Christmas is just 30 days away, but Santa Claus won't be stopping by Florida Gulf Coast University this holiday. He's not allowed on campus. FGCU administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest, which is being replaced by an ugly sweater competition. In Griffin Hall, the university's giving tree for needy preschoolers has been transformed into a "giving garden." The moves boil down to political correctness.
"Public institutions, including FGCU, often struggle with how best to observe the season in ways that honor and respect all traditions," President Wilson Bradshaw wrote in a memo to faculty and staff Thursday. "This is a challenging issue each year at FGCU, and 2008 is no exception. While it may appear at times that a vocal majority of opinion is the only view that is held, this is not always the case."
Bradshaw's directive struck a chord with FGCU employees. The Staff Advisory Council received 44 anonymous comments on the issue; all were against the ban on holiday decorations. "It says people are very passionate about this," said council president Ruth Rodrigues, who also is director of auxiliary services. "The holidays are a joyous time, and they want to express themselves." The council voted Monday to send administration a letter outlining employees' comments.
In Bradshaw's memo, he said the decision was not an "attempt to suppress expression of the holiday spirit." Staffers will be permitted to display holiday decorations on their desks, but not on their office doors or in common spaces. Traditional workplace Christmas parties are not an issue at FGCU. "We don't generally have Christmas parties here," said Audrea Anderson, associate vice president for community relations and marketing. "There are end-of-the-semester parties or end-of-the-calendar-year parties. They are certainly not related to anyone's beliefs." Bradshaw plans to convene a committee in 2009 to address future methods of sharing traditions throughout the year.
In 2001, then-President William Merwin lit the university's official Christmas tree, a 22-foot Colorado blue spruce. Children from the college's child care center and university choir performed traditional carols. Junior Marilyn Lerner, a 20-year-old resort and hospitality management major from California, said she'll miss seeing Christmas trees in the Student Union. "I think they're pretty," said Lerner, who is Jewish. "It's just a Christmas tree. I don't mind."
Neither does junior Stephanie Tirado, 20, an education major from New York. "Christmas is no longer just a religious holiday. It's commercialized now," said Tirado, who is Wiccan. "Why don't they just add a menorah then?"
Dumbing down of exams leaves students `unable to deal with real problems'
Britain sliding towards mediocrity, says report
The "catastrophic slippage" in the standard of science exams is deplored by leading scientists in a report sent today to MPs. The Royal Society of Chemistry says that the system is failing a generation of school-leavers by setting them undemanding exams. It says: "The record-breaking results in school exam passes are illusory, with these deficiencies having to be remedied at enormous expense by universities and employers."
The society set up an online Downing Street petition that was signed in the first 24 hours by more than 1,700 people, including Susan Blackmore, the psychologist, Adam Hart-Davis, the broadcaster, and the chemistry author Peter Atkins. The petition says: "Science examination standards at UK schools have eroded so severely that the testing of problem-solving, critical thinking and the application of mathematics has almost disappeared. Even bright students with enthusiastic teachers are being compelled to learn to the test, answering undemanding questions to satisfy the needs of league tables and national targets. This system is failing an entire generation, which will be unequipped to address key issues facing society."
The society undertook an experiment by asking schools to nominate their most gifted students to sit an online examination immediately after their GCSEs. Chemistry questions were selected from O-level and GCSE papers from the 1960s to this decade. More than 1,300 pupils took part. The researchers found that many highly intelligent teenagers were unfamiliar with solving the types of questions on the older papers. They achieved, on average, 35 per cent on the most recent papers and only 15 per cent on the exams from the 1960s.
The report said: "Changes to the syllabus and to the language used in examinations since the 1960s may partially explain this progression, but are unlikely to provide a complete explanation. Questions needing multiple mathematical steps, without prompting, were answered least well."
Richard Pike, the society's chief executive, said: "The target of our campaign is a failed education system, not the youngsters it is supposed to serve. There has to be revolutionary change; otherwise, this country will continue to slide down the slippery slope to mediocrity."
The report sent to MPs said that the style of exam questions had changed over the decades. "There is now a greater emphasis on the processes and implications of scientific inquiry. Such changes should be welcomed; however, it is important that this can include stretching talented students and preparing them for a possible career in science," it said. "The 2008 GCSE results for chemistry and science were in keeping with the continuing remarkable performance of pupils."
In this summer's GCSE exams, 94 per cent of students achieved a grade C or higher in chemistry, according to provisional figures, up from 91 per cent last year. More than half were awarded the top grades of A* or A.
The report's authors said that there had been, in recent years, "increased emphasis placed on the context and application of scientific knowledge to problems in the real world". They added: "While this represents an improvement over more traditional education approaches, which relied heavily on recall of isolated chemical facts, the lack of quantitative content in the GCSE curriculum means that an A or A* can be attained with little manipulation of numbers. The inevitable outcome is that pupils will not be able to develop better logic and problem-solving abilities, and their appreciation of the context of science will be, at best, superficial."
Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, said: "The Royal Society of Chemistry is only the latest independent body to warn of the devaluation of science education. We've slipped ten places in the international league tables for science, and children are being asked questions that show our curriculum isn't preparing them for the challenges for the 21st century."
More British state teachers quitting jobs for better working life in independant schools
State school teachers are fleeing to the independent sector in record numbers to escape big classes and Government targets, it emerged yesterday. Staff who moved over from state primaries and secondaries now make up one in four teachers in private schools following a surge in recruitment over the past decade. Private schools employ more than 14 per cent of all teachers despite educating just eight per cent of pupils, according to research presented to an education conference yesterday. The National Union of Teachers accused the Government of driving teachers out of state schools by failing to clamp down on large classes and persisting with a testing and target-setting regime.
Academics who conducted the study said the 'poaching' of experienced teachers by independent schools had 'negative' effects on the state system. Figures from the universities of Kent and London School of Economics showed that the number of teachers transferring from state to fee-paying schools outstripped the numbers moving in the opposite direction by 1,500 last year. In 1994, the figure was just 400. In total, some 2,000 teachers transferred to independent schools last year - up from 600 in 1994. Out of 45,000 to 50,000 private school teachers, 12,000 - around a quarter - previously worked in the state sector.
The sharp upturn in little more than a decade is partly down to the expansion of the independent sector over the past 10 years due to rising pupil numbers. But they have also invested heavily in staffing, enabling them to reduce class sizes while raising recruitment of pupils.
Research co-authored by Francis Green, professor of economics at Kent University, found that independent schools tend to employ better-qualified teachers. They are also able to attract a significantly greater share of teachers in shortage subjects such as the sciences than the state system. 'There is no doubt that the rising resources flowing to independent schools have raised the quality of the education input in these schools,' the study concluded.
John Bangs, the NUT's head of education, criticised levels of 'poaching' by the independent sector. He said the Government must learn a 'massive lesson'. Mr Bangs said: 'Many teachers go into the independent sector because they feel the professional freedom and smaller class sizes are something they want, and they want to escape from the heavy duty accountability culture in the state sector. 'There's a massive lesson for the Government. 'The Government needs to ask itself what is driving some of our most talented teachers into independent schools.'
Presenting the figures at the Westminster Education Forum yesterday, Professor Green urged independent schools that 'attract an experienced teacher away from the maintained sector' to ensure that top staff are shared with local state schools.
However David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council said fee-paying schools were willing to forge links with state schools and share teaching expertise but warned that it 'takes two to tango', implying some comprehensive heads are reluctant to work with their fee-paying counterparts.
Mr Lyscom also sounded a warning that new laws requiring fee-paying schools to pass a public benefit test in order to retain their charitable status could lead to perverse consequences. It raised the prospect of a boys' school failing the test if charitable activities involved girls from neighbouring state schools. 'What I am worried about is a narrow legislative approach to decide what can count and can't count by looking at the articles of individual charities and trying to interpret what they do within the legal terms of their status. 'For example, I worry that if a boys' school does an activity with a girls' school, it won't be counted because it is not part of the purpose of their charity.'
Mr Lyscom said it will be unfortunate when 'hard-pressed heads have to look at what they are doing and if it's not regarded as being positive have to look for other opportunities'.
Student testing 'gets best results' says New Yorker visiting Australia
TESTING literacy and numeracy is vital to helping students complete high school and continue their education into adulthood, says the head of New York's education department, Joel Klein. In Australia at the invitation of the federal Government, Mr Klein yesterday dismissed concerns that publicly reporting test results between peer groups of schools meant students only mastered what was in the tests.
"What we've found is that kind of mastery is significant, and has the most significant impact on students' achievement," he told The Australian. "We're finding right now with student progress that you can seea direct correlation with likelihood of a student graduating and making it to post-secondary education." Mr Klein is a leading proponent of using tests to measure the improvement of students and school performance, and publicly reporting the results to share expertise and hold schools to account. Even among high-performing schools in New York, Mr Klein said lifting students' test scores by 0.2 points increased their chances of graduating by 15 points.
Punchbowl Boys High School principal Jihad Dib said increased literacy and numeracy testing had been a key part of a remarkable turnaround in student performance at his school. "We put literacy and numeracy in every activity and I always ask teachers where that component is," Mr Dib said.
During Mr Klein's week-long visit in Australia, sponsored by global financial firm UBS, he will promote the tools underpinning the accountability system adopted in in New York. He addressed a forum in Melbourne yesterday on leading transformational change in schools, will address the National Press Club in Canberra today, and tomorrow will speak at a corporate dinner hosted by UBS on strengthening the links between business and schools.
Mr Klein's visit comes ahead of a looming showdown between the commonwealth and states and territories at the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments on Saturday over the reporting of school performance.
Addressing the forum yesterday, Mr Klein was effusive in his praise for Education Minister Julia Gillard, and described her speech outlining the Government's commitment to transparency in schools as one of the "greatest" on education reform he had heard. "The level of courage in a public official isn't as rare as I sometimes thought," he said. He warned that any changes depended on political will.
Ms Gillard said yesterday the Government was still working on the final form of school reports, but she envisaged a paper report for parents on their child, and a website on schools. Ms Gillard made it clear the Government would not bow to pressure from the states and teaching unions over reporting school results. "We want a new era of transparency so that parents and taxpayers know what is happening in Australian schools," she said. "I want to see a system where parents can get full information about schools in their local community which (they) can compare with similar schools around the nation."
In her speech, Ms Gillard acknowledged concerns over reporting school results, saying publishing test performances "out of context can be misleading". But she said Australia had failed to grasp that it was not appropriate for information on students' learning to be held by schools and government but not made available to the community. "I absolutely reject the proposition that somehow I am smart enough to understand information and parents and community members are somehow too dumb," she said. Ms Gillard said boosting teacher quality was key to improving standards, especially at schools in disadvantaged areas that did not attract their share of good teachers.
Mr Klein received a mixed response from the 100-strong group of educators and policymakers at the Melbourne forum. While teachers generally supported boosting accountability and empowering parents, president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association Andrew Blair was concerned that tests for ranking schools were simplistic. Mr Blair said measurements of performance should cover multiple methodologies, beyond "raw grabs" of test data.
Mr Klein said multiple measurements risked covering up underperformance. "The more we have multiple measures the risk is we dilute the power of accountability," he said. "What matters isn't finding the perfect indicator, but settling on a consistent intelligent method of assessing outputs and tracking them."
Mr Klein trumpeted the importance of mathematics and literature, and defended tests as being effective in teaching higher order thinking beyond the test itself.
It was important to empower parents with information. "Don't believe for a second that when you provide them with the information and the transparency, that parents won't become the greatest advocates for their kids. Sure, it will make you uncomfortable to think your kid isn't in a great school, but it will make you much more uncomfortable not to know that."
In an interview with The Australian, Mr Klein said the key was to measure progress in groups of like schools, to give information to parents and identify the most effective teaching practices.
An analysis of middle schools in New York found that almost regardless of the level of achievement at which students started, students in 90per cent of schools lost ground in their results from year to year. But in 10 per cent of schools, student results improved. "We learn by studying that 10per cent and particularly wondering why students in one out of 10 schools are moving forward," he said. "We analyse different results from different teachers, and how some are getting steady progress of students, and use that information to support teachers and improve their work. That's the power of accountability systems; to shine a spotlight right on the best practice. There is no question about it."
Mr Klein said three basic tools of accountability underlined his system: a progress report measuring student improvement; a quality review of schools; and surveys of parents, students and teachers.
Students see instructors in explicit photos, drinking alcohol, discussing sex online
As part of a disturbing new trend, America's public-school teachers are increasingly posting questionable and even sexually explicit information on video-sharing websites and social networks frequented by youth. According to several nationwide reports, students often search for their teachers on MySpace and Facebook, and some find more information about their instructors than they ever expected. The National Education Association listed a number of cases, while news outlets have been consistently reporting similar incidents, including the following:
Virginia - Monacan High School art teacher Stephen Murmer posted pictures of what he called "butt art" on YouTube in January 2007. He painted his buttocks and genitals and pressed them onto canvas. Many students saw his painting before the school fired him. He then contacted the ACLU and sued the district, saying it violated his First Amendment rights. Murmer reached a $65,000 settlement with the district.
A kindergarten teacher from Prince William County, Va., posted a video of a half-nude man having an orgasm in the shower, the Washington Post reported. Another Prince William County substitute teacher used MySpace to post photos of a woman lifting her dress, showing lingerie and flashing breasts.
Florida - Band director Scott Davis of Broward County posted explicit material about sex and drugs on his MySpace profile. He was later dismissed by the school.
Also Florida middle-school teacher John Bush was fired from his position after officials discovered "offensive" and "unacceptable" photos on MySpace.
Palm Beach County, Fla., kindergarten teacher Meghan Buckley posted photos on Facebook of herself drinking and having a friend spank her buttocks, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Special-education teacher Andrew Summerlin, also of Palm Beach County, described himself as "super horny" and an "A++" in bed.
Colorado - An English teacher was fired for posting explicit sexual poetry on MySpace.
Tennessee - Nashville teacher Margaret Thompson posted "racy pictures" on her MySpace profile.
Massachusetts - Teacher Keath Driscoll referred to women as "whores" and posted photographs of alcohol consumption and "sexually suggestive" pictures. He was originally fired, but the Massachusetts Teachers Association sued. Driscoll received his job back, with back pay, seniority and benefits.
Georgia - Atlanta high school football coach Donald Shockley used his school computer to store pictures of an assistant principal wearing lingerie and posing provocatively. Shockley asked a student to use his computer for work, and the teen posted the pictures on the Internet and distributed them to his peers. The coach was later fired.
Ohio - According to the Columbus Dispatch, one teacher described herself as "an aggressive freak in bed," "sexy" and "an outstanding kisser," while another instructor said she had "gotten drunk," "taken drugs" and "gone skinny-dipping" in October last year. Both teachers posted their accounts on MySpace.
Maryland - In April, Montgomery County special education teacher posted a picture of talking sperm on her Facebook profile and used a slang term for oral sex, the Washington Post reported. Another teacher, Alina Espinosa of Clopper Mill Elementary School, included the following in her "about me" section: "I only have two feelings: hunger and lust. Also, I slept with a hooker. Be jealous. I like to go onto Jdate [an online dating service for Jewish people] and get straight guys to agree to sleep with me."
North Carolina - In the latest case, the Charlotte Observer reports a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher may be fired for "posting derogatory comments about students on Facebook." According to the report, four other instructors have been disciplined for using the social network for posts showing "poor judgment and bad taste." One teacher listed drinking as a favorite hobby and described her job as "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte."
Another special-education teacher reportedly used Facebook to write, "I'm feeling p---ed because I hate my students!"
Teachers in several states have been fired or suspended for their postings on social networks, and some challenge their termination in court, citing exercise of free speech. Now teachers' unions are now warning instructors about displaying questionable material.
Michael Simpson, assistant general counsel for the National Education Association, told the Washington Post teachers should think twice before claiming free speech protection under the First Amendment, as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that governments may terminate employees if their speech harms workplace function.
"I hate to think of what's out there," Ken Blackstone, a Prince William, Va., schools spokesman, told the Post. "But as public employees, we all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach."
As Britain launches another Anti-Bullying Week, the author of Reclaiming Childhood says demonising teasing can do more harm than good
This year's anti-bullying week in the UK - with its theme of `Being different, belonging together' - kicks off today. And it provides a powerful reminder that official fretting over children's wellbeing, over the supposedly terrible dangers of bullying in the playground, can do more harm than good, stunting children's developmental growth and harming their social interaction with others.
The annual anti-bullying week is an initiative launched by the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), founded in 2002 by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the National Children's Bureau. The ABA brings together 60 organisations `with the aim of reducing bullying and creating safer environments in which children and young people can live, grow, play and learn'.
At the launch event for anti-bullying week, in the Globe Theatre in London, the secretary of state for children, families and schools, Ed Balls, said: `When I talk to mums and dads, when I talk to children in primary school and secondary school to ask what is really important about school, often they will say that the most important thing is to make sure there isn't bullying.' (1)
In last month's Ofsted survey of more than 150,000 10- to 15-year-olds in England, 39 per cent said they had been bullied at school and over a quarter said bullying was a `significant' concern (2).
In preparation for this year's anti-bullying week, ABA sent every school in England a resource pack to help prepare them for a stream of anti-bullying initiatives and activities. These include an `Ideas for pupils' section, with suggestions such as: `Get everyone in your school to wear blue for the day', and `Get all the people wearing blue into the playground to form different shapes or words - for example "Say No", "No", "Stop", "Stop Bullying", "Be Unique"' (3). The packs also include a `Briefing for school leaders' explaining that the theme `Being different, belonging together' will encourage schools to `open up the central issue of difference in their communities to further scrutiny, and to use Anti-Bullying Week as an opportunity to ask what it is that makes people unique and different, whilst retaining a key focus on what unites and unifies them' (4).
As an aside, surely this slogan sits rather uneasily with the government's anti-obesity drive, and its plan to weigh all children in Reception and Year 6, to see if they are an `acceptable' size? If anything will make children feel different from the `norm', and cut off from their classmates, it will be something like the government's top-down shaming of chubby children and its celebration of slim children. This government measure is likely to encourage overweight and obese children to obsess unnecessarily about their bodies, to feel like failures in comparison to other children and as a drain on the nation's resources. It is striking, and very worrying, that almost a third (32 per cent) of the children in the Ofsted survey said they were concerned `about their body' when asked what worried them most.
However, setting aside government hypocrisy over `differences' between kids, surely it is a laudable aim to try to reduce bullying and create a safer environment for children?
For a small minority of children, bullying is undoubtedly a profound problem. Every year we read tragic news stories about children taking their own lives after years of incessant bullying. In 2004, 13-year-old Laura Rhodes from Neath, South Wales, took a fatal overdose. Her parents said she had been terrified by the bullying and taunts she endured at school every day. That same year, 12-year-old Aaron Armstrong was found hanged in a hayshed at his family farm in County Antrim in Ireland after being bullied at school.
Such stories are heartbreaking - and they are precisely why we need to put the discussion about bullying in some proper perspective. Unlike these tragic cases, much that is defined as bullying today is not bullying at all. It is boisterous banter or everyday playground disputes that could - and should - be resolved without adult intervention. Treating all playground disputes as serious acts of abuse does not help victims of terrible bullying, like Laura or Aaron. Indeed, as I argue in my forthcoming book Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear, it discourages a proper sense of vigilance about real brutality perpetrated by a handful of children in favour of seeing all relationships between all children as somehow problematic.
Today's obsession with bullying is not good for children and it is not good for teachers, either. Teachers are increasingly lumbered with the task of looking after children's health and wellbeing, rather than being allowed to get on with the task of educating them. And children are encouraged to assume that their relationships with other children are damaging, and are tacitly encouraged to look upon their peers with trepidation and suspicion.
As more and more forms of behaviour are labelled as `bullying' - from arguments to group-creation, from name-calling to actual violence - so more and more children come to be labelled as `bullies' or `victims'. Professor Dennis Hayes, co-author of the 2008 book The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, believes anti-bullying policies are making mattes worse. `The more you talk about bullying, the more it sensitises people to every social slight, and the more it becomes a problem', he argues.
In the ABA's school resource pack teachers are told that they need to `keep the signs of bullying in the forefront of their minds' (5). But if teachers become involved in every playground spat or squabble, they will both blow incidents out of proportion and, more worryingly still, undermine children's ability to manage uncomfortable situations.
Some childhood experiences are of course hurtful; and for children, a nasty taunt or a fallout with your best friend can genuinely feel like the end of the world. That does not mean, however, that these experiences actually are harmful. Being left out of a playground game may make a child cry for a week, but by the following week he or she is likely to be involved again and earlier antagonisms will have been forgotten. Children are not emotionally scarred by these experiences: they get over them and move on. Once the experience is labelled as `bullying', however, and a teacher becomes involved and makes it an Official Issue, then it becomes an issue of much greater significance, driving a more permanent wedge between the putative victim and that week's bullies, and making it far harder for the spontaneous dynamics of playground life to resolve themselves.
There is a real danger that by focusing on bullying we can end up denying children the experiences they need to develop. American sociologist William Corsaro shows that conflict, especially arguments and teasing, can `help bring children together and help organise activities': `Recent research on peer conflict among elementary school children shows how disputes are a basic means for construction of social order, cultivating, testing and maintaining friendships, and developing and displaying social identity. Disputes, teasing and conflict can add a creative tension that increases [play's] enjoyment.' (5)
If we treat children as if they cannot possibly cope with hurtful experiences, then we will likely undermine their confidence and make them less likely to cope with difficult events in the future. In effect, we will prevent them from growing up.
The UK government document Building Brighter Futures, which outlines a 10-year `Children's Plan', states: `Bullying can destroy lives and have an immeasurable impact on young people's confidence, self-esteem, mental health and social and emotional development.' This obsession with the long-term effects of bullying leads to a situation where children might become unwilling, and even incapable of, resolving their own problems with their peers - and that could damage children's development, and their relationships with each other, far more than the odd stone thrown or insult shouted.
A Democrat shakes up Washington's failed public schools
Guess who recently said the following: "Tenure is the holy grail of teacher unions, but it has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults." A right-wing blogger? No, those are the words of Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington, D.C. schools, who is speaking truth to teacher-union power to shake up one of the nation's worst education systems.
In going after tenure, Ms. Rhee is taking on the holiest citadel of the education establishment. This summer she offered a new teacher contract proposal with two options. Teachers could choose a plan under which their pay would rise spectacularly -- nearly doubling by 2010 -- in exchange for giving up tenure. Or they could opt for a smaller pay bump and still lose some seniority rights.
Ms. Rhee's proposal has caused a meltdown among leaders of the Washington Teachers' Union, and negotiations have collapsed. The Chancellor has raised the stakes, announcing the district would seek to dismiss tenured teachers who are ineffective. She has also hinted she'll go around the union by creating more nonunionized charter schools, or getting the federal government to deem her district in a "state of emergency."
Plucked from a nonprofit by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Ms. Rhee (a Democrat) has spent the past 18 months puncturing other education taboos. She closed 23 failing schools and restructured 27 more. She fired nearly one-third of the district's principals and reduced a bloated bureaucracy. She dismisses as "complete crap" the argument that students can't learn because of disadvantaged backgrounds.
It's about time. Washington is the lowest-performing school district in the nation. Only 12% of D.C. eighth graders are proficient readers, 8% in math. A mere 60% of high schoolers finish in four years with a diploma. The problem can't be money; Washington's per-pupil spending is the third-highest in the nation, at $13,000 a head.
In part, the problem is unqualified teachers with lifetime job security. Contracts provide ways to fire incompetents, but unions make the process burdensome. In New York City, it costs an average of $250,000 to fire a teacher; the city last year dismissed 10 out of 55,000. New Jersey fired precisely 47 (of 100,000) in the 10 years ending in 2005.
The beauty of Ms. Rhee's tenure reform is that it would use financial incentives to help the best teachers. Unions love to say they are underpaid professionals. Ms. Rhee agrees. Under her reform, teachers willing to be judged on their worth could earn up to $130,000 a year. Her price: Disburse money as is in the real world -- on merit.
The union leadership claims its members oppose to the plan, but the WTU has refused to allow a vote. The local is getting heat from its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, which is petrified that Ms. Rhee's plan will set a national precedent. These bosses know that smaller pay-for-performance experiments across the country have received strong teacher support.
Ms. Rhee was recently thrust into the middle of a Presidential debate, when Barack Obama and John McCain debated whether she supports school vouchers. (She says she doesn't have an official view but doesn't view them as the solution for public-school woes.) The key point is she's willing to tackle the hidebound practices that have made our worst public schools unreformable. Here's hoping she succeeds, and that her method becomes a movement.
In the media telling, America during the Bush years has been an unpopular and insular country. But one group would seem to differ: young people. The U.S. remains the top destination for students from around the world, while Americans are studying abroad in record numbers too.
The New York-based Institute of International Education's "Open Doors" report, published this week, shows that more foreign students than ever are flocking to American colleges and universities. International student enrollment increased by 7% to 623,805 in the 2007-08 academic year -- the largest annual increase since 1980. The survey, funded by the State Department's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, accumulates data from 3,000 institutions of higher education.
The report also notes that more American students are choosing to study abroad. In 2006-07, 241,791 Americans studied in foreign universities, a 150% increase from a decade ago. Students are also looking further afield than long-popular Europe, heading instead to places like Tsinghua University in Beijing.
More good news is lurking in the explanations for these trends. American universities continue to enjoy a world-wide reputation for academic excellence and cutting-edge research, even if there's room for improvement. And hosting these students gives the U.S. an opportunity to show them American life and values in action, a useful myth-dispelling exercise. On the other side of the equation, many young Americans are interested in, and engaged with, the world beyond their borders -- which says something about the kind of business and political leaders they'll be after graduation.
If there's a darker note here, it's that Congress remains uninterested in keeping those foreign students in the country once we've invested in their training -- witness the annual cap of H-1B work visas at 65,000. Higher education is a case study in the benefits of free movement of people across borders.
British pupils are 'too spoon-fed to cope with tough degrees'
Students are being sold short by a culture of 'spoon-feeding' at school which leaves them ill-equipped for traditional degrees, a report has warned. The UK produces a bigger percentage of graduates in 'soft' subjects than any other developed nation, according to a study by the Reform think-tank. It also generates the lowest percentage of graduates in engineering, manufacturing, construction, medicine and law - and the second lowest in science and maths. British students are losing out because these courses offer the best salary prospects and are highly valued by employers, Reform said.
The think-tank claims that a culture of 'teaching to the test' has left pupils incapable of thinking independently. 'One result is the growth of a spoon-fed generation that wants to receive education passively and without effort,' the report said. 'This generation prefers the X Factor to A grades.'
The report cited figures showing that only 6.2 per cent of UK graduates have studied engineering - against 15 per cent in continental Europe and 12.9 per cent in Eastern Europe. In contrast, 12.1 per cent of British students graduated in social and behavioural sciences, which include subjects such as media studies. In Asia and continental Europe, the figure is just 6.7 per cent.
The report concluded that UK students are 'poor at following high-value degree options' such as medicine, mathematics, computer sciences and engineering. The think-tank also said that further education colleges had 'lost their sense of purpose' and some had a drop-out rate of 71 per cent.
The report came on the day Ofsted warned that some business qualifications are treated as equivalent to A-levels despite being tested almost entirely through coursework. It said students needed only a 'weak grasp of key concepts' to pass the course.
Reform advocates giving each student an 'education account' worth 13,000 pounds to spend as they wish. It also believes that university tuition fees should not be limited. Elizabeth Truss, deputy director of Reform, said: 'We're already in recession. We urgently need to replace a bureaucratic skills maze with a system that puts individuals in charge of their own learning.'
For some years now, many elite American colleges have been downgrading the role of standardized tests like the SAT in deciding which applicants are admitted, or have even discarded their use altogether. While some institutions justify this move primarily as a way to enroll a more diverse group of students, an increasing number claim that the SAT is a poor predictor of academic success in college, especially compared with high school grade-point averages.
Are they correct? To get an answer, we need to first decide on a good measure of "academic success." Given inconsistent grading standards for college courses, the most easily comparable metric is the graduation rate. Students' families and society both want college entrants to graduate, and we all know that having a college degree translates into higher income. Further, graduation rates among students and institutions vary much more widely than do college grades, making them a clearer indicator of how students are faring.
So, here is the question: do SATs predict graduation rates more accurately than high school grade-point averages? If we look merely at studies that statistically correlate SAT scores and high school grades with graduation rates, we find that, indeed, the two standards are roughly equivalent, meaning that the better that applicants do on either of these indicators the more likely they are to graduate from college. However, since students with high SAT scores tend to have better high school grade-point averages, this data doesn't tell us which of the indicators - independent of the other - is a better predictor of college success.
Instead, we need to look at the two factors separately. And we can, thanks to the recent experience of the State University of New York, America's largest comprehensive university system, where I was provost from 1997 to 2006. SUNY is blessed with many different types of campuses, mirroring most of the collegiate options (other than small elite private institutions) that characterize contemporary higher education. The university also collects a gold mine of student data, including statistics on pre-admission academic profiles and graduation rates.
In the 1990s, several SUNY campuses chose to raise their admissions standards by requiring higher SAT scores, while others opted to keep them unchanged. With respect to high school grades, all SUNY campuses consider applicants' grade-point averages in decisions, but among the total pool of applicants across the state system, those averages have remained fairly consistent over time.
Thus, by comparing graduation rates at SUNY campuses that raised the SAT admissions bar with those that didn't, we have a controlled experiment of sorts that can fairly conclusively tell us whether SAT scores were accurate predictors of whether a student would get a degree.
The short answer is: yes, they were. Consider the changes in admissions profiles and six-year graduation rates of the classes entering in 1997 and 2001 at SUNY's 16 baccalaureate institutions. Among this group, nine campuses raised the emphasis they put on the SAT after 1997. This group included two prestigious research universities (Buffalo and Stony Brook) and seven smaller, regional colleges (Brockport, Cortland, New Paltz, Old Westbury, Oneonta, Potsdam and Purchase).
Among the campuses that raised selectivity, the average incoming student's SAT score increased 4.5 percent (at Cortland) to 13.3 percent (Old Westbury), while high school grade-point averages increased only 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent - a gain in grades almost identical to that at campuses that did not raise their SAT cutoff.
Yet when we look at the graduation rates of those incoming classes, we find remarkable improvements at the increasingly selective campuses. These ranged from 10 percent (at Stony Brook, where the six-year graduation rate went to 59.2 percent from 53.8 percent) to 95 percent (at Old Westbury, which went to 35.9 percent from 18.4 percent).
Most revealingly, graduation rates actually declined at the seven SUNY campuses that did not raise their cutoffs and whose entering students' SAT scores from 1997 to 2001 were stable or rose only modestly. Even at Binghamton, always the most selective of SUNY's research universities, the graduation rate declined by 2.8 percent.
The change is even more striking if we compare experiences of three pairs of similar SUNY campuses that, from 1997 to 2001, took sharply divergent paths. First, Stony Brook and Albany, both research universities: over four years, at Stony Brook the average entering freshman SAT score went up 7.9 percent, to 1164, and the graduation rate rose by 10 percent; meanwhile, Albany's average freshman SAT score increased by only 1.3 percent and its graduation rate fell by 2.7 percent, to 64 percent.
Next, Brockport and Oswego, two urban colleges with about 8,000 students each: Brockport's average freshman SAT score rose 5.7 percent to 1080, and its graduation rate increased by 18.7 percent, to 58.5 percent. At the same time, Oswego's freshman SAT average rose by only 3 percent and its graduation rate fell by 1.9 percent, to 52.6 percent.
Finally, Oneonta and Plattsburgh, two small liberal arts colleges with 5,000 students each: Oneonta's freshman SAT score increased by 6.2 percent, to 1069, and its graduation rate rose 25.3 percent, to 58.9 percent. Plattsburgh's average freshman SAT score increased by 1.3 percent and its graduation rate fell sharply, by 6.3 percent, to 55.1 percent.
Clearly, we find that among a group of SUNY campuses with very different missions and admissions standards, and at which the high school grade-point averages of enrolling freshmen improved by the same modest amount (about 2 percent to 4 percent), only those campuses whose incoming students' SAT scores improved substantially saw gains in graduation rates.
Demeaning the SAT has become fashionable at campuses across the country. But college administrators who really seek to understand the value of the test based on good empirical evidence would do well to learn from the varied experiences of New York's state university campuses.
More than a third of schools failing pupils, British regulator warns
More than a third of schools are not giving pupils a good education, inspectors warned today. One in ten 11-year-olds are still leaving primary school without reaching the level expected of their age group in English and maths, Ofsted's annual report found. And more than half of England's teenagers are still leaving school without five good GCSEs, including English and maths.
In her third annual report, Chief Inspector of Schools Christine Gilbert said England must do better if it is to compare favourably with the rest of the world. She said she was concerned that there was still too much variation in achievement between different areas of the country. Poor quality services existed across the education and care sectors, for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Poorer children, such as those who qualify for free schools meals, were still less likely to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, than their peers. In 2007, only 21 per cent of children on free school meals achieved this benchmark, compared with 49 per cent of other pupils.
Ms Gilbert said there was a strong link across every sector between deprivation and poor quality services. She said: "This means that children and families already experiencing relative deprivation face further inequity in the quality of care and support for their welfare, learning and development. "In short, if you are poor you are more likely to receive poor services: disadvantage compounds disadvantage." But Ms Gilbert added it was possible to "buck this trend" and there were examples of places that were outstanding. She said: "Typically the provision that really makes a difference is ambitious. It does not believe that anyone's past or present circumstances should define their future."
Today's report covers the first full year of Ofsted's new wider remit - they now inspect and regulate social care, children's services, adult learning and skills, as well as schools and childcare. It found improvements in school standards, with 15 per cent of schools judged to be outstanding, up slightly from 14 per cent last year. In primaries that figure was 13 per cent while in secondaries it was 17 per cent. But more than a third of schools (37 per cent) were found to be not good enough - given a rating of "satisfactory" or "inadequate". More than four in ten (43 per cent) secondary schools were rated no better than satisfactory, although this was down from 49 per cent in 2006/07. In primaries this figure was 37 per cent. Nursery schools had some of the best ratings, with 39 per cent judged to be outstanding and 58 per cent rated good. Just 3 per cent were rated satisfactory and there were none that were inadequate.
A higher proportion of childcare and early education was good or outstanding this year. But the quality of provision varies, and it is not as good in areas with high deprivation. The report said that teaching literacy and numeracy skills must "remain a priority" and while there was evidence of improvements in these areas, in some progress was still too slow. And it warned that more needed to be done to raise standards at GCSE level. "A decade ago, two-thirds of secondary age pupils left compulsory education with five good GCSEs, including English and maths - it is still more than half."
An 18-month-old toddler has been left abandoned inside a locked childcare centre in Sydney's west - the second such case in just months. Uriah Vollmer, son of Daily Telegraph reporter Tim Vollmer, was left sleeping in a cot inside Penrith's Nepean Pre-School when staff went home early. His mother Michelle arrived 10 minutes before closing time to find the centre already locked and empty - apart from baby Uriah. It was only when a centre staff member drove by and spotted a distraught Mrs Vollmer that Uriah was discovered asleep inside.
The two incidents have prompted calls for a State Government review of centre lock-up procedures. "(This) is proof that a serious overhaul of the procedures is urgently needed," Mrs Vollmer said. The first case, in May, resulted in the baby being left alone for more than an hour before police broke in.
Mrs Vollmers' concerns have been backed by the body that represents childcare centres around the country. Childcare Associations Australia conceded yesterday that it was timely for the State Government to re-examine centre training programs in the wake of two incidents in just six months. "The fact that it has happened twice might mean there needs to be a training program and a review of lock-up procedures," executive director Helen Kenneally said. "It does astound me people have these things happen."
A spokeswoman for Community Services Minister Linda Burney said yesterday a total review of the regulations was under way but changes, if any, would not come into effect until 2010. The current regulation states that two primary contact staff must inspect the premises to ensure no children are left behind.
Mrs Vollmer said the delay was "completely unacceptable and it is putting the safety of kids at risk". She also criticised the fact she was still yet to be contacted by DOCS investigators despite making a complaint on Friday. Ms Burney's spokeswoman said investigators had already interviewed staff at the centre and checked its records and would move on to the family.
Schools failing the children of the poor, says Rupert Murdoch
Below is a large excerpt from his latest Boyer lecture. It has been accepted for centuries that education is the high-road to advancement for the able children of the poor but far-Leftists hate that. They want everyone ground down to a uniform low level. And they have been doing that in the schools with considerable success. Murdoch is reasserting the more compassionate traditional message of opportunity
As a child, I attended boarding school outside Melbourne. Bucolic and idyllic it wasn't. So I made myself a promise. I swore that I would never become one of those fogeys who goes on and on about how his schooldays were the best days of his life. Today I intend to keep that promise. But I do want to talk about schools. In particular, I would like to talk about why you hear so many business leaders talking about the problems with public education. Far from reminiscing about some glorious and largely mythical past, I want to focus on the challenges we face today - and what they mean for our future.
Let me say at the outset: it is not a pretty picture. The unvarnished truth is that in countries such as Australia, Britain, and particularly the United States, our public education systems are a disgrace. Despite spending more and more money, our children seem to be learning less and less -especially for those who are most vulnerable in our society.
In my view, things will not really improve until we begin setting much higher expectations - for our students, for our teachers, and for our schools. At the very least, we ought to demand as much quality and performance from those who run our schools as we do from those who provide us with our morning cup of coffee. And then we ought to hold these schools accountable when they fail.
In Australia, we pride ourselves on our passion for equality - we have popularised the word "egalitarian". That passion is an attractive part of the Australian personality. But it is getting harder and harder to square Australian pride in equality with the realities of the Australian system of public education.
Like me, most of you probably went to a decent school. Your children will probably do the same. This means that your family will probably thrive no matter what happens, because you are no doubt primed to succeed. But too many children are socialised to fail.
We can argue over whether our better schools are as focused as they should be on mathematics and science. But it is inarguable that our lesser schools are leaving far too many children innumerate, illiterate, and ignorant of our history. These are the people whose future I am most concerned about. For these boys and girls to rise in society - and have a fair go at the opportunities you and I take for granted- a basic education is essential.
The tragedy today is that in many nations like Australia, the people who need a solid education to lift them out of deprived circumstances are the people who are falling further and further behind. That is unacceptable to me. And it should be unacceptable to all of us.
So I will talk about three things. First, I will discuss how the dividing point between the haves and the have-nots is no longer how much money they have. Increasingly, your life chances and your life choices will be defined by your skills and knowledge.
Second, I will talk about why we need to stop making excuses for schools and school systems that are failing the very children they are meant to serve.
Finally, I will talk about the need for corporations to get more involved - especially at the lower school levels. Corporate leaders know better than government officials the skills that people need to get ahead in the 21st century. And businessmen and businesswomen need to take this knowledge and help build school systems that will ensure that all children get at least a basic education.
Let me begin with the growing importance of education in our new economy. At first glance, it might look as though advances in technology are making education less important. After all, thanks to computers and calculators, even people without a good education now have the ability to have their sums done for them by a cheap calculator . to have their faulty spelling corrected by a word processing program . and to have even complex tasks completed for them by a specialised software program.
For example, if you go to a McDonald's or the milk bar the person behind the counter no longer has to calculate the change. The cash register is now a mini-computer and the barcode does the work. In industry, computers and automation have reduced much of the need for calculation and repetitive labour. And, as unions in Europe have been quick to notice, that means many enterprises can be more productive with fewer workers. This in turn is one big reason that so many unions - like the Luddites before them - are so opposed to new technology.
But ultimately, fighting the new and better technology is a fool's errand. History clearly demonstrates that a technology that shows itself to be more productive will win out in the end. The reason is simple. Over the long haul, no one is going to pay more than he has to for something that can be done far more cheaply. Even if an individual businessman or two were willing to forgo such an improvement, in the end they will be forced to adopt the more productive approach just to keep up with their competitors.
That's where a good education comes in. New technology is replacing many tedious tasks. That means that there will be fewer and fewer satisfying jobs for people without skills. In the new economy, the people that companies are craving - and are willing to pay for - are people who add value to their enterprises. That means people with talent and skills and judgment.
Talent and skills and judgment are part of what economists call human capital. Human capital is a broad term. It includes formal skills - for example, a degree in computer science or the ability to speak a foreign language. But human capital is much more than this. It also includes such things as good work habits . the judgment that comes from experience . a sense of creativity . a curiosity about the world ... And the ability to think for oneself. Free societies succeed because the people who have these skills are free to use them to advance themselves, their enterprises, and society.
It's true that some people manage to develop these skills on their own. For the most part, these people are highly driven self-starters. They exist in every society. They are also very rare. For every Steve Jobs who drops out of college and founds a company like Apple . for every Jim Clark who leaves high school and starts up Netscape . for every Peter Allen who drops out and becomes a successful entertainer, there are tens of thousands of others for whom leaving school early means shutting the door forever on opportunity - and permanent condemnation to an underclass.
For most of us, the best path to success is through an education that will allow us to fulfill our potential. That begins by setting high expectations, adhering to real standards, and ensuring that when you do leave school, you leave with the tools that will help you get ahead in life. These tools begin with the basics of any education: the ability to read and write . to add, subtract, multiply and divide ... And to use these basics to acquire other, more advanced skills.
For those who doubt me, the relationship between education and opportunity is most obvious in the pay cheque. As a general rule, the more education you have, the more you are going to earn over your working career. That differential can be very large. Two Australian economists found that for each additional year of education a person has, he can expect about 10 per cent a year in increased income. That's true even after taking into account the lost earnings from starting work later. And though that figure is for Australia, it roughly tracks with similar findings in the United States....
Another way of putting it is this: it's not that the poor are getting poorer. It's that the economic rewards to the skilled are making them much richer. This is clearly understood by the leaders of developing countries. But it seems beyond the comprehension of much of the developed world.
That leads me to my second point: what we ought to do about it. As the world economy grows more competitive, it is will become even more difficult for people without skills to keep up. Billions of people are now entering the global workforce. And a recent study by Goldman Sachs suggested that 70 million people are joining the new global middle class each year. These people are talented . they are confident . and they are increasingly well-educated. That means the competition is getting keener. And unless we stop making excuses for our failures, a good many of our own young people will be left behind and bereft of opportunity.
Most of you are well aware of the public debate about education. And you will be well aware that there is a whole industry of pedagogues devoted to explaining why some schools and some students are failing. Some say classrooms are too large. Others complain that not enough public funding is devoted to this or that program. Still others will tell you that the students who come from certain backgrounds just can1t learn.
The bad schools do not pay for these fundamental failings. Their students pay the price, because they are the victims when our schools fail. And the more people we graduate without basic skills, the more likely Australian society will pay the price in social dysfunction - in welfare, in healthcare, in crime. We must help ourselves by holding schools accountable - and ensuring that they put students on the right track.
As a rule, we spend too much time on avoiding failure. The real answer is to start pursuing success. Developing countries seem to understand this. When I travel to places like India and China, I do not hear people making lame excuses for mediocre schools. Instead of suggesting that their students cannot learn, they set high standards and expect they will be met. And they have crash programs for more and better schools.
The obstacles they have to overcome are as difficult and challenging as any we face here. Recently, for example, American public television ran a special called Chinese Prep - which followed five students through their final year at an elite high school. These students are competing for slots at the top universities in a system based almost entirely on merit. The pressure is intense, and most Australians watching would probably think that the time and effort these boys and girls put into their studies is inhumane.
Now, the high school in this film is elite, and it is far from representative of the schools that most Chinese attend. But the interesting thing about this show is the emphasis on competition, on merit, on doing well on standardised tests. Some of the children who do end up doing well come from very poor backgrounds. The television cameras showed that one of them lived in essentially a hut in the countryside.
But no one makes allowances for them. They compete with the children of high officials. And they succeed. In a sense, the entire school system is taking a lesson from Confucius, who observed sagely, as a sage does: "If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself."
I am not saying that Chinese education is perfect. It certainly is not. But it is clear that in a system where you are expected to perform, there is less slacking off. Maybe that1s because poor people in China know that doing well on tests and getting a good education is the ticket to personal progress. Or maybe they know that the consequences for failure are much more severe than they are in, say, the more comfortable societies that are America and Australia.
My point is this: the children of poor people always have fewer options than the elite. That's true whether you live in Sydney or Shanghai or San Francisco. For these people, a solid education is the one hope for rising in society and levelling the playing field. If we have any real sense of fairness, we owe these children school systems that hold them to high standards.
However tough their schools may be, the world is going to be tougher and less forgiving. That is one reason I have two key criteria for education programs that News Corporation supports: schools must be focused on achievement. And they cannot make excuses for why some students are supposedly poor scholars.
It's amazing the results that you get when you actually expect your students to learn regardless of race, background, or income. In Manhattan, for example, my wife and I have been involved with a local public school called Shuang Wen. Shuang Wen is unique. It is the only public school in America offering a mandated bilingual program in Chinese and English for all students. Two-thirds of its students live below the poverty line. Despite this, Shuang Wen is one of New York's top-ranked schools in terms of performance. It also has the highest daily attendance rate - 98 per cent.
What's the secret? In the morning, its students study in English. Then they stay until 5:30 pm to study Chinese. They come in on weekends too. Not many American children have a school day or school week that goes as long as Shuang Wen. But instead of repelling students, the school is attracting them. African-American parents are clamouring to get their children into this school. They know that the hard work and sacrifice Shuang Wen demands of its students is their children's ticket out of poverty and hopelessness.
Another school we support in New York is the Eagle Academy for Young Men. This is a charter school. Although charters are public schools, charters have more freedom than traditional American public schools. They are also directly accountable to the people who run it. The Eagle Academy for Young Men is boys-only. And it was started up by a group of concerned African-American men who are simply unwilling to allow the next generation of African-American boys to be written off by the country's public schools.
Let me put this in context. The Eagle Academy has a student body of almost all Latino or African-American boys. It also operates in a part of New York City where three out of four young black men drop out before they receive a high school diploma. So failure is all around them. But inside the Eagle Academy doors, they don't talk about failure. The students have long days, often until 6pm. They come in on Saturdays. And they are paired with mentors. It's tough. But the results are impressive.
The fact is, the boys at Eagle Academy are getting the education they would never get from soft-hearted, supposedly well-meaning people who would just make excuses for them. And, like Shuang Wen, the Eagle Academy has a waiting list of parents who are ambitious for their children.
In Australia, our problem is a little different. In America, the children whose futures are being sacrificed tend to be those who are stuck in rotten schools in the inner cities. In Australia, by contrast, the children who suffer the most tend to be those in our rural areas and outer suburbs. But whether urban or rural, no government of any decent society should be effectively writing off whole segments of the population by refusing to confront a failing education bureaucracy.
Australian Federal education boss pledges transparency of school performance
Rupert has an influential convert already
JULIA Gillard has marked the first anniversary of the Rudd Government by pledging a new era of transparency in Australian schools, allowing parents to compare student performance across the nation. The Acting Prime Minister and Education Minister outlined her goals for a revolution in transparency at a conference in Melbourne today, warning schools that withholding information from parents on national tests and performance in literacy and numeracy was not an option. "We need a revolution in transparency," Ms Gillard said.
"I absolutely reject the proposition that somehow I am smart enough to understand information, and parents and community members are somehow too dumb. "I therefore absolutely reject the idea that rich performance information about schools should be confidential to government and denied to the parents of children in schools and the taxpayers who fund schools."
Accusing unions of running a fear campaign about transparency on funding, she said this approach should be viewed for what it is - the last gasp of those who think education policy in this country is a sterile debate between school systems about who wins and who loses. "Transparency about resources isn't about the politics of envy. Rather, transparency about resources is the tool which will better able us to understand what difference resources make to educational outcomes," she said.
Ms Gillard also said News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch was making a "hell of a lot of sense" when he described Australia's school system as a disgrace. Mr Murdoch said yesterday that schools and school systems must stop making excuses for failing the children they are meant to serve, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Australian-born Mr Murdoch, now a US citizen, used the fourth of his six Boyer Lectures for the ABC to focus on the state of public education, saying the school system in Australia, along with the US and Britain, is a "disgrace".
"I certainly think Rupert Murdoch is making a hell of a lot of sense," Ms Gillard, who is also federal education minister, told ABC Radio. High-achieving students in Australia were not doing well enough against their counterparts in other countries, she said. There were too many students - overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds - who don't reach minimum standards.
Ms Gillard agreed with Mr Murdoch's suggestion Australian businesses must take an active role in the reform process, saying she would like to see all major corporations enter a relationship with schools.
Ms Gillard is hailing the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, Joel Klein, who is touring Australia as the example Australian schools should follow. "You have to admire the dedication of someone who deliberately located a school in his education department building so that every bureaucrat every day heard the sound of kid's voices," he said. "And you have to admire the relentless reform dedication of someone who is prepared to say that putting a bright light on a problem is the best way to get it fixed."
In Australia, Ms Gillard said too many students from disadvantaged backgrounds were clustered in a small number of schools, with low expectations and low rates of achievement. "Let's be honest. Current achievement levels are simply not good enough in too many schools," she said. "Australia still performs well in international studies. But we do not achieve as highly as we should or could. Our performance at the higher levels of achievement is static or declining. And our persistent tail of low achievement, associated as it is with socioeconomic disadvantage, is too long." "Our participation and attainment rates at Year 12 have plateaued for the last decade or more at around 75 per cent," she said. "And as a result, a child from a working class family is only half as likely as a child from a high income family to go on to tertiary study. "This level of failure is not acceptable."
She named Cherbourg State School in Queensland, where principal Chris Sarra pioneered his "strong and smart" philosophy of educational leadership and Punchbowl High School in Sydney as examples to follow in Australia.
Ms Gillard said a major government survey of parents' attitudes about the information they want from schools revealed 96.9 per cent of parents in all school systems agreed that important information relating to school activities and performance should be made available to parents. "What this shows is that parents are hungry for information about how they can help their own children to learn better, both at home and at school. And that they understand the importance of information for producing systematic school improvement," she said. "I know that national testing is controversial. And I know that publishing information about student test performance out of context can be misleading."
The Council of Australian Government meets on Saturday to finalise the new National Education Agreement and the new National Partnerships on teacher quality, improving disadvantaged school and literacy and numeracy and the Schools Assistance Bill, that will provide $28 billion to non-government schools over the next four years must also pass the Australian Parliament by the end of the fortnight.
"Together the new agreements and the Bill will mean every jurisdiction will sign up to transparency and accountability for the same measures of achievement, from the readiness to learn of our youngest children to attainment at year 12 and its equivalent. A comprehensive framework of this kind is unprecedented in Australia," she said. "To those who oppose transparency the message is clear. The Rudd Government is absolutely determined to achieve this reform for Australia's children."
Ms Gillard said future reforms may include rewarding accomplished teachers to work in the most difficult schools or "developing an extended or full service school offer, where breakfast clubs and after-school activities combine to offer children from chaotic homes or homes without a focus on achievement, extra learning opportunities and encouragement to pursue their studies in a structured and supportive environment."
"As a nation we have to say we will no longer tolerate an education system that under-achieves," Ms Gillard said. "We will no longer turn a blind eye to results that say in our nation if you are a poor kid you are likely to fail at school."
An unlikely concept. One would think that any bullsh*t at all passes muster in Sociology. I taught in a sociology school for 12 years and I can warrant that it does
National Collegiate Athletic Association officials have taken pride in the rising rates at which Division I athletes are graduating, and they often credit the association's five-year-old academic eligibility rules as a driving factor. But the rules, which for the first time penalize college teams whose athletes do not make adequate progress toward a degree, were also widely seen as increasing the pressure on institutions and coaches to ensure that they do.
The hope was that this goal would be accomplished through a positive change in the culture - recruiting more academically qualified athletes, perhaps, or putting more emphasis on players' classroom success. But the fear among others was that those gains might be achieved through less noble means - encouraging students to take the academic path of least resistance, or, in the worst case, cheating.
Figuring out whether the recent gains in graduation rates of NCAA athletes have been achieved through good means or bad is next to impossible, as the factors are many and evidence about such things as the academic qualifications of incoming athletes is hard to come by. But USA Today on Wednesday published a special report that provides significant evidence that athletes on many high-profile teams "cluster" in certain majors.
About a third of all football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and softball teams at the 142 colleges examined had at least 25 percent of their juniors and seniors in the same major field of study, and on more than half of those teams - 125 of 235 - at least 40 percent of the upperclassmen were in the same major.
A few examples: Twenty-two, or 58 percent, of the junior and senior football players at the University of Southern California in 2007 majored in sociology, representing one-fifth of all junior and senior sociology majors at USC. Sixteen of 25 junior and senior football players at Vanderbilt University majored in human and organizational development, and 31 of 41 football players at the University of Michigan majored in general studies. (A chart published as part of USA Today's package lists all of the teams that have at least 25 percent of their junior and senior members in a particular major.)
Such clustering, many college sports officials argue, is not in and of itself a problem. Every college has majors that are more and less popular, and they fluctuate over time for a wide range of reasons. Students also tend to make choices about their studies based in part on what their peers are doing, so given the significant amount of time that athletes spend together, it's hardly surprising that teammates would end up in the same majors. And athletes may end up in certain majors more than other students because of their interests (particularly explaining overrepresentation in sports-related fields) or because the time demands of their sports discourage, if not rule out, disciplines that require lots of afternoon labs or the equivalent.
"There's been an exponential growth in how much we demand of student-athletes, by day, week, semester and across the whole calendar year," said Chris Kennedy, deputy director of athletics at Duke University. "There's a sense that coaches want their kids available all the time, and that makes it harder to choose some majors."
But having significant numbers of athletes at a college in a particular major does raise concerns that the NCAA's academic policies, well-intentioned as they are, may be driving athletes - or, worse yet, prompting colleges to push athletes - into majors that are perceived as being easier.
In addition to injecting significant new data into the discussion, which has been raised by several recent controversies involving independent study at Auburn University and the University of Michigan, the USA Today report highlights athletes at several institutions who said they had been "steered" into certain "friendly" majors by academic advisers or coaches intent on keeping the players eligible to compete. "This is what everybody is doing. It's the easiest major," one former athlete recalls being told by an academic adviser from the athletics department.
The idea that big-time college athletes might seek out the academic path of least resistance is hardly a new concept. But what makes the issue of clustering particularly relevant now, for some observers, is that the whole design of the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate system is to increase the stakes on colleges to ensure that athletes stay on track to a degree. The worry has been that by taking away scholarships from teams whose athletes become ineligible to compete or leave college in poor academic standing, the NCAA - in addition to encouraging more emphasis on academic performance - may well have increased the incentives on athletes and colleges to take the easy route.
Even The Washington Post Sneers At Barry's School Choice
Hope! Change! A New way of...ah, forget it
Continuing a tradition among Washington's power elite, President-elect Barack Obama and his wife have decided to send their kids to Sidwell Friends School. Michelle Obama confirmed yesterday that Malia and Sasha, the incoming first daughters, will enroll at the pricey private school when the family moves into the White House in January.
Although Mrs. Obama has said that public schools were under consideration and consulted with D.C. school officials, the decision narrowed this week after she and the girls visited Sidwell and the private Georgetown Day School. Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, visited classes and met with students while their mother talked with administration officials and parents. Mrs. Obama also visited both schools last week when she came to Washington with her husband to tour the White House and meet with President and Mrs. Bush.
Despite the early tone, the Post talks about it being an elitist school, about the school having "long been the choice of politically powerful and moneyed families," and the cost of the school, which is $28,442 for elementary school and $29,442 for the middle school. Hmm, sounds middle class to me, how 'bout you?
I wonder if they even have a teachers union at Sidwell? Most private schools don't. So, yet another group of Barry supporters thrown under the ever growing bus. But, hey, public school is good for YOUR kids, ya know!
"Mrs. Obama is the product of public education on the South Side of Chicago and she believes strongly in the importance of good public schools for all kids," Lelyveld said. "The Obama administration intends to work closely with the school systems in the years to come to ensure quality public education is available to all kids."
As long as her elitist kids don't have to go there.
British schools fined for expelling violent pupils
Secondary schools are being fined millions of pounds a year for expelling violent and abusive pupils. An investigation has revealed that at least 4.4 million pounds in financial penalties have been imposed on schools this year. Nearly a third of local authorities in England are issuing the fines, ranging from 1,500 to 10,000 pounds per expelled pupil. Some councils, including Essex, Nottinghamshire, Oldham and Somerset, have collected in excess of a quarter of a million pounds from their schools this year. The penalties are in addition to the "per pupil funding" - the money a school gets for each pupil it teaches - that councils automatically claw back when a pupil is permanently excluded.
Critics claim the fines put unacceptable pressure on head teachers to avoid permanently excluding pupils, undermining their authority and robbing them of the ultimate sanction in the battle against unruly behaviour in the classroom. The high level of fines in some authorities help to explain the big rise in temporary exclusions, where pupils are sent home for a matter of days rather than being kicked out. It also plays a part in the big growth in "managed moves", revealed by this newspaper in June, through which children escape expulsion and are simply transferred to another school, even for offences such as threatening classmates with knives and attacking teachers. These children do not count in official figures, which showed a seven per cent fall in permanent exclusions last year.
Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: "Clawing back per pupil funding is understandable, as this funding should follow the child. "What is totally unacceptable is this removal of additional money, without any clear criteria. It undermines the Government's stated view that head teacher and governing bodies should be free to exclude pupils when it is necessary. "Stopping schools from permanently excluding pupils not only puts the education of that child at risk but puts the education of other pupils at risk. "More and more teachers are telling us that they are coming under pressure not to exclude pupils. Fining schools distorts the system and should be outlawed. "The Government needs to launch its own inquiry, as it did with admissions, to look at which authorities are setting these arbitrary penalties."
Tony Wells, the head teacher at Farnborough School Technology College, in Nottingham, an authority which fines schools up to 6,000 for permanent exclusions, said: "The removal of significant funds from school budgets is a concern to head teachers. "When the permanent exclusion of three pupils can equate to the salary of a member of staff it can seem excessively punitive and could work to limit the degree to which heads feel able to resort to that final sanction."
Of the 100 councils that responded to the Freedom of Information request, 31 imposed financial penalties. Some argued that much of the money they recover is "pupil retention" funding, allocated to schools by the Government to improve exclusion rates and behaviour. They also claim that most of the money is passed on to the schools or pupil referral units that have to find places for troublesome youngsters.
While councils are not required to fine schools, the Government supports the move. A Department for Children, Schools and Families, spokesman said: "We back heads in taking the tough decision to exclude pupils and we have given them the powers they have asked for to deal with unruly behaviour. "Of course excluded pupils still need to be educated, we cannot simply give up on them. It is right that if a school excludes a pupil, the money that would have been used to teach that pupil is reallocated and moves with them as they move on into alternative provision. "Schools have multi-million pound budgets and we do not believe that this would be a disincentive to exclusion, especially when unruly pupils use such large amounts of resources."
Teacher quality the 'focus of education revolution' -- says Australia's Leftist government
What a lot of bosh. Good teachers are born, not made. But Leftists can never accept that anything is inborn, of course (homosexuality excepted). But if the four-year courses that teachers now undergo (one year used to be enough in the past) still turn out lots of ineffective teachers, more of the same will not do any good.
While teaching is a bottom-of-the barrel choice for smart people, teacher quality will always be low. Better discipline among the kids is the main thing that would improve teaching -- if only by restoring teaching to the attractive profession that it once was. Another improvement would be larger class sizes, so that the dud teachers can be fired and the abilities of good teachers put to wider use. Heresy! But there are in fact decades of research showing that large class sizes work well. See here and here and here and here and here
The so-called education revolution will have a new focus on improving teacher quality, Education Minister Julia Gillard says. The federal government will use next Saturday's Council of Australian Government's (COAG) meeting in Canberra to push its education reform agenda. Improving teacher quality and lifting investment in disadvantaged schools will be key to the discussions, Ms Gillard said on Sunday.
"I'd like to see us next Saturday at the Council of Australian Governments put new investment into teacher quality, new investment into disadvantaged schools," Ms Gillard told ABC Television. "Quality teaching is the thing that makes the biggest difference to a child's learning outcomes," she said. "If you want to lift quality, you need to lift teacher quality."
Labor had already made a significant investment in education via its computers in schools program, the introduction of new trades training centres and steps to introduce a national curricula.
Kansas City Student Could Face Charges for Hugging School Social Worker
A whining social worker. How unsurprising
An Olathe junior high school student could face sexual battery charges after allegedly giving a school social worker an "inappropriate" hug, police said on Tuesday. According to Olathe Police, a school social worker at Chisholm Trail Junior High School told an assistant principal that the boy, 13, hugged her in a way that she thought was inappropriate. The student was contacted by the school resource officer, then released to his parents.
"The report has been taken and the incident was documented and it has been forwarded to the district attorney's office," said Sgt. Johnnie Rowland of the Olathe Police Department. "They will review it and decide from that point what action should be taken."
Nicole Littler from MOCSA, the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault says some teens don't understand sexual harassment, and she urges parents to talk to their children about it. "Sexual harassment is the No. 1 topic that we are asked to go out and talk about especially in middle schools," said Littler. "Hugging someone can be sexual harassment, but it also depends on who it is and how they feel about the situation."
The Olathe School District would not comment on the case. The Johnson County District Attorney's office is reviewing the case.
No one's sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School. But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this tiny (pop. 810) Vermont town, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating children up to scorn. Supporters say the classroom is the place for it, and the disagreement has fueled an increasingly acrimonious debate.
"The whole thing is tearing our community apart," said Heather Lanphear, 39, the mother of a first-grade student. Unlike other Pledge controversies, this one centers on how and where schoolchildren say it, not whether they should be allowed to.
In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren can opt out of reciting the pledge for religious reasons. Sixty-one years later, the court said a California father couldn't challenge the Pledge of Allegiance, reversing a lower-court decision saying teacher-led Pledge recitals in public schools were unconstitutional. That case involved an atheist who didn't want his third-grader to have to listen to the phrase "under God." But it didn't rule on the constitutionality of compulsory recitation.
The brouhaha in the Vermont school began in September, when parent Ted Tedesco began circulating petitions calling for its return as a daily practice in the 19th-century schoolhouse, which has 55 children in grades kindergarten through six. School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom. "We don't want to isolate children every day in their own classroom, or make them feel they're different," said Principal Michaela Martin.
Instead, starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge. About half the students chose to participate, according to Martin.
Tedesco, 55, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major, and others who signed his petitions didn't like that solution, calling it disruptive to routine and inappropriate because it put young children in the position of having to decide between pre-class play time and leaving the classroom to say the Pledge. "Saying the Pledge in the classroom is legal, convenient and traditional," said Tedesco. "Asking kindergarten through sixth graders who want to say the Pledge to leave their classrooms to do so is neither convenient nor traditional."
Martin and School Board Chair Retta Dunlap defended the practice, saying it restored the Pledge to the school as requested, preserved the rights of students who - for political or religious reasons - didn't want to participate and gave others the opportunity to pledge their allegiance. "I was happy to have it upstairs. I think it's important that all the kids share in it together," said parent Ellen Demers, 42.
On Friday, the routine changed again. Just before 8 a.m., Martin herded all the school's students - and a handful of adults - into a cramped foyer that adjoins the first-floor classrooms and told sixth-grader Nathan Gilbert, 12, to lead them in the Pledge. Most recited it; some didn't. Afterward, 10 adults streamed down the steps and outside, forming a circle around Dunlap for a heated discussion in which they pressed for an explanation of why it couldn't be said in the classrooms.
The format is up to teachers, not administrators or parents, Dunlap said. "The children will get used to it, and they'll know what's expected of them," she said.
In an interview, Martin said the point of having the whole school gather for the Pledge was to protect children who don't participate in it. "If you're in a classroom with 15 students and you choose not to say the Pledge, it's much more obvious than a group setting. When they're saying it in a group of 55, it's may not be so obvious. We don't want to isolate children," she said.
Tedesco pulled his two children out of the school last week, but he says the reason was the school's declining scores on standardized tests, not the Pledge issue. He plans to continue lobbying for classroom recitation. "There's no way a heckler's veto should abridge the constitutional rights of the majority," he said.
The Foundation For Individual Rights in Education is set to release (mid-day Friday) a compendious report by Adam Kissel on the Delaware Residential Life Program. If you haven't followed this rank system of indoctrination (now happily suspended) the FIRE report is a comprehensive and sobering account of the roots and influences of the Delaware system.
Most importantly, and disquietingly, the FIRE report exposes the extent to which the Delaware program was by no mean isolated - it was simply the most forceful implementation of explicitly political "educational outcomes" encouraged by the American College Personnel Association for all colleges. Once instituted, the Res Life system became, most egregiously, a model for the ACPA and other "res life" professionals. Here's Kissel on the topic:
ResLife was so proud of its achievements that the University of Delaware began to hold annual Residential Curriculum Institutes for trusted counterparts from around the United States and Canada. Over 70 people from more than 35 schools registered for the first one in January 2007, which focused on the university's cutting-edge "curricular approach." The institute was cosponsored by the ACPA, which sent its president, Jeanne S. Steffes, to be the opening speaker. Then---University of Delaware President David Roselle was on hand to welcome the participants, and the keynote address by Marcia Baxter Magolda of Miami University of Ohio was sponsored by Delaware's Office of the Provost and its Academic and Student Affairs Council.
Residence Life staff, some of them sporting Ed.D. degrees from the university's own School of Education, also began publishing articles about the cutting-edge methods of the curriculum---without quite revealing the sustainability agenda. For instance, in the November--December 2006 issue of About Campus, a magazine for college and university educators, Kerr and Associate Director of Residence Life James Tweedy published "Beyond Seat Time and Student Satisfaction: A Curricular Approach to Residential Education." In that article, Kerr and Tweedy discuss their desired "learning goals," which include requiring each student to, among other things, "explore societal privilege and the experiences of those disadvantaged in our democracy," "explore social identity privilege," and "explore class privilege." They also---creepy as it sounds---discuss potential improvements to the program, such as "the possibility of identifying behavioral factors that can be observed and recorded by hall staff members."
The Delaware program may be gone, but its advocates are still legion. The report is essential reading on an impulse to indoctrinate still far from dormant.
Arab Students at UC Berkeley Disrupt Israel Event, Attack Jews
Arab students disrupted a pro-Israel event at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley Thursday night, unfurling a large Palestinian flag in front of a crowd of hundreds of supporters of Israel who were enjoying a pro-Israel hip-hop concert. The event was sponsored by the Zionist Freedom Alliance student group.
The Arab students unfurled the large flag on a balcony above the outdoor site where the concert was taking place, inciting a provocation right in front of the concert-goers, who were enjoying the event as part of the campus' Israel Liberation Week. Several Jewish concertgoers went into the building to ask the Arabs to remove the flag - but were viciously attacked, with one male concertgoer knocked down from a blow on the back of his head, witnesses said.
College alumnus Gabe Weiner, who was helping run the concert, was assaulted by the leader of the anti-Israel group, Husam Zakharia, who also attacked one of the performers, Yehuda De Sa. The fight was finally broken up by John Moghtader, a senator in the UC Berkelely student organization. Police were called in and arrested Zakharia along with others from his group, charging them with battery. Witnesses said that the Arab students shouted anti-Semitic curses and epithets throughout the incident, calling the Jews "Nazis" and "dogs," and threatening to kill them. According to one witness, as many as 20 anti-Israel students participated in the attacks.
In a statement, the Zionist Freedom Alliance said "we call on state officials, the President of the University of California, the Chancellor, the Dean of Students, faculty, and the student body to take a unified stand against the continued harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students on this campus, particularly by members of Students for Justice in Palestine," the anti-Israel group whose leaders began the incitement and attacked the concertgoers.
Pro-Israel students at UC Berkeley have long complained of the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic harassment they have been subject to. Tikvah, a Jewish student group at the college, displayed on its web site numerous examples of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic graffiti, with anti-Israel elements defacing property with their screed. Jewish students complained that the only media coverage given to the event, in the Berkeley campus newspaper, was one sided. "Funny how the battery citation against Husam of SJP isn't even mentioned [in the article], and the comment which purports to be from an objective bystander is actually from one of the top people in Students for Justice in Palestine," commented Ariel, one of the concertgoers.
Meanwhile, the anti-Israel group is planning to file a petition to remove from office Moghtader, who tried to break up the fight.
Senior state education leaders are considering expanding the state MCAS exams to include science experiments, group projects, and oral presentations in an attempt to inject more critical thinking into the widely criticized tests. The recommendations, which were unveiled yesterday, respond to growing concerns that the state's high school graduates are entering college or the workplace lacking the sophisticated skills needed to succeed, such as the ability to solve problems, communicate, or work in teams.
The state originally emphasized these "21st Century skills" after passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, but many schools stopped teaching them as the state ramped up the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, which placed a higher premium on content knowledge. Sophomores must pass the English, math, and science exams to graduate, while students in grades 3 through 8 are also tested.
A task force presented its report and recommendations to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education yesterday after a six-month review of how to integrate these more sophisticated skills into the MCAS exams and the everyday rigor of the classroom. The prospect of moving beyond a paper-and-pencil test to evaluate students immediately prompted harsh criticism from some conservative education policy groups that the state was backing away from high standards. But state Education Secretary Paul Reville emphasized at the start of the meeting that the changes would complement, not replace, the 10-year-old MCAS tests.
"Our employers are telling us, more urgently with each passing year, that we are not preparing enough of our students to do the jobs of the present and future," said Reville, reading from prepared remarks in the auditorium at Somerville High School. "They tell us too few can make coherent oral presentations, solve complex problems using either creativity or technology . . . and too few have the motivation and work ethic needed for success."
Gary Gottlieb, a task force member and president of Brigham & Women's Hospital and the Boston Private Industry Council, told the board "even highly educated people are not able to express themselves and convey the knowledge they have." [Probably meaning that they went through school on social promotion]
The recommendations, which can be approved by the board without legislative review, could take up to 10 years to implement, Reville said. They would require a massive overhaul of teacher training programs to include the new skills, as well as revising the state's academic standards so the new skills are emphasized in each subject tested by MCAS, officials said.
More than 500,00 students in grades 3 through 8 and Grade 10 are tested annually in English and math, under the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, adopted in 1993. Students at some grade levels are also tested in science and social studies.
One of the top priorities of the task force is adding a lab experiment to the 10th-grade MCAS science exam in the next few years. The task force is also urging the incorporation of oral presentations or other testing methods into the yet-to-be-developed 10th-grade US history exam, which becomes a graduation requirement for the class of 2012. The 22-member task force, which was appointed by the board earlier this year when Reville was still chairman, was made up of prominent leaders in business, higher education, K-12 education, parents, and teacher unions.
It remains unclear how the state would add the new skill-based elements to the MCAS system. Officials said some approaches, such as lab experiments and oral presentations, could be administered and evaluated by local schools. That, however, could raise questions about the possibility of inconsistent evaluations from one school to another. A private contractor scores the MCAS exams.
But before the state can figure out how to assess the skills, the board must first refine the definitions of each of the skills, which include global awareness, cultural competency [a code-word for muliticultural indoctrination], and information literacy. The task force report presented yesterday acknowledged that the definitions of many skills are vague, leading some critics to write off the proposal as an attempt to water down standards. "Many of the skills are unmeasurable and ill-defined," said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for School Reform at the Pioneer Institute, a conservative research group. "What we are seeing here is an incremental dismantling of education reform that has made Massachusetts the highest-performing state in the country."
The task force did not project how much the changes would cost, and officials acknowledge the state's fiscal crisis may mean they will have to turn to nonprofits for financial support. Reville has already directed the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to reduce its budget proposal for next year to $547 million, a nearly $50 million cut from the current budget.
Since its inception, the MCAS has been ensnared in controversy with groups, such as Pioneer, favoring MCAS as a graduation requirement, while teacher unions, many local school administrators, parents, and school boards have opposed it. A growing number of higher education officials have also faulted the exam as a poor indicator of students' readiness for college. Two years ago, when Governor Deval Patrick ran for office, he won over many MCAS critics by expressing a desire to expand MCAS to include other assessment measures. The proposed changes somewhat appeased some MCAS critics yesterday, although they would like the board to drop MCAS as a graduation requirement, a change that the state board does not support.
"It's a step in the right direction," said Paul Toner, vice president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, who oversaw the task force's research on assessment and accountability. "We don't think a child's future should be determined by a paper-and-pencil test. . . . We have to have kids do things, as opposed to just sitting and studying things."
Leaders of the state's superintendent and school board associations voiced their support, especially of changes to science and US history tests. Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, said it will allow history teachers to move teaching beyond just facts and allow students to develop and argue their political interpretations, not only in class discussions, but in essays and projects.
Revamping the MCAS comes after a report released Monday that showed that two-thirds of Boston public school graduates who enrolled in college after receiving diplomas in 2000 failed to graduate from college seven years later. The report, sponsored by the Boston public schools and the Private Industry Council, have raised concerns that the city's schools and the higher education system are failing to adequately prepare students for more sophisticated jobs.
Another report, released last month by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, found that the majority of high school graduates and many college graduates lacked critical job skills, such as teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication. "Some would have us hang a 'mission accomplished' banner on Massachusetts, but we are not done," Reville said. "We can do better. We must do better."
Officious British school checking pupils' underwear to make they are wearing the right colour bras and pants
Big backpedal under the glare of publicity, of course. Maybe now they can concentrate on actually teaching the kids something
A row erupted today over claims that teachers were checking pupils' underwear to make sure they comply with a new school uniform policy. Parents said their children were told what colour pants and bras they can wear and teachers were doing 'spot checks' under the new rules introduced at Kings School in Winchester. Staff at the mixed 11 to 16-year-old comprehensive dismissed the claims and said they only issued guidance on what was appropriate to wear. But parents said it was 'ridiculous' and an invasion of their children's privacy.
The boys were told to wear white or black underpants and a belt if needed to stop their trousers hanging low, in line with fashion, and exposing their underwear. Girls were told to wear white or light-coloured, unpadded bras underneath their blouses.
Stuart Gander's two daughters 15-year-old Chelsea Hay and 13-year-old Kirby Moore were told at a girls' assembly that coloured bras were 'offensive'. The 35-year-old foreman from Winchester said: 'They were told they had to wear white ones or very light pale bras and they would be spot checked. 'It's just a case of the girls putting out their bra strap and them having a look. 'It's obviously caused a bit of upset. Friends of mine have sons at the school and two days later they had an assembly about boxer shorts.' He added: 'It's just ridiculous. Parents I have spoken to are annoyed by it. The kids feel it's an invasion of their privacy. 'You wouldn't be able to do that in a work place so why should you be able to do that at school?'
Leanne Hosking, who has three children aged 14, 13 and 11 at the school, said her elder daughter did not like male teachers turning her around and checking her bra.
The latest dispute comes just a week after Kirby Moore was told she would be taught in isolation at Kings after she dyed her hair a darker shade of brown while her sister, Chelsea Hay, who dyed her hair a lighter shade, was not disciplined by the school.
A spokeswoman for the school said: 'The assembly was to bring to the attention of Year 10 girls what is appropriate dress for the working environment, preparing them for work experience. 'There is no rule, we are not checking underwear. We are not checking girls' bra straps and we have certainly not had an assembly with any of the boys telling them what colour underwear to wear.'
Over the last year, during three different Islamo-Fascism Awareness Weeks, I've spoken at seventeen university campuses all across the country. I've never been shouted off the stage, as have some other speakers. I have, however, been threatened, heckled, protested, and made the subject of libelous hate-sheets passed out to people attending my talks, but I have never encountered a bolder or more brazen display of Islamic supremacist denial, obfuscation, lies, slander, intimidation, apologetics for mass murder and open hostility to reasoned discourse than I did last Wednesday night at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee.
East Tennessee State, of course, is that bastion of free inquiry and open debate that denied funding for my address for fear that my speaking there would make Muslim students feel "ostracized." Through a donation from the Middle East Forum, supplementing the David Horowitz Freedom Center's covering of the costs of travel, lodging and a bodyguard (all of which should have been paid for by the University, whose students evidently can't be expected to behave civilly), I was able to go anyway, and university officials need not have worried: Muslim students had no reason to go away feeling ostracized. Indeed, they were anything but ostracized: along with some Muslim leaders from the area, they were responsible for an evening strongly reminiscent of the denunciation sessions once held in the Soviet Union and Communist China for those who deviated from the ideological line of those who held power. The same furious hatred, the same frenzied personal attacks, the same emotionalism and defiance of reason and fact -- it was all on display in spades, and it was all directed at me.
Inside the folder that Muslim students were handing out at the door was a paper entitled "WHO IS THE REAL ROBERT SPENCER?" This contained the usual libels, more expensively printed than usual. A choice morsel: He is politically aligned with the extreme Right-wing and receives patronage from Neo-Conservative foundations and organizations.
This sentence is designed to frighten away the ignorant and easily intimidated by invoking scare words -- "Right-wing," "Neo-Conservative" -- that ultimately have no substance beyond "opposed to Islamic supremacism." But as empty as it is, this charge was a favorite of the Muslim propagandists at the event. Two separate questioners asked me just who was paying me, asking me to identify the "right wing extremists" that were supposedly bankrolling my attempt to "defame Islam."
I refused to play along with this, saying both times that I was supported by patriotic Americans who were interested in defending the U.S. Constitution, the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights before the law, and I would not stand by silently while these good people were slandered. For this one of the slanderers said he hoped that the audience noted how "defensive" I got at his question. But he did not dispute my characterization of my benefactors -- no doubt for the questioners who tried this ad hominem tack, to defend the Constitution is precisely to be a "right wing extremist."
The flier goes on to claim that I have "no formal academic training in Islamic studies," which is false. I don't have a degree in it, but I certainly have formal academic training in it. I took courses on Islam, and first read the Qur'an, while working toward my Master's degree in Religious Studies -- not, as the flier claims, in "the field of early Christianity." The University of North Carolina doesn't offer a Master's degree in "early Christianity." Of course, the point is that I have learned most of what I know about Islam through personal study -- something I've never made a secret of. The assumption of the flier is that this means that what I say is inaccurate. Its compilers, however, did not and could not buttress that assumption with any actual evidence that I've said anything false about Islam.
The flier invokes such impartial, disinterested authorities as Carl Ernst, Robert Crane, FAIR, Dinesh D'Souza, and Stephen Suleyman Schwartz to establish my wicked "Islamophobia," although none of them either, of course, offers even one specific example of any false or inaccurate claim that I make about Islam. (How proud Dinesh D'Souza must be to find himself used as a tool by Islamic supremacist smearmongers and thugs!)
Then followed a few supposedly damaging quotes from me, such as my saying that Islam is the only major religion that mandates violence against unbelievers -- in other words, statements that are absolutely true, but may appear troublesome to the ignorant. Anyway, the main impact of this flier and the folder it came in was that it showed signs of considerable expense and careful preparation: the Islamic community of East Tennessee worked long and hard to prepare for my appearance at ETSU, and this showed also during the question period.
Many of the questions were clearly scripted. One girl apparently got mixed up about which question she had been assigned to ask, and asked the same question that had been asked by a young man before her. When I asked her why she was asking the same question that the previous questioner had just asked me, she insisted it was a different question, so I went ahead and answered it again.
My talk was not disrupted, but the question period immediately heated up, with the first questioner engaging in the ad hominem "Who is paying you" attack. Subsequent questions were uniformly hostile, with many "questioners" engaging in self-righteous and beside-the-point counter lectures. I tried to stop them from doing this whenever I could, as this was something both the moderator and I had asked the audience not to do -- a request the Muslims in the audience utterly ignored.
Many also called me a liar. Yet only one questioner even tried to back up the accusations of lying with even one specific example. He claimed that I had misquoted the Qur'an, because I had said that Qur'an 4:89 said "Slay them wherever you find them." He asked me to read the passage -- I had a Qur'an with me, so I read it, including the section that says, "Slay them wherever you find them." Evidently his point was that I had misrepresented the passage because I didn't mention that it goes on to say that Muslims shouldn't fight those with whom they have peace treaties. I pointed out that I had discussed the institution of dhimmitude at some length, in which non-Muslims agree to what is essentially a peace treaty with the Muslims, accepting a second-class status and institutionalized discrimination, and so I had not misrepresented the passage, and had not misquoted it, since it does indeed contain the words "Slay them wherever you find them."
It wasn't until I was back at the hotel that I remembered that I had only quoted 4:89 out of the Islamic legal manual `Umdat al-Salik, which quotes "Slay them wherever you find them" -- and only that part of the verse -- from 4:89 in the context of its teaching about jihad warfare. So if I was misquoting the Qur'an, it was actually this Islamic legal manual certified by Al-Azhar, in Cairo, the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, that was misquoting the Qur'an. Not that it would have made any difference with the thuggish crowd at ETSU.
Besides that one failed attempt, no one even tried to demonstrate that anything I had said (and established from the Qur'an, Sunnah, and fiqh) about the Islamic doctrinal imperative to make war against and subjugate unbelievers was false. One charged that the translations of the Qur'an and `Umdat al-Salik that I was using (I had both with me) were inaccurate, but was unable to sustain his claim after I pointed out that both were made by Muslims -- and that Al-Azhar even certified the accuracy of the translation of `Umdat al-Salik.
Several "questioners" spoke of how painful it was to have to sit and listen while I defamed Islam. I responded to one that if reading from their authoritative texts and recognized authorities constituted defaming Islam, maybe he ought to take a second look at those authorities.
The questioners, all of whom were Muslim, issued two separate invitations to the audience to attend one of Yusuf Estes' talks, at which, they said, they would hear the truth about Islam. Capping off a lovely evening was the last questioner, who had no question at all, but accused me of shouting down questioners (perhaps in reference to cutting off their windy, pseudo-pious counter-lectures), not answering questions (in reality I answered every substantive point that anyone made), and calling me a liar. One of his slightly smoother coreligionists than ran to the mike to assure me that he thought of me as a brother, albeit a misguided one, and...to invite everyone to come see Yusuf Estes.
The Orwellian Hate-Rally atmosphere reached its crowning point just before I left the hall (between police officers and security guards, of course). A middle-aged Tennessee matron approached me; she had been sitting next to her husband, who was clearly a Muslim, during the entire evening, and had not asked a question. She said: "I forgive you for hating Muslims so much, and I hope that God will forgive you too." I told her that I didn't hate Muslims, and that she should be ashamed of saying so -- but she was busy making a quick getaway.
There was an unpleasant, mob atmosphere, marked by the refusal of any of my accusers to deal with the actual arguments that I had made. Perhaps they hoped to rattle me, but the more that they resort to these gutter tactics, the more determined I am to resist them.
It is worth noting that in the news as this event took place was the beheading of a convert from Islam to Christianity for apostasy, the stoning to death of a woman for the crime of adultery, and a suicide car bombing in Somalia. And that's just a small bit of this week's jihad news. The people in the mob at ETSU are among those who are responsible for these things. They could be speaking out against them, but they didn't say a thing about them Wednesday night at ETSU, and almost certainly will not. Instead, they direct all their energies toward discrediting one who is speaking out against these things. Their motives are clear. The blood is on their hands.
Make no mistake: had a Muslim speaker been treated this way, the university would be opening up a commission of inquiry about "Islamophobia" on campus. As it is, university administrators will take little notice of what happened on their campus Wednesday night. But to the lasting shame of East Tennessee State University, the record of what happened will stand as a challenge and rebuke to anyone who thinks that reasoned dissent and free academic inquiry are still even possible at ETSU, or at many other American universities today.
Outside City Hall in New York—(From left to right): Chet Szarejko and Frank Milewski of the Downstate N.Y. Division of the Polish American Congress along with Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, join in support of City Council Member Tony Avella at his press conference to allow nativity scene displays in New York City public elementary and secondary schools.
As long ago as June, 2007, Avella has been asking for Council hearings on a resolution he sponsored to “allow for the display of a nativity scene/creche along with the other permitted religious displays - the menorah and the star and crescent.”
Referring to an appeals court decision on the matter, Donohue recalled that this court “never said that a nativity scene could not be displayed alongside a menorah and a crescent star (though schools could elect to substitute a secular symbol like the Christmas tree). Therefore, it is up to the New York City authorities to either practice inclusion and allow creches to be displayed or practice discrimination and deny them.”
Donohue and Avella reject the position that a Christmas tree is an adequate religious symbol when displayed alongside the Jewish menorah and the star and crescent of Islam.
“DOE (Department of Education) cannot dictate to Christians and Catholics what truly represents their religiouis faith during this holiday season,” said Avella.
Representing two of the major Catholic ethnic groups living in New York City, the Polish American Congress and the Ancient Order of Hibernians appeared at Avella’s press conference to show their support for his efforts.
Australia: Students lose if low-performing schools shielded
Students in low-performing schools have the most to gain from publicly reporting their results, with a report by the Centre for Independent Studies arguing this is one of a suite of reforms required to improve education. In a paper released today, CIS research fellow Jennifer Buckingham says that arguments against so-called league tables protect schools at the expense of students and parents.
Ms Buckingham says the concern is only about revealing the schools that do not perform well, not the high-achieving schools, for fear of stigmatising the students and damaging a school's reputation. "This argument holds no water," she says. "In essence, it says that students in under-performing schools will be fine as long as nobody knows they are getting a poor education. "It protects schools, and the people responsible for them, at the expense of the children and families they are meant to serve."
Ms Buckingham says education departments already know which public schools are under-achieving and that publicly identifying such schools is crucial to turning them around. "These schools are allowed to under-achieve year after year, and under-serve hundreds of children, with no redress," she says. "Public identification will put schools and the governments responsible for them in the spotlight, and force improvement in these schools through the weight of public pressure. "What is worse, short-term loss of face or long-term neglect? Some schools may go through pain initially, but when 'problem schools' have been publicly identified in the past, students have ended up better off."
The paper says Australia has already laid the groundwork for a school reporting program, with national tests starting this year in literacy and numeracy and the establishment of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to oversee the tests and the reporting of results. It says the Australian Government is in the enviable position of being able to learn from the experiences of other countries, and cherry-pick features from different systems.
Education Minister Julia Gillard has pointed to the model of rating groups of like schools adopted in New York City, and has organised a trip to Australia next week by the city's schools chancellor, Joel Klein. New York schools are awarded a grade of A, B, C, D or F weighted for student improvement, with schools receiving a D or an F facing closure if they fail to improve.
The CIS paper cautions against overplaying the value of student progress because it can distort the way schools are portrayed, with some very high-achieving schools in New York given an F because their students, already at the top, failed to improve. The report says public accountability and school choice are deemed important as well.
Today's American high school students are far likelier than those in the 1970s to believe they'll make outstanding spouses, parents and workers, new research shows. They're also much more likely to claim they are "A" students with high IQs -- even though other research shows that today's students do less homework than their counterparts did in the 1970s.
The findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science, support the idea that the "self-esteem" movement popular among today's parents and teachers may have gone too far, the study's co-author said. "What this shows is that confidence has crossed over into overconfidence," said Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
She believes that decades of relentless, uncritical boosterism by parents and school systems may be producing a generation of kids with expectations that are out of sync with the challenges of the real world. "High school students' responses have crossed over into a really unrealistic realm, with three-fourths of them expecting performance that's effectively in the top 20 percent," Twenge said.
For the study, she and co-researcher W. Keith Campbell, of the University of Georgia, pored over data from the Monitoring the Future study, a large national survey of thousands of U.S. high school students conducted periodically over the past three decades. The researchers compared the answers kids gave in 1975 and 2006 to 13 questions centered on students' "self-views." These questions solicited students' opinions on such things as how smart they thought they were, or how likely they were to be successful as adults. "When we look at the responses of the students in the '70s, they are certainly confident that they are going to perform well, but their responses are more modest, a little more realistic" than teens in 2006, Twenge said.
For example, in 1975, less than 37 percent of teens thought they'd be "very good" spouses, compared to more than 56 percent of those surveyed in 2006. Likewise, the number of students who thought they'd become "very good" parents rose from less than 36 percent in 1975 to more than 54 percent in 2006. And almost two-thirds of teens in 2006 thought they'd be exemplary workers, compared to about half of those polled in 1975. As for self-reported academic achievement, twice as many students in 2006 than in 1976 said they earned an "A" average in high school -- 15.6 percent vs. 7.7 percent, the report found.
Compared to their counterparts from the '70s, today's youth also tended to rate themselves as more intelligent and were more likely to say they were "completely satisfied" with themselves.
There was one exception -- measures of "self-competency" (i.e., agreeing with statements such as, "I am able to do things as well as most other people") did not rise between 1976 and 2006. According to Twenge, that may mean that young people continue to feel great self-worth even as they remain unsure of their competence in specific tasks.
Twenge stressed that youthful confidence isn't necessarily bad. "Young people have always had some degree of starry-eyed optimism, and that's probably a good thing," she said. "And setting goals for yourself is a good thing. It's just when those goals are wildly unrealistic, then that can cause trouble for everyone." For example, young people entering the workforce may score well in job interviews if they exude self-confidence, she said, but that can quickly sour if a new employer doesn't provide them with the perks or promotions they feel they deserve. "They don't set the right goals for themselves, because they are overconfident -- and that's when it blows up in their face," Twenge said.
The blame for all this may lie with well-intentioned adults, she suggested. "These kids didn't raise themselves, they got these ideas from somewhere," Twenge said. With Mom and Dad handing out endless praise, kids today readily believe they are somehow superior, she said. And teachers aren't blameless, either: According to Twenge, research shows that high school teachers now give out an "A" grade more easily than their counterparts did in the 1970s, even though today's high school students report doing less homework than students from that era.
Not everyone interpreted the new findings in the same way, however. Jennifer Crocker is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and a longtime researcher in self-esteem. She said that by selecting data from 1975 and 2006, Twenge and Campbell have only presented two moments in time and have not shown evidence of any decades-long trend. And based on available academic data, today's young Americans might be right to be more self-confident, Crocker argued. "The fact is that we are all getting smarter -- IQ is going up quite dramatically over this same period of time," Crocker noted. "Students may believe that they are getting trained better than they used to, that they are learning skills that they didn't use to have. So, maybe their predictions aren't unreasonable."
But Twenge, who is the author of a book on young people's self-views called Generation Me, isn't convinced. In fact, she believes that today's parents may be sending another crop of young Americans down the same path. "I have a 2-year-old daughter," she said. "I see the parenting of kids around her age, and I haven't seen this changing. Look around -- about a fourth of the clothing available to her says 'Little Princess' on it."
Youth of America, this is your clarion call: do not teach. Do not teach. Again: Do not ever teach. If for some reason you feel a calling to educate children, take a sharp stick and stab yourself about the face and neck until the urge goes away. You might lose an eye but trust me, it will be less painful in the long run. Or you could just teach private school.
If we ever needed an illustration of just how backwards the public education system is, it's in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Facebook scandal that broke last week. At least four teachers were disciplined or suspended by the system for comments or pictures on their Facebook pages, after stories by NBC affiliate WCNC and Charlotte Observer reporters searched for school system employees on the social networking site. Some of the found profiles showed teachers using poor judgment - displaying vaguely racist references to teaching "chitlins" in "ghetto" schools or showed female teachers in suggestive poses. Others simply documented reality by showing pictures of parties where alcohol was available or stated, "I hate my students!"
I won't defend the stupidity of their actions. Their profiles should have been set to private, allowing only known friends to access them. But do those opinions, contained in the sphere of Internet comment independent of their teaching jobs, warrant firing or disciplinary actions? I have to say no.
At the very most, the situation should have been handled privately. A principal might have asked a teacher to make their pages private or to be cognizant of public eyes on them. The superintendent never ought to have been involved other than for comment for the media.
The situation is symptomatic of much larger problems in public education. Public schools no longer exist to educate children, only to perpetuate themselves. They are governed by fear of frivolous lawsuits and public relations snafus. They will do nearly anything to avoid these, including abuse teachers. What else but this irrational fear could motivate disciplinary action over what the district has deemed "unethical or lascivious conduct"
Full disclosure: This is the perspective of a former public school teacher. The soul-crushing year and a half I taught eighth grade tainted my perspective forever. It wasn't because of the kids. Everyone knows kids will be kids and that 13-year-olds are alien creatures, shells of once-normal children.
No, it was the ridiculous administrative intrusion and adults involved in mucking-up the system that destroyed my faith in public schools. By the end of my blessedly short teaching career, red marker had been outlawed at my school because it hurt children's self-esteem and we weren't allowed to put a child's name on the board because it might cause distress or humiliation. And I didn't teach in an overly touchy-feely place like Chapel Hill. I taught in Gaston County, a place with a textile heritage and demographic makeup nearly identical to Alamance County's.
There is a dire teacher shortage in the U.S. Meanwhile, nearly one in three students will drop out of high school. Countless others will leave K-12 without necessary life skills because they never had to work hard to achieve anything - they were passed on to the next grade by a faulty system.
For some reason, education administrators all the way up to the governor's office and the White House fail to grasp that interfering with a teacher's ability to teach and feel successful is the number one cause of these problems. Teacher firings for objectionable online content, which now occur regularly, are just the next step in the erosion of teachers' rights to be individuals and not robotic voices of the state.
Once upon a time, you could get a great education in American public schools. I know because I did. But after seeing the system from the inside, I'd have a hard time ever sending my children into them. We need to scrap the public education system as it now stands and rebuild it from the ground up. The only way to do this is by destroying it from the inside. This is why it's necessary for the teacher deficit to reach crisis levels.
As Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools - an entity funded entirely by tax dollars taken on behalf of a government built on the importance of freedom of speech and expression - prepares to fire teachers for expressing themselves in public, I have to ask: What's next? Will systems discipline teachers who are seen drinking at a downtown restaurant or visiting an adult book store or strip club Will a school system next monitor Facebook to persecute those who join a group that supports a political belief it deems dangerous, like vouchers or school choice And who will CMS find to replace these teachers Who would sign their life away for a paltry teacher's salary? Young adults of America, I hope it won't be you.
Author's Note: The following is, unfortunately, a true story that took place this semester at the once-great (and once-conservative) Pepperdine University. No names have been changed to protect the guilty. They don't deserve it.
One Monday morning, just before the 2008 presidential election, a Pepperdine student (and College Republican, or CR) took a sign to the Office of Student Affairs. The sign read "Barack Obama socialism `08" in big letters, with "Socialism is bad. Do not vote Obama '08. More info: CR meeting Weds 8pm, AC 245". A young woman working in the office took out a stamp and approved the poster.
Three members of the CRs hung the sign up in the Caf‚. A couple of faculty members smiled and warned them to be careful since they were placing it up so high. Pepperdine students gave mixed reactions. The CRs sat in the Caf‚ awhile and then left. Shortly thereafter, their sign was removed.
Chris Garcia, the Vice President of the CRs, and another CR named Wesley Heuler found the sign, which had been moved to Pepperdine's "Freedom Wall". They took the sign down and put it back up in the Caf‚. It was yet again taken down. So a member of the CRs named Mimi Rothfus went to Student Affairs. (Roughly) the following conversation ensued:
Mimi Rothfus: Hi, I brought a sign in earlier, and it was approved. We put it up; it was taken down. When we put it up again, it was again removed. I had two stamps of approval on this poster, so why was it removed?
Student Affairs: This is partially our fault because we should never have approved this in the first place. We got a lot of phone calls complaining. We told your president to take it down and put it on the Freedom Wall. He said he would. When it was not taken down, we removed it. Then you put it up again, and we took it down. We were a bit angry that you never took it down and then put it back up. You cannot put up a statement like you put anywhere except on the Freedom Wall; groups can only advertise themselves and their meetings.
The next day, Mimi went to the poster room and picked up a number of posters Chris had left there. The posters said essentially the same thing as the other one, only with the meeting time and place and contact information enlarged. A female employee at Student Affairs gave Mimi the stamp, and the signs were approved. As she left the office a man named Don Lawrence stopped her. (Roughly) the following conversation ensued:
Don Lawrence: Did you get that approved?
Mimi Rothfus: Yes.
Lawrence: Because we had an issue with a sign saying "Socialism" yesterday.
Rothfus: Yes they were approved.
Mimi walked outside again but only made it a few steps before Lawrence stopped her again. (Roughly) the following conversation ensued:
Lawrence: She wasn't allowed to approve your posters. Let me see them.
(Rothfus showed him).
Lawrence: You can't have these up because they say "Obama" and "Socialism". We've gotten a lot of complaints about it from students and professors yesterday. The university cannot show support for and approve this.
Rothfus: This is advertising our meeting. Like several recent talk shows, we'll be discussing Obama and socialism. All our meeting information is on there.
Lawrence: Well Ryan (CR President) or Chris (Garcia) is going to have to come and talk to me about this, and I'll have to take your posters. This is university policy.
Rothfus: Yes, you're doing your job.
(Rothfus handed over the posters and left).
Mimi Rothfus is just an 18-year old freshman at Pepperdine. But she already understands the job requirements of Don Lawrence. If you haven't yet figured it out, Don Lawrence is the Director of Intercultural Affairs at Pepperdine University.
Any university that decides to hire a Director of Intercultural Affairs is a university that will soon find itself in rapid decline. Put simply, it is a decision that the university is beginning to take seriously the notion of multi-culturalism. The advancement of multiculturalism, by the way, promotes tolerance of all ideas. Of course, the idea that there is something special about Western civilization in general or American culture in particular is an exception to the rule.
Ironically, those who work as Directors of Intercultural Affairs are all cut from the same cloth. They are Democrats, self-described liberals, and, in 2008, they voted for Barack Obama. In other words, they aren't a very diverse bunch of people.The multiculturalists also envision a world without borders. They want open-ended immigration. And they think it's really neat that U.S. Supreme Court justices are starting to interpret our constitution by relying on the laws of other nations and the so-called "international community."
Put simply, Directors of Intercultural Affairs have an affinity for cultural, if not economic, Marxism. And that is why they are offended by posters that make references to "Obama and Socialism." They want their candidate to win. But they want their agenda to remain hidden.
Leftist readers of my column will say that I am making a lot of assumptions about Don Lawrence, Director of Intercultural Affairs at Pepperdine University. Maybe that's because he refuses to talk to me. Instead, he's instructed me to direct my questions to Pepperdine's PR department. At least Pepperdine administrators are smart enough to realize they have a PR problem on their hands.
Ryan Sawtelle, President of the CRs is now reporting that Don Lawrence confiscated and banned the "Obama and Socialism" signs in response to a directive from the higher administration. Three questions follow:
1. What is the name of the Pepperdine administrator who directed Don Lawrence to ban and confiscate the "Obama and Socialism" signs?
2. Is it not academic whoredom to make a living confiscating political signs from teenaged kids?
3. What the hell is happening at the once-great and once-conservative Pepperdine University?
Parents are increasingly turning to private education for their girls as an antidote to a society dominated by "Botox and bingeing" and to protect them from the coarsening of society. The number of girls at independent schools has risen by 14.5 per cent to reach 235,702 over the last ten years, compared to a rise of just four per cent for boys, bringing their numbers to 243,782. In the last three years alone, the number of girls has risen by two per cent, compared with a rise of 0.6 per cent for boys, according to the Independent Schools Council.
Vicky Tuck, principal of Cheltenham Ladies College, said that parents today were anxious that their daughters were growing up too fast, and worried that they were being exposed to many negative influences. Prolonging the wholesomeness of childhood was often cited by parents as a key reason for choosing a girls' school, she told the annual conference of the Girls School Association in Winchester, Hampshire. "Worried about a coarsening of society and the toxic cocktail of binge drinking, internet safety and the early sexualisation of girls," parents were lacking confidence in themselves as parents, she said.
Many tried - and failed - to navigate their way by trying to be a friend to their daughter, instead of a parent, but such an approach was doomed to fail because the two approaches did not mix. "When did we forget the craft of parenting...or that you daughter is not there to be your friend?" she said.
It was often left to schools to pick up the baton. "Sometimes, surrounded by media reports on Botox and bingeing, it's easy to feel we lead in a moral vacuum, garden in a gale. But we must go on gardening," she told the 150 conference delegates from 200 girls schools.
Ms Tuck said that girls often preferred a single sex education for personal reasons. "They do say that it helps not having boys around either mucking about or making them worry about their appearance; that they can compartmentalise their lives," she said. But there were also neurological reasons that also suggested that girls and boys both benefited from single sex teaching because their brains were wired differently. This meant it was "crucial to cater for their separate needs". "I have a hunch that in 50 years time, or maybe only 25, people will be doubled up with laughter when they watch documentaries about the history of education and discover that people once thought it was a good idea to educate adolescent boys and girls together," she said.
In addition to helping girls and young women, Ms Tuck said that head teachers had an important role in helping the parents of daughters develop their own lives. School provided girls with "an antidote to self absorption and narrow-mindedness" through teaching and the opportunities for communal activities. But many parents lacked such levels of stimulation and support and often felt isolated and alienated as a result. By engaging with parents and providing them with their own community, schools would be benefiting the whole of society as well as their pupils.
Addressing heads at the conference, she said: "Is there scope for you to build social capital, arrange for parents to join in things at school to help conquer the sense of alienation and isolation - singing The Messiah with the choral society, joining a book club, attending an art class?"
Mrs Tuck also told delegates that it was "good risk management" for every independent school to consider the possible impact of the economic crisis. But she warned that independent schools could not afford to lose their advantages over the state sector. "Maybe there are costs you can cut, but don't dilute the essence of what your schools do that make them distinctive enough from the state provision that parents feel that their investment is justified," she said.
A November 2008 headline caught my eye: "Media bias a form of arrogance." In this article, columnist Cal Thomas criticizes the media:
"Journalism is the only profession I know that ignores the wishes of its consumers. If a department store found that most of its customers preferred over-the-calf socks to ankle-length socks, would that store ignore customer preferences for the longer socks because the president of the company preferred the ankle-length style? . Yet journalists have this attitude: 'we know what's good for you, so shut up and take it' . In only the rarest of cases are they confronted with their biases and held accountable" (Thomas, 2008).
Thomas must not have any school-age children. Members of the public-school establishment tend to ignore the wishes of their consumers, too.
* For decades, mathematicians, math professors and advocates have complained about "discovery" teaching styles - yet here we are, awash in discovery teaching styles.
* For decades, they've refuted the effectiveness of reform mathematics - yet here we are, awash in reform curricula.
* For decades, parents have tried to address their concerns with administrators and board members - yet they've been repeatedly and consistently rejected as being uninformed, uneducated, unknowledgeable and alone in their complaints.
On Nov. 5, I went to a Spokane school-board meeting and I asked for five things, including a more traditional track in mathematics. I noted that Spokane's curricula - all reform - have been heavily criticized by mathematicians, parents, math professors and math advocates; that the state and state's math advisory panel are unlikely to recommend these curricula; that it's unlikely the curricula are aligned with the revised state math standards; and that clearly, Spokane's students are having serious problems with basic math skills.
The board president asked a Spokane principal for his reaction to my comments about reform curriculum Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. The principal replied that as soon as the state stopped revising its math standards, teachers would be able to get more deeply into Investigations and then everything would be fine.
Parents . Please don't wait for the establishment to get it together. Find out what your children should know in mathematics, and then either teach it to them or find someone who will. Rise up, speak your mind, demand accountability, insist on respect for your viewpoints, and - failing all else - vote with your feet. Don't be dissuaded by the false reassurances, non-answers and argument fallacies you're likely to receive.
The best way to know how your children are doing is to look at what they know versus what they could and should know at their age. Have them tested by outside sources that emphasize more traditional approaches. Find out what the gaps are (I believe you will be shocked).
All students need phonics. All students need to know long division, multiplication in a vertical format, exponents, fractions, decimals and algebra. They need to know how to show their thinking - not in writing but in mathematical processes. They need to practice basic skills. They need to be able to do arithmetic without a calculator.
Please don't wait for the establishment to get it right. Who knows when that will be? As education policy continues to shift under our feet, we must demand the education that our children require and deserve. I'm afraid we're going to have to fight for it.
An Interview with Diane Ravitch: Some Current Concerns Post Election
1) Diane, you have recently published some great pieces about education. I would like you to briefly summarize two. First, you wrote a piece about school systems paying kids for good grades. What in your mind is problematic with this procedures ( and let it be said that I agree with you) and what do you think would be the long term ramifications and repercussions of this practice?
The idea of paying kids to show up to school and to take tests and to get higher scores is spreading. To me, this is objectionable on many grounds, not least because studies by social scientists like Edward Deci and Barry Schwartz (Swarthmore) have shown that when the money stops, the motivation stops. It also corrupts education, because most teachers recognize that they are trying to inspire internal motivation, so that kids keep reading and learning even when there is no one watching or rewarding them. It is a sad renunciation of one of the goals of education to pay kids to do what they ought to do for their own sake without being paid.
2) Do you think anything is wrong with giving smiley faces and stickers and stars and the like for exemplary work?
I see nothing wrong with honors and stickers. That's not different from giving kids grades to recognize their hard work. Yes, we should give grades and we should praise the kids who do their work diligently. That's different, to me, from paying kids to show up, to take tests, and to raise their scores.
3) Do you think paying kids for good grades REALLY makes an appreciable difference?
No. There is no evidence that it does. Since the brain behind this program, Professor Roland Fryer of Harvard University, plans to evaluate the programs he designed, I will not be comfortable until there is external, independent evaluation. Even then, I am willing to bet (dollars, not stickers) that the motivation ends when the money ends. And since we are entering a period of tightened budgets, these programs are unlikely to last much longer. Imagine having to choose between smaller classes and paying kids to get higher scores.
4) Do the schools of education in America not do enough to teach courses on motivation? I don't know.
The fact that this nonsense is spreading (DC, NYC and Chicago) suggests that the education schools are not raising enough of a protest.
5) Now, turning to the results of the election and Obama's agenda for education. Do you think he will be able to deliver on what he promises?
The economic crisis is likely to curtail some of his promises. He will have to make choices.
6) Is there any single area that needs to be focused on in education?
Well, first, get NCLB fixed, if indeed it is fixable. Then, concentrate on improving pre-K and making it more widely available with higher quality.
7) Any single thing that needs to be changed in terms of NCLB?
There are many things that need to be changed, including its punitive spirit, but a good place to start is to eliminate the absurd goal that all children will be "proficient" by 2014. Never happened, won't happen, demoralizes good teachers, principals and schools. And this target, which is out of reach, will cause a huge increase in the number of "failing" schools year by year.
8) As we enter the year 2009, what are the main challenges that we face in education and how would YOU advise our President -elect to deal with them?
I agree with the statement issued by the group called "Broader, Bolder Agenda," which recommended that we take action on the array of social and economic burdens that limit the educational opportunities of so many children. There is much to be done, and one place to start is to recognize that schools operate in a wider environment, and need help to improve the lives of children. NCLB has become a problem in its own right, has turned too many schools into test-prep factories, and has seriously undermined the meaning of what education is and should be.
Faculty members complain constantly about plagiarism and trade stories about strategies to combat it. Loye Young thought he had a solution. On his syllabus at Texas A&M International University this fall, he wrote: “No form of dishonesty is acceptable. I will promptly and publicly fail and humiliate anyone caught lying, cheating, or stealing. That includes academic dishonesty, copyright violations, software piracy, or any other form of dishonesty.”
Many professors use the syllabus to warn students about enforcing plagiarism rules, but few promise public humiliation. Young, who owns a computer business in Laredo and doesn’t depend on a teaching job for his livelihood, thinks humiliation is part of the justice system. He noted in an interview Wednesday that “there’s a reason that trials are in public.”
When he caught six students in his management information systems course cheating, he wrote about it on his course blog (which he maintained on his business’s Web site), naming the students and telling the world that he had caught them and that they would receive an F for the course and be reported to university officials.
“Plagiarism is manifestly unfair and disrespectful to your classmates,” Young wrote on his blog. “There are students taking the course who are working very, very hard to learn a subject that in many cases is foreign to them. A plagiarizer is implicitly treating the honest, hard-working student as a dupe. Of course, the plagiarizer is the dupe or else would not need to plagiarize.”
When university administrators realized that Young had followed through on his threat to fail and publicly humiliate the students, they put the failing grades on hold — the cases are now being referred to an honors council for consideration and the F’s may or may not stand. But action against Young was quick: He was fired. The university says he violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law known widely as the Buckley Amendment or FERPA, which generally bars the release of educational records about students without their permission.
Young says that FERPA is being used to cover up the real reason the university wanted him out: that it was facing an instructor unwilling to stay quiet about students’ academic dishonesty. “People here are told that students should be babied and that we need to keep ‘em in to get enrollment and state funding,” he said. “Well, I want students — when they complete my course — to actually know something, and they can’t if they plagiarize everything.” That his actions distressed many at the university as much as the plagiarism, he said, shows the extent of the problem. “This beehive needed whacking,” he said.
Adding to the buzz has been an e-mail message sent to department chairs by someone in the administration (the provost denies knowing anything about it, and an article Wednesday in the Laredo Morning Times attributed it to deans) in which the chairs were reminded to tell faculty members that any F grades for plagiarism should be reviewed by the honors council and that professors need to always think about students’ due process rights before seeking to punish them.
Several faculty members, speaking privately because they didn’t want to anger administrators, said that they were taken aback by the way the university appeared to be viewing plagiarism as an issue requiring more due process for students, not more support for professors. For the university to follow the dismissal of an adjunct with this reminder, they said, left them feeling that they couldn’t bring plagiarism charges. Further, many said that they believed it was a professor’s right to award an F to a plagiarizer and that this should not require an honors council review.
Several e-mail messages are circulating among faculty members, expressing concern that their right to assure academic integrity is being undercut. Despite how widespread a problem plagiarism is among students, these e-mail messages say, the university is looking the other way and sending a public message to students that they are the victims when a professor takes plagiarism seriously.
Young said that the plagiarism in his course was easy to detect. He said that the essays he found to be copied didn’t read like student writing and seemed to be an odd combination of sources. He said he just put some of the essays into Google to find the sources, on Wikipedia, in the archives of term paper companies, and so forth. “If students don’t know that they will be prosecuted, this will not stop,” he said. “You need to have a deterrent, and it needs to be public.”
Not all faculty members share that view. Some who don’t like the way the university is dealing with situation still think Young crossed a line by going public with the names of students. Robert Haynes, an associate professor of English and president of the Faculty Senate, said Young was “not adequately prepared to deal with the challenge of students he perceived as cheating.” Haynes acknowledged that Young’s dismissal, followed by the memo now in circulation, has left many professors worried. He said that the events are “subject to the interpretation” that the university isn’t interested in tough enforcement of rules against plagiarism, but he said he didn’t think that was true. “We are interested in combining rigor and compassion. and we don’t want to compromise on either,” he said.
It’s important, Haynes said, that professors not “be subject to second guessing for ordinary decisions,” he said, and that includes grades. At the same time, he said, it was important for students to know their appeal rights.
Pablo Arenaz, provost at the university, said he was distressed that some faculty members are concerned about the university’s commitment to academic integrity. Asked whether a professor has the right to award an F to someone caught copying, Arenaz said that was “up to interpretation.” He said it was important that everyone respect students’ due process rights when plagiarism is suspected.
He stressed, however, that the reason Young was dismissed was because he violated students’ privacy rights. Asked if university policy states that violating FERPA is grounds for dismissal, Arenaz said he didn’t know. “The university believes in academic integrity and upholds academic integrity,” he said. Arenaz, asked if he thought plagiarism was a major problem at the university, noted that he has only been there for a few months, and said he wasn’t sure. “I don’t have a feel for it at all. If I put five faculty in a room, I would get different interpretations of what it is.”
If thick-cut marmalade is the touchstone of social class, as correspondents to our Letters page suggest, spelling is the chief indicator of education. No more deadly betrayal of incapacity in this department exists than misusing the apostrophe.
The confusion of they're, their and there drives the nation into red mists of rage. Yet which of us can swear that, in some careless holiday postcard or some late-night composition, we have not, on automatic pilot, written there when we meant they're?
Feelings have run so high that foaming pedants have joined bands of spelling guerrillas, armed with correcting fluid and scalpels to scratch out "greengrocer's apostrophes" (or should that be "greengrocers' apostrophes"?) in potatoe's or insert one in mens shoes.
It should be easy, for heaven's sake. The apostrophe stands for a missing letter. It sits before the possessive s (dog's) in the singular, because the genitive was once expressed by the termination -es (dogges). It all began to go wrong when an apostrophe was added to a plural possessive (dogs'), as an arbitrary sign, for there was no missing letter to mark.
The classic case is Queens' College (Cambridge), to be distinguished from Queen's College (Oxford) by the number of queens who founded them, hence the position of the apostrophe. Very neat, except that, as the Spectator's language columnist Dot Wordsworth reported, Queens' College confesses that the earliest examples of the name spelt with any apostrophe always have the apostrophe before the s. Indeed, the first example of Queens' College is from 1823. In the University Calendar, the spelling was changed from Queen's to Queens' in 1831.
Anomalies in names with and without apostrophes are everywhere. It is Earls Court on the London Underground, but the next stop is Baron's Court. It is St Albans but St David's; St Andrews in Scotland but St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly. St Thomas's hospital mis-spells its own name as St Thomas'. It's a terrible mess.
The trouble is that English language has suffered from the disease of creeping apostrophitis. The apostrophe is the Japanese knotweed of the garden of English. Decoratively established in words like dog's, it then popped up in words like children's. Before we knew what had happened, it was invading carefully tended phrases such as for conscience' sake. All this, says the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary gnomically, "was not yet established in 1725". No, indeed.
In Shakespeare's day, when apostrophes knew their place, the air was freer. We know not where the dramatist put apostrophes, as no manuscripts of his remain. But on the title page of the beautiful first folio it says Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies. No apostrophe for Will. The title of one comedy is: Loves Labour's lost; of another A Midsommer nights Dreame or A Midsommer night's Dreame.
It is not that we know any better now. We merely know different. So would it not be a liberation and a joy to do away with the apostrophe in it's (short for it is)? There is no historical justification for spelling the pronoun its instead of it's. The word its is frightfully nouveau in any case, being invented as recently as the 16th century. Private letters show a reluctance to abide by the baseless distinction between its and it's. "Do you know it's name?" asked Darwin, no simpleton in these matters, in a letter in 1828. As the language historian Lynda Mugglestone has pointed out, such divergences only went out with the long s (which we so enjoy mixing up with f in old books).
A little learning glares at the apostrophe, as basic table-manners concentrate on the knife and fork. Give us grouse and we'll pick them with our fingers, as, once we can spell and parse, we won't mind the odd discrepant apostrophe.
Democratic politicians like to see themselves as champions of public education; but when it comes to picking schools for their own children to attend, their support disappears. President-elect Obama is no different than hundreds of other Democratic elected officials across the nation, from members of Congress to big-city mayors and city council members. The president-elect's daughters have been in private schools in Chicago -- and all indications are that they will enroll in one of Washington's elite private schools when the family makes its big move to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
That's too bad because it insulates the Obamas from what other families must deal with: a failing public school system that resists genuine reform. And in Washington's case, it deprives a courageous new school chancellor of what would be her most powerful constituents, the First Family.
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee could use the Obamas' help -- especially in taking on the teachers union. Rhee has proposed a dramatic reform package aimed at removing incompetent teachers and rewarding excellence.
She wants to get rid of tenure -- a job protection that is no benefit to students and helps keep some of the worst performing teachers in the classroom. And she is willing to pay top dollar to teachers whose students make real progress. What's more, she will use private dollars to fund the increases. The extra money for Rhee's proposal would come from private foundations, which have already pledged an additional $75 million a year for five years, much of which would go to raise teacher pay.
Rhee's bold plan encompasses a voluntary, two-tier track for teachers. Each teacher could choose whether to enroll in the green plan or the red plan, both of which would increase pay but with strings attached. Teachers who choose the green plan could potentially double the pay they could earn, but they would have to give up tenure for a year and would then need a principal's recommendation to keep their job or face dismissal.
Those who choose the red plan would get smaller pay increases but would lose their seniority rights so that they could not bump more-junior teachers for school assignments if their own school closed or was reorganized.
The idea behind the plan would be to weed out the poor performers from those who were doing a good job, and reward merit rather than longevity. In other words, public schools would begin to operate like most other segments of our society: Those who failed would feel it in their paychecks and those who succeeded would be rewarded there. But unions don't cotton to merit-based pay, insisting that seniority is what really matters.
The unions' interest is solely in filling their own coffers with dues and maintaining their political power. An incompetent teacher who pays dues is just as valuable to the union as an excellent teacher, and the bad teacher may be more beholden to the union to protect his or her job. No wonder, then, the Washington Teachers Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, is resisting Rhee's plan.
The union is refusing even to put Rhee's proposal to a vote of its membership, reportedly because of pressure from the AFT's new president, Randi Weingarten. Rhee and Weingarten have locked horns before when Rhee worked for a nonprofit education group in New York City, where Weingarten also leads the local United Federation of Teachers.
Weingarten won her battle against reforms Rhee proposed for the New York schools -- but Rhee has a powerful ally in Washington's mayor Adrian Fenty. Now if only the Obamas could be enlisted to her side, Rhee might actually prevail in D.C.
President-elect Obama wants the best education for his girls -- what parent doesn't? But as someone whose own children attended D.C. public schools, I know what it means to push for reform of public education from within. The Obamas could send a powerful message if they were to enroll their daughters in the D.C. system, either in a regular or a charter school. And it would certainly give them a window into the problems those schools face.
But I won't hold my breath. Democratic politicians' support for public education usually amounts to spending other people's money and keeping their own kids out.
A few weeks ago, as I was walking across the campus of UNC-Wilmington, I heard an old familiar sound. A rap song was blaring from the general vicinity of the university amphitheater. I heard the n-word broadcast loudly (from over 100 yards away) so I decided to walk over to investigate the source of the racial epithet.
I must confess that I had an ulterior motive for seeking the source of the offensive epithet. The last time I heard an offensive word coming from the amphitheater it was an "Obama 2008" group that was playing profanity-laced rap music. I was hoping they were back so I could ask them to change their music to something other than the tired old songs about bitches, niggas, and hos. Like a crack addict voting for Obama I was hoping for a little change. And, of course, I was hoping for another chance to rib them in the wake of the Reverend Wright scandal.
Regrettably, when I got there, I saw that the source of the music was a university group called "ACE" that sponsors various events on campus - sometimes comedians, sometimes musical artists. So I turned around and walked to the university union to get a cup of coffee. That's when I ran into Craig (not real name) who is president of the Alpha Epsilon Sigma fraternity (also not real name and, hereafter, referred to as the As).
Craig and I spend a few minutes talking about the latest free speech scandal at UNCW. It all began when the As were playing another fraternity called the Alpha Kappas (also not real name and, hereafter, referred to as the AKs) in an intramural football game. Because the As and AKs were both founded in the South around the time of the Civil War, they occasionally try to "out-Southern" one another. That was the case during their intramural match and that is when the trouble began.
When the As decided to parade around the football field with a banner - an activity taking only a couple of minutes - they gave little thought to the small Confederate Flag that was displayed along with their fraternity crest and fraternity name. Again, lest there be any confusion, the kids were not carrying a Confederate Flag - an activity, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment. They were carrying a large banner a small part of which was covered by a representation of the Confederate Flag.
Regrettably, a lower-level administrator at UNCW decided to reprimand the As for parading around with a "symbol of hatred." The As were told in no uncertain terms that the Confederate Flag was not protected free speech, presumably because it violates one or more of our university's unconstitutional (read: illegal) speech codes.
It never really mattered to the constitutionally ignorant UNCW administrator (please pardon any redundancy) that there were no blacks who were present and offended by the "symbol of hatred." Nor did it matter that no AKs were offended. Nor did it matter that the AKs later offered to write a letter to the university explaining that they were not offended. Nor did it matter that ACE (remember, the group that broadcast the n-word?) was given exactly $60,000 of public funds by the university to be spent on a concert. They used the $60,000 to hire a rapper to call women bitches and hos and to use the n-word. Five years later, no administrator has been punished for promoting racial hatred.
But the As were punished. They were banned from participating in intramural sports for the rest of the academic year. Their student activity fees will go to other groups who use it to broadcast the n-word while they are banned from engaging in certain student activities. This is all happening at a university with a chancellor from New York who is too ethnocentric to understand fully what the Confederate Flag means to Southerners.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". -The Thirteenth Amendment
Over the past several days, since the recent general election, I have received countless despairing e-messages from individuals who are certain that the ascendency of Barack H. Obama to the Presidency of the United States represents the end of America, the end of democracy, the end of history, the end of the world, or some combination of the above.
You may feel that way, yourself. I certainly have, from moment to moment, but despair is not my chosen mode of existence, and I have spent those moments trying to figure out how to get my family and myself through the bad times that are about to result from electing this Marxoid thug, with a minimum of injury and some hope for the future.
Upon due consideration, there are enough bright spots on the horizon to keep our world warm and bright while we all work through and repair the damage that this "historical event" has done-and will continue trying to do-to the advance of individual human liberty. To begin with, try not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda.
Even so, they clearly understand that George W. Bush is the worst President this country has ever had-so far-and that plugging John McCain in to replace him would have been no improvement. What they didn't understand is that Obama isn't a real alternative, either. Even if they had understood, what could they have done about it that libertarians haven't been trying to do, without success, for over 40 years?
So here we all are, stuck with a Glorious Leader whose sainthood, conferred by masses of worshippers and by mass media sinking fast and clutching at any straw, threatens to make Jack Kennedy's beatification-or even that of Father Abraham Lincoln-look like a poor, pale thing.
It is up to libertarians to keep our heads up, our vision clear, and to speak the truth at every turn. Barack Obama is the pampered pet of Chicago gangsters. He is good buddies with a murderous African dictator. And his wacko leftist academic background evokes memories of the style of sideways thinking that inspired the death marches in Cambodia.
The man burns to have a private army all his own. During the election campaign, he threatened to create a "domestic security force" as large and well-funded as the entire U.S. military, just the thing to send door-to-door (as the police attempted in the Chicago projects) searching for privately-owned weapons. Sure enough, the very first item to appear on his website www.change.org following the election was a proposal to require "mandatory community service"-50 hours a year from junior high school and high school students, 100 hours from those in college-or the individuals in question needn't expect to graduate.
Rather than receiving all this as bad news, however, libertarians should celebrate it as a gift. Think of it as an error of arrogance, the hubris that inevitably undoes the bumbling heroes of classical Greek tragedy. It would appear that, just as "only Nixon could go to China," only the first black president, Barack Obama, would attempt to reimpose slavery on a nation that once tore itself into bloody shreds-or so establishment historians assure us-to put an end to slavery.
The fact is-given his institution of a personal income tax and military conscription on a once-free citizenry-Abraham Lincoln, yet another corrupt politician inappropriately elevated to godhood by his drooling sycophants, didn't abolish slavery, he merely nationalized it. But I digress.
Where both houses of Congress and the presidency are controlled by the Democrats, this evil cannot be dealt with at the national level. The way to handle it-I believe it calls for collaboration between the Libertarian Party and the American Civil Liberties Union-is with thousands of lawsuits and injunctions at the local level, rooted in the Thirteenth Amendment, preventing public schools and colleges from enslaving children and young adults. Such an effort must be nationwide. Those who operate these institutions must be made to understand clearly that cooperation with the Obama regime means the inevitable destruction of all public schools and publicly-funded colleges.
Over the years, I've made a lot of predictions that have come true. Remember this one: two years from now, even those who supported Barack Obama most enthusiastically will be feeling a certain nostalgia about George W. Bush and secretly wishing they'd voted for John McCain.
Yeah, I know, disgusting. But that's the way the world works. Nobody alive today would willingly admit to voting for Adolf Hitler, although the third or fourth worst mass-murderer in history (behind Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, and, on a per capita basis, Pol Pot) won by a landslide. Once the outrages to come have ended and there are thousands-perhaps even millions-of Obama's crimes to account for, would you want to admit to having voted to make those crimes possible?
For libertarians, the possibilities are endless. When socialism fails-again-to bring about paradise on Earth and leaves the usual trail of utter wreckage behind it, we will be there to say "I told you so", exactly as we have been saying it for the past 40-odd years, exactly as we must continue saying it through the next horrible years. Maybe this time somebody will listen.
Outrage as British school fails to observe Veteran's day silence - because it would disrupt classes
A secondary school has sparked outrage by failing to observe the two minute silence on Armistice Day - because it would disrupt classes. The headteacher of Bedminster Down School in Bristol said it was impractical to interrupt lessons - particularly PE and cookery - at 11am on Tuesday. So instead the act of remembrance was moved to the lunch break at 12.30pm, which was ''a more appropriate time for reflection''.
But the move upset some pupils and local members of the Royal British Legion. Schoolgirl Hayley Thomas, 15, said many of Bedminster Down's 1,000 pupils were ''shocked'' by the change. She said: ''I have always been taught to respect those who sacrificed their lives to make life how it is today. ''In my opinion, the majority of this country, regardless of how important their job or education is, such as the police, politicians and general public, all take time out at the official time as a sign of respect to all those who lost their lives for the good of their country. ''We have had the silence at 11am in the past. A lot of people were shocked that the school put it aside this year.''
Roger Duddridge, chairman of the City of Bristol group of Royal British Legion branches, said it is ''sad'' if we can't spare two minutes to remember ''those who gave everything.'' He said: ''If we can't give two minutes of our lives just to stand quietly to remember those who gave everything they had it is a little bit sad. ''But if the school wants to observe the silence at 12.30pm, then at least they are remembering.''
Year-11 student Hayley was in a textiles lesson at 11am on Tuesday and said the teacher of that individual class did allow pupils to mark the silence. However, it was not until 12.30pm when deputy head Philip Bailey made an announcement over loudspeakers to start the official school act of remembrance.
For 90 years British people of all ages and occupations have dropped whatever they were doing to observe the two minute silence at 11am on November 11.
Yesterday Bedminster Down head teacher Marius Frank defended the move and said he felt the Armistice was marked ''reflectively and appropriately'' - even thought it was 90 minutes late. He said: ''The actual time is important, of course, but it is also about having the silence at an appropriate time for reflection to make sure the students really understand what it is about. ''We do not have the space to assemble all 1,000 students plus staff in one place so we chose to observe the silence at a time when we usually have our announcements, while everyone is still in their classrooms before lunchtime. ''We gave it an introduction so that it did not happen in a vacuum and it was marked reflectively and appropriately.''
Send Your Children to D.C. Public Schools, Mr. President-Elect
Barack and Michelle Obama are poised to commit a classic act of limousine-liberal hypocrisy -- in this case, turning their backs on tens of thousands of inner-city kids in Washington, D.C.
Public schools, it seems, are good enough for poor and middle-class families, but not for rich families like the Obamas. In July, when he addressed the NAACP's annual convention, Sen. Barack Obama expressed his devotion to American public schools, vowing he would not "walk away from them" by supporting school-choice programs like Sen. John McCain did. "What he's offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers," said Obama. "Well, I believe we need to move beyond the same debate we've been having for the past 30 years when we haven't gotten anything done. We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them."
In October, in the last presidential debate, Obama specifically attacked McCain's support for the school-choice program in Washington, D.C., which gives 1,900 lower-income students a voucher worth up to $7,500 to attend the private school of their choice -- and which McCain wanted to expand to include more students.
"The centerpiece of Sen. McCain's education policy is to increase the voucher program in D.C. by 2,000 slots," Obama said derisively. "That leaves all of you who live in the other 50 states without an education reform policy from Sen. McCain. So if we are going to be serious about this issue, we've got to have a president who is going to tackle it head-on, and that's what I intend to do as president."
In case anyone doubted that he still opposed school-voucher programs, Obama made his position clear in Time magazine just before the election. The magazine asked: "Should parents be given vouchers to enable them to send their children to any school?" Obama answered: "No: I believe that public education in America should foster innovation and provide students with varied, high-quality learning opportunities."
The practical effect of Obama's policy in Washington, D.C., is that tens of thousands of students will remain trapped in what are simultaneously the most expensive and worst public schools in America.
According to "Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: School Year 2005-2006," a report published by the Department of Education in July, total expenditures per pupil in the District of Columbia's public schools was $15,798, more than the per pupil spending of any state.
Yet, in the National Assessment of Education Progress mathematics and reading tests administered to fourth- and eighth-graders in 2007, D.C. students did worse than students in any state.
Only 12 percent of D.C. eighth-graders were rated grade-level "proficient" or better in reading, only 8 percent in math. There were 59,616 students enrolled in the D.C. public schools in 2006, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. If McCain's plan to increase by 2,000 the number of vouchers available in the District were enacted, taxpayers would still be spending $15,798 per student per year to send more than 55,000 kids through a school system where about nine out of 10 students do not learn to read or do math at grade-level proficiency by the time they "graduate" from elementary school.
What is Obama's plan to deal with this? Spend $18 billion more in federal tax dollars on public education (as he promised in his campaign) -- and send his own kids to extremely expensive private schools. Currently, Obama's two daughters (ages 7 and 10) attend the University of Chicago Lab School, where tuition is $18,492 for grades 1-4 and $20,286 for grades 5-8. When Michelle Obama visited Washington this week, she toured only two prospective schools for her daughters: Sidwell Friends, where lower-school tuition is $28,442; and Georgetown Day, where tuition is $27,445 for grades 1-5.
If Barack Obama backed legislation giving all students in D.C. a voucher worth the $15,798 D.C. public schools spend per pupil, poor and middle-class families -- especially those with more than two children -- would still not be able to afford Sidwell Friends and Georgetown Day. But they would be able to afford most of the other private schools in the Washington area, including almost all of the Catholic schools.
But that would contradict Obama's vision of America, a place where poor children remain trapped in public schools, rich children go to very expensive schools, and middle-class parents who work hard and struggle to send their children to religious schools that share their values and commitment to excellence must expect to pay not only for their own children's education but also escalating local and federal taxes to ill-educate their neighbor's children. Put your children where your ideology is, Mr. President-elect. Send them to public school.
'Entitled' Students Expect Grades for Effort, Attendance
This study demonstrates an attitude of entitlement that has reached into the arena of education. It underscores the need for parents to be intentional in teaching their children to become responsible, and the earlier the process begins, the better
Most university students believe that if they're "trying hard," a professor should reconsider their grade. One-third say that if they attend most of the classes for a course, they deserve at least a B, while almost one-quarter "think poorly" of professors who don't reply to e-mails the same day they're sent. Those are among the revelations in a newly published study examining students' sense of academic entitlement, or the mentality that enrolling in post-secondary education is akin to shopping in a store where the customer is always right.
The paper describes academic entitlement as "expectations of high marks for modest effort and demanding attitudes toward teachers." The study reveals that students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, exploit others, shirk hard work and display "narcissistic orientation." The study, which surveyed two groups of approximately 400 undergraduates aged 18 to 25, is published in the November issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Among the findings:
The study asked approximately 400 undergraduates aged 18 to 25 whether they agreed with these statements:
If I have explained to my professor that I am trying hard, I think he/she should give me some consideration with respect to my course grade - 66.2 percent agree
If I have completed most of the reading for a class, I deserve a B in that course - 40.7 per cent
If I have attended most of the classes for a course, I deserve at least a grade of B - 34.1 per cent
Teachers often give me lower grades than I deserve on paper assignments - 31.5 per cent
Professors who won't let me take my exams at another time because of my personal plans (e.g. a vacation) are too strict - 29.9 per cent
Research suggests comprehensive teacher inductions have little effect in 1st year
The report, Impacts of Comprehensive Teacher Induction: Results from the First Year of a Randomized Controlled Study, presents implementation and impact findings for beginning elementary school teachers after one year of induction services. The study tests whether comprehensive teacher induction affects teacher retention rates, classroom practices, and student achievement, compared to the induction programs that districts normally provide.
Beginning teachers in schools randomly assigned to receive comprehensive induction services were offered weekly mentoring from a full-time mentor (who provided services such as observing the beginning teacher in his/her classroom and providing feedback), opportunities to observe other teachers in their classrooms, and professional development workshops on topics such as classroom management and lesson planning.
Two comprehensive induction providers were included in the study — the Educational Testing Service and the New Teacher Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
Alarming teen suicide rate in lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in Australian schools
Not a lifestyle to be encouraged
Lesbian, gay and bisexual young people are attempting suicide and harming themselves at an alarming rate because of bullying in Queensland schools, a new report shows. The Open Doors Action Research Report 2008 shows that over the past 12 months 37 per cent of affected young people had attempted suicide and 82 per cent had considered suicide. It also showed that of the 164 participants who completed the anonymous online survey, 59 per cent had harmed themselves.
"Given that LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) young people reported extensive maltreatment and lack of support, it is unsurprising that they also reported high rates of self-harm, suicide ideation and suicide attempts," the report by the support organisation Open Doors says.
The report highlights schools as a significant source of distress for lesbian, gay and bisexual young people. Four out of five respondents reported they had been bullied for their sexuality at school, but only 12 per cent said the school took action to stop the bullying. "Bullying not only came from students. Adults such as teachers, school administrators and parents also bullied LGB students," the report says. "Many young people felt so afraid at school that they had missed over two school weeks worth of classes to ensure their safety. "Clearly current school anti-bullying measures do not adequately protect LGB students - this is providing a discriminatory educational environment for LGB students which is illegal. "Schools need to take further actions to ensure LGB students are safe at school."
Sexual health education at schools was also found to be inadequate, as out of the two-thirds of LGB young people who reported that they had engaged in sex, only two per cent reported being adequately educated in practising safe sex. "It is essential that LGB young people are provided equal opportunity to their heterosexual peers to learn about safer sex," the report said.
The average participant in the survey was 17, attending school and sexually active. The report stated 98 per cent of participants were certain of their sexual orientation. Open Doors Youth Service has operated since 2001, tackling youth homelessness in the greater Brisbane area.
In an October email, Spokane's secondary mathematics coordinator reaffirmed this district's commitment to a "student-centered" approach to teaching (also sometimes called "discovery learning" or "constructivism"). In this approach, students often work as partners or in groups, and teachers act as "facilitators" rather than as "instructors." Students are encouraged to come up with their own multiple solutions to problems and to ask fellow students for help before asking the teacher.
Reform math curricula are typically built around a constructivist approach, probably because the 1989 Standards document from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics calls for it (Stiff, 2001c; "Curriculum," 2004). Proponents say the approach leads to "deeper understanding," helpful collaboration and better student enjoyment of the process. Others say a dependence on it can hinder the learning process and frustrate students.
A local parent told me this story about when his daughter took a math class that used reform math curriculum Connected Mathematics: Students were told that "Juan" was mowing a lawn in a right-angle triangle. He wanted to figure out the length of the diagonal. The term "Pythagorean Theorem" (a2 + b2 = c2) wasn't presented. The students were to work in groups and figure out a way to get the answer. Finally, one student who knew the theorem provided it to her group. (Her group was the only one to get the right answer.) Incredibly, the teacher "chastised" the student for using the formula.
"A lot of parents don't believe it at first," the parent said to me. "Like, their kids are younger, they don't know, and they feel that parents are exaggerating, but it is the honest-to-God truth, and these stories get worse."
In small doses, constructivism can provide flavor to classrooms, but some math professors have told me the approach seems to work better in subjects other than math. That sounds reasonable. The learning of mathematics depends on a logical progression of basic skills. Sixth-graders are not Pythagorus, nor are they math teachers.
Meanwhile, anti-reform advocacy group Mathematically Correct provides an amusing take on constructivism ("What Is," 1996): "This notion holds that students will learn math better if they are left to discover the rules and methods of mathematics for themselves, rather than being taught by teachers or textbooks. This is not unlike the Socratic method, minus Socrates."
Insufficient Practice of Basic Skills
Another problem in math classrooms is the lack of practice. Instead of insisting that students practice math skills until they're second nature, educators have labeled this practice "drill and kill" and thrown it under a bus. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase. It's a strange, flippant way to dismiss a logical process for learning. Drilling is how anyone learns a skill. Removing drilling from the learning process is like saying, "We'll just remove this gravity. Now stay put." Everyone drills - athletes, pianists, soldiers, plumbers and doctors. Drilling is necessary. It isn't good or bad - it's simply what must be done.
Imagine if I told chess players they had to figure out the rules of chess on their own, in fits and starts, by trial and error and by asking their fellow players. Imagine if I expected them to win games when they hadn't had a chance to practice.
In American education, the "worm" is not yet turning, but it might be looking over its shoulder. In its March 2008 report, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel reintroduced the notion of practicing the basics: "Practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills - the fast, accurate, and effortless processing of content information - which frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving" ("Foundations," 2008, p. 30).
But children in the system now are stuck with a process that asks them to work in diverse groups to reinvent thousands of years of math procedures that they then don't get to practice.
Some people enjoy puzzles on logic and process, where things might not be what they seem and where they've got to figure out subtle differences and new ways of thinking. But this esoteric, conceptual approach to math, with a constant struggle to understand the process, doesn't seem like a logical approach for children. Children are concrete thinkers who tend to appreciate concrete ideas. Children want instructions, direction and things that make sense. Many don't appreciate the daily grind of writing about math, of having to figure out what they're doing, of having to count on classmates for guidance, of trying to remember things they've done just once or twice and several weeks ago.
It's ironic that proponents of reform math criticize traditionalists for supposedly not knowing "how to teach math to children." The reform method seems completely oppositional to how children learn best.
I asked a Spokane student if she prefers the Connected Mathematics she gets in school over the Singapore Math she gets at home. She said, "In a way, Connected Mathematics is easier because you don't have to know as much math, but in a way, it's harder because you have to know more. You have to know exactly what they want."
She gave me an example of the classroom approach: Students are to gather in groups to discuss a problem. The problem might be a complicated twist on simplistic math, or it might be a concept they've never seen before. As the groups muddle around, they don't always agree on what's required. Sometimes, they don't have the necessary underlying skills. Some students become frustrated or bored. Trying to help each other, some confuse the others. They might come up with the right answer, or they might not, but - without practicing the new concepts - the class moves on to something new. Singapore Math, on the other hand, "might be harder as far as the math goes," she said, "but at least you know what they want."
I told her I thought her answer was articulate and enlightening. "I've spoken to a lot of people now," I said, "and you explained things very well." "That's because they teach it," she replied, "but I'm the one who has to learn it."
British head teacher suspends a quarter of her pupils in a year... and exam results soar
A head teacher has transformed academic achievement at her school by adopting a zero tolerance approach to bad behaviour. Caroline Haynes, 49, has handed out 478 exclusions at Tendring Technology College over the past year - an astonishing one in 20 of all those issued across the county. The crackdown has seen the number of pupils getting A* to C grades at GCSE soar from 48 per cent in 2004, when she joined the school, to 74 per cent this year.
Mrs Haynes attacked political pressure on schools to reduce exclusions in order to improve their Ofsted behaviour ratings. 'Statistics paint a false picture,' she said. 'Because we refuse to buckle under the pressure we had to work very hard to convince Ofsted inspectors that pupil behaviour is good, despite the figures. 'I could reduce exclusion rates tomorrow by not suspending pupils, but it would have a detrimental effect on the quality of teaching and unruly behaviour.'
Academic results at the college in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, were rated as being below average in a 2003 Ofsted report. Mrs Haynes joined the following year and now issues more than two suspensions each day on average to the 1,880 pupils. The total of 478 over the year is the equivalent of one in four of the school's pupils. However, a recent report found the school to be 'good' or better in every category.
Under her regime, there is an escalating level of sanctions, including extra work, detentions and being placed 'on report'. One-day exclusions are dished out for offences such as failing to attend two after-school detentions. Longer exclusions are given for offences such as bullying, stealing, disruption, abuse of staff or fellow students, vandalism and racism. During exclusions pupils are set work and cannot return to classes until it is completed. They and their parents must also meet the head to discuss how to improve their behaviour.
Mrs Haynes said it was important pupils knew when they had 'crossed the line'. She added: 'Our pupils learn to deal with the consequences of their actions and our teachers are allowed to concentrate on their job rather than battle bad behaviour. Exam results have soared. I'm very proud.'
The school permanently excludes pupils for possessing an illegal substance or offensive weapon. Two were expelled last year. The Department for Children, Schools and Families said it trusted heads' judgment 'to decide what sanctions will work best'.
SUPERHEROES outlawed by Victorian kindergartens have been thrown a lifeline by the Federal Government. The caped crusaders have been banned in many individual kinders and childcare centres for encouraging rough play by groups of boys. Parents are sent letters at the beginning of the year advising of a ban on superhero dressing up and toys.
But new research from the Government argues superheroes such as Superman, Spiderman, Buzz Lightyear, Ben 10, and Batman play the same role as fairytales for past generations. An article in Putting Children First, a journal published by the federally-funded National Childcare Accreditation Council, argues superhero play leads to complex, imaginative games.
Childcare consultant Heather Barnes said there were many reasons why early learning teachers adopted a zero-tolerance approach to superhero play, including the risk of accidents and themes of war, violence and masculine strength. But she argues superhero play can instead be seen as a way of releasing tension and giving children a feeling of courage. "Preschool-age children seem drawn to the power, strength and special attributes of superheroes, and when engaged in this type of play, it helps them to feel in charge of their world," she writes.
Kristy Bianchin, 24, of Pakenham, who is the mother of Lewis, 2, and Max, four months, encourages her older son's superhero play. "He loves Sportacus . . . and I don't mind because it's fun, active play that encourages interaction with others and encourages healthy eating," she said.
I hope this guy wins. It might motivate the schools to take discipline seriously
A MAN who says his teachers stood by and did nothing while he was violently bullied by his classmates is suing the state for $2 million. David Gregory went to his teachers in tears during six years of "consistent and systematic bullying" at the hands of his classmates and the school did nothing, the New South Wales Supreme Court was told today.
Mr Gregory, now 30, from Mollymook on the state's south coast, suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder and agoraphobia and is unable to work, which he blames on the years of humiliation and isolation he endured at Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School in Tamworth in the state's north. He is seeking upwards of $2 million in lost earnings from the state, arguing that the school's failure to look after him caused his psychological problems.
Giving evidence before Justice Elizabeth Fullerton today, Mr Gregory described a system designed by students which had been in place while he was there in the 1990s. All younger boys had to obey older boys or risk being "nicked" - hit across the knuckles with a steel ruler, or "broomed" - when they had to bend over and be hit with a broom. "The teachers just accepted it at Farrer," he told the court.
When he criticised the system he was ostracised and the name-calling and physical abuse began. Called "sterile", "faggot", "midget", "loser" and "Nazi", Mr Gregory said he was forbidden to socialise with his peers and had rocks thrown at him regularly. When he complained to his year master and other teachers, his fears were ignored, he said. "I was upset and in tears when I (told them)," Mr Gregory told the court.
Eventually he developed obsessive compulsive disorder, washing thoroughly in hospital strength disinfectant because he felt "dirty", his lawyer Russell McIlwaine told the court. He also began self-mutilating, Mr McIlwaine said.
The school has acknowledged in court that it should not have allowed the system to operate and that it failed to implement "adequate control so as to protect and prevent abusive conduct by the students".
High school sophomores made record improvements on the state's high school exit exam on their first attempt this spring, according to data released Friday by the S.C. Department of Education. Of the more than 51,000 first-time test takers, four out of five passed both the math and English/language arts portions - the highest success rate since the current version of the test was first administered in 2004. This year, the average pass rate on the High School Assessment Program test - which must be passed to earn a high school diploma - was 80.8 percent. That's up nearly 4 percentage points from 2007, and it is the third consecutive year of improvements.
State Superintendent Jim Rex said students who pass the exit exam on their first try should be more likely to graduate on time and have future success. Currently, 73.3 percent of S.C. students graduate from high school in four years. "If we continue to improve, that could have a positive long-term impact on high school graduation rates," Rex said.
The Department of Education also noted some of the biggest gains this year were from students whose native language is not English. High schools in every district in Richland, Lexington and Kershaw counties improved their pass rates from 2007. Students at Dutch Fork High and Chapin High in Lexington-Richland 5 and Lexington High in Lexington 1 had the highest overall passing rates - 94 percent or higher - in the area. At Richland 1's Dreher High and Lexington 3's Batesburg-Leesville High, students made the biggest gains of any area high school - posting a 13.4 percentage point increase over last year.
"That's pretty exciting news," said Batesburg-Leesville principal Raymond Padgett, who noted scores improved consistently over a few years. "Obviously we attribute a lot of this to ... the dedication and hard work of our teachers, and our students, as well." More focus is on English and math classes, teachers are more available for tutoring and faculty have more planning time, the principal said.
Last year, faculty also challenged students in a class meeting to do better than previous students. "We talked to them about the importance of this," Padgett said. "What it meant to them, what it meant to the school, and what it meant to the community.
Besides being a graduation requirement, S.C. exit exam scores also determine whether students meet federal accountability goals. A passing score on the state test is a 2, on a scale of 1 to 4. The federal standard is a 3. Friday's report showed that 56 percent of students scored a 3 or above in math, up from 52.3 percent last year. In English/language arts, scores dropped slightly, from 59.8 percent to 59.3 percent.
Rex said graduation plans, career clusters and innovative instruction, especially ninth-grade academies, are helping better prepare students for the test. "A lot of good things are going on in the state," he said Friday. "It's heartening to see that we're making progress."
Arizona State University, anticipating at least $25 million in budget cuts this fiscal year - on top of the $30 million already cut - is ending its contracts with as many as 200 adjunct instructors. Boston University, Cornell and Brown have announced selective hiring freezes. And Tufts University, which for the last two years has, proudly, been one of the few colleges in the nation that could afford to be need-blind - that is, to admit the best-qualified applicants and meet their full financial need - may not be able to maintain that generosity for next year's incoming class.
This fall, Tufts suspended new capital projects and budgeted more for financial aid. But with the market downturn, and the likelihood that more applicants will need bigger aid packages, need-blind admissions may go by the wayside. "The target of being need-blind is our highest priority," said Lawrence S. Bacow, president of Tufts. "But with what's happening in the larger economy, we expect that the incoming class is going to be needier. That's the real uncertainty."
Tough economic times have come to public and private universities alike, and rich or poor, they are figuring out how to respond. Many are announcing hiring freezes, postponing construction projects or putting off planned capital campaigns. With endowment values and charitable gifts likely to decline, the process of setting next year's tuition low enough to keep students coming, but high enough to support operations, is trickier than ever.
Dozens of college presidents, especially at wealthy institutions, have sent letters and e-mail to students and their families describing their financial situation and belt-tightening plans. At Williams College, for example, President Morton Owen Schapiro wrote that with last year's negative return on the endowment and the worsening situation since June, some renovation and facilities spending would be reduced and nonessential openings left unfilled.
Many students, increasingly conscious of costs, are flocking to their state universities; at Binghamton University, part of the New York State university system, applications were up 50 percent this fall. But with this year's state budget problems, tuition increases at public universities may be especially steep. Some public universities have already announced midyear tuition increases.
With endowment values shrinking, variable-rate debt costs rising and states cutting their financing, colleges face challenges on multiple fronts, said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. "There's no evidence of a complete meltdown," Ms. Broad said, "but the problems are serious enough that higher education is going to need help from the government." And as in other sectors, she said, some financially shaky institutions will most likely be seeking mergers.
Nationwide, retrenchment announcements are coming fast and furious, as state after state reduces education financing. The University of Florida, which eliminated 430 faculty and staff positions this year, was told recently to cut next year's budget by 10 percent, probably requiring more layoffs. Financing for the University of Massachusetts system was cut $24.6 million for the current fiscal year.
On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed a midyear budget cut of $65.5 million for the University of California system - on top of the $48 million reduction already in the budget. "Budget cuts mean that campuses won't be able to fill faculty vacancies, that the student-faculty ratio rises, that students have lecturers instead of tenured professors," said Mark G. Yudof, president of the California system. "Higher education is very labor intensive. We may be getting to the point where there will have to be some basic change in the model."
Private colleges, too, are tightening their belts - turning down thermostats, scrapping plans for new gardens or quads, reducing faculty raises. But many are also increasing their pool of financial aid. Vassar College will give out $1 million more in financial aid this year than originally budgeted, even though the endowment, which provides a third of its operating budget, dropped to $765 million at the end of September, down $80 million from late June. President Catharine Bond Hill of Vassar said the college would reduce its operating costs, but remain need-blind.
Many institutions with small endowments, however, will probably become more need-sensitive than usual this year, quietly offering places to fewer students who need large aid packages.
Reason 142 to Homeschool: Obama Teachers Won’t Bully Kids Who Support conservatives
This is a video of Diantha Harris, a lifelong democrat and avid Barack Obama supporter. She is also a lousy schoolteacher, as is evidenced by the mushmouthed kids in her class. And instead of concentrating on grammar and English, math and science, she abuses and ridicules any child who dares to speak up in support of John McCain. This video is part of a Finnish documentary on Obama fans, and it is shocking that you have to go to a foreign country to learn what goes on in our own classrooms.
See how she singles out the little white girl and mocks her for having an absent parent, who is off defending the country, and lies to her, saying her Dad would have to stay in Iraq for a hundred years? The little girl was ready to cry! Disgusting.
Diantha Harris: It’s a senseless war! [Stares at Kathy.] And by the way, Kathy, the person that you’re picking for president said [Harris shakes her head] that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to! [Kathy bites her lip, looks ashamed. Other kids stare at Kathy, laugh, smirk.] So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years!
[Kathy is on verge of tears.]
[In an interview later:]
Diantha Harris: Now I can support whomever I want to support, as long as I don’t browbeat another person for the candidate that they supported. Like I have some students that support John McCain, and when they told me that, I said ah … “that’s good’ and I just moved on. So, I think that everybody is entitled to their own personal opinion.
You know, the schools are banning kickball, dodgeball and tag on the playgrounds because they are afraid of bullies. Seems to me the bullies are the ones with the chalkboard erasers.
Education is the key to social mobility but Britain has achieved NO improvement in social mobility for a long time
Despite it allegedly being a major goal of the ruling Labour party government
The class divide is as deep as ever in Britain, a Government report has admitted, with "social mobility no greater or less since 1970". Family background "still makes a marked difference" to what chances a person will have in their life, the study says. Working-class children continue to fare badly at school compared with their richer classmates and struggle to get better jobs than their parents had, it is claimed.
The report, by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, discloses that the UK's record on making education and employment more fair "does not compare well internationally" and that much more could be done. It goes on to claim that increased investment on education and care for toddlers is starting to have an effect, however, and there have been "positive changes" in narrowing the class divide this decade.
But critics said the modest improvements are a "damning indictment" of Labour's key pledge to reduce the gap between rich and poor, which has seen education funding almost doubling to 77billion pounds a year in addition to reforms of the welfare system. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "Ministers are claiming this morning that things are getting better - that between 2001 and 2005 in this country social mobility began to improve. Barely. "Firstly, what a damning indictment of 11 years of Labour Government, of vast amounts of money spent on regeneration programmes, on complex new systems of support for people on low incomes, on the New Deal - that the best they can claim is a fractional improvement. If indeed that fractional improvement even exists outside the Downing Street spin machine."
He went on: "Only rarely do you find young people making the social leap that once took the best and the brightest of previous generations brought up in Britain's humblest backgrounds to positions of prominence."
The report, called Getting On, Getting Ahead, says there was a sharp increase in social mobility after the Second World War as children of working-class parents acquired better paid clerical and professional jobs. Social mobility in this report is gauged by comparing the quality of occupation one person has with that of their parents. The trend then went into reverse, however, with the proportion of men getting better jobs than their fathers remaining the same since the 1970s, although it has improved among women. "Broadly, social mobility is no greater or less since 1970," the report states. "Since the war, the UK's record on making sure people have a fair chance to get better jobs does not compare well internationally."
The report says the influence of family background on educational attainment has "remained constant", with poor children less likely to leave school with five good GCSEs or go on to study at university. It states: "One of the UK's major international weaknesses has been the large number of people emerging from school with few qualifications."
However, the report also finds that family background has had less of an impact on GCSE results for those born in 1990 - who took their exams in 2006 - than in 1970, suggesting the younger generation may be more able to move up the social ladder. This group has not yet entered the employment market so comprehensive data on their social mobility is not available. In addition, it says earnings mobility - the chance of getting a better job during a person's career - has "risen slightly since 2000".
Liam Byrne, the Cabinet Office minister, said: "What seems clear is that despite the huge social, economic and political changes between 1970 and 2000, social mobility didn't go up - it stayed the same. Now, things look like they're starting to improve. "The key for the future appears to be capturing a big share of high-value jobs that will come as the world economy changes over the next 20 years plus investing in the things, like Sure Start, school standards, post-16 education and more training at work to give more people a fairer chance to get on."
Prominent UC Professor May Lose Salary for Refusing 'Sham' Sexual Harassment Training
A prominent biologist at the University of California, Irvine could be placed on unpaid leave because he refuses to take sexual harassment prevention training. Alexander McPherson, 64, calls the mandatory training a "sham" and considers his refusal an act of "civil disobedience." He has already been relieved of his duties supervising other scientists in the lab where he studies proteins. McPherson has generated about $20 million in research money since he joined the university in 1997, and has had his experiments aboard the space shuttle and the international space station.
He can attend a training course by November 12 and regain his standing but said he won't, even if it means suspension from his job that pays $148,740 a year. "I have consistently refused to take such training on the grounds that the adoption of the requirement was a naked political act by the state that offended my sensibilities, violated my rights as a tenured professor, impugned my character and cast a shadow of suspicion on my reputation and career," McPherson told the Orange County Register. "I even offered to go to jail if the university persisted in persecuting me for my refusal. We Scots are very stubborn in matters of this sort."
A state law passed in 2004 requires supervisors to undergo sexual harassment training at businesses that regularly employ 50 or more people. McPherson's department chairman declined comment. A university spokeswoman would not comment directly on McPherson, but said 97 percent of the school's faculty have completed the training.
Britain offers high school qualifications in in how to read a tram timetable
Headmistress says drive to make lessons fun is 'cheating our children'
Thousands of students taking English are being asked to study tram timetables as part of dumbed down A-level exams, an adviser to Prince Charles warns today. Bernice McCabe, who is also a leading headmistress, said the drive to make lessons 'relevant' and 'fun' is leaving a generation of children intellectually impoverished. She warned that standards have degenerated so far that the current A-level English syllabus offered by the country's biggest exam board requires the study of a Manchester Metrolink tram timetable. Examiners propose in future to include a bus pass.
In a keynote speech today to the Prince's Teaching Institute, Mrs McCabe will warn that traditional subjects and bodies of knowledge are being sidelined in favour of 'woolly' teaching theories promoted by Government curriculum advisers. Pupils are being robbed of their cultural heritage, and denied opportunities to study great literature and history, because schools are increasingly expected to teach vague 'skills' and make lessons 'accessible'. In fact, pupils enjoy being challenged and often relish problem-solving, she will say.
Mrs McCabe, who is head of North London Collegiate School, a girls' private school which regularly tops exam league tables, will single out an English language and literature AS-level syllabus drawn up by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance exam board. It is accompanied by an anthology of study materials which includes a Manchester Metrolink tram guide, a British passport and a holiday postcard. Pupils are asked to draw on the anthology to answer questions on 'travel, transport and locomotion' in an A-level unit worth up to a quarter of the marks. One contributor to an online teachers' forum said: 'Only just got a copy on Friday and would welcome some ideas. Don't let the Daily Mail see it, huh?'
Mrs McCabe, who was approached by St James Palace in 2001 to help set up summer schools for teachers, said: 'By far the most serious consequence of this emphasis on functionality in education policy is that it may lead to the cultural and intellectual impoverishment of a generation of school children.' She said subject teachers were being 'thwarted' and 'frustrated' by a 'pervasive philosophy' championed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. 'The aim, they state, is to create "successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens",' she said. 'It is hard to quarrel with any aspect of these aspirations except the most important one: their woolliness. They say nothing at all about what children should be learning.'
Mrs McCabe's concerns are known to be shared by the Prince of Wales, who set up the teaching institute to promote effective subject teaching. An AQA spokesman said: 'The purpose of the unit is to allow candidates to study a range of thematically-linked texts. 'The texts cover the three major literary genres and a range of non-literary texts. The tram guide is just one of the non-literary texts and amongst the literary texts are pieces by Samuel Johnson, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.'
A middle-school education in shelf-filling in Britain
I guess it's an improvement on learning how wonderful homosexuality is
Sainsbury's supermarket will offer a qualification in shelf-stacking and stock-taking as well as a GCSE in literacy and numeracy, it will announce today. On-the-job training, open to all staff, will count towards a final NVQ, worth five good (graded A-C) GCSEs, in the retail skills of stock control, merchandising and health and safety.
The company, which has 150,000 employees, is the first retailer to be granted "awarding body" status, allowing it to confer nationally accredited certificates. It is also offering staff the chance to improve their English and maths up to grade D equivalent at GCSE, which they can take without their colleagues' or immediate bosses' knowledge. The first 2,000 will get a $100 voucher.
Rebecca Hales, 25, who works at the branch in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, has already started maths under a pilot version of the scheme. Illness had prevented her doing as well as she would have liked at school, she said. "I've got an online tutor who rings me up to check on me and give me new activities every week," she said. "I know all about fractions and denominators and numerators now. It's a great confidence boost."
The company believes that 25 per cent of its workforce will get one of the new qualifications, endorsed by the awarding body EDI, in the next five years. Justin King, the chief executive, said: "Every one of our colleagues can improve their skills, which not only benefits our customers but also supports our colleagues, to achieve their full potential."
In January McDonald's, Network Rail and Flybe were given powers to award qualifications up to PhD level as part of the Government's drive to improve employer-based training. Critics questioned the worth of "McGCSEs", and said that they could devalue academic qualifications. Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, said: "Employees may find they are locked into that business because these awards don't have credibility outside the company." However educational experts believe that it will become increasingly common for private institutions to award qualifications.
John Denham, the Skills Secretary, congratulated Sainsbury's on the move. "We know that those companies that invest in skills are best equipped to weather tough economic times, and are also best placed to capitalise on opportunities for growth," he said. Richard Wainer, head of education and skills at the CBI, said of the initiative: "It shows how employers can play a valuable role creating opportunities for people."
Thanks to Stanley Kurtz, most of us are aware now that, as chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), Barack Obama had little interest in the educational success of young Chicago area schoolchildren. Funds intended for school reform efforts in Chicago were in some cases diverted to liberationist causes such as the Arab American Action Network, ACORN, and Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church.
Indeed, in two reports totaling well over 100 pages, The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years (1999) and The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Successes, Failures, and Lessons for the Future (2003), very little is mentioned about the fortunes of specific academic programs but quite a bit of ink is devoted to "making learning environments more intimate" and "reducing school isolation from communities." School communities are encouraged to "think boldly" in order to "further development" with respect to educational variables such as "time, size, and isolation." One Chicago area business leader criticized CAC's goals as "abstract to the point of irrelevancy."
Furthermore, the 1999 report "examines the development of the CAC's theory of action." Among the five educational methodologies considered in the report one was cryptically entitled "Redistributing Resources." Supporters of this theory identified "economic and racial inequality" as the central problem in American public school education. Their "action plan" includes fostering "dialogue about underlying causes of inequality." They mention that the "key resources" at their disposal include "public spirited media, political bully pulpits, and Federal and State government entities." The "impediments" to the implementation of their action plan include "resistance from the currently privileged."
In short, CAC money was spent examining how to use the media, bully pulpits, and electoral office to shame Americans into thinking that the "currently privileged" were responsible for the nation's failing schools. Indeed, the CAC report analysts seem to lament the shift in focus from the kids to the activists when they conclude the following:
The development of the CAC into an activist foundation seeking to achieve policy influence while remaining faithful to its initial vision, should it succeed, may ultimately restrain its long-term reform legacy to one less deep and thorough than it might have hoped.
We know that the chief proponent of the "Redistributing Resources" faction of the CAC, Barack Obama, has had astonishing success of late using "public spirited media, political bully pulpits and Federal and State government entities" to advance a class warfare theory of education. But he was an abject failure when it came to actually helping kids in Chicago develop a passion for learning. For Americans about to vote on Tuesday this is a telling and profound sign: had Barack Obama and his colleague Bill Ayers been genuine about their commitment to children the CAC would have been a model of success rather than a 50 million dollar failure.
While the "Messiah" was busy in Chicago softening the rough edges of Marxist educational theory, another African-American activist was working quietly in San Antonio, Texas, improving the lives of children one at a time. His name is David Robinson, former NBA champion center for the San Antonio Spurs and Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. Robinson's nickname "The Admiral" is a byproduct of his stellar performance as a student-athlete at the United States Naval Academy, the prestigious institution he entered with a 1320 SAT score in 1983.
Back in 2001, a couple of years before he retired from the NBA, Robinson, and his wife Valerie, provided the inspiration and financial support to create the kind of school kids in Chicago can only dream about. It's named the Carver Academy after George Washington Carver, the man Time Magazine dubbed in 1941 the "Black Leonardo" because of his genius in science, education, botany and many other fields. Carver also had little patience with whiners ("Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses"). This is why Carver, who endured plenty of discrimination in his life, has never been embraced by our "diversity" engineers. His name, therefore, is a fitting moniker for one of our nation's more successful private schools.
When parents click on "Curriculum Overview" at the Carver Academy website they won't find hundreds of pages of Ed School jargon regarding structural inequality and racism. They will find a couple of short paragraphs describing the "skills mastery approach" to education and how that encompasses science, math, literature, history and languages. Clicking on "Foreign Languages" reveals one sentence telling prospective parents that "all students, pre-kindergarten through 6th grade, take three different foreign language classes. All students attend Spanish, German and Japanese each week." The "Music/Band" link consists of just two paragraphs describing the benefits of music education in other fields of study and that "every Carver Academy student learns to read and write music" as well as "has an opportunity to be in the band."
Parents should know that anyone with a sincere interest in child development is going to keep a healthy distance from an ideologue like Barack Obama. While academics and educrats thrill over the theoretical intricacies of competing learning methodologies, kid-friendly activists like David Robinson believe that education is about young people learning the skills to master their own lives. Simply put, to Obama, kids seem to be abstractions - grist for some personal philosophical vision.
The magnificent English writer Samuel Johnson once penned a penetrating analysis of what he called "self-deception." One of the chief signs, according to Johnson, of a self-deceiver is his tendency to "confound the praise of goodness with the practice." These are people who think they are "mild and moderate, charitable and faithful, because they have exerted their eloquence in commendation of mildness, fidelity, and other virtues." This kind of self-deception says Johnson is "almost universal among those who converse with dependents."
Since Barack Obama has spent most of his life as a professor, community organizer, and politician "conversing with dependents" we must take seriously Johnson's warning that these people will "rate themselves by their opinions" rather than by their good works. The tragedy of the CAC was that the entire project was organized by a gaggle of intellectuals who, according to Johnson, tend to "show their virtue in their talk rather than in their actions." How else does one explain hundreds of pages of analysis and little in the way of results?
Struggling British schools to be spared taking disruptive pupils
Why ANY schools have to take disruptive pupils is the mystery. They should be sent to special classes specifically designed to handle them. What is going to happen now is that good schools are going to be destroyed by having to take young thugs. But reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator is classic Leftism
Poorly performing schools are to receive extra funding and will be spared having to take disruptive pupils, Ed Balls said yesterday. Secondary moderns in particular will benefit from the announcement. The non-selective schools, in local authority areas where grammar schools remain, can apply for the money if they are deemed to be doing badly. It is meant to provide services and role models so that pupils who did not pass the 11-plus do not feel like failures.
The Schools Secretary said he had written to selective local authorities with the highest number of low-attaining secondary modern schools, including Plymouth, Kent, Wirral, Medway, Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire. His letter acknowledged that some schools had "substantial difficulties" in raising and maintaining attainment because students lacked confidence.
Mr Balls has named more than 600 schools, where fewer than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five good GCSEs including maths and English, as being on his National Challenge register. The schools have been warned that they face closure or being turned into academies if results do not improve. He said some would benefit from 1 million pounds to support gifted and talented pupils. This will be spent over three years in up to 50 schools.
Secondary moderns on the register can apply for up to 1 million pounds of extra funding, compared with 750,000 in nonselective areas. In a further eye-catching initiative, the lowest-performing schools on the register - those with 20 per cent or fewer pupils achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths - will no longer have to take children with behaviour problems midway through the year. Currently all schools must take their share of excluded children.
Mr Balls said: "It's really important that all schools cooperate to tackle the issue of excluded pupils. That's why Sir Alan Steer [who conducted a review into pupil behaviour] recommended that all schools should be part of behaviour partnerships. However, we want to allow schools in the most challenging circumstances to focus fully on raising results."
The Department for Children, Schools and Families said most local authorities with schools on the register had appointed experts to hasten their improvement. Mr Balls said: "We want to support selected National Challenge [sink] schools to develop an expertise that will help them to attract parents and pupils as they grow stronger. "Non-selective pupils frequently have a perception of having `failed' the 11-plus [because they did], and it is especially important to provide excellent role models and to raise aspirations."
Australia: "Free" government education not so free
PARENTS at a state primary school have been hit with unexpected "mandatory" fees to fund basic classroom equipment and resources. Robina State School on the Gold Coast last week wrote to parents demanding up to $120 per student for ink, work sheets and computer software. The first page of the 2009 Resource Scheme Years 1-7 Contract Form demanded parents participate in the scheme or have their child's access to equipment and resources cut off. The second page gave a choice for parents who opted out to pay for and secure themselves the resources and services, including technology licences and classroom readers.
According to the Education Act 2006, state education is to be free. Section 56 allows principals to ask parents for "voluntary" financial contributions. And it demands there be no negative consequences for those who do not pay.
This case has outraged parents, who say it is a mockery of so-called free education.
Education Queensland is unaware how many Queensland schools have made similar demands, citing a lack of data. Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Associations president Margaret Black believed it was the first time a school had omitted the word "voluntary" and issued the request as a contract. She urged parents to "make sure the word voluntary is included". Only after The Courier-Mail asked about the legality of the contract did Education Queensland instruct the Robina school to change its tune. "The principal has been asked to clarify the statements in the letter to rectify any misunderstanding it may have caused," a department spokeswoman said.
McCullough Robertson Lawyers partner Malcolm McBratney said the school's Resource Scheme appeared to be compulsory. "It's a legally enforceable contract," he said. "It doesn't seem you've got much choice."
Angry parents said the letter was deceptive. "The letter basically aims to blackmail parents into paying the voluntary annual state school contributions," the parents said. "We send our kids to a public school because we cannot afford a private school and the fees. "The school is trying to force parents and caregivers to pay voluntary contributions by sneakily ... calling it the 'resource scheme' and saying there's 'membership' to be had."
Ms Black will seek an explanation from the Assistant Director General for Education. "I'll ask, 'When did voluntary contributions become signed contracts?'," she said. Primary and high schools often send letters to parents in October and November seeking money to shore up resource budgets for the following year.
Batty Britain again: Unruly school pupils will be punished with... a foot massage
Pupils who create mayhem in the classroom are to face a punishment that will make them quake in their shoes. They will be asked to slip off their socks before being given a foot massage designed to control their unruly behaviour. Medical experts say there is little evidence that such treatment can improve the behaviour of young tearaways.
Yet Labour-run Lambeth Council in South London is to spend 90,000 pounds next year sending reflexologists into its schools to practise their soothing art. The team, from a company known as Bud-Umbrella, will work in 60 primary and 14 secondary schools, with children under 13 deemed to be badly behaved. The firm is run out of a flat [apartment] in Brixton and its website claims reflexology 'releases energy blockages', 'can calm aggressive feelings, improve listening skills, concentration and focus' and 'relieves headaches and sinus problems'.
Tory MP John Penrose is unimpressed. 'The idea that a foot massage is going to keep a hoodie happy is laughable,' said the member for Weston-super-Mare. 'Experienced teachers have a range of ways of dealing with badly-behaved pupils and stroking their feet is not one of them. 'Dealing with bad behaviour should not look like a reward to those who misbehave. Discipline should be brought back into schools.'
Mark Wallace, spokesman for the TaxPayers' Alliance campaign group, said: 'How on earth is the education system going to succeed if there are luxuries given out for naughty children and nothing at all given to those who work hard and do well? 'With everyone struggling in the financial crisis, this is crazy money being paid out on a crazy scheme.'
Despite Lambeth's enthusiasm for foot massage in schools, reflexology sessions are not provided for the wider public by the local primary care trust. The traditional healing art dates from the ancient Egyptians and Chinese. It involves manipulation of pressure points in the hands and feet and is often used to ease period pain, headaches, sinus and back problems as well as the effects of chemotherapy. By massaging different points on the feet, therapists claim they can unblock energy pathways and help the body regain its natural balance and heal itself. Reflexology is not a regulated therapy and medical authorities have raised concerns that qualifications are not needed to perform the massages.
However Lambeth Labour councillor Paul McGlone said the council was right to provide the alternative treatment. 'It's incredibly important that we address young people's behavioural problems and we make no apologies for using different and innovative methods but this obviously won't replace more traditional ways of dealing with anti-social behaviour. 'We need to deal with the root causes of young people's behavioural problems and nip them in the bud - prevention is better than cure.'
When it comes to radical trends including anti-Zionism, Australian campuses are like most other Western universities, only even more extreme. The ubiquity of left-wing politics in Australian academia means that writing about campus Israel-phobia requires discrimination since the range of subjects is so large. The focus here will be on just a few of Australia's most egregious academic anti-Zionists.
Evan Jones
The most virulent is the University of Sydney's Evan Jones. Although his field is economics, he maintains a political web-log called Alert and Alarmed.[1] Its name is a play on the slogan of an Australian government public awareness campaign on terrorism-"alert, but not alarmed." Jones detests the Bush administration and the Australian government of John Howard. His hostility toward Israel runs so deep as to apparently render him unaware of the anti-Semitic overtones of his rhetoric.
For example, Jones often claims that the Jews dominate press coverage on issues relating to Israel. In a blog posting called "The Wall and `topographical considerations,'" he asserted: "All university programs in politics should have a compulsory unit on propaganda, and all such units should include a compulsory component on Israeli propaganda. The Israeli propaganda machine makes the Nazi apparatus under Geobels [sic] look like amateur hour."[2]
The Israelis are not very skilled at public relations. The opinion pages of Australia's newspapers regularly feature leftist critics of Israel. ABC, the country's main publicly funded broadcast network, models itself on the BBC, with predictable results in its Middle East coverage.
Nevertheless, Prof. Jones upholds the idea that pro-Israeli Jews dominate journalism. He refers to the "reactionary war-mongering Zionist Wall Street Journal."[3] The British writer of a pro-Israeli letter to the editor of TheIndependent is nothing more than a "lobotomised Zionist."[4] ....
Jones also constantly equates Zionism with Nazism. In his view, Israel was established through conscious collaboration with Hitler's Germany. In support, Jones cites an assertion by the radical Israeli anti-Zionist Uri Davis: "Zionist leaders made themselves accomplices by default, and sometimes by deliberate design, to the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi annihilation machinery."[7]
Amin Saikal
Other academics cloak their animus toward Israel in a pseudosophistication that facilitates their access to the media as commentators. One such anti-Zionist op-ed contributor is Amin Saikal, who heads the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS) at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Founded in 1994 as the Centre for Middle East and Central Asian Studies, CAIS assumed its current name six years later. This reflected a radical shift in orientation that stemmed from an influx of funding from various Middle Eastern sources.
In December 2000, the Centre announced the receipt of an A$2.5 million donation from Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai and brother of the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.[10] This sum not only purchased the name change but also the creation of a Chair of Arab and Islamic Studies that was eponymous with the Centre's new title. The government of Iran contributed another US$350,000,[11] which underwrote the establishment of the Centre's perpetual foundation in Persian Language and Iranian Studies. In both these cases, the ANU's Endowment in Excellence provided matching funds for these foreign donations, bringing the total amount generated in support of the CAIS to almost A$6 million.[12]
Centre director Amin Saikal's view of both U.S. and Israeli policies is profoundly negative. But if the Americans can at times be excused for their folly because of naivety, Israel receives no such leniency. Saikal takes a "less is more" approach that is more pernicious because it seems reasonable on the surface. At first glance he appears simply to be deploring the violence that plagues the Middle East. But a closer look reveals that his regrets are selectively applied to serve his anti-Zionist views.
This reticence to condemn Palestinian violence against Israelis is so deeply ingrained in Saikal's worldview that it infuses his vocabulary. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, he accused Israel of using disproportionate force "to contain what it calls terrorism, including suicide bombing."[14]
Saikal demonstrates ignorance of simple geostrategic matters. Again in the Sydney Morning Herald, he asserted that the Israeli navy has deployed "nuclear-powered submarines" to launch preemptive strikes against Iran.[15] The Israeli submarine fleet, however, consists of three German-built Dolphin-class diesel boats. Although the Germans' submarines are world-class, their own navy does not possess nuclear vessels.
Saikal also praises the Islamic Republic of Iran as "a sort of democracy which may not accord with Western ideals, but provides for a degree of mass participation, political pluralism and assurance of certain human rights and freedoms which do not exist in most of the Middle East."[16] He has nothing to say about the reign of terror that is inflicted on political opponents, and the many other human rights abuses.....
Scott Burchill
In Melbourne, as in other venues of Australian academia, there are many anti-Zionist academics. A notable example is Scott Burchill, who teaches international relations theory at Deakin University. In the wake of 9-11, Burchill argued in the Sydney Morning Herald that any American military reaction would constitute a "myopic and undemocratic" exercise of extrajudicial injustice.[25] Moreover, he claimed in the Australian Financial Review that these were "not irrational, cowardly or random attacks"; instead, "the rational logic of cause and effect" made 9-11 an understandable response to "US aggression."[26]
In October 2003, The Age published Burchill's thoughts on the first anniversary of the Bali bombing, which killed eighty-eight Australian tourists among others. It was, he wrote, an inevitable reaction to "Washington's support for Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine," and to a "Western collective of terror whose leaders had bombed Islamic states such as Afghanistan and Iraq."[27]
Yet, however profound Burchill's hostility toward the United States, he does not challenge the legitimacy of its existence. He does, however, in the case of Israel. Burchill describes the Palestinians as a "looted people" who justly refuse to "reconcile themselves to occupation and humiliation, regardless of the odds stacked against them."[28] Israel, then, is a "thief" who must return the "stolen property" of Palestine to its rightful Arab owners.[29] ....
Andrew Vincent
A final example is Prof. Andrew Vincent, who heads the Centre for Middle East and North African Studies at Sydney's Macquarie University. Last year in the Macquarie University News, he put forward a viewpoint that: "the Israelis quite possibly murdered Yasser Arafat."
Typically, in the wake of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Vincent wrote an apology for this aggression in Melbourne's Herald newspaper. Citing Iraq's small coastline and Kuwait's historic association with Baghdad, Vincent argued that Saddam's expansionism was legitimate.[34] More recently, Vincent invited blogger Antony Loewenstein - a far-Left freelance writer - to join the board of the Centre that he heads.
Antony Loewenstein
It was "bigotry, hatred and intolerance," Loewenstein suggested, that motivated Jewish opposition to Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi's receipt of the Sydney Peace Prize in 2003.[35] He apparently could not conceive of honest opposition based on Ashrawi's statements and deeds. In Loewenstein's view, Israel is a nation of "apartheid-like policies."[36] This author, after publishing an article in The Australian on the impact of Ariel Sharon's stroke, was characterized by Loewenstein as one of the "dutiful Zionists who are already lining up to praise the unindicted war criminal."[37]
Loewenstein's superficial knowledge of the Middle East was evident last December when he referred to a senior female Israeli cabinet minister as a man. In an article for the leftist online magazine New Matilda, he wrote:
Yet more evidence of Israel speaking the language of "peace" but acting entirely differently came from a senior ally of Sharon, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. He [sic] told a legal conference in early December that, despite years of Israeli denials, Sharon himself imagines the 425-mile separation barrier as the future border between Israel and a potential Palestinian state.
As one commentator on his blog pointed out: "if Loewenstein can't even get the gender of an Israeli cabinet minister right, then what does it say about the quality of his analysis of the Israeli political scene? Nothing good." When confronted with evidence of his gaffe, Lowenstein pleaded that he was "rushed" and that "mistakes do happen."[39]
Conclusion
In their anti-Zionism, Evan Jones, Amin Saikal, Scott Burchill, and Andrew Vincent[42] are some examples among many in Australian academia where radical Leftist ideology is monolithically predominant. A core element of the far-Left doctrine is a relentless hostility to Jewish national self-determination. With Australia's youth being exposed to this outlook during their university years, it remains to be seen how this will affect the next generation of Australian leaders.
Not the best way to motivate your teachers -- and NYC sure does need motivated teachers
The story is relatively fresh but reading it leaves a bitter aftertaste and foul whiff that is vintage Chancellor Klein.
The New York Times on October 22 reported that a librarian at Brooklyn Tech High School, a veteran of 39 years as an educator, was fined $500 by the city's Conflict of Interests Board because he had violated the city's ethics code. The damning evidence, developed by the sticky gumshoes at the Department of Investigation, was the librarian's admitted inclusion of a new edition of "Macbeth" on a display table of literature he recommends. In a sparsely circulated newsletter he also cited it as "best new book."
The violation stemmed from the fact that the librarian's daughter is the book's co-illustrator. No assignments or extra credits were involved and there would be no royalties or other financial reward. The book stands on its merits; the link between artistic achievement and father's pride was fortuitous. The book was pulled from the shelves, expunged from the catalogue and removed from the library.
Actually the librarian was lucky, because the Conflict of Interest Board reduced the penalty from one of spectacular injustice to one of merely grotesque injustice. Originally they had sought a $1,000 fine and warned him that he might lose his job and teaching license. Only the unthinkable is plausible with the DOE and its surrogates.
The Conflict of Interest Board also has a soft touch now and then. Recently it ruled that it was peachy keen for the City Council to extend or abolish term limits to give CPR to their careers, regardless of the contrary wishes of voters as expressed in two referendums.
The librarian certainly wasn't looking for trouble and neither was I when a few years ago I was found guilty for identifying, upon a student's persistent request, a highly respected educational website that had once included me among its legion of contributors. I didn't promote or advertise it and got or had no potential to get any personal profit from it, but that made no difference to them. They had to produce numbers to justify their post-retirement gig with the city.
But they too have their empathies, make no mistake about it. The principal of a Queens high school is the author of a textbook that was in mandatory use by students at his school at least as of a few years ago. I'm not sure whether the students were required to purchase a copy but I suspect so. In a blaze of indifference the investigators found no fault.
A principal could walk out of a school with a piano on his back and not be questioned.But woe to the teacher who absconds with a #2 pencil after an Extended Day nightmare and there will follow an interrogation that the KGB would envy. They will be over his shoulder, in his hair, under his skin and at his throat.
Chancellor Klein clearly feels that teachers are far more prone to corruption than are other folks and can be assumed to put their souls on market for a silk tie and thus must be protected from their impulses. That was the reason that a few years ago, during the holiday season, he ruled that teachers may not accept gifts worth more than 5 dollars. He extended the definition of contraband to include tokens of love, gratitude and cheer that exceeded 5 dollars retail.
The chancellor, unlike the commissioners of police and fire and other agencies, despises his workforce and assumes the worst of them. That is his calling card and that is why a book is missing like a prophet from the stacks at Brooklyn Tech.
'Thought reform' dropped in 2008, but 3 times proposed for 2009
Leaders for The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education say they are continuing to monitor the University of Delaware, which last year was imposing mandatory "all whites are racist" indoctrination on students in residential halls, because there have been multiple attempts to revive the teachings. In was a year ago when WND reported on work by FIRE to shut down Delaware's required student training with the stated goals of converting incoming students into "change" agents and providing "treatment" for those who failed. School officials first defended the program, but later confirmed they were dropping the teachings in light of their apparent conflict with constitutional rights.
Even though school officials assured questioners a year ago that the indoctrination would be halted, officials with the university's residential life department remain "entirely unrepentant" even to this day, according to today's report from FIRE. "Three times ResLife proposed essentially the same program for 2008-2009, and three times a faculty committee rejected it," stated the report by FIRE's Adam Kissel. "No one has apologized to the students for the pressure and shame, the invasion of privacy, or the other assaults on students' freedom of conscience."
It was just a few months ago when FIRE expressed concern that the teachings, required a year ago for all residential hall students and stated as fact, "all whites racist," were being revived. FIRE's concerns, expressed in letters to President Patrick Harker, had been whether, "somehow, the University of Delaware seems terrifyingly unaware that a state-sponsored institution of higher education
in the United States does not have the legal right to engage in a program of systematic thought reform."
Now a new detailed report from FIRE is being published in its new journal, called "The Lantern: The Journal of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education," because of the egregious nature of the program. It was described as "mandatory activities to coerce students to change their thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and habits to conform to a highly specified social, environmental, and political agenda." "The case continues to have a nationwide impact," according to Kissel.
The report said as the 2009 year was beginning, residential program officials at Delaware "accepted a cosmetic amendment to the proposal - simply inserting the word 'environmental' before each instance of 'sustainability' - without actually changing any of the activities in the program. "With promises that the program was actually 'traditional' (false), 'optional' (highly suspect), and under new, strict oversight (despite the fact that all the leading ResLife administrators kept their jobs), the Faculty Senate and then the Trustees let the proposal pass," the FIRE report said.
That's one reason for continuing to watch the situation, officials said. The other is clear: "FIRE has never encountered a more systematic assault upon the individual liberty, dignity, privacy, and autonomy of university students than the University of Delaware's 'treatment' program," the report said.
The report showed in the aftermath of the disastrous program, residential assistants in dorms were "mandated" to speak out against FIRE. "One refused and was told by Residence Life staff that he would lose his job and the university would not consider him a student anymore. I asked him if he [the RA] would be expelled and he said that was 100 percent correct," the report said.
But even Delaware professors Jan Blits and Linda Gottfredson reported their experiences with a type of thuggery on campus. "We read ResLife's online materials (most of which were later removed) and were appalled. ResLife was engaging students in mandatory activities designed to change students' thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and habits to conform to a specific, highly politicized set of 'citizenship values' that had been pre-selected as the marks of responsible citizens. Anything deemed remotely 'oppressive' by anyone was to be stamped out, and resident assistants were being taught that '[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality,'" the FIRE report quoted them saying.
The treatment of a female freshman class student was typical of the school's indoctrination, the program said. "A female freshman arrives for her mandatory one-on-one session in her male RA's dorm room. It is 8:00 p.m. Classes have been in session for about a week. The resident assistant hands her a questionnaire. He tells her it is 'a little questionnaire to help [you] and all the other residents relate to the curriculum.' He adds that they will 'go through every question together and discuss them,'" according to the report.
When the student is asked, "When did you discover your sexual identity?" she responds, "That is none of your d*** business." Because she did not respond correctly, the residence assistant "becomes so appalled by her resistance that he writes up an incident report and reports her to his superiors," the report said.
The mandatory "reprogramming sessions" even had the trappings of a cult, it said. "After an investigation showed that males demonstrated 'a higher degree of resistance to educational efforts,' one dorm chose to hire 'strong male RAs.' Each such RA 'combats male residents' concepts of traditional male identity' in order to 'ensure the delivery of the curriculum at the same level as in the female floors,'" the report said.
While FIRE reported that new students taking part in residence hall programs this year report they appear to be voluntary, the monitoring must stay, the report said. "Rather than repudiate the racist teachings and invasive methods of the program, some University of Delaware faculty even worked with the Office of Residence Life to reinstate the agenda," the report said.
When some students did manage to assemble revolts to the original brainwashing, the response from a residence assistant was clear: "I just wanted to remind you all that floor meetings ARE mandatory. While I am a very understanding person, there is NO WAY that HALF of you weren't able to make it last night. Also, NONE of you e-mailed me about prior commitments...The content is IMPORTANT! Here at the University of Delaware, living in the residence halls is a Living-Learning Experience, meaning that you'll learn just as much, if not MORE, in the residence halls. Like it or not, you all are the future Leaders, and the world is Diverse, so learning to Embrace and Appreciate that diversity is ESSENTIAL," the report cited a residence assistance telling students.
Another Idiot Teacher Alert: Vampire Drawing Gets Kid Called `Gang Member'
But Why Does The AP Report Ignore Key Part of Story?
Remember when you were a young school kid and you drew a vampire during the week of Halloween? Remember how the blood was always dripping down from his menacing, pearly white teeth? Remember how it was all in good Halloween fun? Well, you can just forget THAT mister, at least if you are a 5th-Grader in the Savannah-Chatham school system in Georgia. In Georgia, if you draw a vampire you get called a gang member - even when you were assigned to make the drawing - and then you get sent to "psychological evaluation" as if you are some mentally disturbed monster. Then they kick you out of school. for a Halloween drawing. Really.
The Savannah Morning News gives us the gruesome story of another touchy-feelie teacher gone stupid and another poor little kid lost in "zero-tolerance" hell this Halloween week.
When Jordan Hood was assigned the task of drawing a "scary Halloween mask," he innocently drew a scary vampire. His art teacher even helped him out with a few of the details. But then came home-room teacher Melissa Pevey (amusingly, even her name sounds pent up) who decided that, far from Halloween fun, little 5th-grader Jordan was obviously a violence prone, mentally disturbed, gang member. So in a harrowing Halloween experience that had no fun in it at all, Pevey had him paraded down to the principal's office where he was confronted by the police and assigned "psychological evaluation" as a punishment for his artistry.
Naturally, the school explained it all away and backed up this fool of a teacher. They said she was primed to "watch for gang signs" and that teacher Pevey thought that the blood drops looked like the sort of gang signs that the L.A. gang The Bloods use to denote their presence. Needless to say, Jordan's Mother was not amused.
Jordan's mother, LaKisha Hood, was shocked to find that her son's art lesson had evolved into a gang investigation. "They told me the droplets could actually be a gang symbol for the number of people he killed," she said.
OK, let's not underestimate the infiltration of gangs into our kid's lives. But, come on. When are these people going to use a little common sense? A nail file or set of clippers are NOT "deadly weapons." A kid having an aspirin is not the same as having "illegal drugs." A drawing of a gun is NOT evidence of a "mass murderer." And a crude drawing of a Halloween vampire is NOT proof of "gang activity!"
Now, this story is bad enough without the Associated Press misreporting it and making it almost sound plausible that this overwrought teacher was right to be worried. The most important aspect of this story, the part that pretty much proves that the kid is the innocent victim of an overweening feminism in our schools, is the part where the vampire drawing was actually assigned to poor Jordan Hood by his art teacher. Yet, for some reason, the AP decided to exclude that salient point of the story. Instead, the AP gives full hearing to the school system's absurd act of invoking gang worries in this case, it fully fleshes out the teacher's fears, yet never once mentions that this 5th-grader was assigned to draw the picture by another teacher.
Perhaps teacher Pevey might have legitimately had something to worry about if this kid was drawing these blood "tears" unbidden. But he wasn't. It was a class room assignment, one that his art teacher helped him with.
So, why did the AP exclude the one aspect of the story that tends to prove that the school acted stupidly here? Your guess is as good as mine. It looks to me like an editorial decision to side with the school's untenable position and not the kid's logical grievance.
Sadly, this situation could have been easily solved without involving police, without punishing the kid with the stigma of "psychological evaluation" and then being kicked out of school. All these foolish, emasculated school administrators had to do was ask the art teacher what was going on. That teacher would have had a ready explanation and there you have it. No police, mental exams, or expulsion was needed.
If this isn't further evidence that we need more men in our schools (and not of the Birkenstock wearing, ponytailed, softhanded, bike riding kind either), what is? Having nothing but females running our schools is turning them into thoroughly feminized institutions where everyone has gelatinized spines and all turn to a fear wracked lump of quivering flesh at the slightest evidence of anything rambunctious, gross, tough, loud, or . well. MALE. In the words of Sgt. Hulka, "lighten up, Francis."
Ex-servicemen are helping to turn around unruly pupils in Britain
Keith Green isn't rattled when a boy kicks a door or swears and hurls a book. He even kept his cool during a seven-mile march with a group of teenagers when one of them staged a sit-down protest and said he wasn't budging. Nor does Green betray any emotion if one of his pupils elbows another in the face, starting a fight in the classroom. A former soldier with the Royal Highland Fusiliers, he has dealt with far worse. Nine years in the army, including four tours of duty in Iraq, has effectively inured him to teenage tantrums.
"Iraq was extremely hot, extremely tough, extremely dangerous," says Green, 32, who spent 11 months in Basra. "The riskiest incident was when we drove over a bomb and set it off. Everyone was safe but although we weren't sure if we were a target or not we had to get our drills out under threat of attack and fix the vehicle."
Living through such experiences, he thinks, gives former soldiers special skills when it comes to dealing with truculent teenagers. "Army instructors can be much more tolerant of bad behaviour than main-stream teachers," he says. "And there's a sense of humour that comes from being in the forces. It's very rare that you'll see one of us yell: `Get out of my class'." Green, who leads a team of nine ex-servicemen and women working with teenagers in eight comprehensives in North Lanarkshire, is one of hundreds of former soldiers square bashing in schools - with remarkable results.
Under the scheme, launched eight years ago, former military staff spend one day a week for two years teaching children everything from first aid and team work to how to fill in a curriculum vitae or excel at sport. Since Skill Force started it has grown to 41 teams working with 9,000 children a year - as far afield as Bath, inner city London and the Scottish Highlands. By the end of the courses the proportion of participants who are at risk of being expelled is cut from 36% to 6%, according to Jonny Gritt, the programme's leader.
One of Gritt's biggest success stories is Keri-Anne Payne, who won a silver medal at this year's Olympics in Beijing. She has said that her life was transformed by the two-year programme. When she arrived in Britain from South Africa as a teenager Payne's school suggested that she join the programme to help settle in. Although she was never badly behaved the programme gave her confidence during a time of upheaval.
The Tories are so impressed with Skill Force that they want to expand it fivefold, sending more ex-servicemen like Green into classrooms to become role models for bored, disaffected and shy children. "These men are heroes," said Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, announcing the party's plans this year.
So why does the scheme work? Green says that it's all down to the military approach. "All the way through an army career you learn how to motivate people, which buttons to press to get the best out of them," he says. " The army philosophy is to look after your guys, the people in your charge. That instinct makes our instructors bond with the kids and gives them the feeling that we're going to get through this together. "We don't take any lack of respect. We try to find out why a child is acting up and get him to understand the impact his action has on others. The military brings self-discipline - the best form of discipline - and that's what we try to show them."
The instructors delve into the backgrounds of their charges, says Green. "Children might be from a home where Mum doesn't get up in the morning or make breakfast. We build up the picture." He is proud of the many success stories. "There was one kid who was very quiet in the classroom - yet when he went on a Duke of Edinburgh trip with us he came to life. It showed him what he was capable of, and he's gone on to look at joining the marines."
Another teenager, 16-year-old Peter Hamilton, a pupil at Graeme high school in Falkirk, is enthusiastic about the course - and says it has transformed him. "I was like a bad boy when I was 14 - backchatting teachers, not paying attention in class," he says. "The course made me a better person." Instead of abandoning his education at 16 he now has his sights set on going to college and embarking on a career in sports coaching. "The instructors were much better at dealing with our class than ordinary teachers," he says. "You could talk to them about anything." He liked the way they rewarded good behaviour, giving points that could be collected and swapped for treats. "Ten points and you could go on a trip," says Fraser. "It worked for me."
Yet not everyone is happy with the arrival of soldiers in schools. Green says that when his team visits pupils' homes to deliver awards or certificates, the reception is sometimes frosty. "There is suspicion from some families, yes," he admits. "It may be that one of their worries is that we might try to recruit their son into the army."
Earlier this year the army came under attack from the National Union of Teachers, which accused it of targeting pupils in deprived areas. The union said it would back any teacher who boycotted armed forces material in schools, claiming it was based on "misleading propaganda".
Green notes that many of the children in his charge come from coastal villages where career options are limited because of the decline in the deep-sea fishing industry, so a small number do join the forces. But more opt for what he calls "the uniformed services" - the police, the fire brigade and nursing. "We don't talk to the kids about the military," says Green. "I think the army is a fantastic organisation, and I would never discourage them from joining up - but I am careful about what I say about it in the first place."
Of course, for the servicemen, too, the move into schools reaps rewards. With a recession looming and 7,000 soldiers leaving the forces every year it can be tough to find jobs. Gritt wants his instructors to be able to take a one-year teaching certificate course - a move supported by the Tories, who would give 9,000 pound bursaries to ex-servicemen who are graduates to train as teachers. They have also proposed the introduction of a British "GI bill", which would pay for soldiers to take a degree after discharge.
"I do think it would be good if more people from the forces came into schools," says Green. "Our instructors come from the same backgrounds as many of these children and speak the same language. Some teenagers can't identify with teachers who are straight A-grade students and went from school straight to university. [Our] guys have been a success outside academia - they show the kids what can be achieved."
Britain: Dumbing down outcry as one in five high school pupils thinks the Sun orbits the Earth
More evidence of the conspicuous failure of Leftist education ideas
One in five pupils who took the basic science GCSE this year believes the Sun orbits the Earth, it can be revealed today. And one in ten of those taking the same exam did not know that a rechargeable battery could be used more than once. The level of ignorance, despite the 'laughably easy' questions, was exposed in the 2008 Examiners' Report by exam board Edexcel, which has been seen by the Tories. It sheds new light on what MPs say are falling standards and led to a condemnation of the 'national scandal' of dumbing down in schools.
Conservative schools spokesman Michael Gove, who saw the Edexcel report, also released sample questions from the same board's new GCSE science tests, which were introduced this year. He said they were proof that exams are now much easier than 20 or 30 years ago. Among the questions proposed was one that asked if a nurse should stay clear of X-rays 'to avoid melting her mobile phone'.
Mr Gove said: 'It's not as though these questions are rigorous tests of scientific knowledge. One exam board asks if we look at the stars through telescopes or microscopes.' He added: 'There is a desperate need to assert the importance of rigour and excellence in education if we are to avert further decline, but almost every step the Government takes is in the opposite direction.'
Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education said: 'It's a national scandal. When you get laughably easy questions like this which may help politicians to reach targets but mean businesses and employers can't rely on the standards then obviously the system is not fit for purpose.'
The Tories claim standards have been lowered to inflate the pass rate as part of the Government's drive to meet its targets. The system of single, double or triple science GCSEs, for which separate physics, chemistry and biology papers were set, was scrapped this year. Instead pupils chose science or, for the more competent, additional science. They could also choose the degree of difficulty. The lowest level available, the 'foundation tier', is so basic that even if candidates answer all questions correctly the highest grade they can hope for is a C.
Last summer 537,606 pupils sat the new science GCSE, with 59.3 per cent scoring grade C or higher. And 433,468 took additional science, with 63.2 achieving C or higher. The new GCSE was dismissed as 'fit for the pub', not the classroom, by scientist Baroness Warnock.
Earlier this year pupils who sat chemistry O-level questions from the 1960s achieved an average mark of 16 per cent. Last year in GCSE chemistry 90.9 per cent of candidates achieved at least a C.
Californians amended their constitution in 1996 via Prop. 209, which provided that
The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
As I have discussed here many times (such as Prof Charges UCLA Admissions Cheating, Resigns From Committee), there is a great deal of suggestive evidence that UCLA has honored this constitutional command primarily by exploring different methods of getting around it. See, for example, here, and here I quoted, among other sources, these findings reported in the UCLA Daily Bruin:
In fall 2006, before UCLA switched to holistic admissions, black and Latino applicants' average SAT scores were 255 and 246 points lower than the average for their white and Asian counterparts. That gap seemed largely unaffected by holistic review - in fall 2007, black applicants' SAT scores were on average 293 points lower than those of white and Asian students, and Latino applicants' scores came up 249 points short.
I'm not sure that average black SAT scores falling from 255 to 293 points below the white/Asian average means they were "largely unaffected" by the move to "holistic review," but perhaps, thanks to the Pacific Legal Foundation, now we can find out.
In an effort to determine whether UCLA is obeying the state Constitution's ban on race- and sex-based discrimination and preferences in undergraduate admissions, Pacific Legal Foundation today submitted a California Public Records Act request for relevant documents from UCLA's applications process.... Among the documents sought by PLF's Public Records Act Request:
Undergraduate applications, including essays - with all personal identifying information redacted - from applicants to the classes of 2005 through 2008.
The identities of all applications readers, the scores they gave each application, and documents revealing why they decided to admit or reject each candidate.
All handbooks and other documents designed to guide application readers.
"UCLA asks for personal essays, which by definition have to be graded somewhat subjectively," said [PLF Attorney Joshua] Thompson. "We're asking for these essays - and evidence of how they're scored and weighted - to make sure that admissions officials aren't using these subjective evaluations as a way to bias the process in violation of Proposition 209."
The PLF's request to UCLA emphasizes that "all personal identifying information may be redacted," and stated it is "willing and eager to work with UCLA to safeguard individual identities." Maybe now we can find out how willing UCLA has been to comply with the prohibition against preferential treatment.
Yesterday on the program we had a caller Jose. He brought up a lot of interesting points about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers ... and he believes that we have already begun a Marxist revolution in America - similar to that of Latin America. And he believes that this is happening through our government education system.
Now, it only took a 2-second Google search to find a speech that Bill Ayers made in Venezuela in 2006 at the World Education Forum. Before I give you some of the highlights, I want you to keep a few things in mind. According to Barack Obama, Bill Ayers is "just a professor of English in Chicago" and "a guy who lives down the street." Now if this man was "just" a professor, why is he being invited by Latin American dictators to speak at a World Education Forum? Bill Ayers is more than a professor; he is an icon for those hoping to revolutionize the American government education system.
I also want you to keep in mind that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama worked together on education reform in Chicago. We know the story ... Obama was the chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, serving with Bill Ayers. This $50 million fund awarded grants to groups that were trying to improve inner city education. And how did it do that ... not by giving money to the schools, but by giving money to other groups like the Small Schools Workshop. Ever heard of that? Well when Barack Obama was the chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for this workshop ... which was an organization led by Bill Ayers and Michael Klonsky -- former chairman of both Students for a Democratic Society and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). These are the people who Barack Obama thought would be best equipped to help the ailing inner city schools of Chicago.
There is so much more to this, folks. But it is completely beyond the understanding of government educated myrmidons who swoon at the sight of a "Change We Can Believe In Sign" ready for them to waive like a fool at some Obama rally. What I am driving at is that we know how much government education reform means to Barack Obama. And Bill Ayers was right by his side and a benefactor of Obama's support. We also know that when it comes to education in this country, as President, Barack Obama wants to make sure that your children are educated by the government. Vouchers? No way. Private schools? We'll see. This is a man who believes it is the government's job to educate your children ... and in his past the "educators" that Barack has turned to have been the likes of Bill Ayers.
Now what does Bill Ayers think about education and the United States? Let's return to that speech he made just 2 years ago at the World Education Forum in Venezuela.
I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I'd been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: "We can't have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now."
I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position-and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice ...
Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism - turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life ...
Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome ... Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education- a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.
When it comes to our government education system in this country, it might not even matter if Barack Obama is elected in this country. But under Barack Obama, I know that I can expect more federal government and less choice for parents
Canada: Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) are even more hypocritical than you thought - yes, it's possible
The idea behind Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) is to hook kids on hatred of the Jewish state while they are still wet behind the ears in their knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and vulnerable to the sophisticated play on emotions and pity these fulltime activists with no respect for truth bring to bear on their "victims."
It struck me as risibly hypocritical to see them all hot and bothered last week when Hasbara invited Israeli consul General Amir Gissin to speak at York University. Unwilling to subject him to the usual disruptive savaging Palestinian groups - particularly SAIA - routinely apply to pro-Israel speakers, Hasbara insisted on reserved seating. SAIA went ballistic, accusing Hasbara of "racial profiling." SAIA put out a statement: "SAIA believes the university is a space for open public debate, freedom of expression and thought, and one of the rare spaces to question systems of power, authority, and oppression. York University cannot be allowed to begin using police and security to ban students from attending public events on our own campus."
"Open public debate"? Let me take you back to last year's Israeli Apartheid Week on the University of Toronto campus. SAIA set up a full day session of anti-Zionist brainwashing for high school students. They had some other name for it but that was what it was. Nobody but high school students were allowed into the building, and even they had to have identity cards. Profiling? Ya' think? Nobody else was allowed in: no teachers, no parents, no older siblings.
I can't think of anything creepier or more inculpating than a closed-door session to which youngsters only are invited to listen to adult fanatics spewing hatred. So SAIA should just shut up about profiling, since they are the worst offenders in Canada in that department. If they knew the meaning of shame, they would stop lecturing real democrats on the nature of fairness or justice. But shame, like integrity, truth and fairness can only mean something to people with a conscience. And people with a conscience are the first to be "profiled" right out of SAIA.
