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30 November, 2004

Survey of Smartest People Just Plain Dumb

How smart do you have to be before you can rank smartness?

States Ranked: Smartest to Dumbest

The smartest state in the union for the second consecutive year is Massachusetts. The dumbest, for the third year in a row, is New Mexico.

These are the findings of the Education State Rankings, a survey by Morgan Quitno Press of hundreds of public school systems in all 50 states. States were graded on a variety of factors based on how they compare to the national average. These included such positive attributes as per-pupil expenditures, public high school graduation rates, average class size, student reading and math proficiency, and pupil-teacher ratios. States received negative points for high drop-out rates and physical violence.

Sigh. They just assume (among other assumptions) that intelligence is indicated by the amount of money a state spends per pupil. If one state spends more then another, they are automatically assumed smarter than the other state. hmmmm...

The District of Colombia (Washington DC for the people who put this survey together) spends more per student than any area of the country and routinely ranks at the bottom of the barrel is every measure of actual achievement. In fact, the areas of the country where they spend the most money per pupil often produce the poorest results. But never let the facts get in the way of bad science."

(Post lifted from Wizbang. I think Wizbang is too kind, however. It is not even bad science It is deliberate propaganda.)



THE METEORIC COLLAPSE OF SCHOOLING OVER THE LAST CENTURY

The Spectator has an amazing listing of exam papers for ELEVEN YEAR OLDS in the Britain of 1898. There are now very few university graduates who could answer the questions concerned. Just some of the questions:


LATIN

1. Write in columns the nominative singular, genitive plural, gender, and meaning of:- operibus, principe, imperatori, genere, apro, nivem, vires, frondi, muri.

2. Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive sing. of solus, uter, quisque.

3. Write these phrases in a column and put opposite to each its Latin: he will go; he may wish; he had; he had been; he will be heard; and give in a column the English of fore, amatum, regendus, monetor.

4. Give in columns the perfect Indic. and active supine of ago, pono, dono, cedo, jungo, claudo.

Mention one example each of verbs followed by the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative.

5. Translate into Latin:-

1. The general's little son was loved by the soldiers.
2. Let no bodies be buried within this city.
3. Ask Tullius who found the lions.
4. He said that the city had been taken, and, the war being finished, the forces would return.

6. Translate into English:-

Exceptus est imperatoris adventus incredibili honore atque amore: tum primum enim veniebat ab illo Aegypti bello. Nihil relinquebatur quod ad ornatum locorum omnium qua iturus erat excogitari posset.


ENGLISH HISTORY

1. What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?

2. Give some account of Egbert, William II, Richard III, Robert Blake, Lord Nelson.

3. State what you know of - Henry II's quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven bishops, the Gordon riots.

4. What important results followed - the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Gunpowder plot, the Scottish rebellion of 1639, the surrender at Yorktown, the battles of Bannockburn, Bosworth, Ethandune, La Hogue, Plassey, and Vittoria?

5. How are the following persons connected with English History,- Harold Hardrada, Saladin, James IV of Scotland, Philip II of Spain, Frederick the Elector Palatine?


ARITHMETIC

1. Multiply 642035 by 24506.

2. Add together o132 4s. 1d., o243 7s. 2d., o303 16s 2d., and o1.030 5s. 3d.; and divide the sum by 17. (Two answers to be given.)

3. Write out Length Measure, and reduce 217204 inches to miles, &c.

4. Find the G.C.M. of 13621 and 159848.

5. Find, by Practice, the cost of 537 things at o5 3s. 71/2d. each.

6. Subtract 37/16 from 51/4; multiply 63/4 by 5/36; divide 43/8 by 11/6; and find the value of 21/4 of 12/3 of 13/5.

7. Five horses and 28 sheep cost o126 14s., and 16 sheep cost o22 8s.; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep.

8. Subtract 3.25741 from 3.3; multiply 28.436 by 8.245; and divide .86655 by 26.5.

9. Simplify 183/4 - 22/3 ” 11/5 - 31/2 x 4/7.

10. Find the square root of 5.185,440,100.

11. Find the cost of papering the walls of a room 16ft long, 13ft 6in. wide, and 9ft high, with paper 11/2ft wide at 2s. 3d. a piece of 12yds in length.

12. A and B rent a number of fields between them for a year, the rent and other expenses amounting to o108 17s. 6d. A puts in 2 horses, 5 oxen and 10 sheep; and B puts in 4 horses, 1 ox, and 27 sheep. If a horse eats as much as 3 sheep and an ox as much as 2 sheep, how much should A and B each pay?

This exam was for admission to a private secondary school (the one Tolkien went to, in fact) and most if not all of the children who answered these questions would have been prepared by private primary schools. The big takeover of education in England by the State was just a little later -- in 1899 (primary) and 1902 (secondary). Need I say more?

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

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

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29 November, 2004

THE EVOLUTION CONTROVERSY IN GEORGIA

A recent CNN article discusses the plight of Georgia residents who worry that the controversial "warning labels" being placed on high school biology textbooks will give their students a bad reputation. In case you haven't heard, the Cobb County Board of Education's sticker reads as follows:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

The Cobb County debacle is yet another example of the pitfalls of collectivism. For example, if a particular grocery store in Georgia decided not to sell genetically engineered vegetables, nobody would conclude that everybody in Georgia is a Luddite hick; it would be clear that this was the decision of a private entity, and did not reflect the wishes of the average Southerner. In the exact same way, if the government stopped meddling with education - and what a fantastic job it's done thus far! - then private schools could determine their own policies regarding curricula. Fundamentalist parents would be free to send their kids to schools that taught Intelligent Design theory, and if graduate schools balked at this, those kids wouldn't be accepted to Harvard's doctoral biology program. No need for national media coverage, or residents complaining about negative stereotypes.

More here



VAST SPENDING ON A MISGUIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM GIVES ZERO BENEFIT

Anybody for a restoration of discipline? Or teaching reading by methods that work?

Drawing its evidence almost entirely from official sources such as the U.S. Department of Education, a thoroughly researched study from the Cato Institute concludes there is little to show for the hundreds of billions of tax dollars the federal government has spent on K-12 education since 1965. The study suggests this conclusion, coupled with growing state-level unrest over new federal regulations, may lead to K-12 education being returned to local control in each state.

In the study, "A Lesson in Waste: Where Does All the Federal Education Money Go?" Cato education policy analyst Neal McCluskey notes, as a starting point, that the U.S. Constitution provides no basis for federal action in education. Despite that lack of constitutional authority, federal education expenditures in constant dollars have soared from about $25 billion in 1965 to more than $108 billion in 2002. "For almost 40 years the federal government has broken with both precedent and the Constitution by inserting itself into American education, an area that is traditionally and legally the domain of state and local governments," notes McCluskey. "In that time the federal government has expended hundreds of billions of dollars on everything from Safe and Drug-Free Schools to programs for towns with historical ties to the whaling industry."

The wide range of these programs is presented by the Cato study in eight pages of appendices, which list the names, 2004 appropriations, and descriptions of 96 federal education programs in eight different areas. Another three pages of the 30-page report are taken up with a listing of the primary funding areas for the top seven spending departments in 1965, 1980, and 2002.

While the U.S. Department of Education (USDoE), created after Jimmy Carter became president, receives the largest single allocation of federal dollars, McCluskey points out more education dollars are spread to other agencies. For example, in 2002, the USDoE was allocated more than $46 billion, but Health and Human Services was given nearly $23 billion for education and Agriculture almost $12 billion. More than $17 billion went to several other agencies.

And what results have taxpayers seen? Title I was initiated in 1965 as a key component of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society to improve education for students living in poverty. It is the largest single disbursement by the USDoE, more than $12 billion in fiscal 2004. As McCluskey notes, in terms of reducing disparities in achievement, there is "not much to show for the multiple billions expended on Title I since 1965."

A look at Head Start, the second largest education program, is no more encouraging, despite annual expenditures that have risen to nearly $6.8 billion by 2004. Studies of the program, which offers educational and other services to low-income preschoolers, show it produces only short-term gains that disappear soon after Head Start youngsters leave the program.

After nearly 40 years of federal efforts to improve K-12 education, McCluskey points out student achievement is not markedly better than in 1965, and in some instances achievement is clearly worse.

More here

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

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

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28 November, 2004

ARE HOME SCHOOLERS CHILD ABUSERS?

"Child abuse, as defined by the Child Maltreatment 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, is defined rather broadly. While the overall statistics legitimately portray parents as the most likely perpetrators, it also includes things such as mental and verbal abuse, which is not what most people are considering with regards to the homeschooling issue.

In keeping with these broad definitions, 58.3 percent of the abusers are women, which should help indicate the definitions are not limited to the extreme abuse about which most people are concerned with regard to the issue at hand. Fortunately, the report breaks the statistics down into highly specific segments which are informative and very useful.

The maltreatment report reveals three problems with the idea that public schooling will help prevent child abuse. First, the vast majority of child fatalities - 82.3 percent - occur before the child has even reached school age, while 40.1 percent of all abuse does. Even if the public schools were made mandatory, no teacher or principal could possibly help a 2-year-old. According to the report, 166 children between the ages of 5 and 17 were victims of lethal child abuse, which is less than one-fifth of the 836 children who died in school-related transportation accidents!

Second, the likelihood that evil pedophile parents will keep their children in order to sexually abuse them seems unlikely considering the following facts. Of the 88,656 cases of confirmed sexual abuse in 2002, 16,210 were committed by parents. Despite having far less time and opportunity than parents, teachers and day-care providers were responsible for 15,098 such cases. In fact, the number of confirmed sexual abuses committed by educational personnel represents almost a quarter of the total cases of all abuses accurately reported by educational personnel.

The third problem is that teachers simply don't make for very reliable reporters. Educational personnel were the single most likely group to make unsubstantiated claims of child abuse. Their 179,098 unsubstantiated claims represented 17.1 percent of all such claims, even higher than the percentage reported by the notoriously inaccurate social services personnel (12.4 percent) and anonymous reporters (11.9 percent.). A case of abuse reported by an educator was 2.83 times more likely to be determined to be unsubstantiated than it was to be found true upon professional investigation, while another 176 abuse claims made by educational personnel were intentionally false.

The reality is that although child abuse is a horrific evil that even moral relativists can find the moral outrage to condemn, there is simply no way to eliminate it completely without eliminating every last vestige of freedom in America. As the sexual-abuse statistics indicate, even permanently removing every child in the country from his parents would not eliminate such abuse, indeed, it might well increase it instead by giving more time and opportunity to the teachers and day-care providers who are molesting children at a greater per-capita rate than parents.

But the real question underneath it all is this: To whom does a child belong? The child either belongs to the state or to the parents. There is no middle ground. And considering the long, lethal history of the relationship between governments and children dating back to King Herod, turning to the state to prevent child abuse would appear to be rather similar to relying on the National Socialists to protect Jews....

It is not an accident that public schools were a major component of the Communist, National Socialist and Fascist party programs; conservative parents who believe their neighborhood public school is excellent would do well to examine precisely how excellence in education is defined by the educationist elite."

From Vox Day:



POLITICIANS TRYING TO DUMB DOWN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION EVEN FURTHER

Under the "Dawkins" reforms all sorts of teachers' colleges and the like got rebadged as universities. But even that did not lower standards enough, apparently. But allowing more private institutions might save the day

Australia would be home to hundreds of boutique universities and colleges within a decade if the Howard Government's push to open tertiary education to the private sector were a success. Incoming University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said last night that higher education in Australia was "on the threshold of radical change" and predicted a US-style three-tier system with more private colleges and fewer big research universities. "A shortfall in public funding, an eager private sector and international competition all challenge a regulatory system designed in an era before the world wide web of trade liberalisation," he said.

Current guidelines stop teaching-only colleges from becoming universities, because they do not have a research output. The Howard Government is keen to relax the protocols and open the market, because the trade-off for badging more universities is that the Government can meet increasing demand for places without using public money.

Professor Davis's prediction came as debate flared over the definition of a university, after the release last week by Education Minister Brendan Nelson of a report on their role. That report leaves open the possibility of a new breed of smaller education providers called university colleges or university institutes with specific focuses, and flags the need to open up the tertiary market in Australia. Report author Gus Guthrie, a former vice-chancellor at the University of Technology, Sydney, said the review was designed to encourage diversity.

Professor Davis said the 1988 Dawkins reforms, which overhauled tertiary education by fusing teaching colleges and research universities, were outdated. "A decade from now ... there are 20 or more universities operating in Melbourne alone, and many more than a hundred across Australia," he said. "Some are the familiar large research universities ... but most of the new entrants are small and specialised."

Speaking at the inaugural Melbourne Politics lecture, Professor Davis said the first tier would probably be made up of private and public community colleges offering diplomas, associate degrees and the vocational fields now provided by TAFE. The second tier would be public and private teaching-only institutions, some ranging across disciplines and others with specific focuses. The third tier would include a small number of public and private research universities, which would be the only institutions qualified to award research qualifications such as Masters and PhD degrees. He said the system, used in California for half a century with great success, could work only with a regulatory body independent of government. "(It) has produced the best universities in the world, public and private," Professor Davis said.

Source



ANOTHER TRIBUTE TO THE CURRENT AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Somebody get Nicolas Cage's new wife, Alice, an American history book - and quick! Spies at the L.A. premiere of "National Treasure" last week said Alice, 20, seemed befuddled when someone talked to her about the Declaration of Independence. "She looked at them and said, 'What is the Declaration of Independence?' " our witness relates - an account confirmed by another attendee. Cage, 40, quickly came to the rescue and said, "I'm sorry - please don't ask my wife any history questions." Another source said, "Nic is so odd - a day before he married Alice, he was asking friends for advice because he didn't want to go through with the wedding. He just can't be alone." Cage and Alice met on Valentine's Day at a sushi joint where she was a waitress

Source

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

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

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27 November, 2004

NO INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY IN AMERICAN ACADEME

Some more data:

A Nov. 9 staff-written editorial in the Columbia Spectator, the mainstream student newspaper at New York's Columbia University, called for a greater range of views on campus. "In all other areas of campus life, students do not hesitate to call for diversity," the editorial said in pointing out the complete absence of conservatives from history, philosophy and humanities departments. "It should be self-evident that a faculty that speaks with unanimity on some of the most divisive issues of the day is not fulfilling its duty. Students across the ideological spectrum must demand that Columbia address this need."

Conservatives contend that assurances by liberals that the professional ethics of professors will keep them having their politics dominate the classroom and smothering alternative views just doesn't pass muster. A forthcoming study by Stanley Rothman of Smith College looked at a random sample of more than 1,600 undergraduate faculty members from 183 institutions of higher learning. He found that across all faculty departments, including business and engineering, academics were over five times as likely to be liberals as conservatives.

Mr. Rothman used statistical analysis to determine what factors explained how academics ended up working at elite universities. Marital status, sexual orientation and race didn't play a statistically significant role. Academic excellence, as measured by papers published and awards conferred, did. But the next best predictor was whether the professor was a liberal. To critics that argue his methodology is flawed, Mr. Rothman points out that he used the same research tools long used in courts by liberal faculty members to prove race and sex bias at universities. Liberals criticizing his methods may find themselves hoist by their own petard.

Furthermore, a new national study by Swedish sociologist Charlotta Stern and Santa Clara University economist Daniel Klein found that in a random national sample of 1,678 responses from university professors Democratic professors outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 in economics. 28 to 1 in sociology and 30 to 1 in anthropology. Their findings will be published in Academic Questions, the journal of the National Association of Scholars.

A separate study by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, run by conservative activist David Horowitz, looked at voter registration records of faculty members in six academic departments in 32 top schools. It found there were 10 Democrats for every Republican. Mr. Klein says a second study he co-authored looked at voter registration records for faculty at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. It found that among assistant and associate professors, there were 183 Democrats and only six Republicans. Since many of the Republicans were full professors close to retirement, Mr. Klein concluded that "in the coming decade the lopsidedness must become even more extreme. At Berkeley and Stanford, the Republican is an endangered species."

More here



Rhetoric hides the human face of illiteracy

An education system that should be regarded as criminal because of the needless harm it does:

"Let me introduce Roy, one of the human faces behind the reading wars. He is the same age as me. Like me, he has parents who were migrants to Australia, he went to a public school and was part of the whole word experiment that schools embraced more than 30 years ago, where teachers read books to the class, pointing to words and expecting children to follow and learn to read. Whereas I learned to read, Roy didn't. Once he fell behind in reading, he never caught up but was pushed along by a system that did not recognise or treat failure. He was never asked to repeat a year, yet by high school, he could do little more than write his name.

Roy told me stories that should shame any educator. His life reflects the heavy price of illiteracy. Classroom humiliation ended when Roy left school but the lies told to hide his illiteracy continued. When his first job required him to purchase materials from a hardware store, Roy would wrap his hand in bandages. "Can you help me write the cheque because I've hurt my hand," he would ask the shop assistant. When his boss wanted to promote him, Roy left. He couldn't take that responsibility because he couldn't read or write. He never worked for another person again because he feared somebody might discover he was illiterate. Roy is an intelligent man who became a cement renderer, not because he wanted to, but because he felt he had no other choice.

Roy is the face behind the studies that show that those who fall behind in the literacy stakes at school will often fall behind in the life stakes later on. Work prospects, relationships and self-confidence all take a battering. For Roy, the last straw came when his young son grew impatient at his father's faltering effort at reading: "I don't want Daddy to read to me anymore," his son told Roy's wife. Roy is angry about the lies, the deception and the manipulation he has used to hide his illiteracy. But just over two years ago he met Helen Grant, or Miss Grant to her former charges at Ascham, an eastern suburbs school in Sydney where she taught for more than 30 years. That same day he was also introduced to two simple ideas - words are made up of sounds and you need to learn the sounds to learn to read.

The milestones have mounted ever since that September meeting. A few months later Roy read his first novel. Then, unprompted, he wrote his first full page essay. It took two hours. In December he wrote his first Christmas card - to "Dear Helen", of course. The following year he gave a reading at his new son's christening.

Teachers will say much has changed. They will point to school curricula that mentions phonics and will say that a combination of methods is now used in the classroom to teach children to read. Yet this new hybrid rhetoric is mere camouflage to keep critics at bay. Soon to be published research by Ruth Fielding-Barnsley, from Queensland University of Technology, suggests that not enough has changed since the heyday of whole language when young trainee teachers like her were trained to teach reading without the alphabet being mentioned.

With co-author Nola Purdie, their study of 340 Queensland teachers found that while teachers now have a positive attitude to children learning the basic building blocks of language - like sounds and language rules - teachers' knowledge of those blocks is deficient. And interestingly there was a gap between what teachers think they know and what they do know. While most primary school teachers (92 per cent) can spot a short vowel sound in the word "slip," only 24 per cent can recognise the number of speech sounds in a given word. More than half could not tell you what a syllable is. If teachers have not been taught and cannot explain basic things such as sounds and syllables, then regardless of what a curriculum says, how can they teach their students?

Of course, phonics-based systems must recognise that not all words play by the rules. So these systems include ways to cope with the rare exceptions. Whole language says that because exceptions exist, phonics is invalid and children are better off guessing and memorising words. It is a theory premised on the abnormal, not the normal, and one that requires very little from teachers. At most, these teachers, untrained in the basic rules of language, end up dabbling in phonics, rather than giving children explicit, structured phonics instruction. And that's why nearly a third of Australian schoolchildren - another generation of Roys - reach high school with poor literacy standards.

Yet many teachers question the need for the review, announced last week by Education Minister Brendan Nelson, into how we train teachers to teach children to read and into what is happening in the classroom. They say the money should be spent on employing more teachers. So let me introduce you to one final voice in this debate. The voice of a dedicated teacher who spoke with me at length one Friday afternoon about the remarkable success enjoyed by children through a phonics-based system. Children in her public school in Tasmania, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, now read well beyond their age level. She talked also about the emotion infusing the debate, the lack of logic or evidence behind the whole language ideology that teachers stubbornly adhere.

Early on Monday morning, the teacher rang to say she could not put her name to her comments. She had a career to consider - a career that could be jeopardised in a state education system where the anti-phonics boffins still dominate. That trepidation tells you that something is still dreadfully wrong in our schools and that should shame us all. A review of what's happening in the classroom and at the teachers' colleges is the easy part. The real test will be taking on the teachers who teach our teachers.

From Janet Albrechtsen

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

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

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26 November, 2004

OWNERSHIP OF EDUCATION NEEDED TOO

Since his re-election, President Bush has spoken a number of times about domestic reforms designed to create an "Ownership Society." Among the best known of those proposed reforms are personal Social Security accounts and health savings accounts that would give individuals, rather than government, control over their financial futures and health care. Both of those initiatives are essential reforms, and an Ownership Society itself is desperately needed. But there is a third component that should be included in this agenda: education.

If an Ownership Society means anything, it should mean giving parents control over their children's education. When children are assigned by bureaucrats to a government school, as they are today, parents lose that control, and the government in effect robs parents of their rights and authority.

Unfortunately, President Bush's signature education legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, has had the effect of concentrating control over children's education in the worst of all places: Washington, D.C. Under that law, not only are most children still forced to go to government schools, but local and state governments -- the levels of government closest to parents -- have been stripped of control over everything from curricula to teacher qualifications, with that power now resting with the federal government. Federal officials now dictate that all public school children must take reading and math tests in third through eighth grade, as well as once in high school, and that children must be taught from a federally approved, "scientifically based," curriculum......

Another indication of Bush's move away from an educational Ownership Society is his nomination of Margaret Spellings to be the next U.S. secretary of education. Little is known about Ms. Spellings other than that she has been a Bush aide for many years and was in large part the architect of No Child Left Behind. That suggests strongly that she will work vigorously to carry out the president's plan to extend No Child Left Behind to high schools. Perhaps even more troubling are early media indications that she opposes, or at least lacks enthusiasm for, reforms designed to truly empower parents, such as school choice. As reported by the New York Post, Spellings is "no champion of school vouchers."

More here



AMERICA NOW HAS TO IMPORT THE EDUCATED MINDS IT NEEDS

"These days, it's not always easy to talk about the benefits of immigration. Especially since 9/11, many Americans worry about borders and security. These are legitimate concerns. But surely a nation as great as America has the wit and resources to distinguish between those who come here to destroy the American Dream--and the many millions more who come to live it.

The evidence of the contributions these immigrants make to our society is all around us--especially in the critical area of education. Adam Smith (another Scotsman) knew that without a decent system of education, a modern capitalist society was committing suicide. Well, our modern public school systems simply are not producing the talent the American economy needs to compete in the future. And it often seems that it is our immigrants who are holding the whole thing up.

In a study on high school students released this past summer, the National Foundation for American Policy found 60% of the top science students, and 65% of the top math students, are children of immigrants. The same study found that seven of the top award winners at the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search were immigrants or children of immigrants. This correlates with other findings that more than half of engineers--and 45% of math and computer scientists--with Ph.D.s now working in the U.S. are foreign born.

It's not just the statistics. You see it at our most elite college and university campuses, where Asian immigrants or their children are disproportionately represented. And a recent study of 28 prestigious American universities by researchers from Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania found something startling: that 41% of the black students attending these schools described themselves as either immigrants or children of immigrants.

The point is that by almost any measure of educational excellence you choose, if you're in America you're going to find immigrants or their children at the top. I don't just mean engineers and scientists and technicians. In my book, anyone who comes here and gives an honest day's work for an honest day's pay is not only putting himself closer to the American Dream, he's helping the rest of us get there too."

Some home truths from Rupert Murdoch, no less



TRUANCY

Truancy is a much neglected topic in the sociology of knowledge. It is mistakenly treated as irrational, even criminal. It is correctly linked with children's learning deficits. These usually arise, however, not from home, but from faulty curriculum and pedagogy.

People think truants hate school. They rarely do, though they often dislike particular subjects and certain sarcastic or rude teachers. My research in Britain and Bruce Cooper's in the US have revealed the huge scale of the phenomenon. In some secondary schools half the children truant regularly.

The American and British establishments blatantly gloss over the problem, along with all those educational difficulties originating in the school itself, echoing the way the old Communists concealed the truth about Communism. The American elite are even more defensive than their British counterparts. This is a disastrous mistake.

Truancy data constitute incomparably rich policy material. We already know that semi-literates truant because they cannot do the work, and that clever children do so because they find the work derisory. We know that a large minority hates games and PE. We know foreign languages are very badly done in both countries. We know that wrong methods of teaching reading have been practiced for 150 years in America, and in Britain for almost a century.

In both countries mathematics teaching is appalling. In both systems political correctness has raged through the curriculum, destroying the authority of the teachers. These indefensible school practices cause truancy and do, indeed, compound the effects of bad homes. Were it not for these poor practices, schools might combat unsatisfactory home life. Sad to say, huge vested interests stand in the way of the requisite reforms. And the related questions of compulsory education and home schooling have not even been brought into the truancy debate.

(Post lifted from the Adam Smith blog)

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

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

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25 November, 2004

UK UNIVERSITIES DUMBED DOWN TOO

"First-hand evidence of the widespread dumbing down of academic standards has emerged in an exclusive Times Higher survey. Academics reported that they were teaching students who were not capable of benefiting from degree-level study and that they had been forced to pass students who did not deserve it - as university managers struggled to maintain student numbers and teaching budgets. The survey of almost 400 academics found that five out of six agreed that "the squeeze on the resources of higher education institutions is having a general adverse effect on academic standards". The survey also found that:

* 71 per cent agreed that their "institution had admitted students who are not capable of benefiting from higher level study"

* Almost half (48 per cent) reported that they had "felt obliged to pass a student whose performance did not really merit a pass"

* 42 per cent said that "decisions to fail students' work had been overruled at higher levels in the institution" - compared with 38 per cent who disagreed with the statement

* Almost one in five admitted to turning "a blind eye" to student plagiarism.

Responding to the survey, a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "It would be worrying if universities were admitting students who are not capable of completing their courses, or passing students who do not merit it. The Government is clear that admission to university must be on merit, based on a student's achievements and potential." Alan Smithers, an adviser to MPs on education policy, said: "These findings are powerful evidence of something that has been very difficult to prove."He said some universities were trapped in a "vicious circle" by a funding system that forced them to accept weaker students to fill places, but imposed financial penalties if any dropped out. "It is almost inevitable that standards will drop," he said.

Roger Kline, head of the universities department at lecturers' union Natfhe, said: "We have been saying for a long time that the Government (and institutions) are trying to get a quart out of a pint pot. There are simply too few lecturers employed in higher education."

Investigations by The Times Higher reveal how far some universities have been forced to make compromises. At Middlesex University, minutes from a computing department meeting last year highlight "complaints made at assessment boards about the literacy and numeracy levels of students". Documents also reveal that over two consecutive terms, Middlesex computing undergraduates were provided with the model answers before sitting the exams. The students produced such similar, word-perfect answers that there were concerns about mass plagiarism. Ken Goulding, Middlesex pro vice-chancellor, said that it was unacceptable that a tutor had provided answers in revision classes, but said the students' results were allowed to stand with the agreement of the external examiners as there had been no cheating.

The "dumbing down" internet survey of Times Higher readers with teaching and marking responsibilities undertaken over the past month also found that most academics agreed that their universities had become increasingly tolerant of student absenteeism. Almost half said that their department had cut important curriculum areas because they were too expensive to teach.

A spokeswoman for Universities UK said that the survey represented only a small sample of academics. But she added: "UUK has for years pressed the Government to reform funding to reverse years of spending decline to prevent a quality crisis. This is why UUK fought so hard to secure the variable fees policy."

Source



Best class rank, or best school?

Education-obsessed families (such as my own) have long pushed their children to strive for the best colleges possible. Better college, better prospects -- even if it was accepted that one might receive just as good an education at a less prestigious school.

But could this accepted wisdom be flawed? A while back, Forbes ran a couple of articles that analyzed career tracks after graduation for students accepted by Yale, comparing those who went to Yale with those who opted to go to cheaper and less highly ranked schools. According to the authors, there was little difference between the two groups, while there was a definite correlation between SAT scores and later real-world success. I'm sure the study had its flaws -- is it even possible to measure the totality of what one gets out of college? -- yet even with all its approximations and simplifications, it cannot be summarily dismissed.

And now another study suggests that, at least for law schools, class rank may be more important than school rank. So with the notable exception of the top ten or so law schools, you might be better off going to the best school where you can be at the top of the class rather than the best school you can get into. Brief summary here; interestingly, the results come out of work asking if affirmative action programs (and my family's conventional wisdom) may actually be counterproductive for most students (full article here; also posts here, here, here, and here). Unfortunately, affirmative action is such a hot-button topic that even the ancillary conclusions of the study may well end up swept under the carpet (it has already been noted how the LA Times' article on the study appeared under the misleading headline, Professor Assails Anti-Bias Program, rather than something like "Professor Finds Anti-Bias Program Counterproductive").

Post lifted from Cronaca

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

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24 November, 2004

COLUMBIA: THE UNIVERSITY OF HATE

Update. I blogged on these fine folk previously -- on October 23rd. Quick summary of what has changed: Nothing.

In the world of Hamid Dabashi, supporters of Israel are "warmongers" and "Gestapo apparatchiks." The Jewish homeland is "nothing more than a military base for the rising predatory empire of the United States." It's a capital of "thuggery" - a "ghastly state of racism and apartheid" - and it "must be dismantled." A voice from America's crackpot fringe? Actually, Dabashi is a tenured professor and department chairman at Columbia University. And his views have resonated and been echoed in other areas of the university.

Columbia is at risk of becoming a poison Ivy, some critics claim, and tensions are high. In classrooms, teach-ins, interviews and published works, dozens of academics are said to be promoting an I-hate-Israel agenda, embracing the ugliest of Arab propaganda, and teaching that Zionism is the root of all evil in the Mideast. In three weeks of interviews, numerous students told the Daily News they face harassment, threats and ridicule merely for defending the right of Israel to survive. And the university itself is holding investigations into the alleged intimidation.

Dabashi has achieved academic stardom: professor of Iranian studies; chairman of the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department; past head of a panel that administers Columbia's core curriculum. The 53-year-old, Iranian-born scholar has said CNN should be held accountable for "war crimes" for one-sided coverage of Sept. 11, 2001. He doubts the existence of Al Qaeda and questions the role of Osama Bin Laden in the attacks.... In September in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, he wrote, "What they call Israel is no mere military state. A subsumed militarism, a systemic mendacity with an ingrained violence constitutional to the very fusion of its fabric, has penetrated the deepest corners of what these people have to call their soul."

After the showing of a student-made documentary about faculty bias and bullying that targets Jewish students, six or seven swastikas were found carved in a Butler Library bathroom last month. Then after a screening of the film, "Columbia Unbecoming," produced by the David Project, a pro-Israel group in Boston, one student denounced another as a "Zionist fascist scum," witnesses said.

On Oct. 27, Columbia announced it would probe alleged intimidation and improve procedures for students to file grievances. "Is the climate hostile to free expression?" asked Alan Brinkley, the university provost. "I don't believe it is, but we're investigating to find out."

But one student on College Walk described the campus as a "republic of fear." Another branded the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department the "department of dishonesty."

"Professorial power is being abused," said Ariel Beery, a senior who is student president in the School of General Studies, but stresses he's speaking only for himself. "Students are being bullied because of their identities, ideologies, religions and national origins," Beery said. Added Noah Liben, another senior, "Debate is being stifled. Students are being silenced in their own classrooms." ...

Said Brinkley: If a professor taught the "Earth was flat or there was no Holocaust," Columbia might intervene in the classroom. "But we don't tell faculty they can't express strong, or even offensive opinions."

Yet even some faculty members say they fear social ostracism and career consequences if they're viewed as too pro-Israel, and that many have been cowed or shamed into silence. One apparently unafraid is Dan Miron, a professor of Hebrew literature and holder of a prestigious endowed chair. He said scores of Jewish students - about one a week - have trooped into his office to complain about bias in the classroom. "Students tell me they've been browbeaten, humiliated and treated disrespectfully for daring to challenge the idea that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish nation," he said. "They say they've been told Israeli soldiers routinely rape Palestinian women and commit other atrocities, and that Zionism is racism and the root of all evil." ....

As usual in American universities, everything can be tolerated except conservatives, Christians and Jews.



INCOMPETENT EDUCATION IS A GRAVE SOCIAL INJUSTICE

But teacher organizations and Leftist State governments don't seem to care

You would think that teaching every young person to read and write (and spell) would be top priority in primary schools. It isn't. But it should be. The vast majority of parents with school-age children will be enthusiastic supporters of federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson's plan for a national inquiry to find out why. Hopefully, the inquiry will have the full co-operation of state governments because its findings should give state education ministers the ammunition they need to take some tough decisions and put literacy at the top of the agenda. Parents are entitled to know why such an inquiry is necessary in 2004.

In 1997, the Howard Government obtained the agreement of state education ministers on a national literacy plan, with the goal of teaching every young person the literacy and numeracy skills they'd need by the time they left primary school. The plan was intended to put an end to years of rhetoric about how hard everyone was trying and for the first time to focus on the real outcomes - how many students were really learning these crucial skills in the years that mattered and what techniques were working.

For the first time, national benchmarks were established that would tell parents whether their child could read, write and spell (at Year 3), and whether their skills were adequate to enable them to do their school work in later years. Every child was to be tested against these benchmarks at grades 3, 5 and 7. Numeracy benchmarks were also established.

Ministers at the time said their goal was that every child starting school in 1998 would be literate and numerate within four years. This recognised that children who were not literate after the first three years would find it increasingly difficult thereafter. The plan was followed by a burst of activity, evidence of where the problems were and of improving results. The tests, for example, revealed there were some remote Aboriginal schools where no child was literate in English and led to the identification of teaching techniques that actually worked. Yet state governments have failed to maintain the momentum.

Was the goal of 1998 achieved? Or even approximately achieved? Who knows? The latest results the states have released against national standards are for 2001. The results of the 2002 tests have not yet been made public. Nor have the results for the 2003 tests or the 2004 tests (most recently held in August). It was only when the federal Government promised to pay for extra tuition for students below the benchmark that some state governments finally decided last year to reveal the results for their children to parents - five years after the benchmarks were set. These inexcusable delays in reporting the true picture to parents and the wider community reflect the fact some state bureaucrats and teacher unions have lost the plot.

Those who claim to be concerned with social justice should be forcing the pace on literacy because literacy is the most important social justice policy in education. It is remarkable how often self-styled defenders of social justice have seemed uninterested in finding out whether disadvantaged children can read and write, and opposed testing. Instead, they will tell you that most students are succeeding (which is not the point), or that more money or smaller classes are essential (that is, put the focus back on to inputs rather than outcomes), or that pointing out the problems is to attack teachers (not true) - anything but finding out what is really happening, rigorously assessing initiatives, telling parents the truth and tailoring solutions to the students who are missing out.

More here

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

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23 November, 2004

TEXAS CHARTER SCHOOLS UNDER ATTACK

More bureaucratic supervision advocated

"The Texas Education Agency is not properly monitoring school districts, especially charter schools, to ensure they're doing a good job of educating students and managing public money, according to a legislative panel. A highly critical report issued Friday by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission also said that some of nearly 70,000 children in independent charter schools "may be at risk of receiving an inadequate education" because of the weak oversight. The sunset panel, which includes 10 legislators and two citizen appointees, also found problems in textbook purchases and TEA distribution of $3 billion a year in state and federal grants to school districts.

On charter schools, the commission said the education agency is not effectively measuring student success, leaving parents and school officials "ill-informed" as to the quality of instruction at each of the 275 charter campuses in Texas. Referring to the notable financial failures of a handful of charter schools, the commission said the education agency "has very little ability to hold charter schools accountable for expending state funds." Texas spent nearly $340 million on charter schools last year.

The panel said the criticisms are not meant to be an "indictment" of all charter schools. "Many charter schools have good business practices and very successful students," the report said. "However, TEA needs the proper authority and direction to determine which schools are effective, and focus their assistance - and if necessary their enforcement action - on those schools that place children at educational risk."

Charter schools are expected to be one of more volatile issues of the legislative session next year as supporters - including the Governor's Business Council - seek to expand the charter school program in Texas. Currently, the state has limited the number of charter school operators to no more than 215. Critics opposing the expansion have cited financial problems at several schools and low student test scores at a majority of the charter schools in the state. The sunset commission recommended that the Legislature create a financial accountability rating system for charter schools and direct the TEA to beef up oversight of charter schools, particularly those that don't receive performance ratings from the state.

More here



PRIVATIZE THE SCHOOLS

Sean Gabb explains why:

Even before Mike Tomlinson reported on examination reform, everyone agreed, and competed at agreeing, that British state education was a mess. Schools all over the country are turning out generations of innumerate, semi-literate proles. They have become places notable for bullying, truancy in its various shades, drugs, unwise sex, the occasional murder, and a pervasive contempt for achievement. Yes, there are those whose job it is to disagree with this proposition. Naturally enough, there are the teachers and educational bureaucrats; and there are the relevant Ministers, who every summer put their names on news releases lauding the latest set of examination results. But everyone knows they are talking nonsense. If examination results were an indicator of excellence, we should be living in a nation of Shakespeares and Newtons. In fact, grade inflation and a continuous debasement of the whole examinations system have made the results largely worthless. We can no more make people educated by giving them pretty certificates than we can make them rich by giving them bags of forged banknotes. State education is a mess.

The standard response is to whine or boast about levels of funding. But this is a manifestly threadbare response. In 2002, the authorities spent o49.354 billion of our money on schooling and further education. Given a total of 10.094 million children and young people in the maintained sector, we have spending per head of around o4,900. Many independent schools charge less than that - and get better results. Indeed, there are schools in black Africa that do better. These are places without school books, without roofs over the classrooms, where the teachers are dying of aids, and where bandits every so often turn up and conscript the more promising children to fight in what are pretentiously called civil wars - and they still turn out children with a better English prose style than the average inmate of an English comprehensive.

There is no one explanation for why things are so bad. But this does not mean the problem is intractably complex. Though there are others, there are three main explanations.

In the first place, there is the emphasis on vocational learning that we owe to the vulgar economic liberalism of the Thatcher and Major Governments. The belief here is that the main or even sole purpose of education is to promote economic development. Accordingly, any subject from which no tangible return could be imagined was either removed from the curriculum or fragmented or simplified into nothingness. History and Classics were the most obvious victims - and, in lesser degree, Music. Much of the time thereby freed was filled with the almost obsessive teaching of Information Technology.

Now, there is a case for teaching children how to type: left to themselves, most people develop typing habits that reduce their general efficiency. There may also be a case for teaching the basics of the Microsoft Office suite. But these are things to be learnt over a few weeks. All else specified in the Information Technology syllabus is useless or would be picked up anyway by the children themselves. No one has yet developed a course in Mobile Telephone Studies. This has not visibly left any of my students at a disadvantage. In my experience, much of the time given to Information Technology is used to play games or look up trivia on the Internet. The time would be better given to teaching German or a musical instrument.

In the second place, there is the fact that the main purpose of state education has always been to legitimise the wealth and status of the ruling class. We can see this was so in the past. Without all the drilling in the playground, and all the team sports, and all the hours given to nationalist propaganda, would those ten million young men have marched even semi-willingly to die in the killing grounds of the Great War? Nothing fundamental has changed since then. All that has changed is the personnel of the ruling class and the nature of its legitimation ideology.

Because it is suited to our present assumptions, we cannot see this ideology so clearly as we now see those it replaced. It is there, even so. It is that axis of anti-liberal, anti-western, anti-science, anti-Enlightenment and pro-collectivist values and coercive social engineering that we call political correctness. With the decline of traditional socialism, this has gained a growing and hegemonic role in most developed societies. As an ideology, it manifestly promotes the power and privileges of our new ruling class - this being a coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, educators, lawyers, media people and associated business interests who derive wealth and status from an enlarged and activist state. The ideology is used to stigmatise and demonise any dissenting opinion, and to censor and silence it; and information is socially constructed in order to balkanise society into alleged "victim groups" who provide tribalistic bases for the exercise of political power and the extraction of economic profit by the ruling class. As ever, education is the chief mechanism by which this legitimation ideology is transmitted from one generation to the next.

As illustration, take the way in which GCSE English Literature is taught. Some years ago, while short of cash, I acted as an assistant examiner. Two of the most commonly examined books - both American - were To Kill a Mocking Bird and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Doubtless, these are worthy enough texts in their own right. But they are nothing much compared with the great classics of English literature produced in these islands. Judging by the several thousand pages of answers I must have read, however, they had been preferred because they allowed English lessons to be made into sermons of racial hatred that passed unrebuked only because the objects of hatred were white.

In the third place, there is the centralised, authoritarian control that both of the above require for complete enforcement. We have the National Curriculum and we have endless testing to see that arbitrary and often incomprehensible targets are being reached.

The combined result is a demoralised teaching profession, bored and apathetic children, and a collapse of standards as these were once universally defined. The system was not very good before the 1980s. Since then, it has rotted away to the point where just about everyone with money either avoids it altogether, choosing the independent sector, or rigs it by moving into middle class catchment areas.

The politicians promise reform. But all reforms so far discussed can only make things worse. Labour promises more money and a restructuring of management - not only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but also replacing the canvas with silk. The Conservatives promise "choice" - though always supervised by the same philistine and politically correct bureaucracy that messed up the present system. The more adventurous Conservatives even talk about a voucher scheme. This has its merits. But conservatives of all people ought to know that any scheme of improvement takes its whole tone from the circumstances in which it is introduced. Any voucher scheme introduced now would give our ruling class a perfect excuse to spread the corruption deep into the independent sector. It would do this by setting criteria for the reception of vouchers, and would enforce these criteria through the usual agencies of inspection and control.

The only answer is to get the state entirely out of education. The education budget should not be expanded, or its administration reformed. It should simply be abolished. That o49 billion - now, I believe, o63 billion - should be handed back to the people in tax cuts; and these should be directed at the poorest taxpayers. The schools should be sold off or given away, and the bureaucrats be made redundant. The people should then be left to arrange by themselves for the education of their children.

The argument that parents would not or could not do this falls flat on any inspection of the third world, where parents make often heavy sacrifices and choose often highly effective schemes of education. There is also the experience of our own past. A generation ago, E.G. West showed how growing numbers of working class people in the 19th century paid for and supervised the education of their children. The beginning of state education in 1870 should be seen as ruling class coup against an independent sector that looked set to marginalise its legitimation ideology.

More here

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

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22 November, 2004

MORE MONEY FOR EDUCATION HAS FAILED: OTHER SOLUTIONS NOW NEEDED

"Overall, the facts presented by this year's Report Card on American Education give us no cause for celebration. In fact, they confirm the same trend presented in past years' reports: increased spending without corresponding improvement in student performance. Over ten years have passed since the Goals 2000 agenda was proposed, and America has failed to reach these goals, despite increasing per pupil expenditures by more than 50 percent over the past twenty years.

It is clear after studying the data and results that the policies of the past have failed to meet the educational needs of our country's children. If we continue to spend more money on the existing educational system in an attempt to buy our way to better student achievement, we will condemn another generation of students to mediocrity.

Let's not keep making the same mistakes that have brought our schools to their present condition. We need to challenge the status quo and pursue serious fundamental reform to improve our educational system. Only then can real progress be made in student performance. Our children deserve nothing less.

The ALEC study expresses the opinion that educational results are improved by better teachers. I suspect that the personal experience of most of us verifies that... many of us have stories about one or two teachers who had a very positive effect on our school experience.

Teachers become better with experience, and they have better results if they're allowed to teach using the methods they've learned work best. Students learn when good teachers make learning fun. My input from some excellent, award-winning teachers over the years has been that schools have become more rigid, more bureaucratic, and that imposed state and federal programs have taken a lot of classroom control from teachers. Campaigns to reduce class size have resulted in having to hire more teachers... younger, less-experienced, lower-paid teachers. That's not a criticism of younger teachers, but experience, once laboriously gained, should not be sacrificed, especially to elitist programs generated by "experts" in quasi-political state and federal educational offices."

More here



THE RELENTLESS DRIVE TO DESTROY BRITISH EDUCATION CONTINUES

The Education Secretary will tell head teachers today that they must all accept a fair share of expelled pupils rather than allow disruptive youngsters to be concentrated in "sink schools" shunned by parents. Schools that are popular and oversubscribed will no longer be able to excuse themselves by claiming that they lack spare places. Grammar schools will have to accept difficult pupils, even if they do not meet the academic standards required for entry.

Mr Clarke told The Times that he wants to end the practice of shunting the most unruly pupils into the least popular schools, condemning them to a spiral of decline as teachers struggle against the odds to maintain order. The move is likely to upset many parents, who will fear the impact on their children's education if well-ordered schools are required to admit problem pupils.

However, Mr Clarke believes that schools will find it easier to manage "hard-to-educate" children in their local areas if they co-operate with each other. "There is a lot of controversy among groups of schools about whether certain schools end up taking more than their fair share of hard-to-educate kids," Mr Clarke said. "Sometimes particular schools end up taking more than their fair share." The Education Secretary will tell a conference in London today of 500 new heads that the key challenge facing schools is to maintain order by dealing firmly with persistently disruptive pupils.

He will announce that groups of schools will be expected to agree local protocols by September next year for sharing out expelled pupils. The agreements will be thrashed out at forums of heads, governors and officials from the local education authority. The Government will also change its code of practice on admissions to include an expectation that schools must share the burden of coping with expelled children. Mr Clarke said it would be "an essential feature" of the protocols that no school would be required to admit an unreasonable percentage of expelled pupils. He indicated that three or four pupils a year would be considered a reasonable number. He accepted that expulsion was an "essential tool in a head teacher's armoury" against the worst offenders. But schools must take responsibility for ensuring such children were educated appropriately. "All schools - including popular schools - should share a collective responsibility for ensuring that vulnerable, hard-to- place children, or children in public care that have been permanently excluded, are admitted to a suitable school as quickly as possible."

He wanted schools to reach voluntary agreements, but indicated he was willing to compel them to accept unruly pupils if the reform were not adopted swiftly enough. "We have set ourselves internal targets. If we felt this was not working we could consider taking further powers but we want to get this up and running as quickly as we can," Mr Clarke said. Groups of schools will be offered an incentive to reach agreement. Mr Clarke said they would be handed direct control of money currently allocated to the local education authority (LEA) for managing expelled pupils, so that they could tailor provision to greatest effect.

Source

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

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

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21 November, 2004

WHAT A DIFFERENCE PRIVATE EDUCATION MAKES

"Like most eight-year-olds, Abraham Larner is in third grade. His path to get there, though, has been quite a challenge. At the end of first grade at his local public school in Murray, Utah, Abraham struggled with basic reading and math concepts, and his parents, Steve and Brenda, wanted him to repeat the grade. His teacher counseled that holding him back would damage his self-esteem, causing more educational problems than promoting him without knowing the material. Against their better judgment, Abraham's parents heeded the teacher's advice, and their son went on to second grade......

In the meantime, Abraham continued to struggle at school. For half of each day, he worked in resource classes with a teacher who simply gave him worksheets, then left him alone. When he arrived home each day, he was sad; other students pushed him and called him names. Although his parents helped him with homework, at the end of second grade Abraham was still struggling with basic math and reading. Steve and Brenda again asked the school to let him repeat a grade. The school's response stunned them; Abraham couldn't repeat the grade because there were too many other students coming into that class.

Frustrated with their neighborhood school, and growing more and more concerned that Abraham wasn't getting the education he needed, Steve and Brenda reapplied for a CFU scholarship..... Even with the CFU scholarships, Steve and Brenda still had to find $1,350 per month to pay the other half of their children's tuition. Brenda again offered to exchange work at Mount Vernon Academy for her children's tuition. This time a position was available, and she took it. She now works as a janitor at the school, cleaning 10 bathrooms every day.

Abraham is succeeding at his new school. In classes with just six other students, his math and reading skills are improving rapidly. He enjoys science, is learning French, and will soon begin learning to play an instrument.

More here



BRITISH LEFTIST LOGIC

Britain's education minister says that single-sex classes improve learning. So he advises that classrooms should therefore be as mixed as possible. You follow it. I can't

"The great education revolution has thrown up targets, permanent exams and a computer in every classroom. Now the new miracle ingredient to create a learning curve steeper than K2 has been revealed: the seating arrangements of a well-run dinner party. Every hostess knows that to get the best results one alternates boy, girl, boy, girl around the table - and then lets the boys withdraw to compete among themselves while the girls sort out the world. Which is just the arrangement presented for the future by the Minister for seating arrangements, sorry, for School Standards, yesterday.

David Miliband called on head teachers of mixed schools to "learn the lessons of single-sex education" as part of a drive to close the gender gap in achievement at GCSE and A-level examinations. He suggested that schools introduce strict "boy-girl" seating in some classes to boost performance. Mr Miliband highlighted "startling" early findings from a four-year study by academics at Cambridge University into differences in achievement by boys and girls. "They looked at a co-educational comprehensive school, where single-sex teaching was used in subjects where gender is sometimes seen as influencing underperformance, such as languages for boys and maths for girls," he told a conference at Alton Towers in Staffordshire. "The number of boys who got five good GCSEs went up from 68 per cent in 1997 to 81 per cent in 2004," he said. "The number of girls went up from 68 per cent in 1997 to 82 per cent in 2004. Both boys and girls did better, and the gender gap usually common at GCSE was negligible." He added: "When interviewed, some of the reasons that pupils gave for the improvement were that they felt more confident to participate in the lessons. There were fewer distractions and they didn't feel the need to show off."

The minister's remarks to the annual meeting of the Girls' Schools Association (GSA) underlined the Government's increasing concern about the relative academic failure of boys. Girls outperform boys virtually across the board at school and there is a gap of ten percentage points in their favour in the proportions gaining at least five good GCSEs. Girls now obtain more A grades at A level than boys and accounted for 54 per cent of this year's entrants to university. Mr Miliband told the GSA, which represents 200 fee-paying girls' schools, that girls had been the primary beneficiaries of a revolution in educational achievement over the past 30 years.

His arguments in favour of single-sex teaching in certain classes amounted to a signal that the Government believes that schools should now seek to restore the balance by focusing on boys' needs. Mr Miliband described debate about the merits of single-sex or co-educational schools as "sterile", saying that nobody seriously proposed abolishing either form. "Instead of debate on structure, we should learn the lessons of single-sex education and apply them in the co-education sector. These lessons are about recognising the differences between pupils, as well as the similarities," he said. "First, we need to recognise that in mixed-sex schools girls and boys can prosper being taught separately for part of the time."

Critics of mixed-sex schooling have usually argued that it is detrimental to girls' achievement and that girls do better in single-sex environments. But Mr Miliband's speech suggested that it would be effective in confronting the "lad culture" among boys that views learning as uncool. The minister also suggested that schools consider introducing strict "boy-girl" seating plans in mixed classes to encourage the sexes to help each other without being distracted by their friends. An Essex school had adopted this seating arrangement and boosted boys' performance."

Source

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

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

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20 November, 2004

THE PRINCE OF WALES GETS IT RIGHT

Prince Charles’s penchant for memo-writing caught up with him today when his uncompromising opinions about the state of education in Britain found their way onto the front pages. “What is wrong with everyone nowadays?” wrote the 56-year-old heir to the British throne to a member of his staff in March 2003 after a secretary asked about prospects for job promotion. “Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?” the Prince of Wales continued. “This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure.

“People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. “This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.” The memo concludes: “What on earth am I to tell Elaine? She is so PC (politically correct), it frightens me rigid.” “Elaine” is Elaine Day, who served as a secretary for the prince’s household, helping to organise his activities and helping to write speeches, from March 1999 until last April

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HOW WE LOST THE PLOT IN READING

For an understanding of why our teaching of literacy is under attack, turn to history, says Kevin Donnelly

The genesis of today's debate about literacy standards can be traced back to the late 1960s and early '70s - a time not only of Woodstock, moratoriums and flower power. Radical educators such as the Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire and the English sociologist M. F. D. Young argued that the then education system preserved the power of society's status quo. Approaches to learning that stressed examinations, traditional subjects such as history, literature and science, and the authority of the teacher were criticised as obsolete and instrumental in oppressing so-called disadvantaged groups. This idea built on the works of US educational theorist John Dewey, who died in 1952. Dewey was more interested in learning by doing than rote learning and instruction.

At the same time, across the English-speaking world, more traditional approaches to teaching English were attacked as ineffective and the preserve of the elite. Freire argued that literacy could no longer be restricted to the ability to read and write. Children had to be empowered as individuals by being taught to be socially critical and to deconstruct language and texts in terms of power relationships. American writers such as Donald Graves and English educators such as James Britton argued that teachers should free students to be creative and that self-expression was more important than learning correct spelling, punctuation and grammar.

This whole-language approach was based on the assumption that learning to read was as natural as learning to speak and that all teachers needed to do was to immerse children in a rich language environment and success would follow. Subject associations such as the Australian Association for the Teaching of English became staunch advocates of the new orthodoxy. Overseas gurus, including Graves and Britton, as well as Freire, were invited to Australia and their texts became compulsory reading in teacher training courses. Radical teacher unions such as the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association and the NSW Teachers Federation argued that it was wrong to test students or to assume that standard English was superior to a student's own language use.

A more recent variant of the progressive approach of the new status quo can be found in the work of the Australian Council of Deans of Education. Those responsible for managing teacher training, in New Learning: A Charter for Australian Education, argue that teaching correct spelling, grammar and punctuation is obsolete (because spell-checking programs remove the need for correct spelling). The deans also argue that there are no right or wrong answers and that what the report describes as good learners, in the jargon much loved by educrats, "will not come to any situation with preordained, known answers. Rather, they will come equipped with problem-solving skills, multiple strategies for tackling a task, and a flexible solutions-orientation to knowledge."

The result? In Australia, England and the US, many argued that standards fell and that the new approaches had failed. Many parents also voted with their feet in favour of non-government schools as these, compared with government schools, were seen as more academic.

Today it's claimed there is a literacy crisis in our schools. Those defending the new educational status quo argue that all is well and Australian students are performing at the top of the table, based on measures such as the OECD's program for international student assessment test and the results of recent national literacy benchmarking tests. Unfortunately, not all agree. Earlier this year 26 literacy researchers wrote to Education Minister Brendan Nelson arguing that Australia's whole language approach to teaching was flawed and, as a result, thousands of students left school illiterate. There is also the concern that, if the PISA test had, as well as testing reading, also corrected faulty spelling, grammar and punctuation, most Australian students would have failed and, according to the Australian Council for Educational Research, about one-third of Year 9 students lack adequate literacy skills.

In Australia, a 1996 national survey of reading. initiated by the Howard Government against the wishes of teachers unions and the AATE, discovered that 27 per cent of Year 3 and 29 per cent of Year 5 students failed to reach the minimum standard. It should be noted that concerns about literacy are not restricted to the school sector. A study in 2000, Changes in Academic Work, found that almost half of the academics interviewed agreed that standards had fallen over time.

In California, after the introduction of whole language in the late '80s, student performance, as measured by national tests, also plummeted. Such was the angst that, in 1996, the Board of Education ruled in favour of phonics and against whole language. In Britain as well, such was the concern about falling standards, especially among boys, that the Blair Government at the beginning of 1998 stipulated that schools had to adopt a structured and systematic phonics approach to literacy learning.

In opposition to whole language, a phonics approach argues that learning to read is decidedly unnatural and students have to be taught phonemic awareness - that is, spoken words and syllables are made up of elementary speech sounds. Instead of looking at a word such as dog and guessing how it might be read, students should be taught to sound out the individual letters. d-o-g. Students also need to memorise the alphabet and be taught the relationship between letters and sounds and clusters of letters. Contrary to whole language, the argument is also put that teaching students to skip words or to guess their meaning leads to illiteracy.

Again and again, research suggests that children must be taught how to read in a structured way. In the US, a study titled What We Know About How Children Learn, carried out by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, in the words of Bonita Grossen, concluded: "This lack of phonemic awareness seems to be a major obstacle to reading acquisition. Children who are not phonemically aware are not able to segment words and syllables into phonemes. Consequently, they do not develop the ability to decode single words accurately and fluently."

The US study, involving more than 100 researchers over 30 years, also concluded that many of the tenets of whole language - that learning to read is natural and that children will learn to read when they are ready - are misplaced and counterproductive. The US study is supported by comments made in an Australian paper titled 100 Children Turn 10. Recent research is described as concluding that: "The level of phonemic awareness ability in preschool [is] a powerful predictor of reading and spelling performance in school."

Such is the overwhelming case for teaching phonics that even wholelanguage advocates argue that their approach was never meant to exclude the more structured and systematic approach to literacy learning. Is this true? First, how extensive is whole language? Based on the 1992 House of Representatives report, The Literacy Challenge, the answer is that whole language is widespread. The report, after hearing teachers and experts across Australia, concluded: "The current approach to literacy learning in Australian schools focuses on the whole language or natural learning approach. It has gained Australia-wide support and virtually all curriculum guidelines on primary school literacy are based on this approach."

As to whether whole language, in fact, includes phonics, the answer is less clear. At the level of Australian education departments, the House of Representatives 2002 report Boys Getting it Right concluded that the answer is no: "The research supporting the more explicit teaching of phonics, especially in remedial literacy instruction, does not appear to be receiving sufficient attention by most education departments." It is also certainly the case that an examination of English syllabuses and frameworks prepared across Australia during the '80s and '90s reveals a failure to treat phonics in a comprehensive and systematic way.

At the level of teacher training it is also true that phonics is underrated and many teachers enter classrooms, through no fault of their own, without a proper grounding in the subject. As noted by Ruth Fielding-Barnsley in her research looking at 340 Queensland-based teachers and how successful teacher preparation is, most teachers showed "poor knowledge of metalinguistics in the process of learning to read".

In 2002 US President George W. Bush introduced a $USl billion program titled "Reading First" in an attempt to address literacy problems. An essential part of the program is that, to be funded, literacy programs must be based on sound research and be proven to be successful. One can only hope, as a result of the proposed inquiry planned by Nelson, that Australian authorities will adopt the same requirements.

This article originally appeared in "The Australian" newspaper of November 13, 2004. The author, Kevin Donnelly, is director of Melbourne-based company Education Strategies and author of Why Our Schools are Failing (which was commissioned by the Menzies Research Centre)

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19 November, 2004

CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES NOT TOO DIFFERENT FROM HITLER'S GERMANY

"The U.S. government's Office for Civil Rights has launched a formal investigation into the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students at the University of California at Irvine, following a complaint submitted by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA)'s Center for Law and Justice.

The Office for Civil Rights, a division of the U.S. Department of Education, has officially notified the ZOA, in a letter dated October 28, 2004, that it "will proceed with an investigation of this complaint."

Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin by recipients of federal funding, and since UC-Irvine receives such funding, it is obligated to provide students with an educational environment free from harassment, intimidation and discrimination

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: "It is appalling that the UC-Irvine administration has failed to take meaningful steps to protect the civil rights of its Jewish students. The UC-Irvine administration certainly safeguards the civil rights of other minorities on campus; why aren't Jews, as a minority group, afforded the same protection? We look forward to a timely investigation by the U.S. government's Office for Civil Rights, so that action will be taken against those who are fostering a climate of hostility to Jews, Israel, and Zionism on campus."

The original complaint, sent by the director of the ZOA's Center for Law and Justice, Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., pointed out that "for the past three years, the environment for Jewish students at UC-Irvine has been hostile, and at times, threatening." Among the many incidents cited:

* In February 2004, a Jewish student with an Israeli flag pin on his lapel was followed into the office of the Dean of Students by a group of Muslim students, who cursed at and threatened to kill him. The student filed a police report and reported the episode to the administration, but no action was taken.

* In January 2004, a rock was thrown at - and barely missed - a student with an identifiably Jewish t-shirt who was walking by the Muslim Student Union's table.

* Rallies by radical campus groups such as the Muslim Student Union, and articles in the Muslim student newspaper Alkalima, frequently equate Israel with the Nazis.

* In April 2003, a swastika was carved onto a table at the Jewish students' Holocaust Memorial ceremony.

* In May 2004, the Society of Arab Students sponsored an "anti-hate rally" to which it invited all student groups except the Jewish ones. Despite this discrimination, the Vice Chancellor of the university was one of the speakers at the event.

* Also in May 2004, Muslim students announced their intention to attend graduation ceremonies wearing green sashes bearing the "Shahada," the Islamic declaration of faith which is used by Hamas and other terrorist organizations to glorify suicide bombers. The administration disregarded Jewish students' concerns and permitted the wearing of the sashes.

Source



Actions must speak louder than words

The article below refers to Australia but could as well be about most places in the Anglosphere. Brendan Nelson is the reformist education minister in Australia's conservative Federal government -- and LOTE is a program for teaching foreign languages to grade-school children

Sure, let's have this national inquiry into the ways children are taught to read - or, sadly, not read - in primary school. But Education Minister Brendan Nelson should have gone much further on Monday for the sake of our children. Why didn't he broaden this new inquiry into literacy by asking how it is that clearly insane fads in education - such as the "whole-language recognition" technique of teaching to read - were allowed to spread throughout our schools, crippling the education of thousands of children? Why not ask how the equally nutty "new maths" got through the school gate? And "new music"? And compulsory LOTE instruction in languages of little interest, relevance or use to millions of children? Why not also ask how children came to study trash books and films for literature? Or fact-free apocalyptic environmentalism? Why not an inquiry into the virulent spread of soft-discipline teaching and don't-correct instruction, and the decline of "hard" subjects such as real history, real geography and the rules of grammar?

But this inquiry is a start, I guess, and will tackle perhaps the most destructive and persistent education fad of them all. For 30 years or more, "whole language" recognition has spread through our schools, replacing phonics as the technique for teaching children to read. Instead of teaching children what sounds each letter makes, and how those sounds combine to form words, this new teaching "immersed" children in language, asking them to guess from looking at the whole word instead. With clues from the pictures, and the words that came before. You can see why this appealed to parents who'd grown up in the '60s. There would be fewer rules, less disciplined instruction, and a lot more close-enough guessing. Strange, how so many new fashions seem to be excuses for laziness. The trouble is, of course, that this seems a pretty lousy way to teach English, and so it has proved.

Nelson says surveys now show almost a third of Australian students lack basic reading skills by the time they reach Year 9. How much this is caused by poor teaching techniques, and how much, say, from too-busy parents no longer staying home to teach the children their alphabet, I do not know. But this year, 26 of our top literacy researchers sent an open letter to Nelson warning that the "whole language" teaching had no scientific credibility. As America's National Reading Panel, set up by President Bill Clinton, reported in 2000, there was no doubt the old way of teaching children - C-makes-a-cuh-sound phonics - was still the best.

I KNEW that. You knew that. And yet 77 per cent of Victorian primary school teachers still use the "whole language" method instead, according to an Australian Council of Educational Research survey. The trouble may be much as a former education mandarin gloomily admitted when I asked why formal grammar was now rarely taught - "We'd first have to teach it to the teachers." Or as Nelson said on Monday: "Some of the research we've done has found that our trainee teachers themselves are having trouble to (sic) read." Just as Nelson has trouble to (sic) speak.

Naturally Labor is again grabbing for a union-friendly excuse - that children really need more teachers with more money. But no. What they need is better teaching, using better methods. The old ways are not working, as auditor-general Wayne Cameron reported after discovering that despite spending $662 million over seven years on teacher-intensive Early Years and Reading Recovery programs in Victorian primary schools, our literacy results barely shifted. The "new" theories must now be rooted out. The big question is: How did they ever get to grow in our schools and what must be thrown out with them?"

(The above article was lifted from Andrew Bolt)

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18 November, 2004

"COLORBLIND RACISM"??

Dave Huber thinks the gobbledegook below is another Sokal Hoax. If so, it has certainly hoisted "Education News". But if it's seriously meant, I wouldn't be surprised either.

"The American racial project is the cornerstone of an overarching paradigm of white supremacy or a white racial order that has matured within our racialized society since its birth some 350 years ago. Today, the operation of our racialized social systems is most obviously articulated in the push for privatization, and expressed through the propaganda of colorblindness. It is also camouflaged (or coded) by the ideology of colorblindness that insists we now live in a race-less or race-neutral state in which the color of one’s skin makes no difference in the attainment of society’s fruits. The basis or defining features of the reigning ideology itself hints at the association being disguised, that is, the relationship between whites and blacks in which the historically raced and now race-lessed are black people (categorically, conceptually, or as construct—those person who cannot or will not whiten). The binary positing of identity formation and the meaning of conceptual blackness and whiteness in the development of commonsense understandings remain unchanged. Colorblindness allows the masking of immigration issues, housing segregation, etc… to be discussed without the mention of race.

In this colorblind condition we are at task to deconstruct or decipher the latest version of Johnson’s ESEA, that is, President GW Bush’s NCLB, in whose title itself begins the subterfuge, as we all know which children are being referenced, though never mentioned. Use of coded language is also visible in the heading of Title 1, Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged, where again the Disadvantaged are never raced, and at most are referenced according to economic status, i.e. the poor. The admiral goal of closing the achievement gap has also been pitted as the latest panacea for racism and all social ailments; an almost absurd proposition in a society with institutionalized racism, and a history of schooling in the service of business interests. These seemingly benign examples of language manipulation appealing to a white-normed commonsense highlight the real danger of NCLB, that is, all the ways in which it reinforces and contributes to colorblind racism..... "

(From "Education News". More here)



BRITAIN'S NEW WORD FOR ENFORCED EQUALITY: "INCLUSION"

Education or social inclusion? A teacher argues that you can't have both.

'This National Curriculum includes for the first time a detailed, overarching statement on inclusion which makes clear the principles schools must follow in their teaching right across the curriculum, to ensure that all pupils have the chance to succeed, whatever their individual needs and the potential barriers to their learning may be.'

The above statement from Britain's National Curriculum online shows that inclusion has been placed at the heart of the UK's school curriculum. Today, cradle-to-grave educational initiatives are justified in terms of social inclusion.... In schools, teaching in an inclusive style is a compulsory requirement of the curriculum, to be inspected by the Office For Standards in Education (OFSTED). Teachers will be checked to ensure they 'plan their approaches to teaching and learning so that all pupils can take part in lessons fully and effectively'. The logical consequence of this is either individualised tasks for each pupil, or a lesson that lacks challenge for anyone.....

What is social inclusion? Writers have commented that the term social inclusion is being used with such frequency that it has become a politically correct cliche - according to one author, 'obligatory in the discourse of all right thinking people'. An irony is that the more frequently the term is used, the more difficult it becomes to pin down exactly what is meant by 'social inclusion'. Projects aiming to promote social inclusion have a wide array of aims: to tackle teenage pregnancy; obesity; high unemployment rates; low literacy levels; low life-expectancy rates; higher incidences of criminality or non-participation in elections.....

In education, the social inclusion debate emerged from policies aimed at integrating children with special needs or behaviour problems into mainstream schools. From the mid-1980s onwards, campaigns by parents and teachers gathered momentum to keep children with learning difficulties, Down's syndrome or a range of physical disabilities, in mainstream schools. 'Special schools' began to close. Including special needs children within the mainstream of the education system was considered to benefit not just the individual concerned but all the other children in the class who would gain 'a greater degree of understanding, more knowledge about certain disabilities and a generally more positive outlook towards those who have them'.

Today, the debate has moved on. Ever-expanding definitions of 'special needs' mean that, incredibly, in 2001 21 per cent of primary school age children in England and Wales were on the special needs register. The concept of special needs has been relativised to such an extent that all children are now considered, to apply the euphemism, 'special'. This may mean the child has special gifts or talents or has any one of a long list of learning or social difficulties from ADHD to dyslexia via Asperger's Syndrome. Teachers concerned with special needs are finding more and more parents queuing at their doors demanding labels for their child.....

Today, inclusion is no longer about how best to teach special needs pupils: it is about how to foster certain values in every child. Where inclusion policies are challenged, it tends to be in cases of older pupils with behaviour problems. Previously, expulsion from school was the punishment of last resort for head teachers. Now, with the closure of Pupil Referral Units and Home School Services, head teachers are under pressure to keep such pupils within the mainstream. For the most part, however, it is assumed that 'anything other than the total integration of all pupils is tantamount to supporting a form of educational apartheid'....

The obsession with self-esteem is the second major consequence of building education around social inclusion. This is a very recent phenomenon; when I trained to be a teacher 10 years ago, not one reference was made to our self-esteem or the self-esteem of the pupils we were to meet. Low self-esteem was never articulated as being a problem. Today, every pupil a teacher comes into contact with is deemed to be at risk of low self-esteem and it is the assumed responsibility of teachers to do all they can to challenge this epidemic.

Kathryn Ecclestone exposes the common assumption that 'education plays a fundamental role in remedying the apparently growing problem of low self-esteem'. A widespread fear of confronting students with failure results in teachers suppressing anything considered too challenging for pupils: the role of the teacher is now not to challenge but to praise and ego-massage pupils. This inevitably results in a focus on pupils' feelings as opposed to pupils' learning. Teachers become therapists, counselling pupils about their state of mind; the danger is that, 'therapeutic pedagogy starts where learners are and leaves them and their teachers in the same 'safe place'....

Teaching and including are two distinctly different aims. Including involves promoting values, boosting self-esteem and seeking whole group participation in an activity that may be essentially contentless; teaching, by contrast, involves rigorously challenging pupils with new and unfamiliar material, pushing them to the boundaries of their understanding and potentially making them feel uncomfortable with their limited understanding of the world. Teachers cannot use the same finite pot of time and money to do both. Put simply, while I'm organising a whole class litter-picking activity or investigating playground squabbles I am not teaching literature.

But there is more to it than this. Teachers are not expected to teach and include as separate activities but to turn teaching itself into an exercise in social inclusion. Yet because including and teaching are fundamentally contradictory aims, it is just not possible to fulfil the requirement of the National Curriculum and teach in an inclusive manner. I cannot include everyone in my mixed ability class and create an environment that is stimulating and challenging to all. It is impossible to boost the self-esteem of my pupils while simultaneously making them feel uncomfortable as they are pushed to the limits of their understanding. It is impossible to inculcate a prescribed list of values while undertaking a rigorous analysis of academic content. To include everyone means no one gets challenged and lessons are reduced to the lowest intellectual common denominator.

More here

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

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17 November, 2004

LOCKSTEP SOCIAL WORK ACADEMICS

Bill Felkner, 41, is a husband, a father and a student of social work. He is also a political libertarian who says he has liberal views on social issues and conversative views on economics. Felkner, of Hopkinton, says his political beliefs have put him in conflict with the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College, where he is pursuing a master's degree. The department, he says, has a liberal bias with little tolerance for ideas that deviate from the progressive "norm." Further, Felkner sees himself in the middle of a much larger debate over free expression at college campuses across the country.

Last fall, the president of Roger Williams University temporarily froze funds for a student newsletter after a group of conservative students published several antigay articles and images that the college deemed offensive. Three years ago, Brown University made national headlines when a band of students stole 4,000 copies of the student newspaper after it ran an ad by conservative author David Horowitz opposing slavery reparations. At Rhode Island College, the controversy began with a movie, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary deeply critical of the Bush administration. A professor in the School of Social Work showed the film to his students. Felkner, who was not in a class where the movie was showed, rented it. Afterward, Felkner asked one of his professors, Jim Ryczek, to show a movie called FahrenHYPE 9/11, which challenges Moore's point of view.

Ryczek, in an e-mail to Felkner, declined to show the movie in his class, but said Felkner was welcome to show it on campus. (FahrenHYPE 9/11 was later shown in several classes taught by another professor.) Then Ryczek sent an e-mail to Felkner telling him: "I will be the first to admit a bias toward a certain point of view. . . . In the words of a colleague, I revel in my biases. So I think anyone who consistently holds antithetical views to those espoused by the profession might ask themselves whether social work is the profession for them. . . . " Ryczek concluded by saying, "I don't want you to think that I am suggesting that you are such a person. But then again, you may be. Only you can make that determination."

Felkner says the e-mail made him very angry: "Knowing Jim, I doubt he meant it as a threat. I think he was saying, 'This is a world of liberals. You won't feel comfortable here.' "

Ryczek says he never meant to imply that Felkner wouldn't make a good social worker. "My message was, 'Let's talk about your point of view.' I wasn't saying he should leave the profession," he says. According to Ryczek, social workers are committed to helping poor and oppressed communities become empowered to make positive changes. That theory, he says, "is not consistent with the most conservative views." Ryczek believes, for example, that a comprehensive welfare state is the optimal form of government. "I talk about my views," he says. "The students need to decide whether they agree with them and whether they belong in social work."

Meanwhile, Felkner e-mailed the chairs of the graduate and undergraduate schools of social work and contacted the president of the college, John Nazarian. Late last month, he met with the two chairs, Lenore Olsen and Mildred Bates, to discuss what he called the "liberal agenda exhibited by the faculty and how these implicit pressures from authority figures can be oppressive.".......

"I would say that the department has a liberal core of values," says Olsen, who chairs the master's of social work program. "It comes down to whether someone is able to balance their beliefs with the values of the profession." According to the National Association of Social Workers code of ethics, social workers should "pursue social change, particularly on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people."

Bates, who chairs the bachelor's program, says, for example, that the profession supports abortion rights because it believes that every person has the right to make choices about his or her life. A student could feel differently as long as she didn't impose her personal values on her clients. Dan Weisman, the professor who showed Fahrenheit 9/11, says most social workers believe that government plays an important role in securing the well-being of all its citizens -- a position that conservatives might oppose.

Marc Genest, a political science professor at the University of Rhode Island, says liberal orthodoxy is the standard at most colleges and universities in the Northeast. "I am the only conservative in my department," he says. "And I can only name three or four moderate to conservative faculty in the liberal arts." A colleague once asked Genest to speak to her graduate class because none of her students could understand why anyone would be a conservative. Whenever a student presents a conservative view, Genest says, "the labels come out," and he or she is called a racist or a sexist......

More here

The amusing thing is that social workers are great supporters of welfare programs and claim that conservatives cannot be social workers because they do not support welfare programs. The fact that the first big government welfare programs in history were introduced by Prince Otto von Bismarck, the arch-conservative "Iron Chancellor" of Prussia (See his pic on the Social Security Administration website) and that the biggest welfare expansion in recent American history was largely the work of George W. Bush entirely escape them. Just because conservatives oppose the huge and mindless handouts of the Left takes nothing away from the fact that conservatives have long supported intelligently targeted welfare programs



BRITAIN'S CONSERVATIVES ARE LOST SOULS

"Britain's Conservatives have got themselves into a right stew over higher education. Not content with making university places free, now they propose to actually pay students to take unpopular courses like chemistry, physics, and modern languages. Barmy.

Going to university should be a market choice, just like any other. The state doesn't run a chain of supermarkets offering free food to all comers. And it certainly doesn't pay people to walk out with the kinds of food that most people don't care for. Food is no less essential than education - so why the difference in policy?

The answer is that we are distorting, disastrously, the entire education sector in the name of access. The fear is that students from less wealthy backgrounds would not be able to pay university fees: that would be unfair, and the country would lose good talent.

But instead, we should be subsidizing the people who need help, not ruining the market. Universities should charge whatever they like for academic courses. Some universities and some courses would be in worldwide demand, and would be expensive. Others may be less in demand, and would be cheaper. But students could make a rational decision - perhaps they believe they would have more fun, derive more intellectual value, or improve their work prospects more, by choosing an expensive course. It's really up to them. And not much different from the same young people taking out a mortgage on a more expensive home because it is nearer where the jobs are than some cheaper place out in the sticks.

That will give us a competitive world-class university system. If the state has a role, it is to give help to deserving students who can't afford to buy access. But ideally, the universities themselves should build up scholarship funds for that purpose. So that's ideal: a solid higher-education sector, students making rational decisions about investing in themselves, nobody left behind. The Tories know they are wrong. Why can't they admit it?"

(Post lifted from the Adam Smith Blog)

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

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16 November, 2004

QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION (1)

No doubt Leftists will say that "more funding" is the solution

"A 48-year-old teacher in Seminole County, Fla., is accused of torturing her autistic students, including allegedly rubbing a child's face in vomit and slamming another child's head so hard that he lost his front teeth, according to Local 6 News. The Casselberry Police Department received information several weeks ago that South Seminole Middle School teacher Kathleen Garrett allegedly struck several students.

When police investigated, witnesses said she had battered the children who are unable to communicate well. Witnesses told police that Garrett punched a student in the head for wetting his pants and grabbed another student by the back of the neck after he vomited and shoved his face into the vomit. Garrett, who weighs 300 pounds, also reportedly pinned a special needs student facedown on his desk until he choked before two assistants reportedly jumped in to save the child, according to an arrest report. Witnesses also said that Garrett rubbed her body against a child and repeatedly told him to "cry for mama."

Authorities said all of the victims have special needs and that Garrett was their primary caregiver. Police believe that Garrett used threats, intimidation and bodily harm to physically and mentally control the disabled victims, Local 6 News reported. Garrett was arrested Wednesday and charged with nine counts of aggravated child abuse on the special needs students in her classroom. Garrett was booked into the Seminole County Jail but released Wednesday night."

Source



QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION (2)

"While parents may have a reasonable expectation that their child's public school -- as a facility owned and operated by the government -- would be a safe structure that has passed local construction and fire inspection requirements, recent reports from Florida, Illinois, New York City, and Los Angeles indicate negligence and fraud in school construction and maintenance can severely compromise the safety of children in school."

More here:

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

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15 November, 2004

ANOTHER FASCIST UNIVERSITY IGNORES THE LAW

A university student evicted from his dormitory and forced to undergo psychological counseling for posting a satirical flier that offended women has been restored after intervention by a national free-speech advocacy group. Apparently seeking a resolution to clogged dorm elevators, University of New Hampshire sophomore Timothy Garneau posted a hastily made flier joking that women could lose the "Freshman 15" by walking up the stairs instead. Basing it on an advertisement posted at the school gym, Garneau wrote: "9 out of 10 freshman girls gain 10 - 15 pounds. But there is something you can do about it. If u live below the 6th floor takes the stairs..Not only will u feel better about yourself but you will also be saving us time and wont [sic] be sore on the eyes."

Turned in by an angry residence hall director, Garneau was charged with offensiveness including "acts of dishonesty," violation of "affirmative action" policies, "harassment" and "conduct which is disorderly, lewd." He was sentenced to expulsion from student housing, given extended disciplinary probation, required to meet with a psychological counselor to discuss his "decisions, actions, and reflections" and made to write a 3000-word reflection paper about the counseling session. The school rejected any appeal by Garneau, who lived out of his car for three weeks, and he contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.

After a protest from the North Carolina-based group, the university reduced his sentence from eviction to "relocation" to another dormitory, extended disciplinary probation and a single "ethics" meeting with UNH Judicial Officer Jason Whitney.

"We are relieved that UNH has discovered its obligation to the Bill of Rights and that Tim is back indoors," said David French, president of FIRE. "But the university should never have put a student on trial and evicted him merely for posting a flier." In a letter to UNH President Ann Weaver Hart, FIRE contended "forcing a student out of housing for posting a satirical flier is both outrageous and unlawful," pointing out even material far more offensive than Garneau's message is protected by the First Amendment.

FIRE also disputed the "harassment" charges, arguing that hanging a flier was hardly "sufficiently serious -- i.e., severe, persistent, or pervasive -- as to limit or deny a student's ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program," as is required by harassment law. Calling it "harassment"dangerously trivializes real harassment, the group contended.

Garneau acknowledged he initially denied his responsibility for the flier to dorm director Brad Williams but said he confessed a few minutes later. The student explained he was afraid Williams would punish him severely and unlawfully for his expression. "After being kicked out of the dorms for three weeks, it is clear that his fears were completely justified," said Greg Lukianoff, FIRE's director of legal and public advocacy. "Williams had no business 'investigating' constitutionally-protected speech in the first place."

Source



A FUN CASE

In a case that could pave the way for school vouchers, the California Department of Education is opposing a 14-year-old prodigy's bid to receive government funds so he can continue his schooling at a state university -- the only suitable education, his mother argues. The education department confirms that the lawsuit, brought by the mother of University of California at Los Angeles student Levi Clancy, hinges on the constitutionality of vouchers, making it the first case of its kind in the nation, says Clancy's attorney Richard Ackerman of the Pro-Family Law Center, which filed papers in court yesterday.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Clancy, who was reading high school-level books in two languages at age 5, enrolled at Santa Monica Community College at 7 and, earlier this year, entered UCLA. His mother Leila Levi, a single parent, says she cannot afford the more than $9,000 it costs to attend UCLA each year and filed a lawsuit in February in Sacramento Superior Court. She argues her son is of mandatory attendance age, and the California constitution requires he be provided a free education. Having the state pay for his tuition at UCLA is the only possible remedy, insists Ackerman, who notes that if the boy is not in school, he is regarded as truant. "You can't send him back to public school, because they don't have the means to educate a kid this gifted," he told WND. "The only way his intellectual needs can be met is if he goes to a high-level, four-year college."

In recently filed papers, the California Department of Education acknowledged Clancy's mother is "attempting to obtain the functional equivalent of a voucher for her son's university-level education," but insists the agency does not owe a "constitutional duty" to the child in this case.

Ackerman argues any failure to provide a suitable education is a violation of the federal Equal Protection Clause. "The one size fits all approach to education is failing the plaintiff in this case," Ackerman says. "At some point in time, we are going to have to realize that it is intellectual torture to require a highly gifted child to maintain compulsory attendance in a failing system that doesn't even work for average students." Ackerman asserts that at "a bare minimum, the CDE ought to be required to fund Levi's education to the same monetary level as provided on a per-student basis for every other child in the public schools, which happens to be between six and seven thousand dollars a head."

Regardless of who wins the Sacramento case, it likely will end up being appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ackerman believes. "This case has the potential to overhaul a failing educational system, and may open the doors to a truly suitable education for each child within the public school system," he said.

Source

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

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14 November, 2004

The Black Hole of Public Education

"Whenever I hear of a need for more money to fund public education, I envision a big black hole sucking away our tax dollars to further line the pockets of useless UniServe directors. These union employees are allegedly paid to bargain favorable teaching contracts for the overworked teachers whose subsequent contracts charge them with an impossible educational agenda based on faulty methodology and politically correct ideas.

For the most part, teachers begin their educational careers idealistic and excited about their role in the learning process. At first, money is of no concern in the mind of a person who serves in the caretaker profession. It isn’t long, though, before the rookies begin to realize that direct instruction is frowned upon and that no significant amount of learning can take place given the often impossible circumstances with which teachers are faced. Low expectations, subsequent grade inflation, misbehavior all becomes the fault of the instructor; not the students or the administration –whose policy set the educational climate for the school. Only at this point do teachers start complaining that no amount of money is worth the aggravation that they are dealt while trying to do their job.

The public is catching on, though, with NCLB drawing attention to the failure of the schools to produce and the purse strings being attached to public accountability. So now the schools have to figure out alternative methods to keep the money coming in to pay for teaching methods which are cumbersome, unproven, and depend on an extremely small student teacher ratio to be effective.

In comes eminent domain. What a unique way to make money. First you grab a parcel of land with the excuse that it is for the public good (generally, building or improving a school falls under this category). You sit on the land for a few years and then sell it for much more than you paid. Even if you make a mere $12 million, you are not breaking any laws if you can prove that you didn’t purchase the property with the intention of turning it around for a profit.

The San Diego Unified School District sure got a good deal when it took possession of a piece of property formerly owned by San Diego-based West RNLN, LLC, and later deemed, “unsuitable for a school and there is no other school district use for it.” 1 This is using a favored status for a very shady and completely wrong purpose –to make money. Martha Stewart just went to jail for this type of dishonesty. It is essentially “gaming the market”. They used their status under the law of eminent domain to work against other people by taking their property for no other reason than to make a profit.

I’m tired of hearing how the schools need more money. I’m tired of the public paying for their “habitual problem” with mismanagement and poor educational practice. Let’s break up this monopoly"

Source

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

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13 November, 2004

FUNDING CUT OFF FOR CAMPUS LEFTISTS

Australia has for many years had compulsory membership of student unions for all university students. The unions are however often used to promote far-Left politics

Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has supported a new model for student unions that funds services but not political campaigns on campus. Dr Nelson indicated yesterday he was prepared to compromise on legislation to ban compulsory student unionism, but pledged to push ahead with plans to force universities to offer academics individual contracts.

The compromise plan, outlined by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee in documents obtained by The Australian, would allow unions to charge students a compulsory fee but prevent the money being used to fund political activities. The vice-chancellors fear making union fees voluntary would leave them responsible for providing the cafeterias, sports clubs and welfare services now operated by students.

"No student should be forced to pay a fee that supports any kind of political organisation or quasi-social organisation," Dr Nelson told ABC radio. "What I am quite interested in doing is seeing that we nonetheless have some sort of fee that supports a defined and limited list of essential student services on campus."

The National Union of Students will hold talks in Canberra later this month with peak university groups including the AVCC, the Group of Six research-intensive universities, the Australian Technology Network and the National Tertiary Education Union. In a letter to universities, NUS president Jodie Jansen said students were worried about the Howard Government's student union bill in its "current form". "The bill takes away the ability of universities to charge compulsory fees for services that are not for the provision of the course," she said. "The passing of such a bill would impact not only on student unions but also many university building funds and university sports associations that are not run by students."

More here

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

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12 November, 2004

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS RIGHTS ACTIVIST FAVOURS BOARDING SCHOOLS

In Australia too, private schools are seen as better for minorities than government schools

"After primary school in Hope Vale, I was a boarder at St Peters College in Brisbane, to which I had been sent by decision of my parents and by opportunity provided by the Lutheran Church and the federal government. I looked forward to the school holidays. Almost all of the indigenous people from remote Australia who have succeeded in education and gone on to make leading contributions on behalf of their people were educated at boarding schools -- often a long way from their homes, most often at church schools. In Cape York Peninsula, no Aboriginal tertiary graduates have come from local public secondary schools.

Boarding schools are an old and well-established idea, going back to the 1960s for the people of our region. It is on this past practice -- its successes as well as its failures -- that we base our policy in Cape York Peninsula: scholarships to high-quality, high-expectation secondary schools down south. The allegation that indigenous children attending boarding schools represents a repetition of the stolen generations is just silly.

A more serious fallacy is that you can provide quality secondary education in remote communities. Attendance at high-expectation boarding schools has declined in the past 20 years in favour of attempts by governments to provide secondary schooling in our communities. This experiment failed profoundly and the remnant secondary facilities should be closed down. There is not sufficient scale and the teachers and specialisations required to provide a proper secondary education are impossible with small student populations.

Only in regional centres, such as Cooktown and Weipa in Cape York Peninsula, can a credible case be made for providing secondary education facilities. However, these schools in regional centres would need to be fundamentally reformed if they are to produce indigenous tertiary graduates. Thursday Island State High School is testament to the fact that this can happen.

Another fallacy -- expressed by Peter Holt from the Hollows Foundation -- is that boarding should be rejected because students risk suffering cultural loss. First, I have as good a knowledge of the history and languages of my communities as any of my peers who never left Cape York -- because of education. My advantage is that I can enjoy the best of both worlds. I can speak the Queen's English and Guugu Yimithirr.

Second, Aboriginal communities are disintegrating socially and culturally because of passive welfare and substance abuse. Unlike all other government policies that are being implemented in remote communities, high-expectation education offers opportunities. A life in which you are stuck with limited opportunities in remote communities is not conducive to cultural maintenance.

A more substantial objection to increased boarding concerns racial and class prejudice. But indigenous students will face these problems wherever they are -- whether at high school in a regional centre or at a private boarding school in a capital city. This underscores the need for schools to understand the reality of this problem and to support their indigenous students. This is what Clayfield College in Brisbane has done so well.

Another real concern is the high drop-out rate of indigenous students from boarding schools. However, white and Asian youngsters suffer from homesickness as much as black children. If students do not find a place in the school community where they can gain a sense of achievement and recognition, then homesickness will be a fatal problem rather than the normal kind of feeling one has for home town and family.

The principal driver of the low retention rate in boarding schools (and secondary schools generally) is the fact that the students entering secondary school at Year8 are not up to standard. While they have nominally completed Year 7, their literacy levels are around Year 3 or Year 5 at best. If you are in a Year 8 classroom and you are really at Year 5 level, then you are going to struggle to fit in and your chances of ultimate success are poor.

There is a fundamental and widespread underachievement problem in primary school education in remote communities. That is why another of our policies in Cape York Peninsula is: closing the gap between Year 7 in Cape York and Year 8 at secondary schools down south. There is no practical alternative to primary schooling being provided in our own communities. We have to fix up primary schooling if we are to fix up the retention of indigenous students in secondary school. This is the greatest challenge we face, to which we are now turning our attention."

More here

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

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11 November, 2004

IF IT'S OK TO TEACH LEFTISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY, IT'S OK TO TEACH CREATIONISM

Leftists are slipping down their own slippery-slide of bringing ideology into the classroom

Wisconsin: District OKs teaching of creationism: "[Grantsburg's] School Board has revised its science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed. Board members believed a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum 'should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory,' said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the 1,000-student district."



INCULCATING HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE GUISE OF SOCIOLOGY

A letter to a student from the inimitable Prof. Mike Adams

"Thanks for your letter outlining the problems you are having with your "Sociology of Gender" professor. Your contention that the professor and course are both "stupid and should be banned from campus" seemed a little too harsh at first. But then I read the quiz given to your class, which is reproduced below:

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
2. When and how did you decide that you were a heterosexual?
3. Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase that you may grow out of?
4. Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?
5. If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, is it possible that all you need is a good gay or lesbian lover?
6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react?
7. Why do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your lifestyle?
8. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Why can't you just be what you are and keep quiet about it?
9. Would you want your children to be heterosexual knowing the problems that they'd face?
10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers?
11. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?
12. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
13. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual like you?
14. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you fear (s)he might be inclined to influence you in the direction of her/his own leanings?
15. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality, and fail to develop your natural, healthy homosexual potential?
16. There seem to be very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change if you really want to. Have you considered trying aversion therapy?

In your letter, you asked for advice on how to answer your "lunatic" professor. It may disappoint you, but I am going to advise you to ignore this woman. There is simply no chance that you will get into an intelligent argument with this professor. Clearly, she is not committed to quality intellectual discourse. She is just another tenured professor with the emotional development of a sixth grader, hoping that she can get under your skin and cause a "homophobic" reaction. Don't fall for her childish antics.

Unlike most of the cases that are brought to me from other universities, I actually know your professor personally. By the way, your assessment of her is fully accurate. If it makes you feel better, this is a professor who once suggested that we should initiate "all women" armies in order to put an end to war "once and for all." She also takes offense at breast implants for women while fully supporting the rights of trans-gendered persons to have sex changes. I guess that, as a "sexuality" expert, she knows what's breast for everyone.

Granted, you did not know that your professor was an idiot before you took the class, but that is what you get for taking more sociology classes than you were required to take in the university basic studies program. Before you sign up for another sociology elective, remember that sociologists have failed to solve any of the major social problems that they have studied over the last century. In fact, as a general rule, the more that they study a problem, the worse it gets."

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

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

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10 November, 2004

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS SQUEEZED BY BUREAUCRACY

In both Australia and the USA

When Phillip O'Carroll started Fitzroy Community School in a Melbourne terrace in 1976, a number of parent groups were starting schools. O'Carroll and his wife, Faye Berryman, had been involved in several school start-ups, and being all too aware of the red tape involved they didn't bother. They just found a suitable venue and started teaching kids. The Victorian Department of Education eventually acknowledged their existence and registered them as an authorised non-government school in 1980. By that stage O'Carroll and Berryman had a functioning primary school with plenty of supporters. "You couldn't get away with that now," says O'Carroll. "There's so much more regulation."

The number of independent schools in Australia grew from 803 to 979 in the decade 1993 to 2003, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, an annual increase of 17 schools each year. It might not look many, but in comparison with the Catholic and government sectors it's an important trend. Catholic schools increased by two over the same period, while government schools dropped by 436.

Educators and community school advocates believe that the growth of non-government schools would have been much greater if it was easier to start a school. According to O'Carroll, the regulations imposed on non-government schools by state governments are so onerous they act as an impediment and a deterrent to prospective schools. "It's a roundabout way of minimising new schools," he says. "We are in a situation where our major competitor decides whether we exist. It's structurally unjust."

Although the federal government provides most of the government funding for non-government schools, to qualify schools must be registered with their state or territory government. Requirements vary, but the process usually takes between one and five years. Numerous conditions are attached, including that the school must be non-profit. New schools are required to provide evidence that they meet the government's standards on buildings and facilities, policies on discipline and child welfare (corporal punishment is usually expressly forbidden), the qualifications and character of school staff and operators, and the curriculum. While this list appears straightforward, it is far from it. In NSW just the checklist of documentation schools must provide for registration runs to 14 pages.

Vern Hughes, executive director of Social Enterprise Partnerships, an organisation that encourages and facilitates community-based provision of social services, says that the complicated process of registering turns many people off. "The hoops people have to jump through are ludicrous," Hughes says. "For many people it proves too difficult." In some states it is more difficult than in others.

When the Commonwealth Government's new schools policy was abolished by then federal education minister David Kemp in 1996, many states took the opportunity to establish new schools committees to regulate openings. In Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, applications are assessed against the impact they are likely to have on existing schools. Some in the independent sector have likened this to giving Pizza Hut power over which restaurants can open, and where. The Grimshaw review of the registration and accreditation of non-government schools in NSW recommended this year that the same process be established in NSW, but it was not accepted into legislation. Instead, in NSW a committee has been established to exchange information about new schools and expansions between the school sectors.

Terry Chapman, executive director of the Association of Independent Schools, says this committee is "to allow sensible planning, but does not make decisions about limiting the number of schools". It's not just about competition, though, according to Hughes. Rather than drawing students from other schools, Hughes believes there is an unmet demand for certain types of schooling and that non-government schools can provide a better quality of education, as well as relieving some of the burden on the government system. "There are networks of parents of children with disabilities and learning difficulties who are interested in schools with an orientation that is specific to their needs," Hughes says. "The Victorian government ideology of inclusion (of students with disabilities in mainstream classes) places unreal expectations on teachers and kids. Much of the debate has been on high-achieving kids, but the options at the other end are terrible."

The ALESCO Learning Centre in Newcastle, NSW, is a prime example of a non-government school succeeding where others have failed. Opened in 2002, ALESCO is located within the WEA community education centre and housed in a largely unrenovated 100-year-old building in the inner city suburb of Cooks Hill. It provides a secondary school curriculum to students who have high levels of educational and social need, using only its government funding - which is substantially less than what government schools receive. "If we did not exist, these kids could not attend a government high school or TAFE," says Rowan Cox, the school's administrator. "Non-government schools fill a gap, whether at the bottom or at the top. The beauty of a non-government school is that we can be more flexible. We are based in an adult learning environment as part of a registered training organisation (RTO), but have adapted to account for the fact that our students are adolescents and need more support." Cox says she has never before been involved in so much paperwork as with ALESCO, but sees the need for schools to be accountable for their expenditure of public funding and for the responsibility of caring for young people.

While Cox does not resent the "phenomenal" amount of documentation and evidence the school is expected to produce at any time, she thinks it unfair that government schools are not always held to the same standards. "There is an inequity there. It seems that since they are government schools, if there is not enough time or resources to monitor them, then that's okay," Cox says. "We have an important social capital role. Since we opened, crime has gone down and youth unemployment has gone down. That is often not recognised, especially with regard to funding."

Back at Fitzroy, O'Carroll is less complacent about the level of accountability to government. He has seen the paperwork grow each time the school has to re-register, every six years, to the point where he is sending off a wad of paper "centimetres deep". "The process has become quite ridiculous. Many of the aspects monitored have nothing to do with education, things like town planning and building minutiae. "You have to write separate 'vision' and 'mission' statements for the school.... "Schools without much money have to divert energy from their real work to engage in a tedious bunfight, wading through mountains of clumsy regulations," O'Carroll says.

In the US, the burgeoning charter school movement has created a niche for organisations that help new non-government schools establish themselves. Charter schools are independently operated schools receiving public funding on the condition that they meet the educational and operational expectations set by the local school district - the "charter" or contract. In the US, as in Australia, the approval process and securing funding are highly complicated, and there are no government offices set up to help.

This is where the "school incubators" come in. The Apple Tree Institute in Boston and Washington DC, and the Innovative Schools Development Corporation in Delaware, offer their services to people who want to start a school but need help getting through the legal quagmire. Their services range from seed-funding, like an education-version of venture capital, to full management of the school under the direction of the charter holders.

Vern Hughes sees a need for such an organisation in Australia. Although independent school numbers are steadily growing, Hughes says that those that succeed in opening their doors "represent but a tiny proportion of those that could be established if more support were available". Hughes would like to see a "community school incubator" established in Australia to help people who have an educational imperative but lack financial, technical and legal expertise to start a new school. "We need to simplify, demystify and provide connections," Hughes says.

For many community school advocates, including O'Carroll and Hughes, the arguments for community schools are based on performance and principle. According to O'Carroll, it comes down to whether you believe parents have the right and responsibility to be the primary educators of their child, and to pursue their best interests. "Regulations should cover teacher suitability and the core curriculum, but beyond that if fee-paying parents are satisfied that the school is satisfactory it is unnecessary for bureaucrats to step in. "In a democracy we are supposed to have freedom of association, free trade and respect the prior rights and authority of families. The strong interference by central authorities is a barrier against the spirit of democracy."

Source

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

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9 November, 2004

LITERACY: SANITY BREAKING OUT IN AUSTRALIA?

A national inquiry into the teaching of reading in primary schools may be launched amid growing concerns that too many students are barely literate. The federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, says he is considering the review after 26 of Australia's leading literacy researchers wrote to him warning that children were failing to learn to read. They said the main teaching method in schools - "the whole language approach" - was ineffective for many children and had no scientific credibility.

And it appears many primary school teachers struggle with literacy themselves. More than half of 370 teachers and final-year trainees in a Queensland University of Technology study did not know what a syllable was. Three-quarters could not correctly count the sounds in words.

Dr Nelson said: "There are a lot of parents - it gives me great distress - who are finding out that their children at the age of eight and nine are barely literate. I am concerned that there are far too many children who are leaving primary school and secondary school who are barely literate for a variety of reasons." Almost a third of year 9 students lack basic literacy skills, the Australian Council for Educational Research says.

The signatories to the Nelson letter said the whole language approach immersed students in a rich variety of texts without specific teaching of letter-sound relationships, known as phonics. One signatory, Professor Kevin Wheldall, director of Macquarie University's Special Education Centre, said most schools, education departments and teacher training bodies failed to accept the scientific evidence that phonics was crucial for teaching a child to read well.

More here.



HORRORS! EMPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY COMING TO AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

A push from Brendan Nelson, the responsible Federal government minister. HECS are the fees that students pay to enroll at Australian universities

Universities, says Nelson, need greater freedom to match changes in student demand with shifts in staff. This can be done with a broader mix of full-time, part-time and casual workers. And Australian workplace agreements. "I've discovered one of the reasons why the kids are jammed in like sardines in some lecture theatres when there's one nearly empty next door is that the current industrial relations climate in the sector makes it very difficult to shift [staff in response to demand]," he says.

But it is not easy to turn an astrophysicist into a Spanish historian in institutions built on highly specialised staff, although there are ways to get around the problem. Just ask Ian Argall. He's the executive director of the vice-chancellors' national industrial association, which has had its share of clashes with the academic union. Argall says universities are not like other industries where you can transfer employees as demand fluctuates. So another way to have staff respond to student demand is to shed them and hire new ones -- a process that is difficult with the current high level of industrial protection. "The flexibility to move staff in and out of areas of need either has to be done by making people redundant, sacking them for under-performance -- all of which are hard -- or hiring them on fixed-term contracts or casual employment so they're not locked in permanently," says Argall....

Chief executive of the Australian Industry Group Heather Ridout says the universities, like the manufacturing sector, are dominated by powerful unions. But they have gone a long way to find measures that reward talent. "And I think with the strictures of budgeting over the years they've had to look to more flexible modes of employment," she says. "They've felt the financial pressure on them. And the need to attract talent and retain talented people has forced them into a lot of arrangements which might look a bit messy."

Money is the big issue. Nelson has earmarked extra public money for universities through various schemes that kick in next year -- at least another $2.6 billion over the next five years -- though much of that is contingent on them meeting certain criteria.

Universities will have more opportunity to seek out private revenue. They are able to set their own HECS fees at 25 per cent of current levels and enrol up to 35 per cent of Australian undergraduates on a full-fee basis. For the first time, full-fee students will have access to deferred loans similar to HECS, a move that has already boosted dramatically enrolments in one private university, Notre Dame.

While the funding injection will lift the bottom line, it will still not stem the gradual slide in the proportion of funds that universities get from the public purse -- an amount that now hovers at about 40 per cent of their sector-wide total income -- placing greater pressure on them to find other sources of revenue. By far the biggest single source of private income is from international students, who bring $1.5 billion a year in fees to the sector. ...

For now the business of getting the systems in place to launch the Nelson agenda next year has university administrations working overtime. A number of senior administrators told Inquirer that although there was still much work to get the schemes up and running, the Government's intentions were sound. The head of the University of Melbourne's administration Ian Marshman says that in the end there will be more consistent information for students and greater transparency. "It clearly gives an opportunity for a greater level of co-ordination and planning of the higher education output," he says.

More here

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

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8 November, 2004

CORRUPT HISTORY TEACHING

The flap over the U.S. Department of Education consigning 300,000 copies of "Helping Your Child to Learn History" to the trash bin is evidence anew that the federal government should have no role in education. Illiteracy and low scores in public schools are a national scandal, but it's hard to see how federal spending improves anything.....

"Helping Your Child Learn History" was a 73-page booklet published by the Department of Education to give advice to parents of preschool through fifth-grade children. The booklet gratuitously included several favorable references to the infamous "National Standards for United States History," even obliquely suggesting that President Bush supports those standards. When Lynne Cheney, the wife of the Vice President Dick Cheney, spotted those references, her staff communicated displeasure to the Education Department, which then destroyed its inventory of 300,000 copies, or in bureaucratese, "recycled" them.

The University of California Los Angeles professor who had been in charge of the National Standards project found this decision "extremely troubling." He called it "a pretty god-awful example of interference - intellectual interference. If that's not Big Brother or Big Sister, I don't know what is."

Note the inverted mindset of the typical academic. He thinks it is OK for Big Brother federal government to order students to study a revisionist, distorted, and inaccurate version of U.S. history, but it is offensive for parents and citizens to demand that inaccuracies be omitted.

I suppose liberals will soon be whining about "book burning," but as the media say, let's have a reality check. "The National Standards for History" was financed 10 years ago by a $2 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to UCLA to write standards for how U.S. history should be taught in grades 5 through 12. The 271-page result, called "National Standards for United States History," turned out to be so faulty as well as so anti-American that the U.S. Senate denounced it by a vote of 99-to-1. Lynne Cheney, who was National Endowment for the Humanities chairwoman when the grant was given, turned into a vigorous opponent, denouncing the volume as "politicized history," which it surely was.

"National Standards" was not a narrative of past events, but was left-wing revisionism and political correctness. Almost every event in U.S. history was described as though it had race or gender motives and effects, and all ethnic groups except white males were portrayed as oppressed and mistreated.....

Left-wing bias showed itself in the skewed selection of historical figures. Dozens of obscure people were singled out for study, while Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Gen. Robert E. Lee, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and Gen. Douglas MacArthur were omitted....

Despite the discrediting of the taxpayer-financed "History Standards" project, it is obvious the current crop of academic professionals is determined to drop the DWEMs, Dead White European Males, down an Orwellian memory hole and to replace history with Multiculturalism and Oppression Studies, featuring third-rate writers who attack Western Civilization as sexist, racist and oppressive. Parents should check out the history books used in their local schools.

More here



IS THE PENDULUM SWINGING BACK IN AUSTRALIA?

We may be living now in that moment when the pendulum of human history is balanced between the ideological extremes it regularly traverses. The extreme pendulum swing provoked by the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and its era of amorality and permissiveness, has finally petered out. Increasing numbers of people are emboldened to question the value of this "progress" and the price it exacted on human dignity and happiness. Just the fact the long-taboo issue of abortion is being discussed in Australia publicly and rationally is a sign the pendulum has moved back towards the centre. The wreckers and deconstructionists of old have had the pendulum yanked away from them.

One of the best jobs of yanking comes from the 12 authors of a brilliant new book of essays, Education and the Ideal. Conceived and edited by Sydney teacher Naomi Smith, it charts the poisonous impact on young minds of modish educational ideologies of the past 30 or 40 years. Christopher Koch writes in the foreword: "If the barbaric tide identified here is not held back, much more will be lost than the ability to understand what human genius is about. What will be lost will be true civilisation and the understanding of beauty." Complaints about "dumbing down" and political correctness are familiar but never before assembled with such authority and in such a contemporary Australian context.

Alan Barcan, honorary associate in Education at the University of Newcastle, says that until the late 1960s the school curriculum was "imbued with a confident, optimistic sense of purpose", concerned with "the building of character and ideas and with the acquisition of knowledge about things". But then a wave of "innovations" swept through. Today, four competing ideologies hold sway: "Critical theory [and post-modernism], a degenerated form of Marxism, [emphasising] the social context of knowledge"; a social justice approach dwelling on "disadvantaged" groups, such as women, minority ethnic groups, homosexuals and Aborigines; a vocational approach; and the "relics of traditional liberal-humanist values".

Interestingly the '70s were a golden age for teachers - numbers doubled, salaries jumped, government invested, and yet, by the end of the decade, children were worse off. By 1990 the green movement had infiltrated classrooms, and after "the collapse of the New Left, some radicals embraced social justice". By 2000, thanks to multimedia and a wider variety of texts, English looked a lot like cultural studies. "Relativism and sociological interpretations had become ingrained in the curriculum." Even physics was not immune, writes Neville Fletcher, former University of New England physics professor. The HSC syllabus, for instance, asks students how our understanding of energy and matter are "influenced by society".

Postmodern relativism so influences the curriculum we cannot rank a work of art based on artistic value because that would be "elitist", writes Dr Barry Spurr, senior lecturer in English literature at Sydney University. Thus King Lear is no better than Ginger Meggs, and Bush Tucker Man videos are as much a syllabus "text" as The Grapes of Wrath. But in the Standard HSC English course, "not one poet from the entire 16th, 17th and 18th centuries is to be found".

Spurr bemoans the "disastrous abandonment" of the teaching of formal grammar in the '60s and says the subsequent degradation of the language was "validated by the Australian anti-intellectual cultural prejudice against the lucid expression of informed and sustained ideas". The result is that Sydney University has had to introduce a remedial subject to deal with students' "grammatical incompetence"......

The book is not all doom and gloom. There is praise for the return in NSW to teaching basic grammar, phonics, writing and times tables. In fact Education and the Ideal is as much homage to good teachers as it is a critique of educational fads. Naomi Smith writes a chapter acknowledging teachers who "hold the education system together whose judgement [students] accept and whose example they are inspired to emulate".

But under the onslaught of all the overlapping -isms of the past 30 years, only mathematics survives with its integrity unchallenged, writes Sydney Grammar's Dr Bill Pender. "Mathematics collapses completely whenever language is misused or logic is ignored." If only that were the case for all disciplines. Imagine how much clearer life would be and how little need for pendulum extremes.

More here.

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

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7 November, 2004

Mounting discontent with public education in the US?

"A National Guard F-16 fighter plane mistakenly fired off 25 rounds of ammunition at the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School in South New Jersey on Wednesday night.

The pilot was meant to fire the rounds some 3 1/2 miles away at a military target range, Lt. Col. Roberta Niedt of the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs told reporters in the Jersey shore township's police headquarters.

No one was injured as school was out and a lone custodian was inside the building when the bullets hit. Damage was minimal as the non-exploding, 20 millimeter bullets left only puncture marks in the school's roof and the asphalt outside the building.

The fighter jet was part of the 113th Wing, District of Columbia Air National Guard assigned to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. An investigation is being conducted into how the pilot mistook the school, located on Frog Pond Road, for a target range".

OK. Joke, joke! -- In case anybody does not get British-style humour

But it did happen



Kicked upstairs

Letter of Nov. 1 in The Pasadena Star News

My experience regarding employment throughout the years is that people are hired to perform a certain function. When a person is hired to do a job and they don't work out, or they are not fit for the job, or they simply don't do the job, that person is let go.

Not so if you're hired by the Pasadena Unified School District. If you fail as a teacher or principal, no worries, you get kicked upstairs. You get a job in the administration office at your same salary, or in some cases an even higher salary. That means the district is paying two salaries for the same job, the one downtown and the one for the replacement.

Why not put these people back in the classroom or get rid of them? They were hired as teachers and should be qualified to teach; otherwise, why were they hired in the first place?

I'd like to see a list of all the positions in the administration office, complete with job descriptions and salaries. I'd also like to know how many of those positions are filled by teachers and principals who failed in the job they were hired to perform. Soon there may be a new position downtown... Assistant to an assistant director in charge of finding positions downtown for failed employees. Enrollment is down and the administration keeps growing. Wake up Pasadena, these jobs are paid for with taxpayer money.

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

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

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6 November, 2004

SUMMERHILL: OLD LEFT NOW INCORRECT

Amusing how yesterday's Leftist "wisdom" eventually gets recognized as bunk. It doesn't say much for today's Leftist "wisdom", however

"The dictum that a pupil who plays with his pencil has a repressed urge to masturbate was just one of the pronouncements made by the late A.S. Neill in Summerhill , the landmark book written by the founder of Britain's most famous progressive school. Controversial and provocative, Neill's explanation of Summerhill's pioneering philosophies is still widely regarded as a bible of liberal education, yet now the book is to be republished with most of its author's words excised. In a decision that has led former pupils to fear for the very survival of the school, the words of one of Britain's most radical educationists are to be bowdlerised in an attempt to make the ethos of Summerhill more palatable to today's parents.

'There is a danger that the school will not survive any softening of Neill's passion and philosophies,' said Nathalie Gensac, a television documentary maker who attended Summerhill from 1976 to 1982. 'Without his beliefs, Summerhill will become like any other ordinary school, and that would be a tragedy.' In the original text, first published in 1962 but now out of print, Neill explained his reasons for creating the independent school that became as famous for allowing its pupils to skip lessons as for the habit of staff and students to sunbathe nude. The new edition, however, will cut Neill's arguments in half, replacing them with a short introduction by Zoe Readhead, principal of Summerhill since 1985 and Neill's daughter.

Neill's beliefs were founded firmly on Freud. In one of the sections that is to be cut, he wrote that 'Summerhill has not turned out a single homosexual... because Summerhill children do not suffer from a guilt complex about masturbation'.

Readhead, however, who successfully appealed against a notice of complaint issued in 2000 by David Blunkett, then Education Secretary, after an Ofsted inspection team found that the school was failing to maintain proper standards, has defended her decision. 'I don't want to be offensive to Neill but he wrote the book in a different time,' she said. 'Perhaps his arguments need to be subtler now.'

Mark Vaughan, a former Summerhill student who co-edited the new book, was the last journalist to interview Neill just months before his death in 1972. 'This is not a question of censoring or editing,' Vaughan said. 'It is not that we went through the original book and took out the bits we didn't like. But Summerhill is a book of the past and it is a credit to Neill that anything he wrote so long ago is still so relevant that it can be reprinted next year'. [I couldn't have put it better myself]

More here



BRITISH EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS EBB AWAY

Learning foreign languages has slumped since the Government allowed secondary schools to make them optional for students over 14, according to a study released yesterday. Three quarters of comprehensives no longer require pupils to take a language at GCSE. Of these, 72 per cent report a decline in the numbers studying French and 70 per cent in German. Only Spanish bucked the trend, with 44 per cent of schools noting an increase in take-up and 44 per cent reporting a decline.

Schools in the poorest areas were the most likely to let children drop foreign languages, according to the survey of 807 secondary schools carried out by Cilt, the National Centre for Languages. Eighty-two per cent of comprehensives in working class areas reported that languages had been made optional after 14, compared with 62 per cent of those in better-off communities. Overall, 85 per cent of schools in which languages were no longer compulsory said that there had been a decline in the numbers of children taking them....

Two thirds of schools used exchange trips and talks to underline the importance of learning languages. Only 7 per cent of grammar schools had made languages optional.

Although 61 per cent of schools in the South had made the subject optional, the figures were 71 per cent in the Midlands and 77 per cent in the North. Among schools that had continued to make languages compulsory, 48 per cent said thjat languages provided children with useful social and employment skills. A third said it was because they achieved good exam results, and a quarter said it was important to give children a broad curriculum.

More here

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

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5 November, 2004

EDUCATIONAL CONFORMITY

There is an excellent post below copied from Prof. Plum. The sad part about it is that a man who is simply advocating proper scientific skepticism has to present himself as a bit of a nut

"At a gathering of ed school professors (I believe we were tucking into a bucket of pork rinds at the time)--I asked my whole language colleagues if I could see their research. Apparently this was rude. One of them expanded like a disgruntled adder and made frightening noises with her cheeks-the ones attached to her face. She said she had 20 years experience teaching whole language and was an expert. [ONE year experience 20 times.]

Then I did something really perverted--at a teleconference. All the ed schools in the state were watching big shots from the department of public instruction tell us that new teachers would no longer be evaluated by their principal but by a portfolio read by two consultants. I thought, "How come? Talk about expensive! Ho, boy. Another useless `innovation.'"

Well, this was a "conference," so I figured I'd do a bit of conferring. I had a cold and my voice came out like the little girl's in Exorcist. Pea soupy, if you catch my drift. I asked, "Do you have any data showing that portfolio assessment results in better judgments of teacher quality than the judgment of a principal and mentor who see a new teacher all year?"

The images on the screen began to cough and look at each other. [Actually, I believe they looked first, then coughed.] I heard whispering on the screen and all around me. The colleagues were restless. Then the screen images offered a detailed and informative answer. "Ahem ahem oh yes yes yes oh indeed yes, and so forth."

The wheels came off pretty quick after that, and we were told the show was over. Afterwards, four or five of my collards accosted me and said, "That was inappropriate" and "You were not respectful." I replied, "Nice hat," or something equally charming. That was my first lesson in the politics and intellectual dishonesty in education. Forced consensus. Shut up and go along. After stupification, the underlying power relations become invisible. Indeed, desirable. Ed perfessers come to like Big Brother. He takes care of them. Defends them from the wolves who are onto the game.

Over the next few years I read the websites and syllabi from hundreds of ed schools. I reviewed the literature in whole language, constructivism, "authentic assessments," learning styles, and multiple intelligences-and other "pedagogies" that struck my cynical nature as weird beyond belief. I even tried to figure out what "brain based learning" was-because, I reasoned, "What OTHER organ WOULD be involved? Before brain-based learning was there BUTTOCKS based learning? Sure they ARE similar. Two hemispheres. A nearby segment of spine. A division down the middle. An apparatus for speaking your mind. But usually you can tell which is which. Just look for a hat!"

Then my graduate assistant and I began working on our own. We suggested to all the elementary schools in the county that they could raise reading achievement for all kids if they used better curricula-in fact, Reading Mastery, starting in kindergarten, and Corrective Reading for kids at least one year behind, starting in grade three. Within two years, 20 out of 23 schools did just that, and got those results".



OPPOSITION TO CHARTER SCHOOLS

The Gadfly sums it up very succinctly:

This is the New York Times' idea of a balanced story on charter schooling? We'd hate to see the biased story . . . oh, wait, we already did (click here). For weeks, we've heard rumors that the Times might be considering a follow-up to correct some of the more blatant problems with its August hatchet job on charter schools, filed by the American Federation of Teachers. The basic premise of this story seems to be that charters schools weren't initially controversial, but now they are, as school failures have caused previously supportive teachers' unions and others to rethink their support. The counter argument-that charters are now "controversial" because they now are numerous enough, and successful enough, to threaten the system's interests-is never considered. Note that the author refers to states such as Delaware and Connecticut as places where charters "enjoy broad support" because those states have tough charter oversight schemes. It's never mentioned that both states also severely limit the number of charters that can operate and that charter students account for small portions of the total student population in those states (four and less than one percent, respectively). So the message from the system is, yes, let's have charters, so long as they don't represent real competition to us or threaten our chokehold on education. That's why we hope that charters remain controversial, threatening, competitive, and all the other things the New York Times regards with horror.

And an excellent letter from one of the Gadfly's readers:

"You lament that Idaho's charter schools are funded at only 60-70 percent of the per-pupil cost of the state's traditional public schools and suggest their funding be raised toward parity ("New Idaho charter rules a start"). You're right, but you miss the important example set by all charter schools when they operate successfully at a cost far less than their traditional public counterparts.

Comparable private schools operate at between 60 and 65 percent of the cost of the traditional public schools. Similarly, schools abroad also operate at a cost of 65-70 percent of those in the U.S. The public schools' cost bloat exposed by this evidence is the ignored elephant in the corner of the education establishment.

When charter schools operate successfully at far less cost, they, too, expose this cost bloat. That is the real reason the establishment opposes their creation, limits their growth, and hobbles them with regulations. When charter schools become funded on parity with the traditional public schools, they will have become part of the public education problem, rather than a solution to it. Idaho's charter schools are doing very well, thank you, while operating at a cost far less than the public schools. Too bad others in the U.S. are not doing the same".

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

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

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4 November, 2004

AMERICA'S MUSLIM-LOVING UNIVERSITIES

They much prefer aggressive foreign Muslims to law-abiding American conservatives

"A mob of Arab students at San Francisco State University attacked a group of College Republicans on the San Francisco State University campus at noon today during a "Turnout the Vote" event in front of the campus student union building.

Derek Wray, President of the SFSU College Republicans, told Front Page Magazine that an angry mob of Palestinian students attacked the club's table, as well as individual members of the Republican club who were handing out pro-Bush/Cheney campaign materials. According to Wray, campus police were nearby, but "just stood around watching and, instead of protecting the College Republican students from the mob that was pouring drinks on our table and materials, and even physically assaulting our members, only suggested that the campus Republicans leave rather than arrest those responsible for the violence."

Wray said the incident began when four Palestinian women from the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) on the S.F. State campus approached the CRs' table and began a verbal tirade. "You and the Jews want to kill all the Muslims!" one screamed at Wray. "You and Ariel Sharon want to kill innocent Palestinian babies." A larger crowd of male Arab students then joined in creating a threatening mob in front of the table.

"When one of the Republican students asked one of the women that if she hated America so much, why she didn't leave, she screamed at him `I have some pride. I would strap a bomb on myself and blow myself up as a suicide bomber rather than call myself an American,'"according to Wray. He said the woman also ranted that terrorists are "freedom fighters."

"One woman said she'd blow up the College Republicans on campus," Wray continued. "They began throwing food at us and even tried to tip over our table." The campus police did nothing. Instead of separating them from our table, they kept pulling me aside and asking if we were willing to leave."

One of the Arab women even began hitting one of the male college Republicans who deflected her blows with his arms. "She got right into his face screaming and trying to hit him. When he deflected one of her blows she then yelled to the male Arabs present that the Republican student was hitting a woman." This is a tactic used frequently in demonstrations lately, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators send women in to physically assault demonstrators from opposing groups then claim that women are being attacked when they are physically stopped by victims....

The GUPS have attacked Jewish students and groups before on the S.F.S.U. campus, but this is the first time they attacked a group of conservative students, most of whom are not Jewish, because of their political views. Over a year ago, Jewish students had to be physically escorted off campus by 25 San Francisco city police officers during a pro-Israel rally on campus because of threats of violence by Palestinian and Muslim students there. Tatiana Menaker, one of the Jewish students involved, was later expelled by the administration for five years for hurling an epithet during the attack on the Jewish students, a sentence dropped by the administration after Front Page Magazine reported on what occurred on her situation. In addition, Hatem Bazian, a history professor at UC Berkeley who recently called for an "Intifada" in America was a former member and officer of the GUPS.

More here



AUTHORITARIAN EDUCATION

In an article published recently in Columbia University's Teachers College Record (which bills itself modestly as "The Voice of Scholarship in Education"), Drew University English professor Merrill Maguire Skaggs explained why she felt justified in making it a requirement in one of her classes that students register and vote. She wrote that while attending a meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education earlier this year, she was dismayed to learn that only 37 percent of college students had voted in the 2000 presidential election. From that, Prof. Skaggs concluded that if students participated in elections in greater numbers, they had "the capacity to swing an election." But because relatively few students vote, candidates do not "bother to address student issues thoroughly."

Feeling the need to do something, Prof. Skaggs hit on the idea of requiring all of her English students to vote. Although she tosses in such bromides as "citizenship comes first" (quoting a martial arts instructor who required all of his students to register and vote), she makes no effort to conceal the fact that her motivation was personal: "For me, making what I myself could consider a meaningful gesture was the important thing--the personal satisfaction of finding something I could do."

So is this a good thing to do? Should professors across the country (not to mention martial arts instructors) adopt Skaggs's idea and make voting mandatory? Is this a laudable attempt to promote good citizenship - or an indefensible abuse of power for personal satisfaction?

I take the latter view.

The job of an English professor is to teach English. That's it. Adding non-academic requirements to a course is objectionable, no matter how important the professor may believe them to be. Suppose that another English professor who feels passionately that students need to get in better physical shape (for their own benefit, and also to reduce the strain that overweight, sickly people put on our semi-socialist health-care system) mandates that in order to pass the course, all students must be able to run a mile in less than eight minutes. Undoubtedly, this is a "meaningful gesture" in the critical war against obesity. True, getting in shape for the run would take a lot more time from the students than registering and voting, but it's a difference only in degree, not in kind.

Such a fitness requirement would be roundly condemned as none of the professor's business. I can see no reason to regard a voting requirement differently......

Skaggs says that "it's time for students to seize their power." Alas, the chief problem with the United States is rooted in groups "seizing their power" and using the political system to help them get what they want, inevitably at the expense of others. With her "you must vote because I say so" attitude, she has set a bad example and given a small boost to the authoritarianism she thinks she is combating.

More here.

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

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

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3 November, 2004

"PRO-CHOICE" ON ABORTION BUT NOT "PRO-CHOICE" ON EDUCATION?

How very strange -- NOT

Feminists are challenged to support school choice: "Feminist groups are out of touch with women on the issue of education, concludes a new study by Carrie L. Lukas for the Independent Women's Forum (IWF). Lukas points out that women, children, and communities benefit from school choice policies, yet feminist groups oppose vouchers and tax credits and offer only tepid support for public school choice programs. Lukas urges women's groups to return from their 'recess from reality' and support school choice."



FUN!

Real reform of Leftist bastions coming in Australia

Education Minister Brendan Nelson will use the Howard Government's new Senate majority to push through sweeping changes to the academic workplace and centralise in Canberra power over universities. Unveiling his second-term agenda yesterday, Dr Nelson signalled he would pursue some of the most contentious parts of his higher education package watered down in the Senate last year.

The changes are likely to provoke widespread industrial unrest on campuses and lead to a stoush with the states. Dr Nelson wants to outlaw compulsory membership of student unions, by reintroducing a voluntary student unionism bill that has been defeated many times in the Senate. He will also extend the use of Australian Workplace Agreements in what academic unions will see as an attack on the sacred cow of tenure. And he wants to ban strike action that damages "innocent third parties".

Dr Nelson said he wanted universities to have greater freedom on the employment mix within their institutions, using full-time, part-time and casual staff. "We strongly want to drive this performance culture and financial rewards for performance culture," he said. "I also strongly believe that every academic, every employee of the university should be free to be represented by a union. "But equally if they wish to negotiate their own working arrangements ... they are surely capable of negotiating their own employment arrangements if they choose to."....

He told The Australian yesterday he would approach the states to discuss having all legislative acts governing universities - presently enacted by each state - transferred to the commonwealth, a move that would finish what former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam started when the federal government took over university funding and policy in the 1970s. Universities are established under state acts, which gives the states control over their borrowing, their commercial activities, part of their governing councils and financial accountability. "Too often ... the states see universities as quasi government departments," Dr Nelson said. "I think there are unnecessary restrictions on commercial activities." .....

Carolyn Allport, president of the peak National Tertiary Education Union, said that after the exhaustive negotiations to get the Government's initial higher education package through the Senate last year, Dr Nelson's opening gambit was not productive. "If the Government wants to come after us again I can assure you we are well up to it and we will hold our sites," Dr Allport said.

The National Union of Students has predicted the demise of student unions on campus under voluntary student unionism. NUS president Jodie Jansen said this would not only mean the loss of important services for students, but also threaten their representation on many boards and committees.

Dr Nelson said the most important thing for Australian higher education was to exceed international benchmarks and be competitive on quality. That required money, less regulation, and having flexible work practices.

More here

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

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

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2 November, 2004

EXCEPT FOR THE BRIGHTEST KIDS, PHONICS IS THE KEY TO READING

Continuation of the century-old "whole word" strategy can a only be explained as putting ideology before children's welfare

I began referring to the sight word/whole language foolishness ("Foolishness?". Actually I consider it a criminal act against the children and the culture of this nation) as the "I Haven't Had That Word Yet" method. I encourage my students to either: work hard and become skilled at phonetically decoding the Code in which English is written (the only way to read at any level above a middle-third/early-fourth grade), or.OR. plan their honeymoon around my schedule so that I can accompany them and help them read the ".(I haven't had that word yet).[menu].menu!"

Since I believe the adage that "The first step towards solving a problem is to find some humor in it," I tease and the students soon respond to my "joke," my challenge, with laughter and a strengthened determination to learn the phonograms; to decode with automaticity in the shortest timeframe possible. They swear that they will never let me accompany them on their honeymoon. [Whew! I haven't had to attend even one thus far.]

Poor readers feel their limitations and live compromised lives. They are embarrassed at having to ask for words that they "haven't had yet," but still too many educators fall for the fallacy that if only students experience good literature and have fun in reading class, they will, by osmosis, just naturally learn to read. Too many educators believe that the brain is wired for learning to read as it is naturally wired for learning language. It is not. Louisa Cook Moats, in Speech to Print, explains:

Alphabets, systems that use symbols for individual speech sounds, were invented little more than 3,000 years ago. It is understandable, then, that learning to read is not as natural or biologically "wired in" as are speaking and listening and that reading must be taught directly to most children over several years through formal education. Our brains are not as fully evolved for the processing of written language as they are for the processing of spoken language, and, therefore, learning to read and write are much more challenging for most of us than learning to speak. (pg 3)

Another problem is that many instructors and professors involved with teacher training accept money from parents and taxpayers (who have the right to expect that teacher-training establishments actually train teachers to teach), then purposely fail to accomplish what they have been paid to do. Such instructors feel no responsibility to drop their pet prejudices and foolish schemes; to research reading with an open mind; to send young teachers out into the schools skilled in teaching children how to read - logically, systematically, explicitly.

Instead, teachers leave college with no idea about what needs to occur in order to produce a good reader, or how to teach those skills, strategies and processes. I know, for I left college having no idea, and taught for several years lacking the knowledge and skills that I needed. Had I not done my own research, paid for my own training with Spalding, learned from every child with whom I came into contact, I would still be a caring, hardworking, highly motivated, but very ineffective reading teacher....

It is completely unfortunate that the control of so many teacher-training programs lies in the hands of those with gimmicks and snake oil. Teaching reading is not so very difficult once one understands what needs to be done. My best friend (who is not a teacher) spent a few hours with me to learn the whys and wherefores, then read a couple books that I suggested. Following the fastest 'teacher training' program on record, she proceeded to skillfully teach her two homeschooled children to not only read, but to read far above grade level, and to love reading in the process....

School children are burdened with defects brought about by dangerous methods devised by fools who have forgotten, or have chosen to ignore, the fact that once .ONCE. Americans, as a whole, were not only literate, but were enthusiastic, skilled readers capable of reading, pondering, and arguing the points in newspaper articles such as The Federalist Papers.

It is completely unfortunate that the federal government has violated the U.S. Constitution by stealing local control from states and communities in order to establish the ineffective, illegal, and immoral public schooling system in which children are caught in a web of destruction as parents too often look on in anger but feel helpless, unable to act. Let us seriously work towards closing the State educational system. Let us then work to replace it with small, autonomous, local schools having no obligation, and no right, to: teach State curriculum; answer to State demands; mold and warp young minds by whim or State order; destroy a culture by Federal mandate.

More here



POOR KIDS CAN LEARN -- IF TREATED NON-BUREAUCRATICALLY

Encouraging school flexibility and encouraging effort are the keys

The education establishment would have us believe that poor children can't learn. The excuses are numerous. But across the nation dozens of principals of low-income schools have demonstrated that poverty is no excuse for academic failure. I recently studied more than a hundred high-performing, high-poverty schools to identify those practices that can make any school a center of academic excellence, regardless of its particular student composition. In general, I looked for schools where at least 75 percent of the students come from low-income families, but which score above the 66th percentile on national exams. Typically, schools of this profile score below the 35th percentile.

The schools themselves are a diverse lot. Three of them are charter schools. Three are private. One is religious. One is rural. Fifteen are public schools that draw a majority of their students from the same local attendance zones where other public schools are failing. These 21 schools are a foretaste of what choice and competition would bring to education in America. Their success demonstrates that by taking back the freedom that most schools have long-since relinquished to bureaucracies, teachers' unions, and a hopeless degree of regulation, some schools possess the intelligence, the inventiveness, and the willpower to achieve.....

Achievement is the key to discipline. In a "command-and-control" approach, discipline is limited by the number of guards hired. But when discipline and order come from within, everybody is part of the solution. Nothing inspires confidence like success and the school's own success helps create order and discipline among its students. Parents must make the home a center of learning. Achievement is a choice that parents make, too. In high-poverty schools, lack of parental involvement is often the easiest excuse for poor performance. So principals of high-performing schools have parents sign contracts that they will support their children's efforts to learn. Effective parents read to their children, check their homework, and ask after their assignments.

Effort creates ability. Education is hard work, and great principals demand that their students and their teachers work hard. Longs days, extended years, after-school programs, weekend programs, and summer school are all features of outstanding schools. And in high-performing schools, no student is advanced without a clear demonstration of mastery. Students must fulfill very specific course requirements in order to advance either in class or on to the next grade level. No exemptions. No excuses.

Conclusion. It bears repeating that many of these high-performing, high-poverty schools are public schools. The great tragedy is that all of them achieved their success in spite of the structure of our education system, and not because of it. No educational system can be deemed healthy if it thwarts the efforts of committed reformers, as ours so frequently does. The men and women who buck the system of public education are the kinds of leaders and educational entrepreneurs that America needs more of if we are to improve education--especially for low-income children. Conservatives tend to focus on the benefits of school choice between schools. But few consider the benefits of choice and competition within the schools themselves. When principals and teachers are encouraged to perform at their best, any school can improve. Only by encouraging and rewarding achievement--rather than mediocrity--within the four walls of every schoolhouse will our classrooms provide the kind of opportunity that all children in a free society deserve.

More here

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

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

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1 November, 2004

ACADEMIC DETACHMENT

I think that's what they call it:

A part-time college instructor has apologized for kicking a student wearing a Republican sweatshirt in an off-campus incident. Fort Lewis College student Mark O'Donnell said he was showing people his College Republicans sweatshirt, which said "Work for us now ... or work for us later," when Maria Spero kicked him. After kicking him, Spero said "she should have kicked me harder and higher," said O'Donnell. In a police report, O'Donnell said Spero kicked him in the right calf.

Durango Police Sgt. Mitch Higgins said Saturday that O'Donnell wanted to press charges against Spero and a misdemeanor summons would be issued. "To physically take that out on someone because you disagree with them, that is completely wrong," said O'Donnell.

David Eppich, assistant to the president of the college, said the college has formally apologized for the incident. He said an investigation indicated Spero, a visiting instructor of modern languages, did not know O'Donnell was a student and she has apologized. "I acted entirely inappropriately by kicking you, giving vent to a thoughtless knee-jerk political reaction that should never have happened. I apologize for my untoward comments. Before the incident, I did not know you and that you are a Fort Lewis student. I am entirely sorry. I am ashamed of my behavior, and I hope you will accept my apology," Spero said in a letter to O'Donnell dated Oct. 29.

O'Donnell said the apology wasn't enough, and he planned to file a complaint with the college. "I just think that students are held accountable for how they act and what they do in town. They can have actions brought against them. It is imperative that professors should be held accountable for their actions in town and on campus," he said.

Source



NEA Gave Over A Million To Kerry, Faces IRS Audit

(Post lifted from Captain's Quarters)

The National Education Association has been busy this election cycle, the Washington Times reports. The teachers union has spent over a million dollars in direct support for John Kerry and $2.78 million supporting Democrats overall, prompting the IRS to investigate its tax-exempt status:

The National Education Association (NEA) pumped more than $1 million into 67 mailings for the Kerry-Edwards presidential ticket and against President Bush in the past four months, Federal Election Commission reports show.

Twenty-one NEA mailings in behalf of the Kerry campaign, produced by an Arlington firm whose clients include the Democratic Party, went out to hundreds of thousands of public school employees across the country this month at a cost of $468,333. The union paid for all the mailings from its general operating budget, not its political action committee, the reports show.

Now that presents two problems. First, using the same production firm as the DNC indicates possible collusion (termed "illegal coordination" by McCain-Feingold) in advocacy efforts. Second and more to the point for the IRS, spending the money out of the NEA's general budget instead of its political-action committee violates campaign-finance regulating the influence of corporations and unions, I believe. Conservative teachers have called for reform of the union's political activities as well:

In a July interview, NEA President Reg Weaver said about one-third of the union's 2.7 million dues-paying members are Democrats, one-third are Republicans and one-third are independents.

FEC reports show that only four Republican congressional candidates received money from the NEA's political action committee from April through July - Sens. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Reps. C.W. Bill Young of Florida and Jim Kolbe of Arizona. ...

"We need to look toward spending political action committee funds more equitably between the political parties," said Diane Lenning, an English teacher from California and past chairman of the NEA Republican Educators Caucus. "The NEA's teachers speak of fairness, diversity and free speech. Therefore, we need to look toward equal representation of funds spent among candidates across the country from local to national levels," Mrs. Lenning said.

The NEA's almost-complete Democratic support comes as no surprise, and its motivations are easily understood. The efforts at educational reform have unnerved union leaders due to the administration's determination to hold schools responsible for their performance -- a philosophy that threatens to undermine the ridiculous "tenure" model that makes removal of ineffective teachers an almost impossible task.

But what they truly fear is an effort to implement a school-voucher plan that would for the first time create a competitive market for educating the children of working families instead of just the richest families in America. Competition would either force public schools to reform themselves and their evaluation processes or face obsolescence. Good teachers, of course, could find work in a boom of private-school openings that vouchers would create or negotiate better conditions for themselves at the public schools that would want to hang onto them. The effect of the NEA's opposition to change is to protect the least competent among them, a fact not lost on several teachers I know personally.

The NEA has gone all out to prevent any meaningful reform of our public education system, and they have done so by overwhelmingly supporting John Kerry and other Democrats. That should tell you all you need to know about which party can be trusted to bring change and improvement to the education of our children.

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

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

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