be biased and growing irrelevant.

The tea party activist to receive the gold star this week is Lennie Jarrett of Grayslake, Illinois.

In the Grayslake, Illinois School District 46, three tea party members decided to take action by running for three available seats on the school board this spring. I wish more would do the same thing.

Their opponents were two incumbents with strong teachers’ union ties. One of the incumbents, Mary Garcia, also serves as the teachers’ union president in neighboring District 30. The other, Susan Fecklam, reportedly ran a coordinated campaign with Garcia.

The incumbents were obviously concerned about the presence of the tea party candidates on the ballot, and what they might do to the union agenda if they were elected.

So what did the incumbents do? They allegedly broke the law, or violated school policies, by using school email accounts to promote their campaigns, and by bribing 18-year-old students to register to vote, on the presumption the kids would vote for them.

These alleged misdeeds were discovered by Lennie Jarrett, founder of the Lake County Tea Party, through a freedom of information request. He sought and received more than 300 pages of school emails that he believes proves the two candidates, as well as the District 46 superintendent, crossed the line during the recent campaign.

A political campaign on school time

Jarrett said he learned about the alleged misdeeds when he was told that Garcia emailed a state official from her District 30 account, asking for a campaign contribution. That led him to file the freedom of information request, which led him many other Garcia emails.

In one email, sent to School District 46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barkley and several union leaders, Garcia wrote, "I think that all members of both unions should be appraised of this information. There will be no collective bargaining with these three (tea party candidates) on the board. I am very afraid that Sue and I will not have the funds necessary to fight a 'party.'"

Using school equipment for political activities is a violation of the code of ethics in District 30, where Garcia teaches, according to Jarrett.

Another e-mail, sent by Correll to a fellow superintendent in a nearby district, said "Mary Garcia is wondering how many signs or fliers you would take?"

Superintendents are prohibited by law from participating in any political activities, according to Jarrett.

Yet another e-mail, sent by campaign manager Alex Finke to Fecklam and copied to Garcia, allegedly refers to an effort to hide campaign contributions.

By law, the joint Garcia/Fecklam campaign would be required to form a campaign committee and make a detailed campaign finance report if it raised or spent more than $2,000, according to Jarrett.

"Anything you spend counts toward the $1,999.99 that you and Mary would be allowed to spend," Finke allegedly wrote. "The only way around it would be to lie and pay me cash. Then I could claim that I am volunteering for you."

The fourth, and perhaps most disturbing email was allegedly written by Fecklam to Garcia at her school district address. Fecklam bragged to Garcia about her efforts to bribe 18-year-old high school students who live in the district to register to vote before the school board election.

It is a felony to offer bribes to anyone for voting or registering to vote, according to Jarrett.

"Don't let them turn us in; gifts to register to vote is probably illegal! I did offer Erika (Garcia's daughter) more gift cards if she can gather up even more friends!"

Holding the cheaters accountable

It's bad enough that teachers’ unions at the local, state and national level have become more preoccupied with politics than they are with students and education.

Now it appears they are willing to bend or break laws and regulations to guarantee victory.

Perhaps they've come to believe they somehow own the public schools, or have some special right to use school property for their own purposes. Perhaps they forgot that the schools are owned by taxpayers like Jarrett, who are watching and willing to hold them accountable.

"This is not about whose policies are best or whose are wrongheaded," wrote Paul Mitchell, a local tea party activist, in an article posted on the Lake County Tea Party website.

"It's about how elected officials and employees of School District 46 have abused their positions and their access to benefit themselves at taxpayer expense, and at the expense of the school children entrusted to them."

Jarrett has not been sitting on his email discoveries. He shared them with the District 46 school board at a recent meeting, as well as the Lake County State's Attorney and Illinois Attorney General.

A large group of parents and concerned citizens showed up at the school board meeting to complain about the alleged campaign abuse, according to the Chicago Daily Herald.

"You dishonor this community," parent Joan Siefert reportedly told the pro-union candidates at the meeting.

Garcia is reportedly already under investigation for her activities by a School District 30 ethics review board. She could reportedly face various types of discipline, up to and including termination of her employment as a teacher.

Garcia has already suffered at the polls. Two of the tea party candidates, along with Fecklam, were elected to the three school board seats in the April 5 election. Garcia is no longer on the board.

Meat Loaf – and supporters of good government – would say that two-out-of-three ain't bad.

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The Feds, The Economy, Your State And Your School Board

The wisdom of the American people is prevailing in some of the most unlikely places. Unfortunately, the local public school board is typically not one of those places.

As the federal government goes deficit-crazy and state governments continue to feel the recession’s impact, some good things are actually starting to develop. Fiscally conservative ideals are emerging in states as diverse as Wisconsin, Idaho, New Jersey and Ohio

In these states and in others, governors and legislatures have stood-up to the ever-expanding demands of government employee unions, reigned-in employee compensation growth, and have cut state spending. Even in liberal Massachusetts the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted last week to limit the powers of their state government employees’ unions.

This is good news for the American taxpayer, and good news for the overall U.S. economy. But when state governments start to spend fewer tax dollars, that often means fewer state tax dollars are flowing to local public school districts. And when that happens, the affairs of local public school districts can get especially outrageous.

Your local school district may be the exception, and its collective behavior may be entirely “above the board.” But the sad reality for teachers, students, and parents, is simply this: in the face of tight budgets, most local school boards across the nation would rather fire teachers, than reign-in other school district expenses. The reason for this is simple: when teachers lose their jobs, students suffer – and “student suffering” gets parents and other voters in the mood for a tax increase.

It sounds cynical, I know. But think about it from the vantage point of political strategy. if school boards actually tried to manage the taxpayers’ money in such a way as to serve the students, first and foremost, then every effort would be made to retain good teachers and keep class sizes small. This would mean that school boards would look “up the food chain” in to the administrative ranks, rather than “down to the classrooms,” when the need arose to cut the budget.

But that’s generally not what happens in most public school districts. The preference for board members is usually to eliminate teacher positions, or at least to “threaten to eliminate” teacher positions – because when budget cuts are felt in the classroom, voters become more amenable to tax hikes – and tax hikes usually provide more money for the school district to spend.

Consider the case of the Mount Diablo School District in the San Francisco suburb of Concord . Like every other public school district in California, Mount Diablo is being threatened with a dramatic shut-off of state tax revenues, as the bankrupt state government grapples with a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion – a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the middle of 2012.

So the elected members of the Mount Diablo School District met in open session last week. They heard public testimony, with local residents pleading to “spare the teachers jobs” at the open microphone. Members of the board even offered their own impassioned dissertations about how “every one of our teachers is a human being,” and many of the teachers “have their own families,” and they all “touch our families in such important and necessary ways…” And then the board voted unanimously to terminate one-hundred eleven of those “human being” teachers. Unanimously. No dissenting voters.

After getting the “dirty work” completed, the elected board members at the Mount Diablo School District then proceeded to vote in favor of spending over $9 million on school building upgrades. All in the same school board meeting, all on the same night.

The board made it clear that the $9 million or so that they were spending on structural enhancements was money approved directly by voters and designated for such purposes, and could not possibly have been spent on retaining teachers. Legally speaking, it was probably accurate that the revenues could not simply be used for “more urgent purposes.”

But doesn’t this speak to a degree of mismanagement by the district board? Why wouldn’t a school board in California be anticipating a shortfall in state tax revenues, given that the state government is broke, and begin strategizing a way to retain teachers, rather than enhancing buildings?

The mismanagement of the Mount Diablo School District becomes even more apparent when you turn the calendar back a couple of months. In March of this year, the district board voted to raise the salary paid to the district legal counsel by $28,000.00 (that person now takes home $190,000 annually), the facilities and projects manager got a raise of $11,000, and the director of certificated personnel got a nice $6,000.00 annual income boost (each one of these employees also receives taxpayer funded healthcare and retirement benefits).

If school districts genuinely cared for students, then budget cuts would more often happen at the district office rather than in the classroom. But nobody wants to raise their taxes just so the Superintendent or the staff Attorney can keep their six-figure salary and benefits. Thus, “firing teachers” becomes the best political strategy.

Students, parents, and teachers deserve much better.

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British Government to give green light to first fully free state run boarding school -- for black kids

It is thought to be first time that a state primary school has ever bought its own boarding school to educate its children. The joint venture between the Government and the Durand Education Trust will see inner city children from south London educated at a school in Sussex.

The Government has committed up to £17.34 million phased over four years to contribute towards the capital costs, with significant investment already made and committed to by the school’s foundation for the remainder.

Under the plan, children will leave Durand Primary School, in Lambeth, south London, aged 13, and board for four nights a week, free of charge, at the school, built on the site of a former public school in west Sussex.

Durand has committed to funding the furnishing of the middle school and will pay for the construction of sixth form accommodation for older children.The first pupils will start to arrive from September 2012.

Unlike like other state boarding schools, where a fee is payable, Durand will ensure that the cost of boarding is paid for, so that parents do not have to pay a penny. Almost half of the children that attend Durand Academy receive Free School Meals and more than 95 per cent are from black or minority ethnic backgrounds. Some 40 per cent live in overcrowded households.

The new all-through Academy will provide 250 places for years 7 - 9, 375 boarding places for years 9 - 11 and a proposed 250 places for post-16 pupils.

Greg Martin, the school’s executive head, told The Daily Telegraph: “This project will transform life opportunities for children and families from Stockwell’s estates. We believe that all children deserve the best education and this project will help us to deliver that for our intake.”

Mark Dunn, former chairman of West Sussex Council, said: “This is a hugely exciting and welcome development. Not only will the proposed project bring alive the school in West Sussex again but it is also offer life changing opportunities for hundreds of children.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “The poorest children are too often left behind because of weak schools and lack of opportunity. "This unique and pioneering project, led by one of London’s best primary schools, will give disadvantaged pupils the type of education previously reserved for the rich. It is vital that we concentrate resources on the children who need it most.”

Last April The Daily Telegraph disclosed how Durand Primary in London purchased St Cuthman’s, a former public school in west Sussex, for a seven figure sum.

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22 May, 2011

Academic Freedom at Florida State University

Last week I wrote about the publicity — mostly negative — that Florida State University was receiving as a result of accepting a grant from the C.G. Koch Foundation to fund positions in the economics department. I know a lot about the issue, because I am a professor of economics at Florida State.

The publicity has kept up. Every day I’ve been getting e-mails from people near and far, some from people I know, some from people I’ve never met, passing along a link or offering an opinion. The story has been covered in the New York Times and Businessweek, among other outlets. I admit to being somewhat entertained by all the publicity, which is easy for me because unlike my Dean or university president, I have not been in the direct line of fire in these attacks on my department and university.

In what I wrote last week I was just trying to state the facts as I saw them, as someone with more knowledge about the deal than most people who offered their opinions. I didn’t pass judgment. I tried to present objective facts, and let readers decide.

As someone close to the grant in question, I do have an opinion, however, and my opinion is that the Koch grant does not compromise the academic integrity of Florida State University, has not limited our academic freedom, and has provided unambiguously beneficial results to the university — unless you count the negative publicity. So, (1) we were right to accept the grant, and (2) we should defend ourselves by explaining why we were right.

FSU President Eric Barron mostly followed through on that in this letter posted on the university’s web site that explains the facts better than I did. I say “mostly followed through” because after defending the procedures we followed, explaining how all decisions made with regard to this grant were made by our department, and saying, “…much of what has been written has been distortion of reality. We did not deserve the attack on our integrity. Certainly, our Economics faculty deserve much more credit for actively debating their concerns and then for committing themselves never to compromise their high scholarly standards,” he finishes the letter by saying, “I promise that we will be diligent in working to prevent outcomes like this in the future.”

If the outcome was beneficial to the university, and if “We did not deserve this attack on our integrity,” then why would we want to prevent outcomes like this in the future? Reading his letter, I am sure the outcome President Barron was referring to was the negative publicity, not the grant’s impact on the economics department, or the academic integrity and academic freedom in the university. Still, I am a bit uneasy about the caveat at the end.

One result of this is that today President Barron has asked our faculty senate to create a committee to investigate the possibility that the grant led to undue outside influence of university activities. I welcome the investigation, and am also not unhappy that the press is giving our state-supported university some scrutiny. We should be held accountable. I just think that in this case the facts are at odds with what most commentators have been reporting. So, investigate, and find out the facts. This is, after all, a state university that is heavily supported by taxpayer dollars.

One thing that aggravates me about all this is a nagging suspicion that the main catalyst for the negative publicity has less to do with issues of academic freedom than with the fact that the money came from the Koch Foundation. We have a group of faculty in the FSU economics department who have undertaken decades of academic research, published in reputable academic journals, that demonstrates the benefits of market institutions and limited government to prosperity. The work we have been doing for decades is consistent with the type of academic program the Koch Foundation wants to support. Having common interests, the deal was struck that was beneficial to both the Foundation and us.

Who else should we appeal to if we want outside support for this type of program? The Ford Foundation? The Carnegie Foundation? As I described in this book, published well before our department had any contact with the Koch Foundation, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie would turn over in their graves if they knew how the money from their fortunes was being spent today. Those foundations would not support a program like ours.

If a department wants funding to support programs that are friendly to markets and suspicious of big government, they have to get it from donors who have similar views. And, those donors would be wise to try to structure any grants so that the money is spent in ways consistent with their ideas. That’s what happened in our case.

Florida State University has been under attack for accepting a grant from the Koch Foundation, but my view, as someone very close to the situation, is that we were right to take the money, and that we should stand up to critics and explain why.

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Gov. Scott Walker Fights Republicans, Unions in Mission to Expand School Choice

School choice is on the move in Wisconsin, at least in Milwaukee County. The state Assembly has approved a bill that will increase the number of voucher students in Milwaukee, and increase the number of private schools they can choose from.

But an idea recently suggested by Gov. Scott Walker, to spread voucher opportunities beyond Milwaukee to Green Bay, Racine and Beloit, received a cool reception from Senate President Mike Ellis, as well as several other Republicans. Ellis also questioned a reform, embedded in the governor's budget proposal, that would lift income restrictions from voucher programs so all families would be eligible to participate.

That leads me to wonder if some Republicans, once committed to the concept of public school reform, have lost their nerve in the face of obnoxious union rallies and recall efforts.

I also wonder if Walker might have received a more positive response if he had targeted the entire state for voucher eligibility, in the same manner as Indiana. Only expanding to three cities may not sit well with legislators from areas that would not benefit.

School choice is best for all families and students. Every child is unique, and parents are best equipped to choose a school that fits their needs.

The state of Wisconsin provides a certain amount of money for every K-12 student in the state. What's wrong with letting parents spend that money at the school of their choice?

Walker sought to build momentum for school choice expansion with his keynote address to the National Policy Summit of the American Federation for Children in Washington, D.C. last week.

He focused on the idea that all students have the right to equal access to a quality education. "Every kid, no matter where they live, no matter what their background, no matter what their parents do for a living ... deserves the opportunity to have a great education because they each have limitless potential," Walker told his audience.

"We have 100,000 kids that we serve in the city of Milwaukee. Roughly 20,000 go to choice schools but that means that 80 percent of our families are looking at some other option and the majority of which are (using) public schools ... many of which fail to live up to the standard we expect for each and every child in that community and in our state.

"We fail as a country, we fail as a nation, we fail as a society if any of our kids slip through the cracks. We have to make sure every single one of them have the same opportunities we'd want for our children and grandchildren."

Walker referred to studies that show Milwaukee children in the voucher program are 17 times more likely to graduate from high school than their counterparts in Milwaukee public schools.

"If you look at the kids who come into the Milwaukee parental choice program, they more often than not come in (with lower learning levels) than kids in the Milwaukee public school system. But in the end, one of the most important outcomes is that they're 17 percent more likely to graduate by the time they're done.

"One of our greatest challenges is keeping kids in the system all the way to graduation ... It used to be that just graduating was enough to get a job, but these days you've got to have a two-year or four-year post-secondary education component just to get a job in our society. If you're not making it through graduation you're going to be another statistic."

Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers’ union, is trying to recall several Republican senators from office and destroy the GOP majority in the chamber.

The union’s president, Mary Bell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that research "does not support broadening choice."

I believe the only research that matters is the research conducted by the parents of every individual student in Wisconsin and America.

If they find a school that fits their child's needs - be it public, public charter, private or religious - they should have a right to use their share of state money to enroll their child in that school.

Somehow our society has been blinded into thinking that government-run schools have an exclusive right to K-12 students. State constitutions mandate that governments provide an education to every student in their jurisdiction. That does not mean those students have to attend government-run schools.

By providing the means for students to finance an education, the state has met its constitutional responsibility. At that point the state should step aside and let parents decide where that education will take place.

As far as I can tell, the only reason for enforcing geographic school boundaries is to provide a guaranteed clientele, and guaranteed jobs, for unionized teachers. That's not a very good reason to keep any kid trapped in any school that's not meeting his or her needs.

Scott Walker seems to understand that. The union doesn’t and it’s unrealistic for us to hope otherwise. Will legislative Republicans?

Leaders should be going bold in their attempts to save children from failing public schools. This is not the time to be pussyfooting around, making sure the adults aren’t offended by reforms that put the interests of children first.

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A fight for Britain's remaining selective schools

David Cameron was last night facing a fresh row over academic selection as protesters mounted the first bid in a decade to axe the 11-plus. The Prime Minister was braced for calls to come to the aid of two long-established grammar schools which are facing a concerted campaign to abolish them.

In the first move of its type since 2000, campaigners are poised to force a ballot on changing the selection policy of the two schools in Reading, Berkshire.

Last night, local Tory MP Rob Wilson angrily condemned the campaign as ‘profoundly wrong and retrograde’ and called on his constituents to fight to retain the schools.

But the battle will revive the bitter internal Tory splits of four years ago when Mr Cameron sought to rebrand his party’s image by promising that a future Conservative Government would make no effort to revive grammar school education across the country.

The row, one of the fiercest in which Mr Cameron was involved as Opposition Leader, led to Tory MP Graham Brady angrily resigning from the front bench after party bosses claimed the schools impeded social mobility.

One Conservative MP privately said last night: ‘Cameron was never against existing grammars but this whole issue is always incredibly toxic for us.’

The dispute will also prove difficult for several leading Tory MPs, including Immigration Minister Damian Green, who went to one of the grammars at risk – Reading School for boys.

It is now 11 years since campaigners against the 11-plus last tried to abolish selection at a particular school – Ripon Grammar in North Yorkshire. Using legislation introduced by the Labour Government in 1998, they forced a ballot on the admission policy there – but were defeated.

But last night it was confirmed that a group of parents in Berkshire had begun the process of forcing a vote on the future of the Reading School and the town’s other grammar, Kendrick School for girls.

The group said grammar schools were ‘a luxury Reading can no longer afford’ and claimed the ‘vast majority’ of children educated in them came from outside the town. In a joint statement, the two schools hit back by saying they were both recognised as ‘outstanding’ by education watchdog Ofsted and that scrapping selection would fundamentally change their ‘unique character’.

A statement said: ‘Parents rightly want their children to go to outstanding schools. Reading and Kendrick Schools believe that many parents would therefore wish to keep open the option of grammar school education for their children.’

Under schools legislation, parents of local ‘feeder’ schools for the two grammars are eligible to vote in the ballot. But Mr Wilson raised fears that as they had to ‘opt in’ to be registered to vote, a determined minority of anti-selection parents could carry the day. ‘I urge parents to sign up to vote in the ballot and ensure their voice is heard. We must not allow excellence and aspiration to be destroyed by the misconceived action of a small number of people,’ the MP said.

In the mid-seventies, there were more than 800 grammar schools across the country. But years of anti-selection policies and fears of ‘elitist’ education have seen their number whittled down to just over 160 now.

In 2007, Mr Cameron – keen to transform the Tories’ traditional image – made it clear that a future Conservative Government would not seek to reverse the grammar school decline. ‘There will be no reintroduction of grammar schools and no re-introduction of the 11-plus in the huge swathes of the country where they were abolished,’ he said then.

SOURCE



21 May, 2011

Creationism banned from British free schools

If science needs protection from creationist ideas, that does not say much for science

Creationism, intelligent design and other theories that contradict evolution are to be banned from being taught as science in free schools. Critics have warned that evangelical groups will be able to teach such ideas without interference, as free schools will not have to follow the national curriculum.

But now the Department for Children, Education and Schools has issued guidance explicitly stating that teaching such theories as science will not be allowed. The "minimum requirements" guidance, published earlier this week, reads: "Creationism, intelligent design and similar ideas must not be taught as valid scientific theories."

The guidance is to help those assessing applications for free schools. More than 300 groups have already applied to set up free schools, including one by the Everyday Champions Church in Newark, Notts., which wants to include creationism as part of the national curriculum.

In January Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said applications from creationist groups would be considered on a case-by-case basis. That prompted a letter from the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE), which warned that creationists intended to use free schools to launch a "concerted attack" on science education.

In March the DfE said Mr Gove was "crystal clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact". Nonetheless, speculation continued that creationism would be allowed, as no guidance was issued on the subject.

A DfE spokesman said on Friday that Mr Gove "will not accept any academy or free school proposal which plans to teach creationism in the science curriculum or as an alternative to accepted scientific theories". The spokesman said such ideas could be legitimately discussed as beliefs in religious education classes, but not taught as science.

Roger Stanyard from the BCSE - which describes itself as "the leading anti-creationist organisation in Europe" - said it was "largely happy" at the DfE's stance. However, he said: "It depends how it is implemented. People will always find ways around the rules."

Pastor Gareth Morgan, leader of the Everyday Champions Church, said the guidance would have no impact on their plans to open a secondary school for 652 pupils in Newark. They submitted the application in January. He said: "We have no intention of teaching creationism in the science curriculum. It will be taught in RE.

"It is very very clear, and has been from the start, that teaching creationism as science will not be allowed. "We must be happy with that, or otherwise we would not have bothered submitting the proposal."

SOURCE





Falsely accused teachers & students harmed by new U.S. Education Department policy

By Hans Bader (a former Education Department lawyer)

The Washington Post had a sad story on May 14 about a school teacher falsely accused of sexual misconduct by a student with a vendetta against him and a history of bullying. A jury acquitted Fairfax teacher Sean Lanigan after just 47 minutes of deliberations, expressing amazement at the weakness of the charges against him. But he still doesn’t have his old job back.

If the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has its way, more teachers like him will end up being fired even if they are acquitted by a jury of any wrongdoing, and may very well be innocent. It sent a letter to school officials on April 4 ordering them to lower the burden of proof they use when determining whether students or staff are guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault. According to the Department of Education’s demands, schools must find people guilty if there is a mere 51% chance that they are guilty – a so-called preponderance of the evidence standard. So if an accused is found not guilty under a higher burden of proof – like the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard that applies in criminal cases – the accused will still be subject to disciplinary action under the lower burden of proof dictated by the Education Department.

Most colleges have historically required "clear and convincing" evidence of guilt. This sensible standard requires less absolute certainty about guilt than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal prosecutions, but more certainty than the mere 51% chance (preponderance) standard demanded by the Education Department. But under pressure from the Education Department, colleges across the country have now abandoned this safeguard against false accusations.

Many colleges, like Yale, Stanford, Brandeis, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Virginia have now changed the burden of proof in their disciplinary proceedings to comply with the Education Department’s demands, largely eliminating the presumption of innocence. The Education Department investigated these schools at the request of Wendy Murphy, a lawyer who championed the failed prosecution of the innocent Duke Lacrosse players (making a litany of false claims against them and their lawyers), even though their innocence was later conceded by prosecutors and North Carolina’s attorney general. (The woman who falsely accused the Duke Lacrosse players was never punished for her false allegation, despite her prior criminal record and history of false allegations, and recently stabbed to death her live-in boyfriend). Murphy claims that she has “never, ever” encountered “a false rape claim.”

But as another lawyer, Wendy Kaminer, noted in the Washington Post on May 12, “not all accusations of sexual misconduct are accurate or true, and the truth can be especially hard to discern in ‘he said, she said’ cases.” Thus, “the Education Department’s new policies increase the risk that students wrongly accused of misconduct will be found guilty, suspended or expelled, and tarred as stalkers or rapists.”

I earlier explained why the Education Department’s position was not supported by the court rulings it pretended to rely on, and actually conflicted with appeals court rulings making clear that employers and schools are not liable for sexual harassment under Title IX and Title VII merely because they give the accused a strong presumption of innocence.

Now, the Daily Caller reports that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent the Education Department a letter on May 5 protesting its attempt to water down due-process rights in campus disciplinary proceedings.

In addition to trying to lower the burden of proof, the Education Department is attempting to deprive accused students and faculty of the opportunity to cross-examine their accusers: “students accused of harassment should not be allowed to confront (or directly question) their accusers, according to OCR, because cross-examination of a complainant ‘may be traumatic or intimidating.’” As OCR puts it, “OCR strongly discourages schools from allowing the parties personally to question or cross-examine each other during the hearing.” This is perverse, since the preeminent legal expert on evidence, Wigmore, called cross-examination “the most powerful engine for the discovery of truth ever devised by man." In sexual harassment cases brought in court, the defendant invariably has the opportunity to cross-examine the accuser, because courts recognize that cross-examination is useful in exposing false allegations.

The Education Department argues that colleges must use a 51%-chance standard in their internal disciplinary proceedings over harassment -- rather than requiring clear and convincing evidence -- because that’s the standard that courts use in most lawsuits, including civil rights cases. But that doesn’t make sense, because the issue being decided in college disciplinary proceedings (whether harassment occurred and the accused is guilty) is different from the issue being decided in court when a college is sued for harassment (whether the college’s response to harassment was unreasonable or “deliberately indifferent”).

The Education Department is glossing over the undisputed fact that the mere existence of harassment by students isn’t enough for liability in a lawsuit against a college. More is required. The school’s own actions in response to the harassment must be culpably negligent or indifferent. As the Education Department itself admitted in its 1997 “Sexual Harassment Guidance,” “Title IX does not make a school responsible for the actions of harassing students, but rather for its own discrimination in failing to remedy it once the school has notice.” (See U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Sexual Harassment Guidance: Harassment of Students by School Employees, Other Students, or Third Parties, 62 Fed. Reg. 12034, 12040 (March 13, 1997)).

So to violate Title IX, an institution’s own actions must be proven culpable under a “preponderance” standard — not the mere occurrence of harassment. And whether harassment occurred and whether the school was unreasonable in how it responded to it are two different issues. (For example, in Knabe v. Boury Corp. (1997), a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit against an employer that refused to discipline an accused employee because of the lack of corroboration for the accuser’s allegations – even though it assumed that the accuser’s allegations were accurate and truthful – because the employer investigated and in good faith concluded that the accused was not guilty based on the lack of strong proof of guilt. The employer could not be held liable, because its response was “reasonably calculated” to address harassment. Similarly, in Doe v. Dallas Independent School District (2000), another federal appeals court ruled than a school did not violate Title IX, and was not "deliberately indifferent" to harassment, merely because it reached the wrong conclusion about whether the accused was guilty. In Adler v. Wal-Mart (1998), a different appeals court ruled that an employer was not liable for sexual harassment where it failed to discipline one of the harassers, since his guilt was not clear at the time, and holding it liable for its reasonable but erroneous belief that he was not guilty would callously disregard his due process rights. In short, as yet another appeals court put it in the case of Harris v. L & L Wings (1997), "a good faith investigation of alleged harassment may satisfy the ‘prompt and adequate’ response standard, even if the investigation turns up no evidence of harassment. . . . Such an employer may avoid liability even if a jury later concludes that in fact harassment occurred.'”)

What standard of proof is “reasonable” for a school to apply in disciplinary cases? Both legal tradition and constitutional due-process rulings suggest that it is perfectly reasonable to apply a higher burden of proof than 51% -- like “clear and convincing evidence” – when determining the guilt of individuals, rather than the monetary liability of an institution.

First, as FIRE notes, the Supreme Court itself has used a higher “‘clear, unequivocal and convincing' standard of proof” even outside the context of criminal prosecutions, when necessary to promote the due process rights of individuals, and has blessed the use of this higher standard “in civil cases involving allegations of fraud or some other quasi-criminal wrongdoing by the defendant," where the damage to “reputation” resulting from an erroneous finding of guilt is particularly severe (as it surely is in sexual harassment and rape cases).

Second, it has long been customary to use a “clear and convincing” standard of proof in disciplinary cases in general, including sexual harassment and other forms of wrongdoing that can lead to civil litigation. This standard has long been used by a wide variety of decision-makers ranging from college officials and labor arbitrators to state licensing boards and bar disciplinary proceedings.

SOURCE





Local high school seeks principal by advertising in hardcore homosexual newspaper!

How radical and severely anti-family have some public school systems become? Much more than you can imagine.

The town of Milton, Massachusetts is advertising in a hardcore homosexual newspaper for a new principal for Milton High School. The newspaper Bay Windows, published in Boston, has a history of perversion, anti-Catholic bigotry, hatred of traditional values, and general disgusting content. Over the years it has published some of the most vile anti-parent articles you could imagine.

Milton actually was known for being fairly conservative, at one time. But obviously not now.

We don't know what else to say about this. It's complete madness. When a homosexual activist runs the school and all the staff, the indoctrination becomes institutionalized and religious freedom goes out the window. And the students (and their parents) are the ones who will have to deal with the consequences.

SOURCE



20 May, 2011

The Failure of American Schools

By JOEL KLEIN, former Chancellor of NYC schools

TO COMPREHEND THE depth of the problem, consider one episode that still shocks me. Starting in 2006, under federal law, the State of New York was required to test students in grades three through eight annually in math and English. The results of those tests would enable us, for the first time, to analyze year-to-year student progress and tie it to individual teacher performance—a metric known in the field as “teacher value-added.” In essence, you hold constant other factors—where the students start from the prior year, demographics, class size, teacher length of service, and so on—and, based on test results, seek to isolate the individual teacher’s contribution to a student’s progress. Some teachers, for example, move their class forward on average a quarter-year more than expected; others, a quarter-year less. Value-added isn’t a perfect metric, but it’s surely worth considering as part of an overall teacher evaluation.

After we developed data from this metric, we decided to factor them into the granting of tenure, an award that is made after three years and that provides virtual lifetime job security. Under state law at the time, we were free to use these data. But after the New York City teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, objected, I proposed that the City use value-added numbers only for the top and bottom 20 percent of teachers: the top 20 percent would get positive credit; the bottom would lose credit. And even then, principals would take value-added data into account only as part of a much larger, comprehensive tenure review. Even with these limitations, the UFT said “No way,” and headed to Albany to set up a legislative roadblock.

Seemingly overnight, a budget amendment barring the use of test data in tenure decisions materialized in the heavily Democratic State Assembly. Joe Bruno, then the Republican majority leader in the State Senate, assured me that this amendment would not pass: he controlled the majority and would make sure that it remained united in opposition. Fast-forward a few weeks: the next call I got from Senator Bruno was to say, apologetically, that several of his Republican colleagues had caved to the teachers union, which had threatened reprisals in the next election if they didn’t get on board.

As a result, even when making a lifetime tenure commitment, under New York law you could not consider a teacher’s impact on student learning. That Kafkaesque outcome demonstrates precisely the way the system is run: for the adults. The school system doesn’t want to change, because it serves the needs of the adult stakeholders quite well, both politically and financially.

Let’s start with the politicians. From their point of view, the school system can be enormously helpful, providing patronage hires, school-placement opportunities for connected constituents, the means to get favored community and business programs adopted and funded, and politically advantageous ties to schools and parents in their communities.

During my maiden testimony before the State Assembly, I said that we would end patronage hires, which were notorious under the old system of 32 school districts, run by 32 school boards and 32 superintendents (a 2002 state bill granting Bloomberg mayoral control of the city’s schools abolished the 32 boards). At my mention of patronage, the legislators, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, purported to be “shocked.” Nevertheless, after the hearing, when I went to thank committee members, one took me aside and said: “Listen, they’re trying to get rid of a principal in my district who runs a Democratic club for us. If you protect him, you’ll never have a problem with me.” This kind of encounter was not rare.

Similarly, I faced repeated requests for “constituent services,” meaning good school placements for wired constituents. After we reorganized the system and minimized the power of the 32 local superintendents—the go-to people for politicians under the past regime—a local official called me and asked, “Whom do I call for constituent services after your reorg?” I replied, “What’s that?” Impatiently, he asked, “How do I get a kid into a school when I need to?” I jokingly answered, “Oh, we must have left out that office in the reorg” (actually thinking, silly me, that the school system should use equitable rules for admission). He said, “Go fuck yourself,” and hung up. Despite our constant efforts, or because of them, this kind of political pressure—and payback if we weren’t responsive—happened at every level. Even more important, politicians can reap enormous political support from the unions representing school employees. The two national unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—together have some 4.7 million members, who pay hundreds of millions of dollars in national, state, and local dues, much of which is funneled to political causes. Teachers unions consistently rank among the top spenders on politics.

Moreover, millions of union members turn out when summoned, going door-to-door, staffing phone banks, attending rallies, and the like. Teachers are extremely effective messengers to parents, community groups, faith-based groups, and elected officials, and the unions know how to deploy them well. And just as happy unions can give a politician massive clout, unhappy unions—well, just ask Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who headed the City Council Education Committee when I became chancellor in 2002. Brilliant, savvy, ambitious, often a pain in my neck, and atypically fearless for an elected official, she was widely expected to be elected Manhattan borough president in 2005. Until, that is, she held hearings on the New York City teachers-union contract—an extraordinary document, running on for hundreds of pages, governing who can teach what and when, who can be assigned to hall-monitor or lunchroom duty and who can’t, who has to be given time off to do union work during the school day, and so on. Truth is, the contract defied parody. So when Moskowitz exposed its ridiculousness, the UFT, then headed by Randi Weingarten, made sure that Moskowitz’s run for borough president came up short. After that, other elected officials would say to me, “I agree with you, but I ain’t gonna get Eva’d.”

In short, politicians—especially Democratic politicians—generally do what the unions want. And the unions, in turn, are very clear about what that is. They want, first, happy members, so that those who run the unions get reelected; and, second, more members, so their power, money, and influence grow. As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly put it, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” And what do the members want? Employees understandably want lifetime job security (tenure), better pay regardless of performance (seniority pay), less work (short days, long holidays, lots of sick days), and the opportunity to retire early (at, say, 55) with a good lifetime pension and full health benefits; for their part, the retirees want to make sure their benefits keep coming and grow through cost-of-living increases. The result: whether you work hard or don’t, get good results with kids or don’t, teach in a shortage area like math or special education or don’t, or in a hard-to-staff school in a poor community or not, you get paid the same, unless you’ve been around for another year, in which case you get more. Not bad for the adults.

But it’s just disastrous for the kids in our schools. While out-of-school environment certainly affects student achievement, President Obama was on to something in 2008 when he said: “The single most important factor in determining [student] achievement is not the color of [students’] skin or where they come from. It’s not who their parents are or how much money they have. It’s who their teacher is.” Yet, rather than create a system that attracts and rewards excellent teachers—and that imposes consequences for ineffective or lazy ones—we treat all teachers as if they were identical widgets and their performance didn’t matter.

In fact, notwithstanding union rhetoric that “tenure is merely due process,” firing a public-school teacher for non-performance is virtually impossible. In New York City, which has some 55,000 tenured teachers, we were able to fire only half a dozen or so for incompetence in a given year, even though we devoted significant resources to this effort.

The extent of this “no one gets fired” mentality is difficult to overstate—or even adequately describe. Steven Brill wrote an eye-opening piece in The New Yorker about the “rubber rooms” in New York City, where teachers were kept, while doing no work, pending resolution of the charges against them—mostly for malfeasance, like physical abuse or embezzlement, but also for incompetence. The teachers got paid regardless. (To add insult to injury, these cases ultimately were heard by an arbitrator whom the union had to first approve.) Before we stopped this charade—unfortunately by returning many of these teachers to the classroom, as the arbitrators likely would have required—it used to cost the City about $35 million a year.

In addition, more than 1,000 teachers get full pay while performing substitute-teacher and administrative duties because no principal wants to hire them full-time. This practice costs more than $100 million annually.

Perhaps the most shocking example of the City’s having to pay for teachers who don’t work involves several teachers accused of sexual misconduct—including at least one who was found guilty—whom the union-approved arbitrators refuse to terminate. Although the City is required to put them back in the classroom, it understandably refuses to do so. And the union has never sued the City to have these teachers reinstated, even though it knows it could readily win. It has also never helped figure out how to get these deadbeats off the payroll, where they may remain for decades at full pay, followed by a lifetime pension. No one—and the union means no one—gets fired.

More HERE





Are Teacher Unions Gouging Teachers?

How much money do teachers unions really need to collect from their members to represent their interests with their employers?

One way we can find out is to see how much money the various branches of the national and state teachers unions have left over after paying the people who work directly for the unions themselves, whose jobs are to represent the member teachers at their school districts and perhaps also to represent their interests at the state and national level as well.

With that in mind, any money collected from mandatory union dues that sharply exceeds the costs of compensating the union's own employees or the costs of operating the union itself, such as rent for office or meeting space for the union's employees, would have to be considered to be excessive. If excessively excessive, the amount of dues above that basic level would constitute gouging on the part of the union bosses, who set the level of their represented teachers' dues, as they would be collecting far more in dues than what is genuinely necessary to represent their members' at their employers..........

Using these mean and median figures as a baseline value, we identify any union affiliate with a surplus percentage of member dues greater than 25% of the total member dues collected as potentially having set their member dues in excess of that required to legitimately represent the interests of teachers at their employers. We've shaded the rows of the table where the union affiliate's surplus dues exceed this level.

We also note several union affiliates that appear to have been substantially mismanaged in 2008-09, in that their expenditures for compensating their direct employees exceed the revenue collected by dues imposed upon their union's member teachers. The states that fall in this category include Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Oregon and Washington. The rows for these states have been shaded red in the table above.

But to answer the question we asked at the outset, some teachers are indeed being gouged by their union's bosses - the ones whose state legislatures were controlled by the Democratic party in 2008-09 and whose union bosses are sending the member teachers' money. The amount of the gouging would be approximately the amount in excess of 25% of each education union affiliate's total revenue from their members' dues.

We see that at the national level, where surplus member dues exceed 63% of the total member dues collected. Using our 25% threshold as the cap for "legitimate" union representation expenses, this suggests that the portion of teachers union dues that go to the national affiliate of the NEA could be reduced by 40% without impacting the ability of the teachers to have their interests effectively represented at this level.

The states whose education unions are most gouging their teachers members include Hawaii (with surplus member dues of 66% and 34% for the state's two NEA affiliates), California (54%), Ohio (50.7%), Florida (42.0%), Nevada (41.6%), Massachusetts (37.6%) and Wisconsin (35.6%). At a minimum, teachers' union dues could be reduced by anywhere from 10% to 25% in these states without impacting the union affiliates ability to just represent the teachers at their employers.

Finally, we note a significant divergence between states with legislatures controlled by members of the Democratic party and those states whose legislatures are either controlled by the Republicans or are split between the two major U.S. political parties.

Here, after adding up the amount of surplus revenue remaining after the union affiliates employees compensation has been subtracted from the total member dues collected, we find that states with Democratic legislatures account for $237,616,324 of the total surplus dues collected, or 70.7% of the $335,937,045 of the total surplus member dues collected in 2008-09 for the NEA's state affiliates.

By contrast, union affiliates in states with divided legislatures account for $66,067,598, or 19.7% of the total surplus collected, while union affiliates in states with legislatures controlled by the Republican party have surplus member dues collections of $32,253,123, or 9.6% of the total surplus collected among all states.

There are some different ways to interpret what this divergence means. First, it could indicate that teachers in states with legislatures with at least one division of the state legislature controlled by the Republican party are happier with that situation, as it indicates that the teachers aren't massing funds to support a prolonged strike in those states. That would also mean that teachers in states with Democratic-party controlled legislatures are less happy with that situation, and that they were preparing to support massive walkouts in 2008-09.

Yes, we laughed at that idea too! More likely, what's going on is that the teachers unions in states with Democratic party-controlled legislatures have been effectively captured by Democratic party members, who are using the surplus member dues to fund their party's political candidates at all levels in those states.

But we'd love to see the reaction of the state union bosses with high levels of dues gouging if anyone ever asks them if the reason why union dues would seem to be so much lower in the so-called Republican-controlled states is because Republicans are better at keeping unionized teachers happy!

Much more HERE





Australia: Harsher penalities for school thugs in Victoria

TOUGHER penalties for violent parents and students are on the way as more schools resort to lockdowns to protect students and staff. More than one state school a week is now locking students in to protect them from violence and aggression, compared to less than one a month five years ago.

Education Minister Martin Dixon yesterday told the Herald Sun he planned to increase penalties for the sorts of behaviour that often spark lockdowns. "There is a high expectation in the community that schools are safe places," Mr Dixon said. "Teachers expect that, parents expect that and children expect it and we've got to do everything in our power to ensure that remains the case."

Mr Dixon said schools were generally safe places, but there were some worrying trends with violence that needed to be addressed. He said a department taskforce was working to determine appropriate penalties.

Australian Principals Federation president Chris Cotching said the federation had been pushing for tougher penalties for all illegal behaviour on school grounds. He said higher penalties - as applies to attacks on emergency service workers - were needed to curb a marked upsurge in violence, particularly from parents, in the past two years. "We want schools to have a status that is greater than that of a public park," Mr Cotching said. "When (people) come into a school there should be an understood and accepted requirement about how they behave."

New data obtained by the Herald Sun shows 11 schools locked in students in the first two months of the school year - nine of them because of aggressive or antisocial behaviour. In 2010 there were 23 school lockdowns for aggression and antisocial behaviour for the entire school year. Across 2008 and 2009 there were 53 violence-related lockdowns, up from 20 in 2006 and 2007.

Last month Flemington Primary was forced to hire a security guard after a father who was angry over a personal issue allegedly became threatening and aggressive.

Mr Cotching said principals have no protection or timely support in dealing with parents "who seem to think it is their unrestricted right to abuse, harass and intimidate" principals and teachers.

SOURCE



19 May, 2011

School Boots Boy Scouts for Mother Earth

The school in my neighborhood told the Cub Scouts this week that their flyer cannot be distributed because it mentions God in the 12 core values.

While this constitutional misstep is unseemly, it is somehow made worse when contrasted with the always-welcome creed of environmentalism.

Like any normal American, I appreciate living in clean, healthy surroundings. But the green movement went past the point of preachy years ago.

Environmental respect advanced from the “don’t be a litterbug” messages of the 1960s to that crying indian commercial of 1970 to the recycle obsession of the past thirty years. Somewhere along the tour, the movement got mystical. For some time now, environmentalism has looked, walked, and quacked like a religion.

While bothered at what appears to be government-established religion in public schools, I had not made the effort to analyze it until the rejected Cub Scout flyer became an issue in our local school this week.

The message of reverence for “Mother Earth” has unquestionably been presented in this same school district for years. Still on the school website from 2009 are photos, videos and quotes from a local high school assembly where all 2,000 students gathered for a hero’s welcome for visiting Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

Ms. Tum is quoted as telling the students, “The Mayan calendar teaches that the earth is our mother.” Then, “Wherever you go in life, get your group together and do something. Teach other young people. If we were to gather a million young people that care for Mother Earth, we’ve done something very successful. Young people need to say: Here we are. We are here to stand for the health of our Mother Earth.”

Does this worship of the environment constitute a religion? Turns out that it does -- since 1998. Merriam-Webster defines Pantheism as “a doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe.” A bit of search-engine query reveals that the World Pantheist Movement officially established themselves as a religion on June 29, 1998 when they were issued a certificate of incorporation as a non-profit corporation in Colorado. Their website domain name, pantheism.net, was first created on January 23 of that same year.

The salient quotes from the World Pantheist Movement website include, “Why call this a religion rather than a philosophy? Like Buddhism or Taoism, it is both. It is clearly a philosophy. However, it deals with areas of life - especially our feelings of awe and wonder at the universe and love for nature - which are emotional and aesthetic and go beyond philosophy.

These are the proper realm of religion. Unlike straight philosophical systems, pantheism also has its own characteristic approach to meditation and religious ceremony.”

The site goes on to describe the legal benefits of being a religion, including tax advantages, and “being allowed to perform legal marriage and funeral ceremonies.”

I believe that my instincts are confirmed. Strictly controlling every move of the Cub Scouts on campus while celebrating “Mother’s Day for Mother Earth,” as one high school poster reads, is a double violation of the First Amendment.

SOURCE





British university admissions overhaul sparks panic among markers

Plans to overhaul the university admissions system could destroy the accuracy of A-level grades, experts have warned. Pupils currently apply for university courses on the basis of the grades their teachers predict they will achieve. Under Government proposals, from 2014 they will apply after they have received their results.

Universities Minister David Willetts believes the change will help disadvantaged teenagers who are routinely predicted lower grades than they achieve.

But the plans would necessitate a far swifter marking system, and exam boards have said the only way they can do this is by increasing the use of electronic and online marking. This has prompted fears that new systems will be rushed through before the technology is thoroughly tested, possibly leading to inaccurate grades and students wrongly missing out on university places.

Last year a technical glitch in exam board AQA’s system led to the incorrect marking of thousands of papers.

David Vanstone, headmaster of fee-paying North Cestrian Grammar School in Altrincham, Cheshire, and former chairman of the Independent Schools Association, said: ‘It is wholly wrong to rush in a system that isn’t tried and tested. ‘You have to protect the integrity of the exam system to makes sure everybody has faith in it. Accuracy is more important than speed.’

Professor Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, said: ‘In principle it is an excellent idea but I would like to voice caution. In a bid for efficient marking, rigorous questions may be dropped.’ The proposal is to be included in the Higher Education White Paper.

SOURCE






Australia: A university determined to destroy its reputation for excellence

Choosing its academic staff on non-academic criteria: No men allowed for top teaching jobs in engineering

MELBOURNE University has won the right to bypass anti-discrimination laws so it can choose women for senior academic jobs in engineering. VCAT granted an exemption to the university to advertise two women-only research fellowships worth up to $100,000 a year each because of a "gender imbalance" in academic staff.

The university says girls need more role models at the highest levels of engineering, but critics argue gender shouldn't be an issue when choosing suitable staff.

The School of Engineering said less than one-in-five lecturers and research fellows and only 3 per cent of professors were female.

The head of mechanical engineering at Melbourne, Prof Doreen Thomas, said the exemption was needed to encourage more female PhD graduates to further their careers. "Often women don't apply for the positions. They don't think they're good enough for them," she said. "We need to have women as role models to go out to schools and say: 'Consider doing engineering'."

Former Engineers Australia state president Madeleine McManus said the profession struggled to attract women because of image problems, lack of role models and work-life balance issues.

But labour market analyst Rodney Stinson said it was ludicrous to offer women-only academic jobs when female employment in some engineering fields was as low as 4 per cent. "Why should 4 per cent have representation on what should be an elite group at university level," he said. "Within an academic framework, unless you're studying gender matters, it's ludicrous to look at gender."

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New Zealand Schools arrange secret abortions

A MOTHER is angry her 16-year-old daughter had a secret abortion arranged by a school counsellor. Helen, not her real name, found out about the termination four days after it had happened. "I was horrified. Horrified that she'd had to go through that on her own, and horrified her friends and counsellors had felt that she shouldn't talk to us," she said.

She had suspected something was wrong, but her daughter insisted her tears were over everyday teenage dramas.

But Helen confronted her daughter's friends, who said the counsellor had taken the girl for a scan and to doctors. "I didn't know that they could do that."

Helen said teachers could discuss how a student was doing in school or phone parents when their child misbehaved, but would then keep life-changing situations such as abortions secret.

Her daughter had since told her the counsellor "wasn't very forthcoming" with advice. The counsellor did ask the girl if she had talked to her parents, but never pursued it.

Helen said follow-up counselling for her daughter was "nonexistent". She concedes patient confidentiality is a tricky issue and said her child feared she'd be disowned. "She's come to realise that's not the case. But if you're responsible for them, surely you should be told."

Helen has been too upset to approach the school. "Afterwards I was too wild, and I probably still am."

Another mother who was worried for her 15-year-old daughter "hit a brick wall" when she approached the school, and eventually discovered it was a friend of her daughter's who had undergone an abortion. "But I went through the horror of knowing that under the legislation, they did not need to say anything to me."

One teacher told the Sunday Star-Times she had seen parents become "absolutely livid" after finding out they had been kept out of abortion decisions. She knew of a Year 13 student who had had two abortions – one with her parents' knowledge, and one without.

She said the law catered for the "lowest common denominator" – pregnancy as a result of incest or rape, but girls sometimes did not want to tell their parents for fear they would react badly or demand prosecutions for statutory rape if their daughters were under 16.

Christchurch lawyer Kathryn Dalziel, who wrote Privacy In Schools: A guide to the Privacy Act for principals, teachers and boards of trustees, said students who saw counsellors were promised confidentiality, and the service was bound by the Health Privacy Code. "When it comes to contraception and abortion, they [counsellors] would need the consent of the person before they could share information with a parent or the school," she said.

"If that protection disappeared, you can pretty well guarantee the young person won't tell the counsellor a thing – particularly the thing you need them to talk about." And a counsellor who broke the rules and told a parent without the child's consent could be struck off.

Dalziel said she would be devastated if any of her daughters had an abortion without her support. "But knowing it is something that could happen, my whole thing about raising my children is to know how to listen and learn and get information."

Guidance counsellor Helen Bissett said the situation could be an "ethical nightmare", and a number of schools now had wellness centres so girls could see a nurse, not a counsellor. Not knowing how a parent would react was one of the main reasons girls wanted to hide the truth, she said.

"In the heat of the moment, parents can say some pretty rough stuff but once they've got through that, they're often really supportive."

She talked to students "long and hard" about getting a family member involved. Girls had to see a doctor for tests, scans and see two certifying consultants before they could have an abortion. The consultants explained the health risks and the girl had to sign a form saying she understood and consented. "I don't organise any and I never want to," Bissett said. "I go with them to the doctor, but I won't go to a termination."

SOURCE



18 May, 2011

Another hate-filled American school administration

They just don't like kids: Girl who reported bus-trip sex punished

A woman said Monday that an Ohio charter school is punishing her daughter for not immediately reporting that she saw two classmates having sex on a school bus and for changing her seat during the bus trip.

Saundra Roundtree told The Associated Press that her 14-year-old daughter told her she changed seats with a boy who wanted to sit beside another girl on a Dayton View Academy school trip last month and then saw the two having sex.

The 14-year-old told her mother the day the bus returned April 22 about what happened on the trip to tour out-of-state colleges, but said she was afraid to report it to school officials. "She wasn't sure what the boy might do in response," Roundtree said. "He might have retaliated against her."

Roundtree told school officials what her daughter said she witnessed, and they said they would investigate, Roundtree, 48, of Dayton said.

School officials told Roundtree on Friday that her daughter would not be allowed to attend the eighth-grade prom or the class picnic next month, but could graduate with her class, Roundtree said.

School officials did not immediately return calls Monday.

"They punished my daughter — who did the right thing by telling what she saw — but did nothing to the eight chaperones who were sitting in the front of the bus at the time and should have been monitoring the kids," Roundtree said. "If they are not doing anything to the chaperones, how can they punish my daughter?"

Roundtree said the actions against her daughter send the wrong message. "It sends the message that she shouldn't have said anything," Roundtree said.

Roundtree said she had to tell her daughter about the punishment when she got home from school Friday. "She was very upset," Roundtree said. "She had been looking forward to the prom all year."

The students seen having sex on the bus were suspended, WHIO-TV in Dayton reported, but Roundtree said school officials would not tell her what — if any — discipline they might face.

Roundtree kept her daughter home Monday and was trying to see if she could arrange home schooling for the remaining few weeks of class. "Other students know, and we are afraid of possible retaliation," said Roundtree, who didn't release her daughter's name.

She said she has contacted a lawyer and would ask the school to revoke her daughter's punishment.

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Value of degree questioned as research shows two-in-three British graduates fail to find suitable work

The value of higher education has been cast into doubt after it emerged nearly two thirds of recent graduates have failed to find a graduate job.

New research shows recent university-leavers are questioning the value of their hard-earned degrees, and many are considering moving overseas to find suitable work.

'The UK is failing its graduates. School leavers are faced with difficult decisions. Not only has the cost of going to university risen, but UK employment options are bleak,' said Sean Howard, vice-president of talent management company SHL, which commissioned the poll.

Researchers questioned 1,000 students who had graduated in the past three years, and found that 60 per cent do not have a graduate job. If these figures were replicated across the population, it would mean around 611,000 graduates have not found a degree-level job.

Disillusioned graduates still loooking for that first step on the career ladder have begun to question whether going to university was worth the trouble.

Given the choice again, 28 per cent - more than one in four - said they would go straight into work, and 8 per cent said they would take up an apprenticeship. Two fifths said they would not have gone to university at all if they had to pay the new £9,000 maximum tuition fees.

The findings suggest around 407,000 recent graduates would not have gone to university under the new fee levels.

While the nearly half of respondents (42.9 per cent) had applied for between one and 10 jobs, one in eight (12 per cent) tried their luck with more than 50. Fourty-seven per cent looked, or have been looking, for work for up to six months, and a third have been job-hunting for up to a year.

In an economy still straining to emerge from recession, graduates are increasingly looking overseas for opportunities, raising the prospect that the UK could suffer from a 'brain drain'.

More than a third (36 per cent) of those questioned said they would move abroad for a better salary, 34 per cent said they would move away for better opportunities, and 32 per cent said they would live overseas because of a lack of jobs in the UK. Europe was the most popular destination (chosen by 38 per cent), followed by North America (23 per cent) and Australia (21 per cent).

One in four said they would be willing to work unpaid for more than three months to gain experience in their chosen field.

Mr Howard said: 'Graduates are also under pressure to undertake unpaid internships in order to gain a foothold on the career ladder. It's not just university that carries a high price, but gaining work experience too. 'This could mean a future where the best jobs are reserved for those that can afford to attend university and clock up the most unpaid experience.

'Understandably our graduates are open to the idea of seeking their career abroad, and the UK industry is faced with a potential brain drain. 'If the Government won't reconsider the tuition fees, our recruiters need to reconsider their hiring criteria.'

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Australian students caught in the culture war crossfire

Public schools are again the battleground of a culture war. Make no mistake, the debate about the chaplaincy program and religious teacing really is a conflict about culture rather than God's place in a classroom.

The government announced in last week's federal budget an extra $222 million for the National School Chaplaincy program and providing religion classes in public schools. Yet revelations that Access Ministries chief executive Evonne Paddison had spoken in a 2008 conference about the "need to go and make disciples" through a "God-given open door to children and young people" will no doubt further rattle those who resist such moves. The Victorian teachers union called at the weekend for an end to religious teaching in schools.

The battle is an extension of the skirmishes during the Howard years around what constitutes Australian identity and history. Many supporters of Christianity-oriented Special Religious Instruction (SRI) would argue, for instance, that Australia has after all been peopled and shaped by Christians of various denominations.

They have a point. In 1947, 88 per cent of Australians identified with one of these denominations. Even the most recent ABS census reveals that Christianity remains demographically prominent, with 64 per cent claiming at least nominal adherence. Inevitably, in some circles, being Australian is conflated with being Christian.

However, the reasoning that this aspect of Australian national identity needs to be preserved – some would say expanded – is faulty in the same way that an exclusively "white" or Anglo conception of it is false and potentially dangerous. Our social reality is no longer the monoculture it once was and it will never be that way again. Much as Christians would see opposition to SRI as an attack on their values and God himself, the glaring truth is that Australians embrace a range of belief systems that are also life-giving. Religious plurality is simply not the same as moral relativity.

What is thus insidious about volunteer-run religion classes is not that they might result in young people taking up a creed, but that in Victoria in particular, it is being run by a patently Christian organisation whose executive has reportedly said, "without Jesus, our students are lost". For we can all soberly agree that young people need a safe, structured forum for exploring what is right and wrong, but we cannot honestly teach them that Christianity has a monopoly on moral values. We insult their intellect when we do so. We also legitimise prejudice against other faiths.

This culture war, however, is not just about Christianity versus other faiths, but faith versus secularism. It is interesting to see secularists argue with slightly more vehemence than Christians what the character of Australian society really is. They see it progressing inexorably away from religious traditions and structures. The separation of church and state is often invoked, though the constitution merely prohibits imposition of a state religion and a religious test for public office.

They may not realise that many church organisations in fact do a lot of work for the state, especially in social welfare. Why is it that no one seems to be concerned, for example, by the prospect of a homeless man turning to God because of his encounters with the Salvation Army, which receives government grants?

More to the point, when secularists (humanists and atheists by another name) argue that religion has no place in schools, they make exactly the same mistake that Christian proselytisers do: they insult young people's intelligence by doing their thinking for them.

This, in the end, is what evangelists and atheists have in common, the fear that young people will be lost if the other got hold. It is what underpins all culture wars – fear for the future.

Christians, however, should not use government schools as a platform for a new-found crusade against secularism. They will lose. They will lose once young people figure out that being secular is not the same as being amoral. Neither should secularists dismiss religion wholesale, as if it does not offer young people a view that is as humane and ethical is theirs. If they genuinely wish for students to be able to freely choose, then that choice must be made authentic by having all options on the table.

From shared fear, perhaps both camps can thus share a common hope: that young people who wish to live authentically and decently as human beings will find what they are looking for.

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17 May, 2011

Australia: Schools in Victoria to teach bilingual curriculum

This is nonsense. Why should kids who already speak the international language learn another one? I greatly enjoyed my language studies but that was just a cultural recreation for me. And Asian languages are far too hard for English-speakers. The time would be much better spent reviving the teaching of English grammar -- JR

CHILDREN would be required to learn core subjects such as maths and science in a foreign language, under a state government plan to curb the "appalling" decline of languages in Victorian schools.

With government figures showing almost 60 per cent of secondary school students do not study a language - and almost a third of primary schools don't offer them - Premier Ted Baillieu has vowed to make language education compulsory for most students, starting with prep in 2015, and progressively increasing compulsory participation to year 10 by 2025.

The Sunday Age has learnt the government is also preparing to create a pilot program, in conjunction with a Victorian university, that would train dozens of primary school teachers to conduct lessons in a language other than English.

Academics and teachers have welcomed the push to boost the teaching of languages in schools, but remain sceptical about what the government can achieve.

The plan has been branded as "incredibly ambitious" given the difficulty of finding qualified language teachers, and many warn that without proper resourcing it will be yet another language policy that fails to deliver.

Over recent decades, dozens of state and federal policies have aimed to change Australia's status as a predominantly monolingual nation - but most have achieved limited success.

Six months before the 2007 federal election, for instance, Mandarin-speaking Labor leader Kevin Rudd announced a $68 million plan to revive Asian languages in schools, but four years later there has been little progress.

However, Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras told The Sunday Age there was no reason Victoria couldn't improve. He said the state had the potential to be the multilingual capital of Australia, but had dropped the ball over the past decade, and it was "appalling" so few people could speak more than one language.

"Over the last 10 years, the teaching of LOTE (languages other than English) has decreased considerably, and what should have been our core

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A Word on CUNY, Kushner & Weisenfeld

Kushner is an Israel-bashing leftist. Other Israel-bashing leftists who teach at CUNY recommended that the university honor Kushner with an honorary degree.

Last week, the CUNY Board of Trustees met to consider the recommendation and due to the objections raised by trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the board decided not to accept the faculty recommendation and passed him over for the honor.

Kushner pulled out the McCarthy card. His leftist fans at the New York Times and everywhere in academia rallied to his defense and began a process of demonizing Wiesenfeld.

The university president panicked and took the unprecendented move of overturning his trustees' decision and agreed to give Kushner the honorary degree.

Now the leftist screechers are demanding that Wiesenfeld be removed from the board of trustees because by professing an opinion they don't like, he has destroyed what passes for academic freedom in their twisted little Orwellian world. So four thoughts on this:

First Wiesenfeld is a Jewish hero and deserves the support of all good Jews and supporters of truth.

Second, the fact that the leaders of the major Jewish organizations -- almost all located in New York - have not seen fit to stand up for Wiesenfeld is a mark of shame on all of them. What their silence shows is that there is no reason to believe that they are up to the challenges of defending the Jewish community in the US on any issue of major or minor significance. Wiesenfeld is after all being demonized for the act of standing up to a maligner of Israel. That's all he did. And they cannot even muster the courage to defend him for that.

Third, the assault on Wiesenfeld should raise alarm bells for all parents in the US. It isn't just that universities are increasingly closed to critical thought regarding Israel. Their refusal to countenance the truth in the discussion of Israel -- Columbia, my alma mater just established an institute of Palestine studies. That is, Columbia just established an institute to study an imaginary country and a nation that was invented by the Soviets circa 1969 -- is a signal that they cannot study anything. What the Kushner story shows is that there is no reason for parents to believe that a college degree from most US universities today will provide their children with anything remotely resembling an education.

Finally, while I applaud and respect Wiesenfeld for standing up for what is right, the assault on him raises the issue of whether there is any point anymore to contributing money to corrupted institutions. Many philantropists argue that by funding universitities they buy the ability to influence policies and save them from the inside. But what the assault on Wiesenfeld shows is that this influence is an illusion.

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Custard on pupil's arm? £750. Fall off classroom chair? £6,000. How 'compensation culture' is spreading through British schools

A pupil sued his school for £750 after having hot custard spilt on his arm and another was given more than £6,000 after falling off a chair, a survey has revealed.

Thousands more were paid out in the past two years to children who tripped up on the playground, further showing how a 'compensation culture' has spread to the country's schools.

Payouts were also given to a pupil hit in the eye with a pen and another who tripped over an unmarked ramp, according to statistics provided by councils on Merseyside.

Headteachers have told how the claim culture means schools have to put up warning signs every time it rains, while another said that 'even the cotton wool we wrap children in is checked beforehand'.

The figures were revealed through a Freedom of Information request which asked councils on Merseyside to show details of every successful compensation claim borough against schools by pupils.

The results shows that more than £50,000 was paid out to pupils' families in the Liverpool borough of Knowsley between 2008 and 2010.

Successful claims included £750 for a pupil whose arm was burned by spilt custard, £3,000 for a child accidentally kicked in the face and a pupil who tripped over an 'unmarked ramp' was given £350.

Other payouts included more than £6,000 for a child who was hit in the eye with a pen and £4,500 to a student who caught their leg on a 'protruding screw'.

In Wirral, Merseyside, more than £21,000 was paid out for seven incidents during the same period. Payouts in the borough included £6,535 for a pupil injured falling off a chair, £4,000 for a pupil injured on a fence while compensation payments totalling almost £4,000 were made to pupils for tripping up on the playground.

And in Sefton more than £6,000 was paid over the same period for two incidents relating to trips in playgrounds and a pupil falling on broken glass.

Jim Donnelly, headteacher at Litherland High School, Merseyside, said scrutiny on safeguarding, which now forms part of Ofsted inspections, and the threat of compensation meant health and safety was embedded into school life.

Mr Donnelly said: 'If it starts to rain we would put up a "Be careful, slippery surface" sign up on exit doors because we know insurers would want to know what steps we have taken.'

Steve Peach, headteacher at Wallasey secondary The Oldershaw, said most schools took out insurance cover through the local authority and carried out robust and daily risk assessments. He said: 'We live in a claim culture and health and safety is now part of every member of staff's job description. 'But unless we refuse to allow children to be children nothing is risk free.'

Mick Burrows is Merseyside executive member of teaching union NASUWT, which aims to have specially trained health and safety representatives in every school to monitor accident prevention. He said: 'Not only would it help protect our members and pupils but bring a reduction in compensation as we'd have fewer accidents in the first place.'

Knowsley Council today stressed the number of claims in the borough had fallen in recent years due to 'schools accessing health and safety support from the council's health and safety team.' This includes advice varying from risk assessments to reporting accidents and safety audits. A spokesman for the authority said: 'The council also organises an annual health and safety conference for all head teachers.'

But Nick Seaton, secretary of the Campaign For Real Education, said: 'Schools have an impossible job. Accidents do happen.'

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16 May, 2011

Should an American school be like a penal institution?

It’s that time, again: Young people in tuxedos and fancy dresses (and stretch limos), celebrating their near-completion of a dozen years of compulsory schooling with one big dance as they prepare to enter the larger world.

Thirty-three years ago, my wife went with me to our high school senior prom on our first official date. That day marks the jumping off point for a long and fruitful journey that has included seeing our own off to the prom.

Though today I’m oh-so-much more sophisticated, I still remember the amazing courage required to actually do the “asking out” part. A most essential step. Everyone who has ever asked anyone out knows.

Just not quite as well as James Tate now knows.

Tate is the Shelton High School senior first suspended from his Connecticut school on May 6 and then banned from attending his senior prom, only to be miraculously freed yesterday from the school’s zero-tolerance prom-death-penalty, because of massive worldwide media attention (all negative on the school’s gulag-like stance) and a couple hundred thousand active supporters on the “Let James Tate Go to the Prom” Facebook page.

What led to young Tate’s banishment and then to an Arab-style Facebook revolution in the Constitution State?

It began with the unmistakable fact that Mr. Tate is a normal teenage male Homo sapiens in the alternative universe known as an American public high school. James wanted to ask a girl to the prom in a way that would “make her feel special,” so he, with the help of two friends, taped 12-inch tall letters on the brick front wall of the school that read, “Sonali Rodrigues, Will you go to prom with me? HMU [hit me up] Tate.”

The school’s response might have been calm by today’s standards — no psychologist, no SWAT team. But, of course, the school principal claimed putting the message up had been a “safety risk,” even though James actually wore a helmet while standing on the ladder pressing the letters to the school’s brick exterior . . . with two friends spotting him. It was further alleged that James and his two also indicted co-conspirators trespassed on school property by being outside the building putting up the message between one and three in the morning. All three students were suspended and, because their suspensions were issued after April 1, they were also banned from attending the prom.

By the way, Sonali’s response to James’ prom invitation was, “Yes.” As for the school’s heavy handedness, she adroitly commented, “This is really upsetting. It’s our senior year and we are supposed to have happy memories, not something like this.”

To his credit, James expressed regret for putting his friends in a bad situation. He told one reporter, “I feel like a jerk for getting them in trouble, and leaving my date dateless.” He also offered to make up for his transgressions by doing “community service — like cleaning up the litter outside the school.”

The school would have none of it. While various students displayed a keen sense of justice and proportion — with statements like “[The sign] could be taken off so it’s not like it was permanent damage and he didn't deface any property” and “She should have just let him off with a warning”—the administration put the school on “complete lockdown” to block any budding student revolution against the educational/correctional institution holding them. On Friday, Headmaster Beth Smith, flocked by police, informed the throngs of assembled media camped outside the school that a planned sit-in had been averted with “no disruption.”

But there was, indeed, a disruption. Thank goodness, Shelton High School’s ridiculous clampdown on James Tate and his friends sent an unmistakably troubling message: that enthusiasm and creativity are punishable; that education isn’t supposed to be fun; that bureaucratic rules come far ahead of common sense and decency; that school is a cold institution, rather than a place that nurtures living, growing persons; and that rather than “sucking the marrow out of life,” kids need to learn to just keep their heads down and move along in line . . . when told to move.

People all over America, all over the world, were appalled and tried their best to help. A Facebook page dedicated to Tate’s cause grew quickly to hundreds of thousands, emails were sent and phone calls made to school officials in Shelton, Connecticut. And a Shelton High School in Washington State reported their phone and email inboxes filled with comments berating them for the stupid behavior of their namesake in Connecticut.

Yesterday, Shelton officials finally — and unconditionally — surrendered. Announcing the abandonment of the school’s hard-line position, and that Tate and his two friends could indeed go to the prom, Superintendent Freeman Burr declared, sheepishly, “James Tate has set for us a new standard for romanticism.” Headmaster Beth Smith, who days earlier had strongly defended her draconian commitment to the no-prom punishment, admitted, “I never thought this would lead to international notoriety.”

But as one poster on the Facebook page correctly assessed, “She didn’t reverse her decision because it was the right thing to do, she caved to the pressure of us, all of us.”

James and Sonali get to go to prom, thanks to people power. But what does this say about placing more money and authority in the public schools? Common sense shouldn’t require a worldwide media storm in order to prevail.

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Number of failing British teachers doubles in just a year

The number of teachers classed as incompetent has doubled in just one year, while the number labelled outstanding has halved. Millions of children are being failed by teachers who do not plan lessons, are unable to control a class and have a poor grasp of their subject.

The Ofsted figures, which may reflect a change in assessment methods, disclose that 17,600 teachers were described as ‘inadequate’ last year. This compares with 8,800, or two per cent, in the previous year. Meanwhile 35,200 teachers, out of a total of 440,000, were ranked ‘outstanding’ in 2010, compared with 70,400 in 2009. The proportion of unimpressive teachers labelled merely ‘satisfactory’ has also ballooned from 123,200 in 2009 to 162,800 in 2010.

A spokesman for Ofsted suggested that the rise in the number of poor teachers could be explained by a change in methods of inspection which has highlighted cases which would previously have been undisclosed. He said: ‘Since 2009 we have placed a greater emphasis on classroom teaching, increasing the amount of time inspectors spend observing lessons.’

The apparent slump in standards in the state sector comes as experts warn of a coming crisis in teacher numbers, with 40 per cent expected to retire within the next five years.

Meanwhile, an immigration-fuelled population boom is likely to increase the school roll by 500,000 pupils by 2018.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has promised to make it easier to sack bad teachers. Aware that too many use ‘notorious dodges’ to keep their jobs such as being signed off sick, he is to outline radical plans to get rid of teachers who should not be in the classroom.

Russell Hobby, of the National Union of Head Teachers, said: ‘More has to be done to ease out incompetent teachers. There are some cases where anybody would be better for the children than a bad teacher. ‘And it drags the rest of the teachers down. It really lowers morale and makes matters worse.’

A spokesman for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said: ‘Naturally we want the best people to be teaching our children. But we would be upset by any attempt by heads to target teachers that they do not like.

‘People need to be treated fairly. Drop-out rates for new teachers are high. Therefore those who do not feel up to the job, or do not like it, leave of their own accord.’

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Australia: School class size right, says Premier of Victoria

Good to see the class size myths disregarded. Classes could in fact be bigger with no loss of quality but a big saving for the taxpayer

PREMIER Ted Baillieu has ruled out an increase in school class sizes under his watch.

He made the commitment after his Education Minister Martin Dixon refused to give such a guarantee in a parliamentary budget estimates hearing earlier this week. "There will be no increases in class sizes," Mr Baillieu told the hearing yesterday.

Mr Dixon had refused to comment on class sizes because he said the issue related to wage negotiations with the state's teachers, which are due to begin soon.

Opposition education spokesman Rob Hulls had warned Mr Dixon's refusal to rule it out was code for saying class sizes would rise.

Mr Hulls said under the Labor government from 1999 to 2010, average class sizes in government schools dropped from 25.4 to 22 students.

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15 May, 2011

Indiana School Employee: Education Reform = Nazi Ovens

Last week, my organization praised the Indiana lawmakers for passing some of the nation’s most significant education reforms. In one of Education Action Group’s weekly newsletters, we said that Indiana’s new voucher program and its decision to lift the cap on charter schools will transform the state’s public education system, to the benefit of all Hoosier families and students. (An EAGtv report that details Indiana’s education reforms can be found here.)

Well, EAG’s audacity in celebrating the idea of school choice generated a number of hateful email responses – from unionized Indiana teachers.

The writers (all with the telltale “k12.in.us” in the email address) accused us of “attacking public education” and “bashing” teachers. One writer blamed us for demoralizing “those of us in the trenches and on the front lines of the classroom.”

Anyone who dares challenge the status quo of Big Education can expect such name calling. But as unhinged as unionized teachers can become, one Indiana educator stooped to new lows. An email from a teacher at East Allen County Schools said this:

“Why do you distribute this propaganda? Do you have a conscience? Do you really believe any of this? I am not a union member but feel that Mitch's agenda is killing Indiana. The education agenda is a holocaust against our children. Please understand I am speaking as a grandson of a Holocaust survivor. This is truly as bad or worse than what was done to the Jewish people only it is happening to innocent young people. It is frightening to me.”

According to this—ahem—educator, allowing children to attend a charter school is “WORSE THAN” placing children in ovens like the Nazis did.

Even more disturbing than this teacher’s irresponsible comments is the fact that he is allowed anywhere near a place of learning. It’s darn near criminal that he’s allowed to shape the minds of Indiana’s youth. (By claiming to be “a grandson of a Holocaust survivor,” this teacher believes he is immune from charges of insensitivity.)

Now, some readers are likely thinking that we’re using the words of one loony teacher to smear all union teachers, but we’re not.

The accomplishments of this new crop of education reform-minded governors (Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, to name a few) have caused unionized teachers to lash out at anyone supporting a reform agenda. We’ve received numerous profanity-laced emails sent from teachers who feel threatened by accountability and choice.

The teacher unions’ public image is one of standing up for the interests of kids. They’re just well-meaning teachers who believe in the value of public education. Right.

In reality, the teacher unions are dominated by a group of angry leftists who care far more about their compensation packages and collective bargaining privileges than they do about educating children.

That might strike some as a harsh conclusion, but we’ve got the emails to prove it.

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Could Penn. Kids Soon be Subjected to PETA Ads in School?

A national animal rights group has offered a cash-strapped school district an undisclosed amount of money if it allows ads in school promoting alternatives to animal dissection.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has approached dozens of schools across with country with the offer, said it found out about the Kutztown School District’s financial woes over the Internet.

The group recently sent a letter to Superintendent Nicholas Lazo Jr., offering to pay money if the school allows the posting of ads that say, “STOP SCHOOL VIOLENCE. DO YOUR HOMEWORK – CHOOSE NOT TO DISSECT.” Different versions of the ad feature rats, frogs and fetal pigs.

Lazo told the Reading Eagle newspaper that he is gathering more information on the offer. A message left with the district Friday by The Associated Press was not immediately returned. This week, amid community protests, the school board approved a $28 million budget that calls for the elimination of nearly 13 teaching positions.

PETA spokeswoman Ashley Gonzalez said the group has made similar offers to dozens of schools across the country in the past few years, but none has accepted. Some schools, however, have taken the group up on its offer of free software that allows students to perform digital “dissections,” Gonzalez said.

“We are always on the lookout for schools that can benefit from our support,” she said.

The group has not specified how much money it would provide to a school that allows ads to be posted, but said it would depend partly on how many ads were placed and in how many schools. “We’d have to sit down with them and work out how much exposure we would get,” Gonzalez said.

PETA already has a site targeting young people called PETA2.com. There, students — and even educators — can learn how to start a “campaign” against dissection:

SOURCE





Leading British Catholic school in admissions overhaul

A top Roman Catholic school favoured for the children of Tony Blair and Nick Clegg is set for a clash with the admissions watchdog over plans to root out unbelievers.

The London Oratory School in west London is proposing to introduce an admissions policy that favours children and parents who are more involved in parish life.

The move will be sure to mark out committed Catholics over so-called “pew jumpers” who conveniently discover religion to get children into popular faith schools.

It beefs up the school’s previous admissions rules that focused on the extent to which pupils meet the Church’s requirements regarding Baptism, Holy Communion and attending Mass.

But the change – being introduced next year – could bring the school into trouble with the official admissions watchdog which has already criticised other faith schools for breaching strict entry guidelines.

Last year, Ian Craig, the outgoing Chief Schools Adjudicator, warned schools against using complex points-based systems that benefit middle-class families heavily involved in church activities. He suggested the move disadvantaged children with poorer parents who have less time to volunteer in the local parish.

In recent years, a number of faith schools have been ordered to re-draw their admissions policies for perceived breaches of the code.

Eight Roman Catholic schools in Newham, east London, were ordered to change admissions rules after asking parents and children to meet a local priest for a reference – a move which could favour more articulate middle-class families. A Sikh school was criticised for allocating points to parents who took part in community activities, which could penalise those who are unable to do so for work or family reasons.

The London Oratory is already among the most sought-after faith schools in England and regularly sends talented pupils to Oxford and Cambridge. Tony Blair was famously criticised after bypassing dozens of nearby schools to send his sons across London to the Oratory.

And last year it emerged that Nick Clegg – an atheist whose wife is Catholic – was considering sending his son to the school next year, even though other state schools are closer to his home.

The school’s proposed admissions rules for 2012 prioritise children who regularly attend Mass on Sundays, those fulfilling the Church’s requirements regarding Baptism and whether candidates have received their Holy Communion.

Points are then awarded to recognise “service in any Catholic parish or in the wider Catholic Church by both the candidate and a Catholic parent”.

The Diocese of Westminster – which covers the Oratory – has already clashed with another faith school over its use of a points-based admissions system. It shopped Cardinal Vaughan School to the admissions regulator in a bitter battle with the school, claiming that its entry policy was too elitist.

But the Oratory could escape censure because the Government is currently planning an overhaul of the school admissions code in a move designed to slim down the document and give more power to individual head teachers.

Dr Craig, who refused to comment on the issue yesterday, is due to stand down later this year. The Oratory was also unavailable for comment.

SOURCE



14 May, 2011

A U.S. Catholic university stands up to a lying Leftist

But not on principle -- only in self-defense

The Catholic University of America (CUA) may have thought that AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney’s May 2nd speech on campus would be non-controversial. But Sweeney, a Catholic who doesn’t hide his commitment to socialism and a progressive takeover of the Democratic Party, promised controversy from the start. He attacked conservatives, in particular Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and told the event that opponents of organized labor were out-of-step with the teachings of the church and Jesus Christ Himself. Then, however, Sweeney unloaded on the sponsors of his appearance, attacking university officials as union busters.

Perhaps Sweeney thought his comments would go unanswered, out of deference to the fact that he was a featured speaker and was showered with praise by the liberal organizers of the event as a brilliant labor organizer. But CUA officials struck back, issuing a statement basically accusing Sweeney of lying and having the statement read aloud as Sweeney sat in stunned silence.

In fact, a recording of the event turned up and demonstrates that the statement issued by CUA officials takes issue with almost everything said by the former labor boss and accuses organized labor of manipulating and abusing workers at this institution of higher learning.

The two-day conference was sponsored by Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies (IPR) and titled “120th Anniversary of Rerum Novarum: Church, Labor, and the New Things of the Modern World.”Rerum Novarum, a papal document on labor and capital, is behind much of the “social justice” teaching that animates “progressive” Catholics these days who support Obama and want to overlook his anti-Catholic record on matters such as abortion and homosexual rights.

“Earlier this year,” said Sweeney, “politicians began taking America’s anti-union, anti-worker crusade a step even further by trampling the rights of public employees and boldly trying to eliminate their unions altogether. I’m sure most of you are familiar with what happened in Wisconsin, where a newly elected conservative governor forced state as well as municipal unions to concede health care and pension benefits, and then outlawed collective bargaining.”

In order to “restore Catholic social teaching to the center of the American Church—a position it still holds in Church doctrine—and renew the partnership between the Church and labor,” Sweeney said that the organized labor movement must become “what amounts to an action arm of Catholic social teaching.” Threatening confrontation, he said, “We need the help of every Catholic leader as well as every Catholic parishioner, not just in matters of public policy, but in direct action that we from time to time must undertake.”

“But I am concerned that the Church’s support for workers and unions has become muted and even confusing,” he said.

Sweeney had said, “I’m reminded of the time not too many years ago when we scheduled a demonstration here at this university over a dispute between the workers’ union and the administration. The then-president of CUA called a certain member of the hierarchy, who then called me and asked me to cancel the demonstration in exchange for a promise to deal with our issues. I canceled the demonstration. But I never heard back from either of them…I share that little story not to disparage our esteemed leaders—my calls for help from the hierarchy have most often been answered.”

But the “esteemed leaders” and the hierarchy ordered Schneck to read a statement taking issue with almost everything Sweeney had said about them and the union problems at CUA.

Keeping in mind that CUA President John Garvey had introduced the conference and has emphasized intellect and virtue during his inaugural year at CUA, Schneck read a university statement that essentially accused Sweeney of abandoning those values:

“During his remarks about a labor issue at Catholic University that began in 1999, he implied that the then-president of the Catholic University refused to engage in a dialogue with him about the matter. In fact, the president of the university along with one of his vice presidents met face to face with Mr. Sweeney to discuss the labor issue.

“Mr. Sweeney also stated that the conflict was between the university administration and the workers union. In September 1999 approximately 130 CUA custodial and maintenance workers were involuntarily transferred from one union to a local of the Service Employees International Union. They protested their incorporation into SEIU not just through the university administration but also to the National Labor Relations Board and petitioned the latter to decertify SEIU.

The university adopted a position of neutrality over the matter of union representation, stipulating only that the workers have an opportunity to make a free choice by a secret ballot election. SEIU opposed this position, pressuring the workers to accept their forcible incorporation. Eventually when SEIU concluded that the university would not be swayed from its position, it agreed to a secret ballot election conducted by a neutral third party. The election was held on February 2, 2001, and SEIU lost.”

In an understatement, the university officials went on, “Our recollection of events differs from Mr. Sweeney’s.”

Not only were there different recollections, the controversy suggests that someone was lying—and that someone, according to CUA, was Sweeney. Significantly, Sweeney had nothing to say in response to the scathing CUA statement that was read aloud in front of him.

More HERE





The Screwed Generation

Alan Caruba

June is famous for weddings and graduations. Both are filled with great expectations and both are subject to great disappointments.

Today’s college graduates are thoroughly screwed. According to Matthew Segal, the president of a non-profit membership organization called Our Time, “With 85% of college graduates moving back home and an average debt of $22,900 per student, thousands are staring at a bleak economic future.” You think?

Aren’t these the eager, besotted youngsters who, at age 18, voted for Barack Hussein Obama as if he were the Second Coming? In the words of Herman Cain, a GOP presidential contender, how did that work out?

“New college graduates,” said Segal, “are entering an economy with an almost 17% unemployment rate for Americans under the age of 30.” Despite that and other horrible statistics, Segal insists “We know there is still a bright future out there…” Oh, yeah? High unemployment. Having to move back home. Graduating with a huge debt. That’s not my definition of a bright future.

I graduated college in 1959. When I got out, what awaited all able-bodied young men was the Draft. Before I could think about utilizing my precious diploma, I had to get two years in the U.S. Army behind me and to my surprise it was some of the best post-graduate education one could imagine. And it was mandatory.

My “career” didn’t take off until I joined the staff of a weekly newspaper and, since the editor left within three months or so, I became the editor! Here again, the education I received was invaluable. All small towns and cities pretty much have to deal with the same political, educational, policing, and other issues.

I “graduated” to a daily newspaper and, after a few years concluded that there was no real money to be made. In this respect, I was way ahead of my time as the Internet would decimate newspaper circulations, decimate editorial staffs, and affect the writing craft to the point that rendered it a very bad career choice.

For those graduating from college at age seventeen or eighteen this year, it means they were born in 1990 or 1991. They were eleven or twelve years old on September 11, 2001; old enough to know that something terrible had happened, killing thousands of Americans who probably thought they were not at war with militant Islam. Since then, this generation has not known a day of peace.

For most young men, though, the option to avoid service—an all-volunteer military—had been made by Congress in 1973. So, Generation X, born 1965-1980, and Generation Y, born 1981 to 1995, and the current generation were largely spared serving in the military. You tend to pay closer attention to what is happening in the real world if it means you may have to fight a war. The miracle is that we have a million men and women in uniform who somehow absorbed the values of earlier generations.

A subject of growing contention is the way the nation’s educational system has been “dumbed down” since the 1960s or the growth of “political correctness” that thwarts addressing issues involving ethnicity, ancestry, religious faith, and gender. Nor is there much discussion of the way colleges and universities have become sausage factories squeezing parents and working students for every dollar, pushing them through, and conferring degrees that, with the exception of the professions, often have dubious value.

This new generation is very “connected” in ways earlier ones could never imagine. Facebook, MySpace, and all manner of other Internet machinery have transformed how they perceive themselves and the world. It has not, however, significantly educated them in the traditional sense of the word.

They will doff their caps and gowns and go home to mom and dad. A friend of mine graduated from Georgetown University in 1982 after working his way through. He recently calculated that it cost $232,000 to graduate today. What teenager could ever take on such a burden and why should their parents be expected to shell out the kind of money that could purchase a second home?

Today’s graduate is not likely to see any return on the money he or she pays into Social Security or Medicare. The dollars they earn will have diminished in value from those of my time or my friend’s.

It can be argued that it was no picnic for earlier generations, but they at least had a Constitution that wasn’t being ignored and dismembered.

They had, despite the occasional short-lived recession, a healthy economy, a rational national debt, and presidents who, with the exception of people like Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, didn’t see their job as plundering the public treasury for so-called “social justice” and environmental programs based on liberal pipedreams.

Welcome to the world of faltering economies from here to Greece and back again. Welcome to outsourced jobs. Welcome to rapacious bankers making money on housing loans they knew were bad for those in search of the American Dream. Welcome to useless pat-downs every time you fly. Welcome to “reality TV” and vulgar “entertainment”.

In these and so many other ways, this new generation is thoroughly screwed.

SOURCE





British private schools fire a warning shot at new charity rules

Attempts to force private schools to provide more free places for poor children could have “potentially catastrophic consequences”, according to school leaders. Schools may be required to impose huge fee rises for existing parents to fund more bursaries – pricing out middle-class families and even forcing some to shut altogether, it was claimed.

The Independent Schools Council said it was an “ironic consequence” of the rules that “smaller, poorer” private schools struggle the most while rich institutions are relatively unaffected.

The comments are made in documents submitted to the High Court before an unprecedented legal challenge against guidance drawn up by the charities regulator. Next week, the ISC will present its case to a judicial review of guidelines governing schools’ charitable status that could ultimately lead to them being scrapped altogether.

Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, has also backed a review of the rules after admitting they created “uncertainty as to the operation of charity law in the context of fee-charging schools”.

In a document submitted to the High Court, Matthew Burgess, ISC deputy chief executive, said the guidance had “potentially major unintended consequences” for schools and parents, including pricing out middle-income families.

“Trustees must consider whether fee increases for all are required to fund bursary places for the few with the inevitable result that many families who have, not without sacrifice, managed the fees up till now will be pushed out in favour of the very rich who can afford the fees no matter how expensive and the very poor who will win the few very places subsidised by others,” he said. He added: “For many schools, this will require the trustees to embark on fee strategies which might prove not to be economically viable, with potentially catastrophic circumstances.”

Under Labour’s 2006 Charities Act, fee-paying schools are no longer automatically entitled to charitable status. They must prove they provide “public benefit” to effectively remain open and hang to tax breaks worth around £120m a year to the sector.

The charities regulator issued guidance in late 2008 telling schools how they could meet the new requirement. It said they could theoretically pass the test by offering range of services, including access to swimming pools and concert halls, A-level master classes and running one of the Government’s academies.

But the document made it clear that providing more bursaries was the most straightforward way of satisfying the rules. The ISC claim this constitutes a “gross misinterpretation” of the law. The judicial review starts next Tuesday and is planned to last 10 days.

In statement submitted to the court last year, Mr Burgess said the focus on bursaries would lead to schools’ “limited resources” being concentrated on fee-subsidies, at the expense of other schemes to widen access, such as striking up partnerships with local state schools. At the most extreme end, the rules could also place the future of some schools under threat, he added.

A series of trial “tests” of the public benefit requirements saw two out of five schools fail. The two were both small preparatory schools that failed to provide enough bursaries, it emerged, although they later passed after finding more subsidised places.

“It is an ironic consequence of the commission’s approach as revealed by the public benefit reports that the richest schools have little difficulty in showing generous bursary provision: it is the smaller, poorer schools which struggle,” said Mr Burgess.

The Charity Commission has defended its guidance, insisting that schools can pass the public benefit test without providing bursaries. In a submission to the judicial review, Kenneth Dibble, one of the commission’s executive directors, insisted that it did not “wish to prescribe minimum or maximum thresholds for the amount of means-tested fee assistance that should be provided by charitable schools in general, or by any particular school.”

He added: “The commission made it clear that it was for the charities to produce plans in response to the commission's initial public benefit assessments, and that the commission did not insist that the plans, whether in relation to the provision of bursaries or otherwise, should take any particular form.”

SOURCE



13 May, 2011

Why Bullying Remains a Problem

Michael Milczanowski has been bulled constantly at his high school. He says: "It was ever-constant, never changing, ongoing harassment—that's all it was." We hear constantly, when some poor kid finally takes his life to end the torment, that the schools "did all they could" to end it. We are told that they try to address such issues but that they don't know about many of the cases. Kids in the schools regularly contradict the school authorities. They say that the teachers turn a blind eye to the problem. Rarely have we had such dramatic proof.

Milczanowski does not return the punches. He is not complicit in the assault in any way. His math teacher stands there watching and says a few words but otherwise does NOTHING. Milczanowski said: "I expected him to physically intervene to keep that from happening, but I guess I was wrong." The victim has dropped out of high school because he is afraid to go back.

The parents of this Texas town, as Texans are known to do, are attacking the victim. I have read dozens of hateful comments from parents saying that Milczanowski is violent. Odd that the "violent" student is the only one not trying to take punches?

As for the "poor" teacher that they are all lamenting about, well it appears he has allowed fights in his classroom before. And one of them was video taped as well. The second video is instructive. In the video the fight continues until the teacher says: "Okay, that's enough." I'm sorry, but that appears as if he allows them to punch each other until he decides they've had "enough" and only then does he step in.

With two videos of students fighting in the same classroom, with the same teacher, it is much harder to feel sorry for the teacher. This is especially true given that he seems to have a policy to allow the fighting to go on. In the Milczanowski case he stood by allowing it to happen even as the attacks pummels Michael, who does not attempt to fight back.

But we also have the problem, in this case, of a governmental school system that tends to be, of the teachers, by the teachers, for the teachers. The teacher's unions put teachers ahead of students. And the politicians allow it because the unions make sure they get re-elected and teachers, being independent thinkers, tend to follow instructions from the unions. What we have is a system where teachers get attention while students don't. Teachers' unions treat teachers the way the police treat their own: they deny wrong doing unless absolutely forced to face reality.

If this teacher had not been caught on video ignoring a bully attacking another student, I can assure you he'd still be in the classroom. As is, various bureaucrats are defending him. The assumption from government employee unions is that their members are a sacred bunch whose interests must always come first—even when they are complicit in bankrupting states like California. Politicians who dare touch the sacred band of political parasites are pummeled, much the way Milczanowski was pummeled in the government-owned, government-controlled educational prison.

The whole rotten system has to go. I stand by the reform that all funding should follow students and that the funding should be allowed to go to private school as well. We here people whining about monopolies all the time and then defending the education monopoly. The government school system is a coercive one. It exists entirely because it has the ability to force people to fund it, force parents to send their children there, and because the unions have such a powerful hold over the politicians.

We have crappy, violent schools because they don't have to be better. They have a captured audience and captured funding. Only when a blatantly awful thing happens, and can't be ignored, does it get attention. Otherwise it is business as usual. It takes a video tape of a student being assaulted in full view of a do-nothing teacher to get attention. It takes kids around the country going home and hanging themselves, or putting a bullet in their brain, before anyone pays attention. Even then the hateful types come out and blame the victims.

SOURCE




British educational standards steadily falling

Ofqual will announce an investigation into claims that the tests taken by hundreds of thousands of youngsters every year are too easy. The inquiry, the largest the education watchdog has carried out, is expected to cover annual rises in grades, the perceived difficulty of qualifications, the range of courses and commercial competition between exam boards.

The regulator has already been asked to look into the issue of exam resits and how tests compare with those carried out overseas. Glenys Stacey, the regulator’s new chief executive, told The Daily Telegraph that “an objective and constructive debate” on the state of the exam and qualifications system was needed. The comments come as up to 800,000 pupils across England, Wales and Northern Ireland prepare to start GCSE and A-level exams next week.

Last year, the number of A* and A grades awarded at GCSE increased to almost 23 per cent – the 22nd annual rise and a near tripling in the number of top marks awarded since 1988. A record 27 per cent of A-level students gained A* or As.

The year-on-year rise has prompted claims that tests are less demanding and schools are playing the system to maximise pupils’ scores.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, delivered a fresh warning on Thursday over the exams system, saying “dumbing down has got to stop”. The comment came in response to a report that suggested that up to a third of teenagers are taking worthless vocational qualifications that fail to lead to a good job or higher education.

In her first interview since taking over at Ofqual, Ms Stacey said she wanted to hold a review of exam and qualification standards. This would coincide with government plans to give the watchdog extra powers to raise the standards of qualifications next year. It is expected to start after the summer exam season.

“We do a lot of work here to maintain standards on all the key qualifications; across the board on subject matters and subject levels,” she said. “But still there is a public concern over standards and a feeling that things aren’t what they used to be.

“Well, I would like to understand that better and actually bring some evidence to the debate as well. I want an objective and constructive debate.

“We need to be firm and fair and we really want to focus on the big ticket items; things people are truly concerned about and where regulatory action could actually make a difference to public confidence.”

The exams system has faced repeated criticism in recent years over claims of a fall in the standard of questions and the content of courses. Research by Durham University has suggested that A-levels — the gold standard exam taken by some 250,000 teenagers each year — are two grades easier than they were 20 years ago.

Concerns over standards have been fuelled by the new Government. Mr Gove has already criticised the number of resits taken by pupils, warning that it risks devaluing the exams system.

He asked Ofqual to conduct a separate inquiry into the issue as well as analysing the value of vocational qualifications and setting a benchmark for English exams against those elsewhere in the world.

The latest inquiry will look into the standard of exams and qualifications over time alongside other issues, such as the commercial competition between exam boards and the use of modular GCSEs – breaking qualifications down into bite-sized units that students can retake to boost their scores.

Ms Stacey, who joined Ofqual in March from Standards for England, the local government watchdog, said: “When I listen to what others tell me about their concerns about standards, I hear common themes coming through; concerns about resits, modularisation, concerns about the commercial behaviours of awarding organisations, concerns about the range and nature of qualifications.

“As a regulator, we need to understand to what extent there is a real issue about standards and we need to do that in the interests of young people going forward. I don’t take a predetermined view, but these concerns are expressed sufficiently frequently by a wide range of interested people – employers, higher education, parents and Government – so let’s have a look.”

Ms Stacey, who was head of Animal Health, the farming regulator, and has led the Criminal Cases Review Commission and Greater Manchester Magistrates Court Committee, acknowledged concerns over competition between exam boards.

Several private companies and charities sell qualifications to schools and colleges. Many also provide supplementary text books and run courses in how to maximise results. Last year, Mick Waters, a former director of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, admitted that the system was “almost corrupt”.

Thousands of teenagers will be encouraged to leave school at 14 to enrol in colleges under a government overhaul of vocational qualifications. The Coalition said more children should transfer to further education colleges to benefit from decent practical training. The recommendation was made in a report by Alison Wolf, the professor of public sector management at King’s College London.

The report included a recommendation to require pupils to study English and maths up to the age of 18 if they fail to gain a decent GCSE in the subjects at 16.

SOURCE




Australian study shows that the success of a child is linked to father's education

No surprise to anyone who follows genetics research. It's all IQ and IQ is genetically transmitted. Government "support" will do little.

A Smith Family study has linked a father's education level to the professional success of his children. The report - titled Unequal Opportunities: Life Chances for Children in the Lucky Country - compares the lives and backgrounds of 13,000 university graduates aged 30 to 45.

It found those who had a university educated father were more likely to hold a degree themselves, have a professional job and earn around $300 more a week than those without an academic dad.

Among those people whose fathers did not go on to higher education, only 30 per cent had achieved a degree, compared to 65 per cent for those whose fathers did get a degree.

"If you think about a parent who had a limited education their understanding of career paths available to their kid would be much more limited," the charity's Wendy Field said. "For families on income support the difference is really, really stark.

"For kids it can mean that they make choices in their life that really protect their families from any additional financial stress and it can also mean that they just don't have access to a whole lot of opportunities."

The Smith Family says the report is disheartening and shows Australia has a way to go before its lucky status can be justified.

In 2008, after the Bradley Review into higher education, the Government adopted a target of increasing the number of university students from poor families to 20 per cent. The latest report shows that the current level is hovering around 15 per cent.

Last week Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced new funding measures to help achieve the 20 per cent goal. Low income families will receive an extra $10,000 a year to encourage their teenage children to stay at school or in training.

Ms Field says it is a welcome first step. "It'll be interesting to see how that translates into take-ups," she said. "And it'll also be interesting to see what supports are available to help those kids to stay at university, because it's so much more difficult for kids whose parents are not in a position to support them financially."

SOURCE





12 May, 2011

Degree? You may be better off with a McDonald's job: British school leavers told to 'ignore snobbery' and join fast food chain

University is the wrong choice for many youngsters – and a ‘McJob’ is a better option, according to the boss of McDonald’s. While studying for a degree may be the right path to take for some people, it can be a disaster for others, Jill McDonald said yesterday.

The fast-food chain’s chief executive called for an end to education ‘snobbery’, stressing that no one should feel forced to go to university.

More than half of her executive team even started work flipping burgers, she said.

A ‘McJob’ is considered a low-paid, dead-end work, but the firm says this impression is unfair and misleading. Of its 85,000-strong British workforce, around 16,000 are studying for a qualification organised by the company.

Options range from an NVQ in Maths and English – which is the equivalent of a GCSE – to a foundation degree in hospitality.

Speaking at the Institute of Directors annual conference in East London, Mrs McDonald said: ‘We need to acknowledge that the road many young people take today may not be the one we took in the past. ‘We need to remove the snobbery that does down workplace learning. ‘For many put off by high fees, this could and should be the route they take.’

The 46-year-old, who is married with two young children and coincidentally shares the surname of her employer, said she is ‘definitely’ not saying that people should not go to university.

In fact, she has a first-class degree in business studies from the University of Brighton.

‘I am definitely not saying that people shouldn’t go to university if they have the opportunity to do so, but I do believe it might not be the right route for everyone,’ she added. ‘Universities are getting more competitive and expensive, but if that is someone’s preferred option, that’s great. ‘Work-based training can be a fine option for young people to consider.’

Her comments come as the Coalition has come under fire for plans to allow fees for UK undergraduates of up to £9,000 a year. Students’ tuition fees are paid by the Government in the first instance, with graduates paying back the loan when they earn more than £21,000.

Britain is grappling with a youth unemployment problem among 16 and 17-year-olds, according to official figures. Nearly 40 per cent of this age group are unemployed, which means nearly 220,000 are desperately searching for a job.

McDonald’s is one of the largest employers of people under the age 21. Every week, around 200 of its workers get an NVQ. This is free, and the fast-food chain provides them with text books and access to a computer. They typically study during their lunch break, or before or after their shifts.

Meanwhile, research published today shows that many graduates are ending up in menial jobs such as waitressing. A shocking 42 per cent of this summer’s graduates will be ‘under-employed’ in a job for which a degree is not needed, according to the Centre for Economic and Business Research. It found students doing law, history, philosophy and languages will fare the worst, with more than 50 per cent finding they are under-employed.

SOURCE






Small-minded Connecticut school

Normal people like to see romance -- but not this sour headmistress

A TEENAGER has been barred from attending his senior prom after posting an oversize message to the front of his high school asking his classmate to go with him.

James Tate, an 18-year-old senior at Shelton High School, and two friends posted a 12-inch (30cm) tall cardboard letters outside the school's main entrance last Thursday night so students would see the message in the morning, FOXNews.com said.

The letters read: "Sonali Rodrigues, Will you go to the prom with me? HMU -Tate." HMU means "hit me up," or "call me."

The target of Tate's affection - Rodrigues - said yes, but the Advanced Placement student and his two friends have been given one-day in-house suspensions by the headmaster and barred from the prom.

"I was telling her for the longest time that I was going to go with her, but, you know, I was waiting for a special time, special way to ask her," Tate told FOX CT. "And then I did that, and this is what happened."

Repeated calls to Shelton High School Headmaster Beth Smith were not returned today, but Tate told The Connecticut Post he had been informed the posting constituted trespassing and posed a safety risk.

The city's mayor, Mark Lauretti, has jumped to Tate's defence, saying he is unsure that the "punishment fits the crime." "This may very well be a situation that needs a second look," he said.

"Part of the problem in today's world is that we make policies or recommendations without common sense or flexibility built in and we lose sight of the big picture. This may be one of those situations."

Mr Lauretti said Tate and his family have deep "roots" in the community, with his father serving on a city commission and his mother on the city's historical society. "They're very involved," he said. "I would hope that higher priorities are given to higher offences. I'm not sure what the crime is here; we're talking about something that happened at night."

Shelton Police Department Lieutenant Robert Kozlowsky told FOXNews.com that the incident was not handled by authorities. "That wasn't a police matter," he said, adding that no complaints had been received in connection to the incident. "It's something we could go to [reports of trespassing], but we weren't involved in that."

Tom Murphy, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Department of Education, said local school officials "do have the authority" to investigate the incident and to determine what is a "fair and appropriate" disciplinary action.

"At the same time, a student does have the right to appeal and to request reconsideration," Mr Murphy said. "But attending the prom is a privilege. Students should understand that. Students are expected to follow the rules to take part in an extracurricular activity."

SOURCE





Australia: More bungling from the NSW Education Dept. over school heaters

In a bureaucracy, nobody gives a damn

AFTER decades of insisting unflued gas heaters were safe, the NSW Department of Education has installed flued heaters at Blackheath Public School - but the school had already installed reverse-cycle airconditioning.

Parents are angry the department did not reimburse the $44,000 parents helped raise to install the units a year ago.

Richard Kalina, who has campaigned against unflued gas heating and whose daughter attends Blackheath Public School, said the decision was an "appalling waste" of resources. "Blackheath now has two sets of heating," he said.

A Greens NSW MP, John Kaye, said the school found itself "in the ridiculous position of having two heating systems". But Hazelbrook Primary School, in the lower Blue Mountains, had missed out on flued heaters. "The sensible option would be to remove the flued units from Blackheath and take them down the road to Hazelbrook.

"The Labor government should never have let the situation reach the level of desperation that caused parents to resort to using their own money to buy a safe heater solution."

A spokesman for the department said the flued heaters, installed last week, were more cost-effective to operate than reverse-cycle airconditioning.

He said when the school raised the possibility of installing airconditioning in early 2009, the department recommended this be delayed until the outcome of the Woolcock Institute report on the use of unflued gas heaters in schools was known.

The report, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found respiratory illness was higher in classrooms with the heaters and levels of nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde were "substantially increased" when they were on.

"The airconditioning was installed in April 2010, before the mid-2010 announcement, after the report's release, of flued gas heating for the 100 coldest schools, including Blackheath," the spokesman said. "While the school will not be reimbursed for installing airconditioning, this equipment can be used for cooling during the summer months."

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11 May, 2011

The 'Education' Mantra

Thomas Sowell

One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those words. One of those words that many people seldom look behind is "education." But education can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to courses on baton twirling.

Unfortunately, an increasing proportion of American education, whether in the schools or in the colleges and universities, is closer to the baton twirling end of the spectrum than toward the nuclear physics end. Even reputable colleges are increasingly teaching things that students should have learned in high school.

We don't have a backlog of serious students trying to take serious courses. If you look at the fields in which American students specialize in colleges and universities, those fields are heavily weighted toward the soft end of the spectrum.

When it comes to postgraduate study in tough fields like math and science, you often find foreign students at American universities receiving more of such degrees than do Americans.

A recent headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education said: "Master's in English: Will Mow Lawns." It featured a man with that degree who has gone into the landscaping business because there is no great demand for people with Master's degrees in English.

Too many of the people coming out of even our most prestigious academic institutions graduate with neither the skills to be economically productive nor the intellectual development to make them discerning citizens and voters.

Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, without ever learning anything about science, mathematics, economics or anything else that would make them either a productive contributor to the economy or an informed voter who can see through political rhetoric.

On the contrary, people with such "education" are often more susceptible to demagoguery than the population at large. Nor is this a situation peculiar to America. In countries around the world, people with degrees in soft subjects have been sources of political unrest, instability and even mass violence.

Nor is this a new phenomenon. A scholarly history of 19th century Prague referred to "the well-educated but underemployed" Czech young men who promoted ethnic polarization there-- a polarization that not only continued, but escalated, in the 20th century to produce bitter tragedies for both Czechs and Germans.

In other central European countries, between the two World Wars a rising class of newly educated young people bitterly resented having to compete with better qualified Jews in the universities and with Jews already established in business and the professions. Anti-Semitic policies and violence were the result.

It was much the same story in Asia, where successful minorities like the Chinese in Malaysia were resented by newly educated Malays without either the educational or business skills to compete with them. These Malaysians demanded-- and got-- heavily discriminatory laws and policies against the Chinese.

Similar situations developed at various times in Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka, Hungary and India, among other places.

Many Third World countries have turned out so many people with diplomas, but without meaningful skills, that "the educated unemployed" became a cliche among people who study such countries. This has not only become a personal problem for those individuals who have been educated, or half-educated, without acquiring any ability to fulfill their rising expectations, it has become a major economic and political problem for these countries.

Such people have proven to be ideal targets for demagogues promoting polarization and strife. We in the United States are still in the early stages of that process. But you need only visit campuses where whole departments feature soft courses preaching a sense of victimhood and resentment, and see the consequences in racial and ethnic polarization on campus.

There are too many other soft courses that allow students to spend years in college without becoming educated in any real sense.

We don't need more government "investment" to produce more of such "education." Lofty words like "investment" should not blind us to the ugly reality of political porkbarrel spending.

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No National Curriculum, Thanks

The good old American inclination to wave a magic wand and say to an urgent problem, "Begone!" is on display in the fast-emerging movement for a national K-12 curriculum.

Ah, you didn't know there was such a movement, far less that it was emerging. Here's the lowdown. Various analysts representing mostly the education establishment are pressing for a so-called "common curriculum" -- one that would supposedly engage the minds of all American students, aligning their performance with the latest thinking as to what's needed.

All but six states (including Texas) have fallen into bed with an effort -- supported by the U.S. Education Department and led by the National Governors Association and state educational officials -- to shape a core curriculum "robust and relevant to the real world." A couple of weeks ago, the Pearson Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said they were developing a complete online curriculum for math and English/language arts courses.

The Albert Shanker Institute, named for the late, widely respected head of the American Federation of Teachers, wants a "coherent, sequential set of guidelines in the core academic disciplines, specifying the knowledge and skills" expected of all students.

Every new movement worth its salt, if that's not the wrong gastronomic image for our health-obsessed century, in due course faces organized dissent. Which honor the common curriculum movement received this week in the form of a manifesto, "Closing the Door on Innovation: Why One National Curriculum is Bad for America" that is signed by numerous notables of a generally rightward bent.

The debate can commence and not a moment too soon. The idea of a "common curriculum" is one of those notions we fall into occasionally, supposing that what sounds good and feels good must somehow or other be really, really good. We identify "good," we decree it and that should be it.

There's much good, obviously, in urging high educational standards. The setting of standards, nonetheless, is generally best left to the people closest to "the people" -- who know what can be done and what "done" actually looks like in practice. A nation of 300 million-plus is more diverse than the nation that engaged the old blue-backed spellers and assigned aspiring pupils to declaim, "Sail on! Sail on and on!" What's right for New York (whatever New York may think!) isn't necessarily right for Rockwall, Texas.

Moreover, the idea of a national curriculum implies no higher duty than to develop and promulgate it. All students shall read and do math up to X-standard of performance? You could put it that way. The No Child Left Behind Act certainly decrees as much, and, lo, it ain't happening. Facts and circumstances have a logic that planners never seem to anticipate.

The facts and circumstances chiefly on display in education don't relate to money. Some of our worst school systems (e.g. Washington, D.C.'s) spend the most money per pupil. Money doesn't heal the social dysfunctions that are at the heart of America's educational slump.

The United States has the kind of educational systems that modern Americans seem most to desire: not the worst possible but not the best possible, either. Sort of in-between: The logical product of a culture so attuned to the demands of absolute equality as to shrink from sorting out sheep from goats, academically speaking. Modern America doesn't want you to fail. If you do, you can start over. If that doesn't work, we'll lower the standards. Anything for success -- real or fake!

American schools will become good the minute American culture finally decides it wants good schools, which isn't the same as deciding to commission a national curriculum. Instead, it's the same as forming a commitment at home and in the community and at the office and in the shop: first to expect and then to enforce a high level of student achievement. Overseers of the public good who think the job gets done by simply commanding high performance are: well, let's be nice. These folk need the summer off.

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No Food for You! Kids Denied Breakfast for Wearing Wrong Shoes to Grade School‏

Rule-defying black kids are undoubtedly a problem but giving a written warning first would have been much wiser

Chicago Public Schools is apologizing to a Chicago mother and her two young sons, ages 5 and 6, after they were denied breakfast because they came to schools wearing the wrong kind of shoes.
CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker reports.

The Nicholson brothers only grab a quick snack before heading to class because they qualify for a full free breakfast at Adam Powell Grade School. It’s something they look forward to every day, and it hurt when they were recently turned away.

They were wearing black athletic shoes. The boys told their mom that the assistant principal, Angela Peagler wouldn’t let them eat because their shoes didn’t fit the school uniform, which calls for a regular black dress shoe.

“I felt sad. We’re always supposed to have breakfast,” first-grader Noah Nicholson says. Noah and his brother Niko, who is in kindergarten, went to class hungry and didn’t eat until lunch.

“It hasn’t been a problem all this time and all of a sudden they can’t have breakfast because of their shoes,” Kahlia Edwards, the boys’ mother, says. Edwards says the boys have been wearing the shoes all year and administrators never complained. She’s confused.

The boy’s great aunt is livid. “I don’t care if they had on orange shoes, they were in line to eat,” Robin Price says. “I’m not going to feed you because you have the wrong shoes? Shoes? No, no.”

CBS 2 tried to ask both the assistant principal and Principal Derek Jordan to explain what happened. They wouldn’t. However, a manager at the CPS regional office spoke with reporter Tucker.

Area 17 Management Support Director Darryl Earl says Peagler told him she thought the boys had returned to the breakfast but he acknowledged she was wrong. “Regardless of what shoes they were wearing, obviously the children should have been allowed the opportunity to merge into breakfast,” he says.

Monday afternoon, the principal and the assistant principal apologized to the boys and their mother. They went on to explain that they were reacting to an increase in students violating the school dress code. The principal even offered to buy the boys new black shoes.

But here’s the kicker: The school’s dress code does not say the shoes have to be black dress shoes. The boys’ mother says the principal obviously needs to make the rules clearer

SOURCE



10 May, 2011

Home education in Britain is unrestricted and works well

Education in Britain is a mess. The complaints roll in. The children are taught less than their grandparents were, but are more pressured by tests and the meeting of other arbitrary targets. They play truant. They are bullied-around 20 children every year commit suicide because of this. They take too many drugs and have too much sex. They are force-fed political correctness. For the past month, the politicians have been issuing competing promises to sort out the mess-as if they had not made it in the first place.

We can be sure of one thing: nothing will improve. Of course, if you can move to the right catchment area, or join the right religion, your children may get a semi-decent education. If you have the money, you can go private and get them a good education. For everyone else, though, it is a matter of what the Prime Minister, with uncharacteristic honesty, calls the “bog standard comprehensive.”

Or is that it? The answer is no. There is an alternative.

The law on education in Britain is clear. Parents have a legal duty to educate their children, but no duty to send them to school. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 reads: “The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable: (a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and (b) to any special education needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.” The meaning of this is that you can educate your children at home.

Until quite recently, home education was a common alternative to school. Noel Coward, for example, was educated almost wholly at home, briefly attending the Chapel Royal Choir School. Agatha Christie had no formal schooling before the age of 16. She later wrote that her mother believed “the best way to bring up girls was to let them run wild as much as possible; to give them food, fresh air and not to force their minds in any way”. C.S. Lewis had only two years of formal schooling as a child-part of this at Wynyard School in Watford-a place he later called “Belsen”.

By the middle of the last century, home education seems largely to have died out. Recently-partly because of the collapse of standards in the state sector, and partly following the American example, where the home schooling movement is huge-there has been a revival of interest. No one knows how many children in England are being educated a home. The estimates range between 84,000 and 150,000. The only agreement is that the numbers are growing fast. They include children who have been bullied or otherwise harmed at school, the children of the devoutly religious, and the children of parents who simply do not like what formal schooling has to offer. They are from all social, educational, ethnic and religious backgrounds.

One reason why we cannot know the numbers is because the law is so astonishingly liberal. You do not have to seek permission from the Local Education Authority to educate “otherwise”; nor inform the Local Education Authority that you have children of school age; nor have regular contact with the Local Education Authority; nor have premises equipped to any specified standard; nor have any teaching or other educational qualifications of your own; nor cover any specific syllabus; nor have any fixed timetable; nor prepare lesson plans of any kind; nor observe normal school hours or terms; nor give formal lessons; nor allow your children to mix with others.

The only requirement is that children receive a “suitable” education. In a landmark decision from 1981, this is defined “one such as to prepare the children in life for modern civilised society, and to enable them to achieve their full potential”. And that is it. You can sit your children down in a room full of books and maps and reproduce a school at home. Or you can tell them Bible stories as they help make bread. Or you can let them run about, picking up whatever learning takes their fancy. There are no controls.

You might suppose that children not committed to the care of professional teachers would become illiterate barbarians. There is no evidence at all that they do. Indeed, what evidence there is shows that children educated at home do significantly better. In 2002, Dr Paula Rothermel of Durham University published the largest study ever made in the United Kingdom. She found that 64 per cent of such children scored over 75 per cent in standard tests, as opposed to only 5.1 children nationally. Other achievement levels were far above the national average. She found that “home educated children were socially adept and without behavioural problems. Overall, the home educated children demonstrated high levels of attainment and good social skills”.

She also notes that the children of working class, poorly-educated parents were doing better than middle class children. While five and six year old children from middle class backgrounds scored only 55.2 per cent in the test, they scored 71 per cent.

Of course, just because it appears to work is no reason for the authorities to approve of it. The law remains unchanged in England. But there is pressure for change. We can be sure the teachers hate anything that shows them in a comparatively poor light. In June this year, one of the main teaching unions heard calls for regulation. Apparently children educated at home were “the only group… who have no consistent level of monitoring or inspection yet are the only group taught in the main by those with no qualifications”. One can almost hear the nervous shuffling of bottoms.

If this were not enough, we live in an age where the authorities just cannot let anything alone. During the ten years to the beginning of October 2004, the phrase “completely unregulated” occurs 153 times in the British newspaper press. In all cases, unless used satirically, the phrase is part of a condemnation of some activity. We are told that the advertising of food to children, residential lettings agents, funeral directors, rock climbing, alleged communication with the dead, salons and tanning shops, contracts for extended warranties on home appliances, and anything to do with the Internet-that these are all “almost completely unregulated” or just “completely unregulated”, and that the authorities had better do something about the fact.

Then there is the ideological agenda. Schooling is only partly about teaching children to read and write and do basic sums. It is mainly about teaching them to think and do as the Establishment desires. When the Establishment was broadly conservative, children were taught how sweet and fitting it was to die for the country: would ten million young men have marched semi willingly to their death in the Great War without the prior conditioning of state education?

Nowadays, the Establishment is almost solidly of the left. Children now are taught how guilty they must feel if they happen to be white or male or middle class, and how they must accept the anti-western, anti-rational, anti-Enlightenment values of political correctness. And this is even thought a basic human right. In its own draft bill of rights, the National Council for Civil Liberties asserts the “right to an education that prepares them… to respect diversity and human rights”.

Given this fact, the Establishment sees home education as a challenge to its ideological hegemony. The academic literature is filled with denunciations of “neoliberals, neoconservatives, and authoritarian populists” who seek to frustrate the noble efforts of teachers. Home education is seen as an example of “individualized behaviour” that “threatens to undermine the quality of public education”.

There has been no concerted attack in England There are ugly stories to be found in the newspapers. It seems that some authorities are trying to conflate home schooling with truancy. Individual officials have been accused of threatening parents known to be educating their children at home-saying that their children would be put on the “at-risk” register. There is one story of a school that informed a mother that it was illegal for her to take one child out of school following the suicide of another who had been bullied there. But none of this yet reflects official policy.

There has, however, been an official attempt in Scotland to make home education less easy for parents. In 2002, the Scottish Executive, proposed that local authorities should be able to use details from the United Kingdom Census, from birth registers, from medical records, and from other confidential sources, to identify those children being educated at home. These proposals were bitterly fought by the home education movement-not just in Scotland, but also in the United Kingdom as a whole, and also from America. The law remains unchanged, but the proposals have not gone away.

But, for the moment, home education is perfectly legal in Britain. It is expensive: at least one parent must be at home at least some of the time to look after things. On the other hand, it can be brilliantly successful. So if you are really think your children are not getting the best at school, stop looking to the politicians. They either have no idea how to make things better, or are planning how to make them still worse. Do it yourself-and almost certainly do it better.

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Catholic schools in Britain

The Catholic church was Britain's original education provider and still offers high-quality learning to 800,000 pupils of many faiths

It is a key part of the church's mission to offer good quality education as part of our contribution to society as a whole. Catholic schools are always happy to welcome children from all backgrounds whose parents seek a Catholic education for them, where there are sufficient places to meet this demand. In cases of oversubscription, priority is given to Catholic pupils.

The Catholic church was the original provider of education in this country. From the Middle Ages onwards, the church took responsibility for teaching children. Central to this work has always been our dedication to providing education for the poorest in society. Following Catholic emancipation in the 19th century, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales prioritised the building of schools before the building of churches. Then, as now, the church's commitment to education was strong.

As time went on of course the church ceased to be the only provider of schools in this country as state-funded education for all became available. So why have we continued to be involved? We consider education to be crucially important as a means of forming the whole person intellectually, morally and socially and we want to help to give children as good a start in life as we can. Catholic schools strive to offer children a well-rounded education, providing them with a moral basis from which they are free to make their own decisions.

And we all know that Catholic schools have long been a success story. Ofsted rate them more highly in terms of their overall effectiveness than other schools nationally, and they also achieve higher examination results. Of course, the immeasurable benefit of a Catholic education is that students are encouraged to engage with the wider community and to make a positive contribution to society as a whole.

The current government, like previous governments, recognises the value that a Catholic education offers young people, which is why the state continues to fund many of the costs associated with Catholic schools. But the Catholic church doesn't just expect handouts. We own the land on which most of our schools are built. This is no small financial contribution, and it has been made over a long period of time: it is an arrangement that has been in place since the 1944 Education Act when Catholic schools became partners with the state in the provision of education. The financial contribution made by the church comes from Catholics up and down the country, who not only pay their taxes, but who also give generously to the church, thus helping to fund Catholic schools.

Catholic schools are inclusive. Our schools are more ethnically diverse than schools nationally (26% of students in Catholic secondary schools come from ethnic groups other than the "White British" category, compared to only 21% of students in secondary schools nationally). Recently published data also showed that Catholic schools have a higher proportion of students from the most deprived areas compared to schools nationally. Catholic schools are rated more highly by Ofsted when it comes to their commitment to community cohesion than other schools are. Visit your local Catholic school and you're unlikely to find it full of middle-class children with pushy parents.

Central to this is the Catholic ethos and distinctive nature of our schools. This is maintained, in part, by Catholic children having priority in cases of over subscription, defined by local bishops according to local circumstances. Steps are taken to ensure that the system meets the needs of genuine applicants rather than those parents who might try to "play the system". Interestingly, in England around a quarter of pupils in Catholic schools are not Catholics and in Wales the figure is a third.

As Baroness Warsi recognised in a recent speech, the provision of education is a major part of the Catholic church's contribution to British society, part of a centuries-old tradition. We are proud to offer a well-rounded, high-quality education to almost 800,000 pupils and students in England and Wales: Catholics, members of other faiths and none.

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Blended approach extends reach of business degrees

The lines between face-to-face teaching and traditional online learning are blurring

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago the most adventurous business schools were experimenting with e-readers – Kindles – to replace paper case studies and textbooks, and Facebook to boost student recruitment. Today, e-readers are passé; Facebook ubiquitous.

As tablet devices such as the iPad replace e-readers for both degree and non-degree learning, personalised electronic textbooks replace their paper counterparts, and web-based seminars – webinars – replace the classroom experience, technology is moving beyond its role in student support and becoming an intrinsic element of the pedagogy.

The lines between traditional face-to-face teaching and traditional distance learning programmes are blurring and “blended learning”, combining virtual with face-to-face teaching, is the latest buzz phrase.

One of the biggest developments over the past year has been the launch of high quality – and expensive – blended degree programmes. Earlier this month Brown University in the US, one of just two Ivy League universities not to have a business school, launched an Executive MBA programme with Spain’s IE Business School.

Half of the EMBA – an “Executive MBA” for senior working managers – will be taught face-to-face, the other half online, says David Bach, dean of programmes at IE. He is an avid supporter of using asynchronous communications to improve quality of participation on these senior programmes.

“Everybody participates, even the shy people. You think twice as hard about writing something as you do about saying it in the classroom.” As a result, a 90-minute classroom exchange can become a three-day threaded discussion, he says.

The 15-month Brown programme will cost $95,000, more expensive than many full-time programmes, but Prof Bach defends the cost. “This is the Starbucks model, not the Walmart model. You don’t economise on faculty. Blended programmes are as expensive as on-campus programmes and they will become more expensive.”

Prof Bach believes people will be prepared to pay for the convenience of blended programmes. But other benefits to this technology include the ability of participants to select the way of studying that suits them.

Recognition that advanced technology can help students learn more effectively is spreading at the very top schools, those not usually associated with e-learning. And it is being regarded as enriching the on-campus experience.

At the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, Karl Ulrich, vice-dean of the school’s innovation initiative, believes that blended learning – or connected learning as Wharton calls it – can respond better to different learning styles.

“You can provide different ways to deliver a module. Our current learning technology is one-size-fits-all. I think we can be more respectful of student’s learning styles,” he says.

But connected learning can also help the school extend its reach. “What I’d like to do is to have students in internships take courses over the summer. If you can separate time and place, we can get our people out into the world a bit more.”

Recognition of different learning styles will be one of the selling points of MBA@UNC, the blended learning programme to be launched in July by the Kenan-Flagler school at the University of North Carolina.

Like the IE/Brown programme, MBA@UNC is targeted at the top end of the market, priced at $89,000 for the two years including books, student fees, and food and accommodation for four weekend immersions.

The two programmes are also both limiting the size of their inaugural intake, to 50 for the UNC programme and 24 for the IE Brown EMBA. Although technology has solved the problem of linking students across distance – 12 nationalities are represented in IE’s first cohort of 24 students – it has not enabled business schools to produce quality programmes at scale.

But that may be changing. At Ashridge in the UK, a blended learning master's degree launched in April 2010 is proving that online delivery can result in geographical reach and scaleability, says Roger Delves, director of the programme.

He gives the example of a video lecture he recorded for the current class that could be used for participants on future programmes – there are four intakes each year. In a face-to-face environment, he would have to repeatedly teach the same class.

“The biggest breakthrough [in technology] has been around increased bandwidth,” he says. “People can download materials quickly and the programme works seamlessly.”

By reducing costs, Ashridge has been able to attract participants from countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, says Mr Delves. “This is an attractive product for people in developing countries because the costs are much lower [than on-campus programmes].”

Mr Delves says Ashridge has been particularly successful with this model because of the years of experience it has in developing online modules through its Virtual Learning Resource Centre – recently renamed Virtual Ashridge.

Elsewhere, the latest web technology is breathing new life into established programmes. At Queen’s School of Business in Canada, which has been running a videoconferencing-based EMBA programme for a decade, improvements in web technology have enabled the school to extend its reach, says Michael Darling, programme director of one of the three videoconferencing programmes taught at the school.

Increased bandwidth means students can view the synchronous video lectures from their desktops, eliminating the need to travel to a videoconferencing “boardroom”. Students from Bermuda to British Columbia are participating in the same virtual learning EMBA team.

The UK’s Open University is an established player in delivering programmes at a distance, and it is embracing the latest technology.

Martin Bean, its vice-chancellor, believes the ideal scenario is for students to consume content and undergo a comprehension assessment at a distance and then use the face-to-face meetings with tutors and professors to actively engage in discussion.

He thinks this is particularly appropriate in business education. “I think the real value of a business school is the community of learning.”

Prof Bean says the demand for management education is growing to such an extent that online and blended learning will be increasingly popular globally. “The world simply can’t build enough brick-and-mortar institutions to meet demand.”

And, he believes its popularity will grow as the technology becomes more personal. “The technology is coming our way; it’s now a lot more social, which works well with education.”

That said, the success of blended learning – “supported open learning” as the OU calls it – will always depend on the quality of the teaching, he says.

For the OU, where fewer than 10 per cent of the 265,000 enrolled students live outside the UK, using technology to spearhead expansion overseas is a priority.

It has had some success, though, with podcasting, through iTunes University. Some 89 per cent of the 31m downloads of OU material on iTunes has come from outside the UK, says Prof Bean. “It’s an amazing base of informal learning.

SOURCE



9 May, 2011

Indiana vouchers only a small step forward

A regulatory mountain being dropped on participating private schools

An expansive new voucher program, signed into Indiana law today, has been widely praised as a momentous victory for school choice and Gov. Mitch Daniels on the brink of his long-awaited presidential campaign announcement. In reality, the voucher program is a tactical victory for highly constrained choice won at the price of a broad strategic defeat for educational freedom.

To see why, consider the bill's regulations. Most people would agree there are some topics about which every child in this country should learn. Historical documents, for instance, that are vital for understanding our shared American heritage: the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and Chief Seattle's 1852 letter to the United States government.

Chief Seattle was a great leader of native Americans in the Northwest, and this moving letter lays out the vast gulf between how his people and the "white" man viewed the land, not as a commodity to be bought and sold but a part of themselves, a sacred trust. Chief Seattle's letter is also a modern fabrication sprung from the pen of a screenwriter for a 1972 film about ecology.

And in Indiana, it is a legally protected historical document that public, and now voucher-accepting private schools, are required to have on hand for academic use by students.

The apocryphal Chief Seattle letter is merely an illustration of the dangers and absurdities of state-controlled curriculum. Private voucher schools will not only be forced to make this fabrication available to students, they are also prohibited from lowering a student's grade, if he should, for example, cite the letter as a primary source in the course of his school work.

Unfortunately, this is just the peak of the regulatory mountain being dropped on participating private schools. The legislation will greatly expand state regulation of and authority over participating private schools. It will force them to annually administer the Indiana Statewide Testing for Progress examination (ISTEP), and submit both ISTEP and other progress and performance data to the state. It will require the state to track and evaluate private schools according to state standards, and to align consequences with their performances. It establishes a lottery admissions requirement for over-subscribed schools that could interfere with their ability to determine admissions procedures and the character of the school.

Finally, it establishes extensive and detailed new curriculum and pedagogical requirements for participating private schools, including some requirements that are not currently a part of state accreditation. For instance, private schools must "provide good citizenship instruction that stresses the nature and importance of," among other items, "respecting authority," "respecting the property of others," respecting the student's parents and home," "respecting the student's self," and "respecting the rights of others to have their own views and religious beliefs."

What does this mean for religious private schools teaching that one can only be saved by belief in Jesus Christ? Would a school wherein a teacher discusses the recent federal healthcare legislation violate the provision mandating respect for authority should she criticize the law, or perhaps violate a respect for property if she speaks favorably of the individual insurance mandate in that law?

Currently, less than 40 percent of all known private schools in Indiana are accredited by the state. The majority of private schools, in other words, are subject to very few restrictions on educational freedom.

Because participating schools will have a significant financial advantage over non-participating schools, lightly regulated schools will face increasing financial pressure to participate. Over time, many of those who refuse to submit to state control will be driven out of business by competition from the highly regulated, but voucher-funded schools.

In other words, the voucher program will not only expand state control over and homogenize participating schools by requiring adherence to a single state-designed test, evaluation, and curriculum, it will also cut into the market for non-accredited schools. The likely effect is a serious loss of education freedom and diversity of options in the medium-term and a near-total loss in the long term.

The voucher law places private schools under the supervision of the state Department of Education, making them accountable to career bureaucrats and political appointees for performance on government standards and curriculum. It is an authorization and framework of accountability to the state, rather than to parents and taxpayers directly. This is a strategic victory for opponents of educational freedom; all that's required is a downhill push for tighter control.

In our efforts to expand educational choice across the country, we can't lose sight of what makes that choice valuable; educational freedom and the diversity of choices it allows to develop. School choice is meaningless if all the choices are the same.

SOURCE




Half of British firms give courses in the 3Rs to teenage recruits

Almost half of companies are holding remedial courses in the three Rs for their recruits, a survey shows. Businesses are being forced into the drastic measures because youngsters leave school without a proper grasp of the basics. They are struggling with tasks such as calculating percentages, working out change or composing coherent memos. Teenagers also fall short in terms of team-working, problem-solving, dealing with customers and showing a positive attitude.

The survey, which was carried out by the Confederation of British Industry and qualifications body Education Development International, covered 566 employers with 2.2million workers between them. Forty-two per cent of firms were not satisfied with the basic use of English by school and college leavers while 35 per cent were concerned about numeracy standards. Sixty-five per cent see a desperate need to raise standards of literacy and numeracy among 14- to 19-year-olds.

To address these weaknesses in basic skills, 44 per cent of employers have been forced to invest in remedial training.

A fifth have provided training in literacy, numeracy or information technology. Some firms provided courses in all three areas. John Cridland, CBI director general, said: ‘It’s alarming that a significant number of employers have concerns about the basic skills of school and college leavers.

‘Companies do not expect “job ready” young people, but having a solid foundation in basic skills such as literacy and numeracy is fundamental for work. ‘Employability skills are crucial to making the smooth transition from education to the workplace.’

Last year over 300,000 teenagers failed to achieve a grade C in maths GCSE.

A Department for Education spokesman said the recruitment of specialist maths teachers was part of a package to restore rigour to GCSE and A level teaching.

SOURCE




David Cameron under pressure to ensure that religious education is at the heart of the secondary school curriculum

In Britain??

David Cameron is facing calls to revise exam league tables to ensure that religious education is at the heart of the secondary school curriculum. A campaign to include RE in the new English baccalaureate has won the support of 110,000 people, including faith leaders and 100 MPs.

Before last year’s election, Mr Cameron said any petition with more than 100,000 signatures would be eligible for debate in the House of Commons. The RE. ACT campaign is calling on the Prime Minister to honour his pre-election pledge and allow MPs to discuss revising the school reforms.

The Coalition’s new English baccalaureate was introduced in an attempt to address years of “dumbing down” in which pupils have been able to opt for so-called soft courses at the expense of traditional academic subjects. In order to pass the baccalaureate, all pupils are expected to score A* to C grades in the five core subjects of English, mathematics, science, languages and humanities.

However, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Revd John Pritchard, said RE should be included and called for the Commons to debate the plan. “We have serious concerns that the English Baccalaureate does not include RE in the core of selected academic subjects,” he said. “Many testify to RE being the only space on the curriculum where they can explore their own beliefs and values and engage with people of faith in that exploration. “There is a real problem with religious literacy in society and RE is a crucial gift to us.”

Others backing the RE. ACT campaign include the leaders of Sikh, Buddhist, Roman Catholic, Muslim and Hindu organisations.

SOURCE



8 May, 2011

Is education the next bubble?

Higher learning is just an overpriced, speculative investment that typically rewards graduates with dismal career prospects, says billionaire Peter Thiel

Billionaire libertarian businessman Peter Thiel, the founder and former CEO of PayPal, is perhaps best known as the venture capitalist who gave Facebook the angel investment it needed to really get started. But, increasingly, he's getting attention for his controversial views on higher learning.

Last year, he launched the Thiel fellowship, which gives grants as large as $100,000 to 20 tech entrepreneurs who drop out of college by age 20 to pursue their own ideas. Then, in a National Review interview earlier this year, Thiel said that higher education is a "bubble in the classic sense," because education is "overpriced," something people have "an intense belief in," and an investment that's unlikely, in the majority of cases, to have a positive return. He made the point again last week at TechCrunch.

Given the "financial disaster" of student loan debt surpassing credit card debt, does Thiel have a point?

No, education isn't about returns on an investment: The concept of the education bubble is based on horrifying, false logic, says Freddie deBoer at L'Hote. "To see an education, college or otherwise, as merely a way to increase the amount of money you make is a terrible corruption and fundamentally unsustainable." Increasing earning potential was never meant to be the sole purpose of education, and if it's reduced to that, we're all in trouble.

Well, college is overpriced: College has gotten too expensive, with state governments cutting aid to public universities, says E.D. Kain in Forbes. But let's not abandon institutions of higher learning. If needed, we should raise taxes to make public universities more affordable. "Yes, education costs money. But that money should not fall squarely on the heads of middle class kids who are forced to take out tens of thousands in debt just to attend school."

And grad school is a particularly poor investment: College is still a good decision for most young Americans, but I can't say the same about grad school, says Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. Grad school has become a socially acceptable way to drink beer, read, and go into massive debt in your 20s. "Upper-middle-class Americans tend to overvalue the non-financial benefits of grad school." Thiel's wrong about a lot. But at least he's "challenging the cultural assumptions that cause a lot of people to make bad life decisions."

SOURCE





Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth Out of Public Education?

If you find an investment no longer meets your needs, you quit investing in it and find a worthy substitution. That is exactly what is happening within the public school system. Taxpayers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their return on their public school education investment, so they are finding other solutions.

A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 72 percent of taxpayers say they are not getting their money’s worth from public schools. How much money are they referring to? Well, the nation as a whole spends about $9,000 per student on the public education system. Of course that number varies state by state.

But what’s more interesting from the poll is that only one in three voters thought that sending more money towards the education system would aid student performance. The rest of the poll takers were either unsure or disagreed altogether that money was the answer to the problems within the public school system.

There are many reasons why parents and taxpayers in general are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the system. States are trimming back spending, and all programs that receive state funding are subject to the cutbacks. Those taxpayers and parents who don’t think enough is spent on education currently are worried students’ performance will take a hit if less money is devoted to the system.

But the majority of taxpayers in the poll say spending isn’t the issue, so what is fueling their dissatisfaction? “One reason is that voting Americans remember how much better education was when they were in the system and how it cost much less,” says Jon Coupal, president of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in California. “There is a mentality that education money is being used for things that do not give a good return on investment.”

As dissatisfaction grows within the public education system, so do more opportunities. And with new opportunities available, the status quo no longer suffices. This has led to many states now offering charter schools or voucher programs for students to attend private schools. Also, the number of parents who opt to home school their children continues to grow as well.

“Students should come first in the education system,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). “Parents deserve options when deciding where their child should attend school.”

School choice leads to competition in the marketplace and children often reap the positive benefits.

In 2009, about six million students were enrolled in a private school, which is about 11 percent of all U.S. students. Students enrolled in private schools consistently score well above the national average in every academic area. They are also more likely than public school students to complete a bachelor’s or advanced degree by their mid-20s, according to research done by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

There are many advantages to a charter school as well. There are more than 5,400 charter schools serving more than 1.7 million children across the country. And that number is growing. For the 2010-2011 school year, 465 new charter schools opened in 40 states and Washington, D.C.

Charter schools have more freedom from the many regulations of public schools. They allow students and teachers more authority to make decisions. Instead of being accountable to rules and regulations like public schools, charter schools are focused on the students and academic achievement and upholding their charter.

Another option for parents who want full control over their child’s education is to home school them. Today, about 2 million students are homeschooled, and the population continues to grow at a rate of 5 to 12 percent each year, according to a report by Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., President of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI).

Many factors are involved when the decision to home school a child is made. Academic concerns and religious motivation are the top reasons for homeschooling, says Nathan Mehrens, currently a Counsel for Americans for Limited Government and previously a legal and legislative assistant for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Another key reason for parents choosing homeschooling is concern over unspecified current problems within some public schools.

As parents now have more options than ever as to how to educate their children and as states continue to evaluate their budgets, it is important to compare education spending in the past and its connections to academic performance.

Research by The Heritage Foundation finds that increased spending on education has not led to better student performance:

“Since 1985, inflation-adjusted federal spending on K-12 education has increased 138 percent. Since the 1960s, real per-pupil federal education expenditures have more than tripled. Meanwhile, academic achievement has languished. Since the 1970s, math achievement has increased slightly, reading achievement has stagnated, and graduation rates have remained at about 73 percent nationally.”

And it looks like more taxpayers are finding those results consistent with their own children’s academic success rates.

Dissatisfaction within the public school system allows states to reevaluate spending, increase competition and boost a child’s academic performance levels. All good things for the many states that are struggling to stay afloat in these hard economic times.

As taxpayers reassess their priorities and investments, the federal, state and local governments should do the same. Reexamining the public education system would be welcomed change to both students and taxpayers.

SOURCE





'Unruly' British school suspends its headteacher after 70 teachers went on strike

A headteacher has been suspended after her staff went on strike, claiming that she would not help them crack down on unruly pupils.

Seventy teachers brandished placards and picketed the gates at Darwen Vale High School in Darwen, Lancashire, on April 7. They were angered by an alleged ‘lack of backing’ from head Hilary Torpey, 52, when they had to confront wild pupils.

Pupils frequently challenge teachers to fights, push and shove them in the corridors and classrooms and are constantly swearing and insulting them. But teachers said that when they take the matters to the headteacher she often sides with the pupils instead of staff.

Complaints were also made about pupils having filmed teachers on mobile phones and posted clips online. They claim that when teachers have confiscated the phones, they have been returned by the school’s management - leaving them ‘totally undermined’.

The strike followed an announcement by Education Secretary Michael Gove of a new crackdown on ill-discipline in class.

Now governors have suspended Ms Torpey. A statement – with spelling mistakes – was issued by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council on behalf of governors’ chairman Don Heatlie-Jackson, saying that there would be ‘a full and proper investigation’.

Simon Jones, of the National Union of Teachers, said: ‘Intense negotiations have been taking place with senior local authority officers and the chairman of governors.

'Considerable progress has been made towards agreeing strategies that should lead to the resolution of this dispute.’

SOURCE



7 May, 2011

Study: 1/3 US students clueless about civics

Fewer than half of US eighth-graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics exam, and one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, according to test results released yesterday.

Three-quarters of high school seniors who took the National Assessment of Educational Progress were unable to identify the effect of foreign policy on other nations or name a power granted to Congress.

The results “confirm that we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education,’’ said Sandra Day O’Connor, a former Supreme Court justice who last year founded icivics.org, a nonprofit group that teaches civics through Web-based games.

The Department of Education administered the tests to 27,000 fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-grade students last year.

Average fourth-grade scores on the test’s 300-point scale rose slightly since the exam was last administered, in 2006, to 157 from 154. Average eighth-grade scores were virtually unchanged at 151. Scores of high school seniors — who are either eligible to vote or about to be — dropped to 148 from 151.

“The results confirm an alarming and continuing trend that civics in America is in decline,’’ said Charles N. Quigley, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Civic Education.

One bright spot: Hispanic students, a growing proportion of the country’s population and student body, narrowed the gap between their scores and those of non-Hispanic white students. On average, Hispanic eighth-graders scored 137 and non-Hispanic whites 160. That 23-point gap was down from 29 in 2006.

SOURCE





British Government to crackdown on the 'Mickey Mouse' High School courses introduced by the Labour Party

Hundreds of worthless qualifications face the axe under a Government shake-up of vocational education. Ministers believe too many ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses are failing teenagers as they do not lead to higher education or stable jobs.

In a major crackdown, ministers are expected to implement the findings of a review which found that up to a third of the non-academic GCSE courses introduced under Labour were pointless. Many of these ‘soft’ courses will be banned from counting towards schools’ GCSE league table positions, while others will fail to be accredited in the first place.

The Government is set to urge regulator Ofqual to take a tougher stance and oversee a fall in the number of poor-quality, non-academic courses being accredited in schools and colleges. This will free more funding for work-based tuition, including apprenticeships.

The Government will announce plans to compile detailed guidance about which vocational qualifications will be allowed to count in school league tables. Many will no longer contribute towards the traditional five A* to C measure of GCSE performance – leading to their demise as schools start to shun them.

The overhaul comes amid an astonishing 3,800 per cent increase in uptake of non-academic GCSE-equivalent courses under Labour. Numbers soared to 575,000 last year – from just 15,000 in 2005.

This helped fuel a damaging collapse in the number of children taking academic courses, and enabled schools to ‘play the system’ by pushing pupils on to ‘soft’ courses that helped boost league rankings.

An independent review in March found up to a third of the soft, non-academic courses introduced under Labour and taken by up to 400,000 16 to 19-year-olds were pointless. They fail to lead directly to a job or other, more advanced courses at college or university, the report said.

One, the level two Certificate in Personal Effectiveness, worth a GCSE, was taken by 10,843 pupils last year. A sample paper asks students to ‘find out what benefits you are entitled to if you are unemployed’. It also asks students to ‘show you can obtain information on a topic you are interested in’ using telephones, the internet, radio or TV and newspapers.

Another, among the most popular highlighted in the report included a Certificate in Preparation for Working Life, worth half a GCSE and taken by almost 30,000 young people last year. Material includes a compulsory section on ‘hazard identification at home, on the roads and at work’, such as ‘storage, falling/ladders and the use of energy’. Students are also taught about emotions people experience including ‘happiness, grief and envy’.

Professor Alison Wolfe of King’s College London, who led the review, said the ‘depth and breadth’ of vocational courses as well as assessment arrangements should be considered when deciding should continue to contribute to Key Stage Four league tables.

Ofqual should also be ‘strongly encouraged to expand and improve the ways in which it regulates awarding bodies and examines standards in vocational education’.

Education Secretary Michael Gove is expected to endorse Professor Wolfe’s findings. A Coalition source said: ‘Under Labour millions of children were pushed into dead end qualifications. ‘The Wolfe Review gives us a blueprint for learning from the most successful countries and putting Labour’s failure behind us.’

SOURCE





The good ol' generous taxpayer again

Incredible salaries of Australian university bosses

THE salary of University of Queensland vice-chancellor Paul Greenfield soared to $1,069,999 this week after he won a staggering $80,000 payrise. The rise alone is more than the Australian average wage of $66,200 and ahead of salaries paid to lecturers and tutors. Several other Queensland vice-chancellors are edging closer to the million-dollar mark, according to reports tabled in Parliament.

Are they worth it? While acknowledging their high-powered, high-stress jobs, many will conclude the salaries are excessive.

There is no doubt that university boffins who make it to the top in Australia climb aboard the ultimate gravy train. Perks include free cars and expense accounts and trips to exotic locations for "research" and important seminars and meetings.

University leaders become the chief executives of vast "companies". Unlike real-world companies, however, universities are topped up each year with billions in federal funding.

Peter Coaldrake, vice-chancellor of Queensland University of Technology, got a pay rise of $50,000, taking his salary to $759,999. Ian O'Connor, vice-chancellor of Griffith University, got a pay rise of $75,000, taking his salary to $714,999.

However, the academic world remains puzzled by the generous salaries paid to the heads of much smaller universities. The remuneration of Greg Hill, vice-chancellor of the University of Sunshine Coast, is believed to be on $489,999, with rises in the pipeline set to take his salary next year to $509,000. Hill succeeded vice-chancellor Paul Thomas, who left with a payout including superannuation of $859,999. Hill is also president of the university whose student numbers have jumped 15 per cent to 7276 since 2006.

In a note in the annual report Hill said: "Despite the rapid growth in student numbers the quality of learning and teaching has remained high. The university was the top-ranked public university in Queensland for teaching quality and graduate satisfaction in the most recent Good Universities Guide." He said the Australian Learning and Teaching Council awarded university staff six citations for excellence.

The remuneration of Scott Bowman, vice-chancellor of Central Queensland University, was listed as $479,999. The university has 12,733 full and part-time students. More than 8000 of them are international students. Sandra Harding, vice-chancellor of James Cook University, won a $60,000 pay rise, taking her salary to a high of $559,999. James Cook has 18,971 students.

By comparison, the University of Queensland has 44,000 full-time and part-time students including 10,465 international students. QUT has 40,563 enrolments, including 6000 from overseas and Griffith University said it has 43,000 students with 9007 from overseas.

A professor told me vice-chancellors of smaller universities had to be paid more to attract them to regional cities. Their pay had to compensate for a loss of prestige in accepting a job at a university of lower standing, he said.

Professor Bill Lovegrove, vice-chancellor at the University of Southern Queensland, accepted a more modest pay rise of $20,000, taking his salary to $509,999. USQ has 26,069 students, nearly 20,000 of them external or online students.

And salaries look set to soar as student numbers rise. Indeed, I was told some universities had already approved a fresh round of pay rises for their vice-chancellors for next year. The top 10 executives at the University of Queensland now earn in excess of $300,000 each. So do the top 10 at Griffith. The top seven executives at QUT earn $300,000 or better.

So why are vice-chancellors and executives paid like the CEOs of big companies?

No doubt universities have become big companies. International education is Australia's third-largest export industry, generating $18 billion in exports in 2009, the Australian Technology Network Universities reported. That amount is 50 per cent larger than tourism-related travel, and has grown by 94 per cent since 2004, according to Greenfield. Higher education generates about $9.3 billion or 57 per cent of this export income, he told the Canberra Press Club this week.

Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said recently that Melbourne's seven universities were the city's biggest employers and had been the largest contributor to state economic development during the past 25 years.

Greenfield said higher education's contribution to economic prosperity was rarely discussed, even though it was the largest service export industry in Australia. He said a total of 480,000 undergraduate places were being funded in 2011, which is 50,000 students more than in 2009. "Encouragingly offers to students from low socio-economic backgrounds have increased faster than for other groups."

The rise of an academic fat cat class comes at a time when Australia's 40,000 academics such as lecturers and tutors believe they are underpaid. It is estimated that an additional 40,000 academic staff will be needed in the next two decades to reduce student staff ratios from an average of 20:1 to 15:1. In addition, thousands of academics will be required to replace those who retire.

A dissenting professor told me there was no evidence academic workers were being underpaid. She pointed to an international comparison of academic salaries by Laura E. Rumbley and colleagues at Boston College's Centre for International Higher Education which found Australian wages for entry-level academic positions are the third highest in the world after Canada and the US.

They are more than three times those in India and more than five times those in China. Australian wages for senior academics are the fourth highest in the world.

SOURCE



6 May, 2011

Riot Police Called in to Restore Order at Tucson School Board Mtg.

Of course this gets a pass in the Leftist "progressive" media, but non-violent Tea Party rallies are demeaned and attacked

Rowdy protesters in Tucson have struck again. And this time, it involves riot police. Those protesters are hell-bent on keeping the district’s shocking, and concerning, Mexican-American studies program as-is. And while they’re causing a ruckus to prove it, there could be a lot more behind the story — mainly, who’s behind the protests.

At a Tucson Unified School District school board meeting on Tuesday — which was a make-up for one canceled after students chained themselves to board-room desks on April 26 — riot police were called in to restore order after program supporters become restless during the public input section of the meeting. Local station KGUN-TV describes the scene:

Nine On Your Side Reporter Ileana Diaz was inside at the time and says after the call to the audience the crowd motioned to the Board to continue hearing from the public. The microphones were turned off and Board Members called for Tucson Police to come inside the room.

Officers in full riot gear escorted Board Members to safety and took control of the room. Police asked people to be calm so the meeting could continue. After about 20 minutes the Board Members walked into the room and resumed with the meeting.

KOLD-TV adds:

The crowd turned uncivil at Tuesday night’s TUSD board meeting to discuss its ethnic studies program.

A call to the audience became an opportunity for audience members to confront the district board about its plans for the program. It grew raucous at times, with one man saying the board’s actions were “disgraceful,“ and that he hoped the board members would ”go to hell for it.” ....

The meeting has been called to order. Security officials are standing in rows, as people chant “No vote.”

KVOA-TV reports seven people were escorted out of the meeting for interrupting by reading prepared statements. There were also several arrests made, but no reports on exactly how many.

So what exactly has the protesters upset? The answer may surprise you. As we’ve previously reported, the district isn’t trying to ban the program outright. Instead, it wants to make a controversial history class — that calls for “death to the invaders” and was found to advocate overthrowing the U.S. government — an elective instead of allowing it to substitute for required history credits. That’s it. And the disturbing class would still be available to students.

But that’s not the rhetoric coming from the supporters. They’re trumpeting the message that the district is trying to eliminate the program altogether, a tactic used to stir up anger and action.

“Last week brave students from UNIDOS took over the Tucson Union School Board meeting and turned it into a pachanga,” a petition e-mail supporting the student action, and obtained by The Blaze, says. “They chained themselves to the seats to prevent the school board from voting to put ethnic studies on the chopping block. Their action worked.”

Outrage over the program isn’t split down liberal vs. conservative lines. As local citizen journalist Mike Shaw recently found out, some of the biggest advocates of removing the program and class are liberals and Democrats. He also found those who believe the student protest movement is being organized by a state university professor:

According to Shaw, the students are getting support from more than just one academic. While reviewing footage from the April 26 chain-in, he noticed something interesting. According to him, Ward Churchill (the controversial, one-time University of Colorado professor who was fired for his views on 9/11) was spotted supporting the protests:

So what became of the Tuesday meeting? Well, nothing. The board decided not to vote on the Mexican-American studies class pending the completion of community forums on the issue. Another vote has not been scheduled.

“It is clear there is a great deal of misperception and miscommunication about the reason for consideration of this item,” district President John Pedicone said in a statement. “This has resulted in heightened levels of frustration.”

SOURCE




Insane British school

Fired for 'abuse', teacher who carried naughty boy of six in from playground

A respected deputy head was sacked after she helped carry a boy of six into school when he refused to leave the playground. Debbie Ellis, who had an unblemished 20-year career, was accused of ‘physical and emotional abuse’ after she and a teaching assistant lifted the boy by his armpits – even though his mother didn’t complain.

Mrs Ellis had taken action because a sex offender had recently been spotted at the school gates.

Yesterday her solicitor described her dismissal as ‘incomprehensible’ and vowed to clear her name.

Mrs Ellis, a policeman’s wife, had been in charge of Hafod-y-Wern primary school in Wrexham, North Wales for the day last June because the head was away. When the boy refused to come inside after playtime, staff phoned his mother, but she wasn’t able to come to the school straight away.

So Mrs Ellis and a teaching assistant went outside, lifted the boy under his armpits and carried him indoors. Mrs Ellis told the head on his return and school governors launched an investigation, which lasted nearly a year.

Police were informed at the time, but there were no grounds on which to prosecute. Now, however, Mrs Ellis has been sacked for ‘gross misconduct by physical and emotional abuse’. She is taking her case to an employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal.

Yesterday her solicitor, Tudor Williams, said Mrs Ellis felt ‘a deep sense of grievance’. ‘What’s happened is incomprehensible,’ he said. ‘For acting in the best interests of the child she gets the sack. It’s totally unfair and over the top. ‘She’s had a 20-year teaching career without a stain on her character, ten years at this school.’

Mr Williams said Mrs Ellis had been sacked despite CCTV footage of the incident showing she hadn’t used excessive force. ‘My client used the minimum of physical restraint to lift him up and carry him to the classroom,’ he said. ‘His mother came to the school and saw him, and made no complaint.’

Mrs Ellis was finally dismissed in February after a two-day disciplinary hearing at which she was represented by the National Union of Teachers. Another teacher at the school was sacked and two teaching assistants were disciplined, but yesterday the school’s governing body declined to give more details.

Mr Williams said: ‘It seems some governors have lost sight of the reality of the situation.’ The playground of the school, which is on a housing estate, is sometimes used as a short cut. Mr Williams said that two weeks earlier, a man had been spotted performing a sex act outside the school gates. ‘Any teacher would be concerned about a pupil being outside in the playground on his own,’ he added. ‘Anything could have happened.

‘Just imagine if he had been allowed to stay there and wandered off on to the main road, or a stranger came in and abused or abducted him. ‘All these things weighed on my client’s mind.’

An NUT spokesman said Mrs Ellis’s dismissal was ‘perverse’ given that she had been acting to keep a child safe.

Mrs Ellis is claiming unfair dismissal and breach of her human rights by allegedly not having a fair hearing.

SOURCE





Australia: Victorian schools allowed to bar non-believing teachers under law change

RELIGIOUS schools will be able to reject teachers belonging to different faiths under Baillieu Government changes to Victoria's equal opportunity laws. Christian schools will be able to ban single-parent teachers or others not fitting their beliefs. Jewish and Islamic schools will be able to hire only those teachers who uphold their values.

Islamic schools will also be able to make head scarfs compulsory for female students in changes that allow faith-based schools to uphold their religion through uniform and behaviour standards.

Strict equal opportunity laws banning discrimination against teachers were initiated by the Brumby government last year and were to take effect on August 1. But the overturning of the laws by the Coalition paves the way for religious organisations to employ only staff who share the beliefs of their communities.

The reforms will also strip Victoria's Equal Opportunity Commissioner of powers to investigate and enter workplaces. The commission was to be handed similar powers to the Office of Police Integrity under a Labor policy.

As part of the Coalition's "operation common sense", Attorney-General Robert Clark will force the commission to get VCAT permission before compelling a person or company to hand over documents, attend a hearing or give evidence about claims of persistent discrimination in workplaces.

Mr Clark said removal of employment restrictions for faith-based schools was a commonsense measure to retain a consistent approach, where the values of teachers match those of students, parents and volunteers. "The changes would apply the same rules to employment as to all other aspects of the organisation's activities - such as provision of services or engagement of contractors," he said.

If challenged on their grounds for rejecting a teacher, schools would have to persuade VCAT their reasons were in keeping with their wider religious beliefs. That would mean the more extreme the school community's beliefs were, the greater their range of exemptions could be.

Independent Schools Victoria chief executive Michelle Green said she was pleased the Government was amending the legislation so parents wanting a choice for their children's education were not disadvantaged. "We were concerned that the rights of independent schools to employ the most suitable staff would have been curtailed," she said.

"Choice in education is very important and we think it is common sense that religious schools ought to be able to choose staff they believe are the most appropriate for their school."

SOURCE



5 May, 2011

Radical Teachers Push Marxist Agenda and Shift Culture Leftward

Far left teachers have young minds captured for 6 ½ hours a day and work subtly to fill them with Marxist and radical ideas. That’s what a New York City teacher explained [see the video here] at the recent socialist Left Forum, transcribed courtesy of the Washington Times:

“How do you act as a teacher…in a classroom? Kind of promote ideas of Marxism or kind of begin to (in-audible)? Ya’ know, I think part of it is, particularly at the high school level or at an elementary school level, you have to be careful, because your job…they want you to stick to fairly narrow things and that can be fairly frustrating about it. You can do it wherever you possibly can.”

You just need to be subtle about it. Can’t put up the Soviet flag. Can’t replace Washington’s picture with ole Karl. So how does one go about it?

“Part of it is just actually allowing for room for critical thought in the classroom and allowing for students to think for themselves to talk about issues wherever it’s possible to bring in history and you know…radical from the past… fight for that kind of thing. And I think there is space to do that. There is limitations that we have to do to try to provide that room in our classrooms. I think that radicals and socialists have a particular role to play in fighting for that type of education and bringing it whenever possible…”

And this scheme seems to be working beautifully.

A survey from late last year commissioned by the Bill of Rights Institute revealed that nearly half of U.S. adults thought a popular Marx saying —”from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” — originated from one of the founding documents.

Karl Marx in the same sentence as America’s founding documents. Let that marinate for a minute.

Their efforts are paying off and they’re moving America’s culture leftward. That doesn’t bode well for our roots of liberty and self-governance.

SOURCE





Nearly Half Of Detroiters Can’t Read

Africans in an African city

According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are "functionally illiterate.” The alarming new statistics were released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on Wednesday.
WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund’s Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means.

“Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should take… just your basic everyday tasks,” she said.

“I don’t really know how they get by, but they do. Are they getting by well? Well, that’s another question,” Tyler-Ruiz said.

Some of the Detroit suburbs also have high numbers of functionally illiterate: 34 percent in Pontiac and 24 percent in Southfield.

“For other major urban areas, we are a little bit on the high side… We compare, slightly higher, to Washington D.C.’s urban population, in certain ZIP codes in Washington D.C. and in Cleveland,” she said.

Tyler-Ruiz said only 10 percent of those who can’t read have gotten any help to resolve it. The report will be used to provide better training for local workers.

SOURCE






Private universities 'need tougher regulations', says British charity

Private universities are a relatively recent phenomenon in Britain so the Leftist education establishment looks at them askance. Even the ancient universities at Oxford and Cambridge are government-funded and regulated. Hence the sheer silliness of the report below

Tougher regulations are needed to keep rising numbers of private universities in order, according to research. New sanctions should be introduced amid fears that some institutions offering degree-level courses may be “of questionable legitimacy or very poor quality”, said the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank.

The warning comes just weeks after the Coalition signalled a major expansion of private providers. David Willetts, the Universities Minister, said students attending an independent university would be eligible for £6,000 a year in Government-backed loans from 2012 – double the current limit.

The move is being seen as an attempt to introduce more competition into higher education and reward private universities that are more likely to offer cut-price courses.

But in today’s report, HEPI called for a “clear definition of a reputable private provider and an agreed designation of acceptability”. “Only those institutions with this recognition should be entitled to benefit,” it said, adding that existing regulations intending to regulate private universities were complex and "scattered” within various different statutes.

Currently, five private organisations have degree awarding powers, with most offering specialist professional courses. Only one – Buckingham University – offers a wide range of degrees. At least 670 other private providers currently provide other further and higher education courses and numbers are likely to grow in coming years.

But the HEPI study – Private Providers in UK Higher Education – said evidence from the United States suggested that private providers were more likely to have high drop-out rates and offer low quality courses. [That would be news to Harvard and Yale!] "A key concern, as in the USA, is the existence of some private institutions of questionable legitimacy or very poor quality," said the study.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “We urgently need tougher regulation of for-profit companies if we are to protect quality and standards in our higher education system. As events in America have shown the for-profit model is fraught with danger for students and taxpayers alike and it is essential that our government rethinks its decision to embrace it.

“As today’s report shows, in its study of for-profits in America, publicly-funded education delivered by established providers offers a better quality of education.”

SOURCE



4 May, 2011

For-profit education rule heads for final U.S. review

The Leftist hatred of profit is particularly strong in education

The U.S. Education Department has sent the final version of a controversial rule aimed at reining in low-quality trade schools and colleges to the White House budget office for review, an agency spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The for-profit education lobby and the Obama administration have been in a pitched battle over rules designed to curb student loan abuses.

The "gainful employment" regulation is the last of many rules introduced by the Education Department to be finalized. The goal of this and other rules is to make for-profit schools such as Apollo Group's University of Phoenix more accountable for the billions of dollars of taxpayer money used to fund student loans.

In its original form, the rule would make a school program ineligible to accept students paying with federal loans if fewer than 35 percent of former students are paying them back after three years. An exception would be made for programs where students are able to pay back loans, but fail to do so.

The Education Department spokeswoman said she did not know when the final version of the rule would be announced. It had been expected early this year. Rules are often weakened between the announcement of the first draft and implementation of the final version.

The White House budget office reviews proposed regulations to ensure they meet regulatory principles and policies. When an initial draft of the gainful employment rule was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget on October 15, the review took about 10 days.

The Education Department has already finalized rules banning the practice of basing recruiters' pay on how many students they enroll and requiring disclosure of graduation rates and job placement rates to new students.

For-profit colleges have been lobbying heavily over the last few months to get the gainful employment rule scrapped or weakened. Losing access to federal loans could put some schools out of business. Some have already tightened their enrollment standards in a move to reduce loan defaults and increase graduation rates.

Apollo Group, the biggest company in the sector, said it saw a 45 percent drop in new enrollments in the quarter ended on February 28. With enrollments down, Apollo, Career Education Corp and Washington Post's education unit Kaplan Higher Education have all cut jobs.

The Standard & Poor's education index was up 0.3 percent in afternoon trading on Tuesday, while the broad S&P 500 stock index fell 0.6 percent.

SOURCE







Degistered New Zealand teacher unrepentant over nude Penthouse photographs

The penalty seems excessive and out of place in today's society



A FORMER New Zealand teacher has been deregistered for posing nude - but she has no regrets, 3 News reported today.

Rachel Whitwell, 29, was photographed draped over a school desk for the pornographic magazine Penthouse's Australia and New Zealand editions in January 2010.

Following a number of complaints and an investigation by the New Zealand Teachers Council (NZTC), the Teachers' Disciplinary Tribunal found the former elementary school teacher's actions had brought the profession into disrepute and reflected poorly on her fitness as a teacher, Radio New Zealand reported.

In her defense, Whitwell argued she was not working as a teacher when she posed for the photographs and had not acted illegally, stuff.co.nz reported. "I simply modeled for some photographs in my role as a model, not as a teacher," she said in submissions to the NZTC. "Even if I was teaching I do not believe that ... the NZTC has any right to impose Victorian moral opinions on my life outside the classroom."

Whitwell also said the New Zealand Bill of Rights meant she had a right to freedom of expression.

She was deregistered as a teacher and ordered to pay costs.

Whitwell said she gave up teaching a year and a half ago to pursue a modeling career and, while she had no regrets about posing nude, she wanted to appeal the decision.

SOURCE





Australian Federal Government offers families cash if teens stay at school

MORE than 143,000 Queensland families will receive extra cash from the Federal Government over five years if their teenage children stay in school. About 650,000 families nationwide will get up to $4200 extra each year under a Labor election commitment to increase the number of 16 to 19-years who complete schooling.

New government modelling suggests tens of thousands of low-income families will also receive extra rent assistance up to $3600 a year and family tax benefit B payments in next week's federal Budget.

Treasurer Wayne Swan pledged the Budget would target welfare payments to low and middle-income families while creating incentives for students to say in school. "We fully understand how much bringing up teenagers can stretch family budgets, especially for families on modest incomes," Mr Swan said. "This extra help with cost of living pressures will help ensure that all teenagers are either learning or earning, so that we can build the best-educated and skilled workforce in the world."

The move reflects findings from former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry's tax review that the current drop in family tax payments once a child turns 16 creates a disincentive for older teenagers to complete school. Extra payments will only be made if students are in full time study or vocational training.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has vowed to make education and training the centrepiece of next week's Budget as the Treasury warns skills shortages threaten the economy. Ms Gillard yesterday pledged to spend an extra $200 million on school education for students with disabilities. The funds will cover speech and occupational therapy, audiovisual technology, teacher aides, health professionals and specialised curriculums.

Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans flagged further skills funding in the Budget ahead of a major overhaul of vocational education.

A report by Skills Australia yesterday laid out a $12 billion plan to boost the number of Australians in training up to certificate III level.

SOURCE



3 May, 2011

Tucson‘s ’Mexican-American Studies’ Curriculum‏

Earlier today we brought you the story of how students chained themselves together at a local Tucson school board chamber to protest administrators who wanted to change the Mexican-American studies curriculum. Currently, a class that teaches history from a Mexican-American perspective is allowed to substitute for the required U.S. history class. But the school superintendent also wants to reevaluate the entire program (and possibly get rid of the class),* in part because it advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Below are excerpts from the controversial curriculum, which (among other things) calls for abolishing Thanksgiving for a National Day of Atonement and includes the headline “Death to the Invader!”

But first, we‘ve also uncovered the superintendent’s findings, which he presented after he reviewed the curriculum. According to him, the Mexican-American Studies Program was found to include all of the below elements that are banned by state law:
Here are the words taken directly from the superintendent’s findings:



So what is so egregious about this program? We’ll let the documents (which were distributed as handouts) speak for themselves (courtesy of Tucsonans United for Sound Districts):









You can see more excerpts, including those from the class “Social Justice, Resistance, and Latino Literature,” here.

Included in the superintendent’s findings was a startling testimonial from a former Hispanic teacher in the district:

Considering the excerpts, it’s not hard to understand how that happened.

SOURCE





Christie Brings Message of Change to Harvard Education School

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has called his state’s teachers’ union “a bunch of political thugs,” took his message of change to Harvard University’s school for educators today.

“There are now smoldering around the country the embers of revolution” in public schools, Christie said in a speech at the Ivy League institution’s Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The need for revolutionary change is as appropriate as anything in public life today.”

The first-term Republican, whose proposals to change government pension and benefit plans sparked a surge in teacher retirements last year, spoke to a packed audience that included those in a 270-seat auditorium and three satellite rooms around the campus across the Charles River from Boston. Christie, 48, has said 2011 will be “the year of education reform” as he pushes to change tenure, link teacher pay to performance and make it easier to fire educators deemed ineffective.

“We have an education system that is set up for the ease, comfort and security of those who operate it,” the governor said. This week, New Jersey voters approved 80 percent of school budgets. A year ago, they rejected a record 59 percent after Christie urged them to do so in districts where teachers rejected wage freezes.

New Jersey spends $17,620 per pupil annually, more than any other U.S. state, yet more than 100,000 students are trapped in failing schools, Christie has said. “Money is not the answer to that problem,” Christie said in his remarks. “New Jersey is the laboratory that proves that.”

While New Jersey has 150,000 teachers, just 17 have been removed for incompetence in the past decade, he has said, blaming tenure rules. The New Jersey Education Association, the union representing 200,000 current and retired school employees, spent $6.6 million on broadcast advertising last year, the most of any lobbying group in the state, according to the Election Law Enforcement Commission in Trenton. Many ads attacked Christie.

Christie likened leaders of the teachers’ union to “political thugs” in an ABC News interview this month with Diane Sawyer.

“The reason I’m engaged in this fight with the teachers’ unions is because it is the only fight worth having,” Christie said to applause. He said that he has tried to focus his attacks on a system that protects poor-performing teachers and favors the system instead of the students.

Teacher retirements surged 95 percent last year, the largest increase of any government group, according to state Treasury Department data.

“I’m in no way condoning every aspect of Christie’s agenda, but he’s at least putting himself out there and I respect that,” student David Donaldson, who invited the New Jersey governor to speak, said in a telephone interview. When Christie entered the room, he was met with a standing ovation.

Donaldson, 26, is head of the Education Policy and Management Student Association speaker series at Harvard, the oldest and richest U.S. university. Other speakers this year include Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

The typical speaker event attracts about 125 people, Donaldson said. More than 400 were expected at Christie’s speech, he said.

“Christie is among the most prominent governors when it comes to education issues,” said Michael Rodman, a spokesman for the graduate school. “Certainly he’s controversial but we welcome controversy and we think his ideas should be discussed and debated.”

Christie urged his audience, many of whom may become leaders of schools, to be “disruptors.” He said they should disrupt “fat, rich and entitled unions” because that’s what’s needed to fix U.S. public schools.

SOURCE






Australia's best teachers to be financially rewarded with bonus payments

The country's best teachers will be offered bonus pay under a budget plan announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

"The forthcoming budget will deliver on our promise to invest in rewarding great teachers around the country," Ms Gillard told reporters at a Canberra primary school this morning.

"We will design a system where teachers who are performing well can get additional pay and additional reward to recognise that great performance."

The bonus pay will cost the commonwealth $425 million over the next four years and a total of $1.3 billion to 2018, the government says.

The first bonuses will be based on the 2013 school year and be paid in early 2014.

Bonuses will range from $5400 to $8100, depending on the teacher's experience.

Ms Gillard says an estimated 25,000 teachers, or around one in 10, will receive incentives under the scheme.

SOURCE



2 May, 2011

Americans Discern Correctly Public Schools are Poor “Investment”

We continue to hear the rhetoric from teachers unions and others in the education establishment that we need to “invest” more in America’s public schools.

Want smarter, better-prepared kids, the teacher unions ask? Give us more money! (And get the “rich” to pay for it.) That’s been the nation’s approach to public education for, oh, the last 50 years.

But after decades of increased education spending, it’s time to ask the obvious question: What kind of return are American taxpayers getting for all this “investment”? The answer: not much.

According to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports, a whopping 72% of taxpayers say they “are not getting a good return on what they spend on public education, and just one-in-three voters think spending more will make a difference.”

Americans are correctly discerning that simply spending more money will not improve educational outcomes.

Sure, throwing more dollars at education helps shore up the teacher unions’ Cadillac health insurance and pension plans. The money also helps cover automatic step raises for teachers. The problem is, none of those things help children read better or compute a calculus equation. Not one iota.

Think of it this way: If you owned stock in a company that was producing a lousy, inferior product that the public was unhappy with, would you buy more stock in that company?

If you’re a savvy investor, you’d demand new leadership that has a clear plan for producing a better product before you gave them a single dollar more. Why shouldn’t the same principle apply to public schools?

For years, the teachers union and their surrogates in elective office could get away with guilting Americans into spending more on public education. It was for the children, after all!

It was a cozy setup. More education dollars meant more union dues and more union political contributions for Democrats (and the occasional incompetent Republican who bought into the teacher union propaganda). Everyone benefitted. Except the students.

This Rasmussen poll indicates that Americans are catching onto this racket.

If the nation’s public schools were producing college-ready, workforce-ready graduates, there is little doubt that Americans would be willing to spend even more money on public education.

But our education system is graduating many students who are lacking in basic skills. The number of college freshmen who have to take remedial English and math classes just to get up to academic speed is an indictment of the entire system. “Kids Aren’t Cars” told the story of a graduate who couldn’t read his own diploma.

If leaders of the education establishment want more of our money, they must show a commitment to quality. That means holding teachers accountable (merit pay, ending tenure) and providing students with greater choices in education (charter schools, online learning). Do those things, National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, and then we’ll talk about more spending.

Until that happens, 72% of Americans understand that more school spending is simply throwing good money after bad.

SOURCE





British education boss makes it 'faster and simpler' to sack bad teachers

Incompetent teachers who use ‘notorious dodges’ to keep their jobs will be ejected from the classroom under radical new plans, Michael Gove announced yesterday. Speaking at the National Association of Head Teachers annual conference the Education Secretary said he would make it ‘faster and simpler’ for heads to sack bad teachers.

And he pledged to curb the underhand tactics used by bad teachers to cling on to their jobs. The two main ‘notorious dodges’ were stated as getting signed off sick and launching legal action against heads for bullying and intimidation.

The ruses can extend the time it takes to sack bad staff by years. Mr Gove wants this to reduced to a few months. Mr Gove’s new measures to cull incompetent teachers are set to be announced within weeks.

Addressing delegates at the Brighton conference, he said: ‘There are some underperforming teachers and it’s your responsibility to pick up the pieces. ‘Some are not pulling their weight or performing how they should in the class room.

‘I will be outlining new measures to manage out of the profession those people who should not be teaching.’ Speaking after the conference he added: ‘We will make it faster and simpler and we will deal with some of the most notorious dodges used by poor teachers.’

The measures are the latest in a string of reforms to boost teaching standards. They include raising the bar on qualifications needed to enter the profession and a review of standards against which teachers can be judged.

Mr Hobby, General Secretary of the NAHT, said elaborate ruses used by teachers to avoid the sack resulted in heads spending too much time managing bad staff. He added: ‘Where there is one underperforming teacher, there are too many.’ Mr Gove spoke after NAHT delegates overwhelming voted – with 99.6% in favour - for the first time in their history 100–year history, to ballot for strike action over pensions. The delegates represent the leaders of 28,000 primary and secondary schools in England.

Millions of children will be shut out of schools when the action takes place in the autumn term. And the walkouts are set to form part of a wave of strikes starting in action by the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in June.

The planned action puts teachers on a collision course with the Government over changes to public sector pensions. Amendments proposed by Lord Hutton call for final salary schemes to be replaced by average salary, a later retirement age of 68 and increased contributions for diminished returns.

Mr Gove, seeking to appease teachers, said they were in a unique position within the public sector and would not have to accept all changes. He said they had made an ‘unwritten compact’ with Government to work for low pay on the condition they receive generous pensions. And he pledged to negotiate and work with teachers to get a fair deal.

Delegates also voted for a boycott over Sats tests for 600,000 primary school pupils in 2012 if the Government review of exams does not lead to the scrapping of the tests.

In a scathing attack on Mr Gove, Mr Hobby said increasing mountains of Government targets and league tables are ruining children’s education and turning youngsters into ‘statistical fodder’.

SOURCE





Schools that cheat in Australia too

NEXT month the latest round of National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy tests will occur. Some students will not be attending. This is because schools have recommended the parents keep their children at home. The reason is these children are deemed a potential hindrance to overall school test scores.

It is not that these children are necessarily those allowed to be excused under the protocols for NAPLAN. Children who have a significant disability that renders them incapable of being tested under NAPLAN specifications, or children from a non-English speaking background who arrived in Australia less than one year before the tests, do not have to sit them.

Even while these conditions are clear, some students will be absent for no reason other than the tests are likely to cause "stress". This at least was one of the scenarios exposed in The Australian on April 11 concerning Queensland's Miami State High School.

The school has encouraged about a dozen parents to keep their children at home. Such school-sanctioned wagging is to enable supposedly low-performing students not to influence the NAPLAN results as quantified on the My School website.

Queensland has an unenviable track record where fudging NAPLAN results is concerned. Last year, there were 23 allegations of cheating on NAPLAN levelled against state schools and five against non-state schools. While the details were not released at the request of state Education Minister Geoff Wilson, "unethical" behaviour of some Queensland schools is a euphemism for non-attendance.

Cold comfort though it may be, Queensland does not lead the nation on schools asking children to stay home at NAPLAN time. Victoria has the lowest NAPLAN participation rates in the country.

In the Year 3 writing test 94 per cent of students in Victoria sat the tests in 2008 compared with 91 per cent last year. This represents a drop of 2000 students. For Year 9 numeracy, 1934 fewer sat the test last year than in 2008.

It's a reality that prompted state Liberal Education Minister Martin Dixon to say of the Education Department's assiduousness under Labor: "If it had been rigorous, we wouldn't have seen falling participation rates."

Having children who do not fit the exclusion conditions stay away and not sit the tests is simply cheating and an unsubtle attempt to skew the tests results published on My School. This was never the idea of the tests.

NAPLAN is part of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's commitment to the "transformative" nature of education. There is a good reason for NAPLAN to be a test for all. Without a full cohort of participants, the national data is rubbery.

Australia's performance on international education skill assessments is declining. The OECD's 2009 Program for International Student Assessment for 15 year olds showed Australia had declined 13 points in reading since 2000 and had slipped 10 points since 2006 in mathematics.

But according to Australian Education Union's national president, Angelo Gavrielatos, teacher unions are to be congratulated on their obdurate anti-NAPLAN stance. Gavrielatos paid tribute to unions stymieing the tests in the AEU's national conference in January, lauding those foot soldiers who "put their careers on the line and faced threats of disciplinary action or dismissal over the union's campaign against NAPLAN testing, the misuse of data and school league tables".

I am supervising NAPLAN tests next month. The reality is that NAPLAN has begun to take on its own momentum. It has morphed into something it was never intended to be. The tests were to be a moment in time, a core sample of basic skills, not a prepared examination.

Underperforming schools were to get an increase in support to assist in bringing the results up to speed. The intention was about identifying weakness and high performance and increasing achievement overall.

But the preparation for NAPLAN tests has increased significantly. As this newspaper pointed out on April 13, Gillard, when she was education minister, foresaw the dangers. She asked the Education Department to "consider limits on practice time".

This, it can be argued, is another kind of cheating. If you prepare children for NAPLAN, teach to the test in other words, you are cooking results.

I have seen practice papers. The curious thing about them is the suggested answers to the questions provide detailed annotations for the teacher, including basic grammar and spelling explanations. That says a lot about the quality of the teachers. It seems they are assumed to know nothing and understand less.

In principle NAPLAN is an imperative educational reform. In practice it's been hijacked by nervous schools wanting a better result on My School and unions not wanting to have bad teaching exposed. Strange bedfellows indeed.

SOURCE



1 May, 2011

Corruption in the US Education Dept over "For profit" colleges?

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General has launched a probe into possible influence by short-sellers on the Education Department's recent rulemaking process, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The investigation may proceed for some time, and there is no guarantee the OIG will make any specific findings.

The Education Department has come under fire from a number of sources since it began issuing a package of new rules last summer that will affect for-profit college operators such as Apollo Group Inc. (APOL), ITT Educational Services Inc. (ESI) and Corinthian Colleges Inc. (COCO). The Education Department released 13 of 14 rules in October but has yet to release the most controversial, which would tie graduates' student-loan repayment rates to programs' access to federal financial aid. As student-loan default rates rise, that rule is intended to ensure programs are educating their students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation.

In November, Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) sent a letter asking the OIG to look into possible ties between the department and investors who were selling short the stock of various for-profit education companies. Correspondence between the parties, which include FrontPoint Partners's Steve Eisman, had been released by the department after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group known as CREW, filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Meanwhile, Sen. Michael Enzi (R., Wyo.) on Thursday sent a letter to Education Department Secretary Arne Duncan asking the department to release "all Department of Education written correspondence, email or otherwise, regarding the development of the proposed gainful-employment regulation," including documents from the Office of the Secretary related to the allegations. Enzi is ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Burr is also a member.

Additionally, lobbying groups supporting the for-profit colleges have alleged the Education Department leaked early copies of the rules to outside organizations and people with financial interests in the industry.

The so-called "gainful-employment" rule has seen strong opposition from lobbyists and a number of members of Congress, as many schools fear they may face program closures if they lose access to the funds. The U.S. House of Representatives voted last month to de-fund the gainful-employment rule, but the measure was later dropped from the final budget bill.

The Education Department said earlier this month it was "very close" to issuing the final rule, which will be "much more thoughtful" than an early draft. The department has said it sought input from a number of parties, including the schools that could be affected by the rules.

FrontPoint Partners's Eisman, the hedge-fund portfolio manager famous for his bearish bet on the mortgage industry, likened for-profit schools to subprime mortgages at an investor conference in May. He sent a copy of that presentation to the Education Department, according to documents released by CREW, and repeated many of the criticisms in front of a Senate committee hearing in June.

A representative from the Education Department referred questions to the OIG. An OIG representative said it's the agency's policy to neither confirm nor deny investigative activity. The OIG investigation was first reported Thursday in the Daily Caller, also citing sources.

SOURCE





British teachers are well-paid but many do not deliver value for money

Katharine Birbalsingh

How much do you think a teacher earns? The more I talk to people, the more I realise that the public think teachers are really poor.

It has come as quite a surprise for them to learn that hundreds of head teachers earn more than £100,000 per year, which is partly why the NASUWT teaching union was yesterday calling for more transparency in their salaries.

Once upon a time, of course, teachers did earn a pittance. But the recent Labour government changed all that. While it was in power, spending on education doubled; it now costs more than £80 billion a year to educate (rather badly) our lovely children. An ordinary London teacher, if good, can become an advanced skills teacher and earn well over £50,000 a year. A head of department or head of year doesn't even have to be good, and they'll be paid between £40,000 and £50,000. Assistant and deputy heads earn between £50,000 and £75,000, and heads can make just over £100,000.

For those teachers outside the capital, pay is slightly lower and for those in primary a little lower still, but no one is complaining. In my entire career as a teacher, I never heard a colleague complain about their pay.

I was always baffled when people would say that my motivation in speaking out about the education system was to sell my book. The £10,000 or so that I will eventually earn from it cannot compare with what I have lost in salary after being forced to leave my job. The fact is that most teachers are far richer than most writers.

And that, in my opinion, is a good thing: teaching is among the most important of our professions. It's a shame the public, on the whole, doesn't feel the same way. Would anyone question a surgeon being paid well? No. And that's because we have respect for doctors. Teachers, however, get a far harsher deal.

But even I'm struck by the quantity – and quality – of executive heads who are earning far more than £100,000 per year. One primary school head is reported to be earning some £276,000. Now, while this may be the exception, there is a disturbing lack of transparency about how and why they earn so much. This is mainly because they are drawing several different salaries for doing a variety of jobs – often rather badly because, frankly, no one can be in many schools and many training institutions and many conferences, all at the same time, while maintaining high standards at them all.

There are a handful of heads and executive heads who are worth every penny. They are extraordinarily talented, run outstanding schools, and do what most ordinary teachers can only dream about. But there are others, and I include deputies and assistants, who aren't even worth that ordinary teacher's salary.

And it is from these examples that public dissatisfaction with the profession festers. If our schools were churning out well-read, numerate, polite and charming young men and women, the public might not be quite so put out to learn that teachers are being so handsomely paid.

But half of our country's children do not manage to get five GCSEs with English and Maths; 84 per cent of them do not manage to get five C grades (not As but Cs) in academic subjects such as Maths, English, Science, History or Geography and a foreign or ancient language. Should we really be rewarding their schools for inadequately educating them?

If the statistics are to be believed, then the vast majority of head teachers do not deserve their salaries. I would go even further and argue that a number do not deserve to be in a post at all.

But when the Education Select Committee at the Commons asked me what should be done about senior teams who do not do their jobs properly and I answered: "Well… we should fire them…", the MPs from all three parties twisted uncomfortably in their seats.

One could barely stutter a response. Others hung their heads to hide their embarrassment at how inappropriate my answer was. I caused such a scandal that my words ended up in several newspapers. "Katharine Birbalsingh says teachers should be fired!"

And I still don't understand what the problem is. If you don't do your job properly, and your organisation is failing because of your poor leadership, isn't it obvious that you should be fired?

Senior teachers should not be paid less. Their jobs are the most important, most challenging and most exhilarating on the planet. Our future as a nation depends on them.

Why on earth would we want to reduce the status and appeal of such positions by decreasing their salaries? It is already hard enough to find good head teachers. The point is that senior teachers should do their jobs well and be held to account. We should give them incentives to ensure our children and schools are top class.

The public are right to be outraged and question teachers' pay – because they aren't getting value for their money.

SOURCE




That evil "rote learning" is needed in Australian primary schools

There is no other way to learn your times tables and they in turn are a major source of numeracy

Jennifer Buckingham

In around two weeks, each school student in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across Australia will sit the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests. The four tests over three days begin with language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and writing, followed by reading and numeracy.

My eldest child, who is in Year 3, will take the tests for the first time this year. My daughter’s school takes these tests very seriously. They have been preparing students for a good proportion of the first term.

Although my own area of interest is reading, I am more familiar with the numeracy test, simply because numeracy is where my daughter is weaker. To my mind, the tests are a fair representation of my daughter’s mathematical prowess at this time. Just by doing practice tests together, I have been able to see the gaps in her skills and knowledge.

Two things have become apparent. First, my daughter’s performance in the test will be impeded because she does not know the times tables well. I share responsibility for this because I was already aware of it. We made a few half-hearted attempts to work on this at home, but it was tedious for both of us and I did not persevere.

However, it has become glaringly obvious that knowing single digit multiples is critical. And I mean really knowing them, not just knowing the concept of multiplication and that if you spend enough time drawing circles with dots in them, you can eventually work out the answer.

I cannot say whether this is true for many schools, but I have seen little evidence of memorisation in my daughter’s maths instruction, and there is no other way to permanently instil this knowledge and provide automatic recall. Language and social studies are not the only areas of schooling that have been adversely affected by constructivism.

Second, the numeracy is a test of mathematical literacy, not mathematical aptitude. All the questions are problem-based. This example from the 2010 Year 3 numeracy test paper shows that it is almost impossible to do well if you are not competent in reading and comprehending written language.

These biscuits are sold in packets of 10. Shelley wants to give one biscuit to each of her 27 classmates. What is the least number of packets that Shelley needs? (©ACARA 2010)

Fortunately, my daughter is literate and able to understand this question, so the test will assess her ability to solve the problem using mathematics. Other children will not be in the same situation.

The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated 29 April. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


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


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


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray