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30 November, 2010

Segregation as sponsored by today's Left

Mike Adams

Many African American Cultural Centers actually impede diversity by turning black students into racists and segregationists. And most of them make black students less tolerant by convincing them that they are somehow more enlightened and have special "perspective" simply because of their race. Recent events have convinced me that such arrogance is on the rise.

Last week, a black female graduate of our university called my office and left a message asking that I call her back regarding an “urgent matter.” I thought she had something important to say. I did not know at the time that I was going to hear a woman half my age lecture me on the importance of tolerance and diversity. But I’m glad she called because she set off a chain of media events that ended quite nicely for those us who are opposed to racism and segregation.

When the black alumna called she said she had read my recent column “If I Were President.” She wanted to know whether I was really going to abolish the African American Center. At that point, I already knew we were in for an educational conversation. These days, college graduates are not well-versed in satire. As an art form, it is swiftly becoming extinct.

Things went downhill in our conversation when this college graduate told me that she became upset with my remarks about getting rid of the African American Center after she “saw that I was white”. My seventh Great Grandfather fought in the American Revolution in order to preserve our basic God-given rights. But this college graduate seemed to suggest that the expression of basic human rights is contingent upon race. The African American Center she frequented as an undergraduate did not seem to give her the ability to reflect and remedy her own possible racism.

After hearing her tell me that she “got all amped up” in response to my satire I made a big mistake. I explained that I would get rid of all the centers if I really were running for chancellor. The alumna’s response was predictable. She said “If you don’t like diversity you should go find another university.” When I pointed out her hypocrisy she replied that I did not need to be “getting all amped up and taking that tone with (her).”

Sitting in my office getting a lecture on tolerance from someone half my age was bad. When I heard her tell me not to take “that tone” with her I wondered “Could it possibly get any worse?” Well, yes it could. Next, she dropped this bombshell: “I will be in touch with your supervisors.” She even promised to drive in from out of town to set up personal meetings with them.

(Author’s Note: Ironically, both of the administrators she promised to contact are defendants in a First Amendment lawsuit pending before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Oral arguments in Adams v. UNCW are scheduled to begin on January 25th).

I got off the phone with the woman who did not like my tone (although at the time I did not think of that rhyme). Shortly after that, the local media decided to get involved. The TV cameras rolled out to UNCW’s African American Center in order to get this footage of a young diversity expert giving his take on the situation. Notice that he confidently asserts that my speech is way outside the mainstream – so much so that it is “inappropriate” to suggest that I represent the university.

The WWAY website (a local TV station) ran a poll, which I am thankful to have won by a ratio of eight-to-one. That is significant because my percentage of support greatly outnumbers the local and national white population. Yet this young diversity expert will probably never acknowledge that his own views are seen by most as “incredible, to say the least” and “inappropriate” at an institution of higher learning.

Note that the WWAY survey was worded in such a way as to steer the results in a certain direction. A better poll would have asked “Does Scott Pickey understand that the First Amendment only protects offensive speech because inoffensive speech does not need protection? Yes or No.” Or “Is Scott Pickey a) an objective journalist? Or, b) a political commentator like Mike Adams?” (Pickey is the reporter who wrote the online version of the story. The reporter handling the video portion of the story was completely objective).

The highlight of the news video is, of course, the portion featuring a black female student who tells us that we still need diversity centers because of the persistence of racism and sexism. But she made the statement while wearing big black sorority letters emblazoned on her blouse. In other words, while lecturing us on the persistence of racism and sexism she was touting her membership in an organization that limits its membership to blacks and women. The hypocrisy of asking the public to fund “solutions” to the “problems” she is exacerbating is simply staggering.

These students did not become so confused overnight. The cultivation their sanctimonious hypocrisy has taken years of indoctrination in the centers of so-called diversity. Even if those centers are shut down the students will retain the right to express their segregationist views. Such views are protected by the First Amendment regardless of how offensive they may be.

SOURCE






Some hope for mathematics teaching in Britain

Car journeys in our family have long been dominated, not by the soothing strains of Classic FM, but by the age-old battle over times tables. Every journey ended with me banging my head on the steering wheel, offering through grinding gnashers: “What are seven eights? No, darling, it’s 56. Now chant it 10 times after me…”

Is it a girl thing? My daughter Emilia is pretty bright. By seven she was a voracious reader with a good vocabulary; yet her maths was often muddled. Which is a shame, as maths graduates earn significantly over the UK average – and a cool £5k more than English graduates – if the latest Complete University Guide is to be believed.

I couldn’t really dangle graduate salary tables in front of a seven-year-old. But I tried everything else. Shouting, obviously. Bribery, blackmail. Even patience.

To be fair, Emilia is hardly alone in struggling with maths. Lenny Henry touched on this in his Radio 4 programme earlier this year, What’s So Great About Maths? For many, there is something intrinsically terrifying about numbers.

We, thankfully, have found deliverance through Emma Jonas, a maths teacher and former headmistress who happened to live near us in Kent. Friends gave glowing testimonies about how she had coached their children through the 11-plus. Since then, her reputation has, well, multiplied to the power of 10: her book, Mrs J Rules, is selling well, and she looks like doing for maths what Supernanny did for the naughty step.

After a few lessons, Emilia is scarcely closer to becoming the next Alan Turing – or even Carol Vorderman – but she is (excuse boastful parental interlude) comfortably in the top half of her maths class – and top at times tables. As turnarounds go, this would be the equivalent of the England football team learning how to thread a pass.

Tables, according to Mrs J, are the building blocks of all maths. “Children often say they know their tables, but they are effectively counting. If they can give the answer instantly they can do more complicated sums such as imperfect fractions so much quicker. This transforms their results in exams for their entire school career,” she says.

The Jonas technique is to make tables fun. Yes, I, too, was sceptical. But I’ve just tried my six-year-old, Fred, out on “Mrs J’s Brilliant Tables Game”, and the remarkable thing is he actually begs to play it (normally he dodges work and soap with equal zeal).

“I know how important it is to engage the child because maths didn’t come easily to me either, and I would get a tummy ache before tables tests,” smiles Jonas, who became a teacher precisely because she couldn’t believe how badly she had been taught. “One school report said: 'She has a cheerful disregard for learning the facts’.” Jonas turns table learning into a brightly coloured card game, which is multi-sensorial.

It really does seem to live up to its slogan: “warning: might make tables easy”. She calls her recent success a “miracle”, admitting that when she self-published her book even the printer reckoned she was wasting her time. “He said a lot of this will need to be recycled,” laughs Jonas, who has just added a book to make English easy.

As for maths, schools do seem to be dragging it from the dark days of blackboard horror. At his primary school (Chiddingstone, near Edenbridge), Fred is less likely to be found doing a sum on a board than counting virtual bubbles in a bath on a computer screen. The girls’ school Walthamstow Hall in Sevenoaks organises “maths races” between primary schools, where pupils from each compete to see who can do the most tables in a short time. For older children there are lectures explaining the maths of such disparate phenomena as clouds and lightning. Whisper it, but it actually sounds mildly interesting.

Oh, and it’s probably not a girl thing, apparently. A vast test by Brian Butterworth of University College London suggested that women are better at quantifying than men. Maths is, as Lenny Henry discovered, a teaching thing.

SOURCE





Something odd about home schooling?

Comment from Australia

Next year I will educate one of my primary school-aged children at home. It suits him, for now, and it will suit me, now that I have made some changes. Yet it doesn't seem to suit anyone else. Even the government representative – meant to support parents and children undertaking home education – seemed, well, judgmental. When I asked why it took a few months for approval to come through – nothing accusatorial in my tone, just wanting to be across the process – she caustically responded “because we care about the children”.

My son loves to learn – more broadly than the curriculum dictates. I like to teach, and I too am still learning. I will organise help if there are elements beyond me. Basically, we are excited. And I am not asking for the $10,722 it would have cost the government to have him in primary school next year. So which bit is confronting?

Teaching has been around as long as humans have, but education and schools are relatively newer concepts, particularly our industrialised version.

The reactions of others would suggest I am removing my son from a perfect education system, a system that, despite some excellent teachers, stands accused of narrowing education, teaching to the test and moving towards rewarding a school, or recognising the "best" teachers, based on flawed measures that foster stress and desperation.

The NSW Board of Studies oversees home education in NSW. Parents or carers must complete an interview with an authorised person within the home. They need to demonstrate that a suitable education program, in accordance with the curriculum provided by the Education Act and Board of Studies syllabuses, has been devised and learning experiences, student achievements and progress can be recorded. Registration for home schooling is granted for a set period, usually between six months and two years, and once it expires you have to re-apply.

Home schooling has steadily increased in recent years. In 2009, 1945 children were registered for home schooling in NSW compared with 1417 in 2005, according to the NSW Board of Studies. More than 1.5 million students were educated at home in the US during 2007, compared with 1.1 million in 2003 and 850,000 in 1999, the US Department of Education says.

A Stanford University journal, Education Next, reported last year that the phenomenon was becoming mainstream, and the most common reason was a concern about the local school environment, rather than religious beliefs.

Research on the performance of home-schooled children here is close to non-existent. But most overseas studies indicate they perform the same, or better, both academically and socially.

Choosing to educate at home is a way of doing things differently. It may not be suitable for everyone – school is a safety net too for many families – but it should not be maligned or deemed unnatural.

The cartoonist and philosopher Michael Leunig did it for more than 10 years. He says home schooling forces parents to re-examine their own values and learning, and question what is worth doing in life. “Having the top score at 18 isn't going to help if you have a nervous breakdown at 40 . . . We are watching horrible pressure being put on children. Human happiness, sanity and health is involved in this issue. Taking back what we are meant to do is a bold step. It's not just about educating, it's about protecting character, it's about parenting.”

"What about the socialisation?" say many of those who disapprove. Frankly, much of the socialisation at school constitutes quips such as “You're gay” (if you, say, go to the library voluntarily) or, “You're weird” (if you don't own a gaming console).

If repeated exposure to this prepares a child for the adult world, then we are doing something very wrong in the adult world. So much of the school experience is just surviving – a strange way to fritter our Western advantage. Research published this year as part of the UK Millennium Cohort Study, which tracks the development of 15,000 children born between 2000 and 2002, found that one in four boys hate school by the age of seven.

Educating a child at home is a legitimate choice. Why are we so frightened of doing things differently? Why are we so frightened of others doing things differently?

SOURCE



29 November, 2010

Some Massachusetts school districts may drop religious holidays

I'm guessing that attendance will be rather poor on Christmas day

School officials in Acton, Boxborough, and Harvard are looking at removing all religious holidays from next year’s school calendars.

Currently, classes in the districts are not held on a Christian holiday, Good Friday, and the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana.

The Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee is scheduled to discuss the issue and vote on next year’s calendar during its meeting Thursday night, while the Harvard School Committee has scheduled a vote for Dec. 13.

Harvard’s School Committee chairman, Keith Cheveralls, said all indications point to the board eliminating the holidays from the calendar. The committee held a meeting on the issue Monday, and discussed a proposal that calls for eliminating religious holidays, and a second policy ensuring that all students and faculty are given reasonable accommodations to observe them, he said.

“It was quite apparent that the committee has a desire to move to a model where we do not recognize religious holidays,’’ Cheveralls said.

Last year, Harvard appointed a subcommittee to study the proposal, but it was unable to reach a recommendation, he said. “It’s a very emotional issue. We’ve tried to be very thoughtful and be considerate of all views.’’

The move to drop the holidays does not appear to have as much support in the Acton-Boxborough school district, where Superintendent Stephen Mills said he has recommended making no changes to the school calendar. It would mean no classes would be held at the regional district’s junior and senior high schools on Good Friday, Yom Kippur, and Rosh Hashana.

To help the committee make a decision, the district asked parents and faculty to take a survey. Mills said the survey, which closed on Nov. 19, found that the district would require a significant number of substitute teachers if classes are held on those holidays.

“It would be difficult but we could accommodate the Jewish holidays,’’ Mills said. “Good Friday presents a real problem in terms of my ability to manage the school system. That would be really problematic.’’

The survey found that 43 teachers would take off the Jewish holidays and 157 teachers would not work on Good Friday. On a typical day, the district uses about 15 to 20 substitutes, Mills said.

Of the 5,500 students in the middle and high school district, about 200 students would stay home on the Jewish holidays, and 300 on Good Friday, he said. The district is about 90 percent Christian and 7 percent Jewish; the remainder is other religions.

Other schools have also considered changes involving religious holidays.

In Natick, the School Committee recently approved a calendar that keeps its observance of Rosh Hashana at two days. Superintendent Peter Sanchioni had proposed reducing it to a single day. Rosh Hashana, one of the holiest days in Judaism, marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Some Jews celebrate the holiday for one day while others celebrate it for two days. Framingham has two days off for the holiday, while Wayland, Newton, Dover-Sherborn, and Wellesley have one.

In Cambridge, school officials have decided to cancel classes on one Muslim holiday beginning with the next school year.

In Harvard, Cheveralls said the School Committee is acting on the religious holidays issue because some residents and members question whether the system should single out any religions for special treatment. He pointed out that the town now has some 19 cultures and it would be difficult to satisfy each with a holiday.

More HERE






The NYC disaster continues

City schools chancellor nominee Cathie Black insists she's connected to public education via a highly touted charter school - but a close look shows she's had no contact with students, parents or teachers there.

Officials at the Harlem Village Academies admit the school's National Leadership Board, which Black joined just five months ago, has never met. That board "has no operational or governing authority" over the school and exists for "support purposes only," the school said in response to Daily News questions.

Black primarily advised the school's CEO, Deborah Kenny, on "management, leadership, and the development of a book" Kenny is writing, the school said.

Harlem Village parents and former employees had little knowledge of Black, who is expected to get a state waiver that will allow her to take the job despite having almost no education experience. "No, no, no, she's not with us," said the parent of a sixth-grader. "She's not on our board. We have a lot of people who give money, lots of very famous people come here. That could be what it is." A second parent added, "I've heard of Cathie Black from the papers, but she's not part of this school."

Black's link to Harlem Village appears to be her only connection to New York public schools. She went to Catholic school, sent her children to a Connecticut boarding school and spent her career in the publishing business.

A former Harlem Village employee said Black visited the school in 2009 at Kenny's invitation as a possible donor. After that, the former employee never saw Black again. Harlem Village officials said Black started on the board in July, a month after she lost her job as president of Hearst Magazines. It's not clear when Mayor Bloomberg first approached Black with the idea of becoming chancellor.

Whatever Black's role there, Harlem Village has little in common with the average public school. Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.

The schools chancellor gets $250,000 to oversee 1.1 million students.

Many charter schools have a parent representative on their board. Harlem Village does not.

Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $5 million toward construction of the new high school.

The school has been lauded nationally for its high test scores, including for pushing 100% of its eighth-graders to pass state math tests.

A look at the overall scores tells a different tale. In the last round of tests, like schools across New York, numbers dropped precipitously after the state made the tests tougher.

SOURCE





The British schools where English is a foreign language for 80% of pupils

Children who speak English as their first language are in a minority in a rapidly growing number of schools, figures reveal. The surge has been most pronounced in London, where in some boroughs youngsters with a different mother tongue make up nearly 80 per cent of primary pupils.

However it is not confined to the capital. In Birmingham, Bradford and Leicester more than 40 per cent of pupils across all primary schools do not count English as their first language. Nationally, English is a foreign tongue to nearly one in six youngsters in primary schools.

The figures, to be published this week, have almost doubled during the past decade and are projected to increase to 23 per cent – 830,000 out of 3.5million – by 2018.

There are concerns that the increases will place school finances under strain as a growing number of youngsters require help with English. MigrationWatch, which conducted the study using figures from the Office for National Statistics, believes that over the next five years more than 500,000 extra school places will be needed for the children of immigrants who arrived in Britain after 1998. This will cost the Treasury £40billion, equal to a penny in the pound on the basic rate of income tax.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said the trend will lower education standards for native English-speaking children. He said: ‘These pupils will of course continue through the education system but it is primary schools where the effect is being felt most acutely at present and where English-speaking children are bound to suffer as immigrant children require extra help.’

The figures reflect a more than four-fold increase in immigration since Labour came to power. Net annual immigration has increased from 48,000 in 1997 to 215,000 in 2009. Across London as a whole, children who speak English as a second language total nearly a half of all pupils – 44.6 per cent.

But in inner London, they number 55 per cent of primary school pupils, and in boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, Westminster and Newham, they form nearly eight in ten of primary pupils.

The lowest populations of youngsters with English as a second language are in the South West and North East. Outside London, the area with the biggest proportion of pupils without English as their first language is Slough, Berkshire. The education authority to record the sharpest increase in the past decade was Luton, Bedfordshire, where almost half have a different mother tongue.

However, while the figures show the number of pupils who are not native English speakers, they do not take into account their fluency in English. Recent Government figures on reading and writing skills among 11-year-olds, show, on average, that children of Indian and Chinese ethnicity outstrip their white British counterparts.

Hazel Blears, a Communities Secretary under Labour, was involved in the party’s immigration policy. She said the figures should be treated with caution. ‘They may be first-generation immigrants and their parents may not speak English, but they [the children] might do.

‘That said, you have to recognise that where you have a large surge in the number of people coming from other countries then you have to deal with that by, for example, having more teaching assistants,’ she said.

Labour has been criticised for almost doubling the number of teaching assistants in schools while the number of qualified teachers remained relatively static.

SOURCE



28 November, 2010

Islamic Supremacism in Christian Schools

File this under "what were they thinking?" Look at 1,400 years of Islamic expansionism, supremacism and imperialism, and what did they think would happen? Look at the Middle East -- once entirely Christian, now entrely Islamic save for the tiny Jewish state. What did they think would happen?

Look at Europe today. What did they think would happen? Look at the Islamic persecution of Christians in Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan, Darfur, Lebanon, etc........ what did they think would happen?

As Muslim enrollment increases at Christian schools, especially in Europe, so too does interfaith conflict at such institutions. A recent piece in Le Figaro highlights the stresses placed on French Catholic schools in particular. For example, the report describes how one had set up a crib for Advent, but "a Muslim parent demanded its removal, saying 'a Muslim cannot hear that Jesus is the Son of God.'" At another, Muslims walked all over a well-intentioned but hapless administrator:

A headmistress … offered Muslim students a room in which to pray and to help them avoid being caught in rain in the school courtyard. The students have turned it into a prayer room and invite other people who have nothing to do with the school to pray with them. Since then the director has been unable to use this space for other activities.

Of course, Christian schools also share many of the challenges faced by secular ones, such as students refusing to swim during Ramadan due to fear of swallowing water (an old standard). No word from Le Figaro on whether Muslims in French Catholic schools respond to lessons on evolution or the Holocaust any more positively than their public school counterparts do.

A 2008 New York Times article explains that France's hijab ban in state-run classes has pushed Muslims to Catholic schools, which are not bound by this law and must accept students of all faiths to qualify for subsidies. Yet even the less critical Times piece could not ignore the ensuing cultural friction. For example, it relates the story of one Catholic school's headmaster who, after a series of accommodations, finally had to "put his foot down when students asked to remove the crucifix in a classroom they wanted for communal prayers during Ramadan."

Christian schools elsewhere are caught in a similar cycle. NIS News reported in 2008 that "two Amsterdam secondary schools with a Christian basis are to close during [Eid al-Fitr] to accede to their Muslim pupils." A year later, a Dutch Catholic elementary school with a handful of Muslims was planning to serve halal food at a Christmas meal, but officials reversed course following parental outrage.

In the UK, bishops have recommended that Catholic schools include prayer rooms and washing facilities for Muslims. The Times of London has also noted that at least one Muslim-heavy Church of England school "no longer observes the requirement to have an act of daily collective worship that is 'consistently and recognizably Christian.'"

SOURCE





Misguided British government attack on school sport

Gove has been declaring ‘war’ on education this week. You can argue elsewhere about the merits of his plans in the academic arena. But some of the collateral damage he has inflicted was idiotically destructive in the extreme, most notably the decision to wipe £162million of protected School Sports Partnership (SSP) funding from the books.

This is money that guaranteed five hours of children’s physical education classes and sports activity per week, allowing schools and colleges to combine facilities and resources.

Gove doesn’t like it. He says money should not be ring-fenced and head teachers must be able to spend their cash as they wish. Either he is stupid — and let us assume here that he is not — or he is being deliberately disingenuous. Gove knows full well why this money had to be ring-fenced.

Schools will not be assessed by any Government methodology or league table for their PE programmes or after-school sports clubs. And so pressurised head teachers will raid the sport pot for every eventuality. Competitions and events will disappear; schools with no PE teachers will find it difficult to link up with centres in their region that have trained staff and useful partnerships will collapse.

On the plus side, however, the bored kid that always sets fire to the wheelie bin outside your house might be easier to identify, because he’ll be too fat to run.

We all know money is tight right now, but this is a false economy on a staggeringly grand scale. The only time the majority of children take part in any worthwhile exercise is at school.

Health should be an absolutely essential part of their education plan, particularly in a country where so many youngsters are indolent and heart disease and diabetes are on the rise.

The amount involved here is also relatively tiny. It’s just over two per cent of the £7billion the UK rustled up to put a bankrupt Republic of Ireland back on the treadmill.

What’s more, for all the lousy education policies dreamt up by the last Government, here was a scheme that was delivering.

Youth Sports Trust (YST) statistics point out that seven years ago less than a quarter of school-children took part in the two hours of physical activity required in the curriculum. Now, thanks to the partnerships Gove aims to wreck, the figure is more than 90 per cent. But to fill the void he is needlessly creating, Gove proposes an ‘Olympic-style school event’.

That’s right. A few sporty kids will still get the chance to run about as they have always done while the rest will be sent back to their PlayStations and turkey twizzlers.

Gove and his Minister for Sport Hugh Something-or-other hoped their steaming dereliction of duty might pass unnoticed if they stuck the Olympics label on their glorified school sports day idea. Pretty much everyone saw through the cynicism.

This isn’t about pretending you can create Olympians through a school jamboree. It’s about the fact that everyday participation in sport gives children self-esteem, raises confidence levels and reduces anti-social behaviour. It provides them with a grounding in leadership, teamwork, or the simple benefits of working up a sweat. Not that Gove looks like he knows anything about that.

A former journalist, Lord help us, the only evidence I can find of Gove in active competition was during his time as ‘chief adjudicator at the World Universities Debating Championship’. I hear he ticked boxes on pieces of paper with great vigour.

He could be a secret jiu-jitsu black belt. But I suspect he was always the last kid picked for any team in the playground and this is his horrible revenge.

Needless to say Gove found some statistics to support his position, as any serial debater would. He toured television studios parroting the line that the scheme had failed because ‘only one child in five plays regular competitive sport against another school’.

Others, who actually know something about this topic, pointed out he had cherry-picked statistics and was talking complete Northampton Town (club nickname: ‘Cobblers’). David Cameron even stood at the Dispatch Box during Prime Minister’s Questions and, from a crib sheet provided by Gove’s department, declared: ‘The number of schools offering rugby (he meant union, not league, but didn’t feel the need to say this, being an Old Etonian), hockey, netball and gymnastics actually fell under the previous Government.’

As Channel 4 astutely pointed out in their analysis, that drop was negligible - between one and five per cent over seven years. But there was a reason for this.

Cameron had blithely ignored the fact that the number of state schools offering rugby league, football, athletics, cricket, tennis, basketball, cycling, golf, badminton, table tennis, volleyball, canoeing, archery, fitness classes, mountaineering, rowing, sailing, judo, karate, boxing, lacrosse, squash, equestrian sports, triathlon and even skateboarding, dance and orienteering had gone up.

In total, the average number of sports offered by any school had risen from 14 to 19, which more than accounted for the slight dip in the four sports Cameron had so cynically selected as failures. Did Gove leave that off his bluffer’s guide? I guess so.

Like all sport, it isn’t over until the final whistle. If you hate what the Government is about to do, if you are a parent, or someone who understands what SSPs contribute, then protest and complain.

Moreover, remember this disastrous plan when you see Cameron supporting the 2018 World Cup bid this week. Remember it when you see Gove’s goggle eyes swivelling in the free seats at the 2012 Olympics. Remember it when ministers elbow into photo opportunities alongside British medal winners at Downing Street in the hope of bathing in some reflected glory. Remember it when they say how important it is to create a sporting legacy for this country. If Cameron doesn’t reverse this decision, he’ll be the dummy, not Gove.

SOURCE







Australia: Bullsh*t school in Victoria cops flak from parents

A SCHOOL that banned homework for young students has been forced to change the policy after a furious backlash from parents. Children from prep to year nine at Carranballac College in Point Cook are not given daily tasks to do at home because it is felt it is unnecessary and even detrimental.

But worried parents feared their children were not keeping up with students from other schools and pushed for homework to be reintroduced.

The school confirmed it has "redefined" its homework policy, but said tasks were still not compulsory. "Families are encouraged to interact in quality learning experiences as a family," principal Peter Kearney said. "Families are advised upon enrolment of our belief in the value of shared family experiences." [What a lot of empty talk! What business does this pr*ick have lecturing families on what they do?]

Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said the school made the homework u-turn because "parents delusionally base the quality of their child's education on the amount of homework they were given". "Parents want homework because they think it will make children better educated. But it can in fact have the opposite effect and even be harmful," he said.

Parent Melanie Bluff, who has two daughters at the school, said she approves of the scheme. "I'm a big fan because you are doing things tailored for your child," she said. "My daughter Alexandra, who is nine, lacked confidence a year ago, but teachers were able to suggest real life scenarios that have really helped. We asked her to ring for a pizza on her own, things like that, and the change has been staggering."

Mr Kearney said: "We ask parents to spend some time with their children after school time to reinforce some of the things they have learned. This process is not difficult." [But it is also none of his business]

SOURCE



27 November, 2010

Why aren't right and wrong on the curriculum?

You know the problem with students? They get encouraged to think too much. Take Edward Woollard, who pleaded guilty to dropping a fire extinguisher from the top of Conservative Party headquarters during a riot in protest at education cuts. It was very fortunate, a ­complete fluke in fact, that the police officers ­gathered below did not suffer serious injury.

And Woollard is certainly bright enough to know better. He is studying politics, classics and ­philosophy at Brockenhurst College, near Southampton. So how does this happen? Here’s how.

Last week one of our boys came home with his head full of the Columbine school massacre. He’s 13. The subject was part of religious studies, which have been expanded to include modern, moral and ­philosophical issues, as well as ­matters of faith. No problem with that. We’re a secular society. It became apparent, however, that in the course of the discussion there was worrying ambiguity.

Too much mitigation, not enough condemnation. The killers had been mocked and bullied, he told us ­earnestly, they were outcasts, they had issues with the student group. And this is true. Columbine, its ­prelude and aftermath, is a vast and complex subject even now. Less complicated, though, is the simple fact that shooting people is wrong.

Yet, as ridiculous as this may sound, in the class debate perhaps not enough time had been spent emphasising the obvious. There will have been wonderfully enlightening discussions around the many issues raised by a teenage killing spree, but they needed underpinning.

Terrorists have motivations, too, but it would be truly dangerous to discuss the 9/11 attacks without first making clear that they cannot be justified.

Of course kids know that violence is wrong. But at 13 there is a lot to compute. Cause and effect is ­testing, so sometimes you have to start at the beginning. Leave that tiny grey area, and who knows what naïve logic will fill the hole?

It wasn’t so long ago, following another RE lesson, that crucifixion was advanced as a proper punishment for murderers. Nail some sense into them, as the campaign slogan might read. Mind you, anyone standing on that ticket for election round our way would probably get in.

This follows on from the recent moon landings debacle. Fake, we were informed definitively by one of our children. This one had watched a programme in school. We remained very calm as we explained that roughly 400,000 people were involved in the Apollo space programme, including ­labourers, technicians, engineers and scientists.

If the whole thing was rigged, and a face-saving video was then knocked up by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and a few spooks with a camcorder in a back lot somewhere in Florida, that is some secret that’s been kept for 40 years. By the time everyone was paid off, plus family and acquaintances, it would ­actually be cheaper to send somebody to the moon than create the lie.

The next week, the class did indeed study the many conspiracy rebuttals about the landings. By which time it was too late. Given seven days to run with the nutjob version, half the students still believed it was a hoax. Too much thinking, you see. Not enough black and white.

We’re now teaching history that doesn’t exist in the mistaken belief it promotes thought. That is how we end up with students like Edward Woollard, who cannot get to grips with the laws of gravity as applicable to a fire extinguisher and a copper’s head; students who fail to realise that random manslaughter might be a disproportionate response to ­having your grant cut.

We think we promote debate, discussion, and a better education with our modern concepts, and the aims may be sincere enough, but some of it bears more than a passing resemblance to Jerry Sadowitz’s introduction to his short-lived television series. ‘And tonight on the show that tackles the real issues,’ he said, ‘Jews and Nazis: so who’s right?’

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Military men as teachers in British schools?

As everyone who has ever been to school will testify, teachers who can’t keep order in the classroom fall at the first hurdle and have precious little hope of passing on much worth knowing to their pupils.

To his credit, Education Secretary Michael Gove has grasped the extreme importance of this fact — and this is clearly what lies behind his imaginative scheme, outlined on ­Wednesday, to give veterans of the armed forces a ­fast-track into teaching.

It’s not hard to follow his reasoning. What our schools desperately need is more ­discipline, he reckons — and that’s one thing they really know about in the services.

So why not sign up a few colonels, air commodores — and perhaps the odd Regimental Sergeant Major — to knock some obedience into the ’orrible little men (and, increasingly, ‘orrible little women) who cause such ­disruption in the classroom, blighting their schoolmates’ chances of learning?

At first sight, it looked to me like an ­excellent idea. But the more I’ve thought about it since, the less sure I am. I cast my mind back to my own school days, when I was taught by quite a few veterans of the Second World War and others who had been in the forces afterwards, either as ­regulars or on national service.

Certainly, some of them were highly effective in keeping order. I’m thinking particularly of a PT teacher, an ex-paratrooper, who would punish us for wearing dirty gym shoes by ­forcing us to do sit-ups until every muscle in our bodies screamed in protest (all right, in my case that was after only about three).

For more serious offences, such as ­whispering or smirking, he would rap us on the forehead with his bare knuckles, with such force that our heads ached for hours afterwards.

I’ve often thought that he’d be behind bars if he tried that sort of thing these days — and how we all would have cheered if he’d been carted off in a Black Maria. But though I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, it has to be said that his methods worked. As a rule, our gym shoes were dazzlingly white for his lessons and his orders were obeyed in terrified, stony-faced silence.

But I had other former servicemen as ­teachers who were little better at keeping order than I turned out to be, years later.

For example, there was one amiable old buffer of a Latin master, an ex-Royal Navy, whose lessons we regarded as an hour off from proper school. All we had to do was prompt him to recount one of his wartime reminiscences (an ­oft-repeated favourite was the occasion when he accidentally dropped a live shell between his warship and the quay where it was moored) and for the rest of the lesson we could run riot while he burbled away.

Now and then, he would break off his ­anecdote to yell for silence, but we took not a blind bit of notice. Indeed, it was because I was making so little progress under the ex-serviceman that I was moved down a stream, to be taught by one of the most effective disciplinarians in the school — who had never been in uniform.

I don’t know what it was about him. He wasn’t physically imposing in any way, he never raised his voice and he certainly never hit us. Yet we instinctively respected him — and just by lifting an eyebrow, he could do more to bring a class to order than many an officer with a lifetime’s ­experience of giving commands on the parade ground.

It all comes back to natural authority and I think this may be where Mr Gove is making his mistake. Certainly, Britain’s armed forces are a byword for discipline of a hugely impressive kind.

But this is institutional discipline, ­underpinned by a rigid chain of command, centuries of tradition, endless square-bashing — and, in the last resort, a wide range of unpleasant punishments for insubordination, from latrine cleaning to the cells.

Mr Gove’s new recruits to the classroom won’t find any of that in an inner-city ­comprehensive, where the ­institutional ­balance of power has shifted relentlessly away from the rights of teachers to impose ­discipline and towards the rights of pupils to behave exactly as they please.

On the parade ground or the battlefield, servicemen can expect the instant respect and obedience owed to their rank. But in a school, teachers have to inspire respect, by sheer force of personality, if they want to be obeyed.

Of course, some former soldiers, sailors and airmen have bags of authority, quite ­independent of their rank. But then so do many people in other walks of life, from businessmen to broadcasters and even, dare I say it, the odd politician.

Isn’t Mr Gove perhaps over-optimistic if he believes that servicemen, in their nature, must be better than civilians at enforcing discipline?

Indeed, I’ve known one or two ex-soldiers who have found civilian life hard to cope with, thrashing around like fish out of water when they’ve left the Army and all its ­certainties behind them. One of my wife’s brothers-in-law springs to mind. Fine chap. Major in the Scots Guards. Served with great distinction in Northern Ireland.

But throughout his adult life, he’d grown so used to squaddies snapping to attention and saying ‘Yes, Sir!’ that he found it ­distinctly disconcerting when he left the Army, married my wife’s sister and started having to get used to the word ‘No’. Somehow, I just can’t see the likes of him trying to control a class full of bolshie ­British schoolchildren — never noted as respecters of rank.

But we shouldn’t reject Mr Gove’s scheme out of hand. If it means there will be more male teachers to act as role models for boys in our increasingly feminised education ­system, that can only be a good thing. And the same applies if it leads to a revival of competitive school sports.

But God help any ex-servicemen-teachers who expect automatic obedience — let alone disciplinary support from the ­education system.

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Michelle Rhee Revisited

These are interesting times for education reform in America today. A lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle are calling for "reform," but no one seems to know what "reform" really looks like.

The issue reached new levels of salience just a few weeks ago when "Waiting for Superman" - the new Davis Guggenheim documentary following five students and their futures in charter schools - opened to nationwide critical acclaim.

There's no question this country must have a serious debate on what reform is needed in our education system. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), U.S. students in 10th grade rank 28th in math and 22nd in science out of a total of 39 countries in proficiency.

Once the hotbed of innovation, medical and technical advancements, America is now sucking the exhaust fumes of revving machines such as India, China and other advancing nations. We are beyond arrested development. We are regressing. It's one thing to grasp this reality. It's quite another to do something about it.

That's why the departure of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee in the wake of a new mayor in our nation's capital is such a major loss, both for the reform movement and the District's future.

Following the primary loss of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, it was fairly evident that Miss Rhee's head would be first in line on the chopping block. Her reform initiatives aggressively pushed overhaul over the status quo, which upset many in the education community. She was moving too fast for them to keep up, and certainly too quickly for them to cut her off.

For too long, education "elites" have repeatedly bashed pioneers such as Miss Rhee for their views. When asked why they oppose them, teachers unions can't nakedly admit, "Because it disrupts the status quo[...]" or "It undermines our power." So instead, they proffer phrases that sound more benign and well-meaning. "We welcome proposals for reform," they numbly chant, "but only if they are inclusive of our ideas."

Read another way, that means if the unions aren't at the table with their thumb on the scale to guarantee outcomes, there ain't no way reform is gonna happen.

It's almost mafia-like in the school systems in the District and other struggling big cities. If you try to do things differently, Rocko and Paulie pay a visit to help you get back in line. Sadly, Michelle Rhee was politically gunned down by her opponents for standing up and saying we ought to look for a better way of teaching kids in the District.

In many respects, education policy is a backward-thinking topic in government circles today. At a time when public institutions are struggling to make ends meet and squeezing even more productivity from every resource, policymakers seem all too eager to simply throw more money at an issue that has clearly shown cash isn't the magic cure-all for advancing education excellence.

According to the Heritage Foundation, federal, state and local education spending combined exceeds $580 billion annually, roughly 4.2 percent of our nation's gross domestic product. Yet while inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending has more than doubled since 1970 (more than $10,000 per student per year), academic achievement has stagnated while graduation rates have flat-lined.

Michelle Rhee understands that truism. Hers is a philosophy that will be a model, not a martyr, for education in the years and decades to come. For it's only a matter of time when the silent majority of parents and community leaders rise up and start asking the critical question of the education establishment, "Is that all I'm getting for my tax dollar [...] a child who struggles to read at a 5th grade level when they're about to graduate from high school?"

Yes, parents play a role, and we'll discuss that in another column at a later time. But for this moment in time, Miss Rhee deserves her moment in the sun - one that will mark the latest evolution of education policy in the United States.

The Obama administration understands what Miss Rhee was trying to do. Just ask the president's education secretary, Arne Duncan, who favored linking teacher evaluations to student test scores, dismissing under-performing educators in favor of teachers who were as excited as the student they taught to be in the classroom and shared the joy, and glory, of watching a child learn.

Let's be clear, Miss Rhee's efforts on behalf of education weren't isolated to that profession alone. Now more than ever, a solid education means a lifetime of solid work. Not just a job, but a career. Our future economic recovery depends on the young minds our teachers educate every day.

Further, our continued dominance as the world's only economic superpower hinges on that same foundation. If we are not properly educating the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs so they can create the next software innovations or next iPad, the Chinese are all too eager to fill that void.

As she gave her final public address as chancellor recently, Miss Rhee told reporters her future remained unclear. What is clear, however, is a reform-minded legacy the District would do well to keep in place long after her departure. The rest of the country knows it needs to head in that direction. It would be nice for the District to actually lead in something, for a change.

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26 November, 2010

The Freakishness of Sociology

Mike Adams

If you want to avoid seeing your 18-year-old turn into a freak within the first year of college, it’s best to make sure he, she, or it avoids taking a course in sociology. That is especially the case if your kid plans to attend Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Professor Laurie Essig teaches a course at Middlebury called “The Sociology of Freakishness.” She justifies the course by saying that “American popular culture began with the freak show” and that “P.T. Barnum taught us that freaks are always made- not born.” Better not tell that to GLEAM (Gay & Lesbian Employees at Middlebury). They might argue that there’s such a thing as a “freak gene.” Next thing you know, the freaks will be entitled to their own “Freak Resource Center.”

According to Essig, a freak is “a performance or display of otherness for fun and profit.” She claims that she has designed her course in order to “explore the history of the freak in American culture as well as how our culture is still structured around the trope of the freak show.” She wants students to become “sociologists of freakishness” whose job it is “to ask what configurations of power are at play in the performance. How do gender, race, nationality, sexuality and class come into play and how are those forms of power translated into a performance of otherness that forces us to watch it over and over again?”

After I read that job description I began to worry that I might be one of those freaks they’re studying. After all, a lot of sociologists read my columns “over and over again,” seemingly “forced” to do so. Maybe, there’s a freak-watcher gene, even though “freaks are made – not born.” Maybe there’s even an intellectually consistent sociologist somewhere. Maybe the moon landing was faked. Maybe professional wrestling is real.

I want to take “The Sociology of Freakishness” if no other reason than to take in the excellent assigned readings. Among those are Catherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Rosemarie Thomson’s Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body.

There are also numerous lectures I found on the course syllabus for “The Sociology of Freakishness,” which make me want to enroll right now. For example, one lecture, scheduled for early October, requires students to read Suzan-Lori Parks’, “Venus.” Next, students ponder these profound intellectual questions: Can the freak be reclaimed as an active subject in her own enfreakment? Is that what Parks was trying to do? And why?

By mid-October, students are asked to read Lori Merish’s “Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics,” and then watch Shirley Temple films in class. Finally, they are urged to bring to class “some contemporary examples of Children as Freaks.”

Shortly thereafter, students read Cecile Lindsay’s, “Bodybuilding: A Postmodern Freak Show,” and Cyril Siorat’s, “Beyond Modern Primitivism”, from the book Tattoo. They are then asked to “Come to class with examples of bodily freaks in our own culture- for example, tattooing, piercing, ear stretching.” They are then asked to “Think about the relationship between bodily freaks and notions of the ‘primitive.’” That’s some deep thinking to require of sociology students.

By the end of October, students read the professor’s own writing, specifically “Plasticity: On the Unexpected Uses of Plastic Surgery”. They are then asked to discuss this profound question: When is surgery “necessary” and when is it “freakish”?

In an early November class meeting, students are asked to “Think about contemporary manifestations of blackface as a genre of the freak show.” In order to provide a real balance to the class, students are then encouraged to study whiteface. In other words, they read about Michael Jackson. The reading is David D. Yuan’s, “The Celebrity Freak: Michael Jackson’s Grotesque Glory.”

Students are then asked to “Do some research on the most recent Jackson trials and Michael Jackson as a racial and sexual freak.” It is unclear whether students are asked to visit Never-land Ranch or attend a meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association. But, then again, calling the NAMBLA meeting a “freak show” might offend GLEAM. So many victims, so little time!

Just before Thanksgiving, students are introduced to a lecture on “YouTube, MySpace, and the importance of self-enfreakment.” They are told to find some examples in new media of freakishness. When they return from break, students get to read the professor’s own essay, “The Pleasure of Freaks.” This all takes place within a lecture titled “Does Pop Culture Need Freaks?”

I don’t know about “pop culture” but academia doesn’t need any more freaks. We just need to put bars on the professors’ windows and charge the public to peer inside their offices. Spectators should be allowed to toss them an occasional peanut or banana.

Eventually, we’ll need to pay someone to clean up the stuff that gathers in their cages. The freaks may call it scholarship. But it smells like crap to me.

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British children 'ignorant of British history' because of trendy teaching

Schoolchildren are increasingly ignorant of British history as teachers scrap traditional lessons in favour of trendy “skills-based” courses, according to academics. Pupils’ grasp of the past has been undermined because schools have “steadily downgraded” the importance of historical knowledge, it was claimed.

In a letter to Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, a delegation of academics and teachers today called for history to be made compulsory up to the age of 16 to reverse a “catastrophic decline” in the subject.

They also claimed that the curriculum should be rewritten to expose children to a more coherent narrative of British history.

It was suggested that at the age of 11, pupils should learn about the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, early medieval England and the Crusades. At 12, pupils should be taught about medieval life, the English conquest of Scotland and Wales, the 100 Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, the Renaissance, the Reformation, Elizabeth I and overseas exploration.

The comments came just 24 hours after Mr Gove pledged to review the National Curriculum. An education White Paper, published on Wednesday, outlined plans to slim down the curriculum document and emphasise the key “bodies of knowledge” children should master at each key stage.

In a letter, the Better History Group said: “We share the widespread alarm at the way history has been allowed to decline in the curriculum, with increasing numbers of children receiving less history teaching than their predecessors, or even none at all.

“Our central concern is that the importance of historical knowledge has been steadily downgraded. “In particular, we believe that the teaching of British history has been allowed to deteriorate, to such an extent that substantial numbers of young people do not have that basic grasp of this country's history that they need in order to function as informed and active adult citizens.”

The group – which was originally formed to advise the Conservatives on the history curriculum in 2007 – set out a series of recommendations to improve history teaching in schools.

Currently, around two-thirds of pupils drop the subject at the age of 14. But in a report, it was claimed that history should be made compulsory up to 16 to give schoolchildren more exposure to the subject.

The report suggested that children should study all main subjects, including history, geography, religious studies, music and art, throughout secondary education. But teenagers should be able to take some at a "higher level" - part of a full GCSE course - while others contribute towards half a GCSE or are not assessed at all.

It also recommended that existing “skills” based lessons, in which students are taught to analyse and evaluate primary and secondary sources without learning historical facts, should be scrapped.

“The current nature of source-based assessment in examinations, both at GCSE and at A-level, bears little relation to actual historical practice or even to actual historical sources,” said the report.

“Consequently, not only are students drilled in formulaic exercises of little practical application, but an enormous amount of time is wasted preparing them for these exercises, time which could have been better spent in extending their historical knowledge.

“Since analysis of source material is, in any case, meaningless without extensive knowledge, the lack of this renders current practice in source analysis a largely pointless exercise.”

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One Australian State government poised to reject 'underprepared' national curriculum

NSW is set to upset plans for a national curriculum by refusing to sign up to it at a meeting of education ministers next month. The Education Minister, Verity Firth, received advice from the NSW Board of Studies that more time was needed for consultation in response to concerns raised by stakeholders.

It is understood Ms Firth will heed the advice and is preparing to reject the curriculum, which the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority will present at the meeting on December 8.

The Herald understands the Board of Studies has responded to concerns about a lack of consultation by the authority and the overall curriculum structure, including the times allotted to teach each subject and the capacity to cater for all students.

Ms Firth's decision is a blow to the federal Education Minister, Peter Garrett, as the meeting is the last chance for ministers to reach agreement before the NSW election in March.

The Coalition is widely expected to win power at the election, making the prospects of an agreement more difficult.

The federal government was counting on all education ministers signing up to the curriculum by year's end so that it could be implemented around the country by 2013.

The Board of Studies has consistently criticised drafts of the curriculum, saying it is inferior to the existing NSW curriculum.

Mr Garrett said last night that he had not seen the detail of the board's decision, but urged it to work with the curriculum authority to resolve problems. "This reform is too important to let it slide because of some minor concerns about one aspect. The Australian Curriculum will be a basic learning entitlement for all students in Australia, no matter where they live."

Barry McGaw, who chairs the authority board, said he had received mixed messages from the NSW government. He believed its stance would amount to a delay in introducing the curriculum rather than to its abandonment. "The other states are keen to sign up," he said.

A coalition of seven national principals' associations, representing public, independent and Catholic schools, issued a statement in support of a "truly national Australian curriculum".

The group, which includes the Australian Secondary Principals Association, is scheduled to meet with the curriculum authority in Sydney today to discuss the future of the proposal.

Sheree Vertigan, the president of the Secondary Principals Association, said the associations were "definitely committed to a national curriculum". "It will be really sad if one state is rejecting it," she said.

But Christine Cawsey, the president of the NSW Secondary Principals' Council, said she supported a delay in the introduction of a curriculum as it was important to give stakeholders more time for consultation to improve the content.

"The Board of Studies would not recommend such a serious decision to the minister without serious consideration about what still needs to be done."

The NSW opposition spokesman on education, Adrian Piccoli, said if the curriculum was not signed off by March 26, a Coalition government would support the development of a national curriculum in principle, but it would need to be as good as the NSW curriculum. "It needs more work," he said.

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25 November, 2010

Media Rush to Defend LSU “Blood Will Be on Your Hands” Prof

What do the higher ed media do when a professor is caught blustering and biased—on camera? They scramble to defend him, of course.

A few weeks ago after getting a tip from a student at Louisiana State University, Campus Reform, a web-based organization that fights political correctness in higher education, sent a cameraman into class. The course, intended for freshmen, was Astronomy 1101 “The Solar System,” and the class was devoted entirely to the discussion of global warming.

Nothing in the terse description in LSU’s course catalog indicated that the professor would focus on terrestrial politics. The course description simply says that “The Solar System” will deal with “fundamental principles of the solar system.”

This week, Campus Reform released three video excerpts from that class (part 1, part 2, part 3). The videos show the professor, Bradley E. Schaefer, denouncing students for their views on global warming. He asks the class to sit according to actions they think the government should take, ranging from “U.S. should do nothing” to “Mandatory birth control” and “Eliminate all engines.”

To students who take their seats on the right side of the room (the “U.S. should do nothing” side), Professor Schaefer scoffs: “Oh boy, that’s really good for you, at least for the next decade or two. And then you will remember having sat on that corner, because you will not want to tell your children, if they live, why you’re sitting on that corner, that you were part of the trouble, right? Do you realize that?”

He goes on, “The more you’re sitting over here, the more you’re wanting to keep your hedonistic luxury at the cost of your children.” To one student he says, “Too little, too late. Blood will be on your hands.”

Campus Reform’s videos are short, 1-3 minute clips that highlight Schaefer’s most vigorous statements. When the organization published the first installment of the series, it wrote that this “shows what happens when a professor brings his politics into the classroom.”

Campus Reform has provided one of the clearest examples ever documented of liberal bias in academe. Defenders of the status quo saw its potential for serious damage and immediately set out to discredit it.

Both the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed published articles that essentially say: Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes? It’s not what it looks like. It was taken out of context. He yelled at liberal students too. The Chronicle article, “Video Seems to Catch Professor in a Liberal Rant, But There’s More to the Story,” paraphrases Schaefer: “He was actually challenging all of his students, both liberal and conservative, he says, and not chastising any of them for their beliefs.”

Indeed, Professor Schaefer did mock the “Eliminate all engines” segment of the class as well. He said, “The other side – they’re just as bad also.” When students asked him where he would sit, he said he didn’t know but that “I would not sit on either of the two edges. I think those are insane.”

What Schaefer doesn’t realize is that he shouldn’t be jeering at students on either side of a debate he has staged with an invitation to take positions that he believes to be extreme. When he asks students to sit according to their beliefs, then ridicules them for doing so—no matter what their politics are, he is in the wrong. As a professor, his job is not to belittle both sides equally but to instruct impartially.

At the request of the Chronicle, Campus Reform published the full, unedited, 40-minute long video of the class. It doesn’t help Schaeffer’s case. Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle probably bet that most people would read their headlines, accept the notion that Campus Reform deviously and “selectively edited,” and not take the time to watch the longer version.

Those who do watch the full video will see that there’s nothing in it to exonerate Schaefer or prove that he was unfairly treated by Campus Reform. After his first round of deriding students for their views, he gives a melodramatic lecture on global warming, comprised mostly of his avowals that global warming exists and will cause untold deaths. He declares, “Global warming is real; it’s caused by humanity,” and repeatedly says, “It’s only going to get worse.”

Schaefer says “About fifteen years ago Exxon suddenly decided, ‘Oh geez, this is going to be bad for our bottom line,’ and they started pouring vast sums of money into saying, ‘Oh, global warming doesn’t exist.’ That’s completely false.”

“There is universal agreement among scientists,” he proclaims, echoing Al Gore’s “The debate is over.”

Professor Schaefer fails to mention the many respected scientists who have made public their skepticism of anthropogenic global warming. Among them is Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and finds evidence that global warming alarmism has been greatly exaggerated for political purposes.

Another is Australian geologist Ian Plimer, who writes in his book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science, “Climate has always changed. It always has and always will [...] If we humans, in a fit of ego, think we can change these normal planetary processes, then we need stronger medication.” Saying “there is universal agreement among scientists” is an outright lie.

Another lie is recorded in the Chronicle, where Schaefer is quoted defending himself, “I put forth no opinions on how humanity should respond to global warming.” No opinions on how we should respond? Try:

"The solution has to come with some combination of not having as many people and not being as luxurious. So you can have a smaller population of high luxury or, you know, take your choice. If we go on as we are, you’ll have deaths in the billions, and that will solve the problem for you. That is not a good solution."

Later, a student asks about volcanoes, and Schaefer replies, “There are all sorts of natural catastrophes. This is one we made ourselves, and this is one we can control.”

At the end of the class he has the students do a group exercise and gives each section different questions for which they must present an answer to the class. The group on the right side of the room is given a piece of paper that says:

"Your professed policies have a substantial likelihood of leading to the death of a billion people or more. (A) Estimate the probability that you personally will be killed in an ugly way because of your decision? (B) What is the probability that any children of yours will die in ugly ways due to your current decision."

Die in ugly ways? This professor has decided to try to weed out anyone who disagrees with him by using scare and guilt tactics. He sustains the violent imagery through the entire class, telling students, “Blood will be on your hands,” and pooh-poohing deaths from September 11th (“3,000? Whatever.”) in light of the toll global warming would take. Toward the end of his lecture he indicts the students who prefer no new legislation on climate change:

"So, you see, the trouble here is the people on that corner [points at right side of room]. They’re wanting to do nothing. They’re wanting to let global warming take its toll. People decades from now will have deaths in the billions if we do nothing, and that will solve the problem."

Campus Reform’s video #2 points out that when the spokesman from that side stands up to share his group’s answers to the “die in ugly ways” questions, Schaefer repeatedly interrupts him. Several students ask the professor to let the spokesman talk, which Schaefer does, collapsing into a theatrical fit of laughter, holding his sides, bobbing his head, and gesturing to imply that he thinks the student is spouting idiocy.

The mockery, of course, does far more to discredit the integrity of the teacher than the opinions of the students. But the most chilling moment in the class wasn’t included in the shorter Campus Reform videos. It’s what the group on the other side of the room has to say.

The young woman speaking for her section reads the question, “Would you personally aim to have no more than 2 children?” Out of about 50 students, 45 said yes, she reports. “So I think that’s a pretty good number, and if, I mean, if the whole country decided to do that it would make a big impact.”

Forty-five students make a verbal pledge not to have more than two children. And they hope the whole country will do the same. If these students are in earnest, they have drunk the Kool-Aid. If they are bluffing, Schaefer was successful in his intimidation tactics. He is so bold as to guide students to limit the size of their future families—and they readily go along in the direction he nudges them.

As for the students over on the right side of the room, Schaefer continues to denounce them as unethical and foolish: “Screwing with the science is WRONG. You’re an ostrich putting your head in the sand.” After the spokesman says, “We personally don’t believe that we will be killed due to our current position because—” Schaefer cuts him off, shouting, “Remember that you gave that answer, okay? You’re going to be accountable for this!”

What about Professor Schaefer? Will he be held accountable? Not likely. The LSU department chair told the Chronicle he did not think any action would be taken to punish or even reprimand Schaeffer. He did say that he would take seriously any student complaints if he hears any.

But why wait to hear from students, who may not complain if they want to preserve their grades, when all the evidence is in? The footage from this class is a smoking gun, and LSU is too deeply invested in maintaining the politically correct system to take responsibility and do the right thing.

Cary Nelson, of course, defended Professor Schaefer. The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Nelson believes that academic freedom is essentially a professor’s ability to say whatever he wants in the classroom. He told Inside Higher Ed that:

"academic freedom and completely honest communication in the classroom requires a certain degree of privacy for all the people there, that they need to be able to be frank, that they need to express their emotions honestly, that the classroom is not a stage, that it’s not designed to be a public performance".

Perhaps Nelson should communicate this directly with Schaefer, who used his authority to put on what amounted to a big performance.

What is truly amazing about this story is the ease with which Schaefer’s defenders can turn a blind eye to his totally unprofessional behavior and point the blame at the messengers. In this way, it resembles the episode at Wesleyan University in which students and faculty were enraged by an affirmative action bake sale because it was “offensive,” but they failed to see the inherent offensiveness of racial preferences portrayed by the bake sale. Once again, blame is shifted to those holding up the mirror.

A year ago “Climategate” exposed the secret steps researchers at East Anglia University had taken to suppress views that did not support climate change orthodoxy. Hundreds of emails came to the surface, undeniable evidence of a conspiracy propping up the supposed “scientific consensus.” Then, as now, the guilty party exonerated itself simply by playing the martyr and repeating declarations of its own innocence.

So what, ideally, should LSU do to assure students, their parents, and the public that Astronomy 1101 isn’t just an occasion for Professor Schaefer to rant about global warming and attempt to humiliate students who disagree with him? How can this be handled without violating the principle of academic freedom? Well, first of all, the University needs to recognize that students have academic freedom too – freedom to be taught by scholars who do not engage in propagandistic bombast, but instead provide a conscientious account of the relevant facts – in this case, about “The Solar System.” The AAUP laid this out definitively in its 1915 Declaration of Principles:

"The liberty of the scholar within the university to set forth his conclusions, be they what they may, is conditioned by their being conclusions gained by a scholar’s method and held in a scholar’s spirit; that is to say, they must be the fruits of competent and patient and sincere inquiry, and they should be set forth with dignity, courtesy, and temperateness of language".

Professor Schaefer appears to have violated these principles as vividly as it might be possible to do. He deserves, at the least, a suspension from teaching until such time as he shows himself ready to teach in a manner appropriate to his position.

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Strange schools decision by NYC Mayor Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg doesn't mind picking a fight. But after nine years in office, he should have learned to pick his battles. He has famously tried - and failed - to build a West Side football stadium, charge tolls into lower Manhattan and turn the Kingsbridge Armory into a huge shopping center.

There was no shame in those losses, though. No matter what you thought of them, they were legitimate ideas with solid backing that deserved a hearing.

Trying to put a magazine executive in charge of the city schools is a different story. Bloomberg may have been the only person in New York who didn't see a downside in naming Cathie Black to be schools chancellor.

"He was thinking about an out-of-the-box candidate who would carry on Joel Klein's legacy and be sort of a maverick," said consultant George Arzt, a longtime student of New York mayors. "I'm sure in his mind he thinks that this is right for the city," Arzt said. "But there were no other candidates interviewed - and it showed."

Even Black's supporters knew a boarding-school mom with a corporate résumé would be a tough sell, no matter how strong a manager she is. Bloomberg's inner circle could have told him that - had he bothered to tell them about Black before he made up his mind. "He went into this by himself, and in fact it was revealed that the emperor had no clothes," said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio.

The mayor's team could have quietly reached out to state Education Commissioner David Steiner to see how he would react, or to at least give him an early heads-up. Instead, the aides who get paid to build support for his controversial ideas - like lifting the charter school cap or extending term limits - were playing defense from the start.

Public school parents understood the problem of a boss with no experience, and 62% of them told a Quinnipiac University poll they didn't want Black. Bloomberg thinks he knows better - but six of eight experts on the state education commissioner's panel agreed with the parents.

Three years ago, the mayor said, "I have always joked that [the difference between] having the courage of your convictions and being pigheaded is in the results." The results are in. As he looks to salvage Black's nomination, he should look in the mirror, too.

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How Britain can we make its teachers better

Ofsted’s damning report on teaching standards is no surprise, but with imagination and courage, it’s a problem we can solve, says Katharine Birbalsingh

The White Paper on education to be published today contains some bold proposals from Michael Gove, such as allowing heads more time to observe teachers at work and giving them more freedom to increase good teachers’ salaries. These will be greeted with open arms by some and rejected by others with contempt.

I do not know why there should be dissent. We should not be surprised by Ofsted’s claim that teaching standards are not good enough in half of secondary schools and more than two-fifths of primaries. Anyone who has been a teacher will recognise the constant frustration caused by colleagues who simply cannot teach. But we are uneasy about criticising them. In schools, the “prizes for all” culture doesn’t just exist for children: it’s the lie of the land for teachers, too.

Everyone knows who the struggling teachers are – head teachers know, the other staff know, pupils know, even most of the parents know. But such is the culture in our schools that no one dares to utter a word. By all means complain in the staff room about how Mr Lazy leaves every day at 4pm and never does any marking; or about how Miss Incompetent cannot even get her children to sit down in their chairs, yet is unwilling or unable to take advice. But tell anyone in charge? No.

In fact, if anyone in charge were to insist on higher standards from these individuals, fellow teachers would be likely to gather in hordes to address their union rep and insist that one of the pack was being victimised. Some schools are so unionised that the poor head cannot take on individual teachers because he doesn’t have the stomach for it.

One might argue that failing teachers should be given support. Of course they should; and some do very well with it and improve. But what of those who have had support for two or three years without changing – what then? I cannot understand why, in the public sector, one must have a job for life, no matter how dreadful one is.

But the unions have a one-size-fits-all policy. Whoever you are, however woeful you are, the unions will defend you. They are powerful and they are encouraged by a culture in our schools that is endemic and all-pervasive. If one dares to dissent, one is seen as a traitor.

Office staff, learning mentors and teaching assistants are also contaminated by an environment in which all are deemed to be equal no matter what they do, and in which the good are rarely rewarded. This is why only truly extraordinary head teachers have the backbone to take on the unions and win. It can be done, but only with exceptional will and determination.

The problem with Michael Gove’s reforms is that as well as requiring head teachers to be robust enough to implement them, they also require the young, talented teacher, just out of university, to have enough backbone not to mind being scorned by his colleagues. For that’s what is likely to happen if you pay them more for being good at their jobs. After all, teachers, like pupils, want to be liked, and they want to have friends in the workplace.

The question people outside teaching often ask is: why hire bad teachers in the first place? Clearly, no one sets out to do this. But it can be very difficult to pick the perfect plum. You can have an applicant teach a lesson, jump through the hoops at interview, and, at senior level, give them in-tray exercises, data analysis tests and so on. But mistakes are made. Sometimes the best teachers perform badly at interview and the worst can put on an excellent performance.

Add to this the fact that a previous head, unable to get rid of a teacher because of union protection, instead chooses to “encourage” the teacher to move on, and provides him with a stunning reference. Good interview performance with an excellent reference? Of course they’ll get the job. Except that six weeks in, it becomes obvious that the phrase “they just need to settle in” no longer applies. Gradually, it becomes apparent that you have hired a dud, and because of the culture of schools, nothing can be done about it.

But in some schools, the hiring of teachers can be an even worse ordeal. Some inner-city head teachers cannot get a single applicant for certain jobs and they are simply forced to take what they can find. Why? Teachers, thankfully, are now paid good salaries, and there is lots of funding in our most challenged schools. But teachers don’t go into the profession because they want to earn loads of cash.

Bankers do banking for money. Doctors practise medicine to save lives. And teachers teach because they like children and their subjects; they love to inspire. If our classrooms are chaotic and all common sense has left our school grounds, teachers don’t want to be the last ones left standing. Instead they flock to the private sector, or to the better state schools.

Some leave the country altogether and teach in Africa, despite there being no money for salaries, buildings, interactive whiteboards or even textbooks. Yet those children manage to sit the O-level papers that still exist outside Britain, and which would have our state-educated children quivering in their boots because they are so difficult.

What we need are bright, capable people in teaching who love children and enjoy inspiring them. I do like Michael Gove’s idea of only funding teacher-training for those with a minimum of a 2.2 degree. While it is true that a PhD will not make anyone into a better teacher, I don’t think I have ever met an excellent teacher with a third-class degree. Teaching is extremely hard work if you want to do it well. A third normally suggests a penchant for laziness, and is therefore a neon sign to heads saying here is someone likely to laze around the staff room complaining, and unlikely ever to stay past 4pm.

What the best teachers hate most is being lumped in with the lazy ones. Sure, the kids know they’re great, and that is something. But like pupils, teachers want to be rewarded when they do well. And if everyone is always rewarded for everything they do, no matter what it is, all rewards become meaningless. A gold star only means something when the powers that be are also happy to use the stars that are silver and bronze, and in some cases, not hand out stars at all.

Last week I caused something of a stir when I told the Commons Education Select Committee that I wanted to work in a profession held in such high regard that when I did something well, someone would say well done; and when I did something badly, and consistently so, I should feel a sense of fear for my position. I also said that if members of senior teams were not doing their jobs properly, they should be fired.

Many of us in teaching want standards to be rigorous, not just for the pupils, but for the teachers, too. I know that a lot of teachers agree with me. They just can’t say it out loud.

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24 November, 2010

Chaos continues at Central Falls High in Rhode Island

Nutty "no discipline" policies ensure it

Things aren’t going well at Central Falls High, the Rhode Island school that became famous early this year when all of the teachers were fired and President Obama praised the “accountability” move.

He didn’t say anything when an agreement was reached between Central Falls Schools District Superintendent Fran Gallo and the teachers union to rehire all the teachers and replace the principal with two co-principals as part of a state-mandated “turnaround” strategy because of a history of low standardized test scores and a high dropout rate.

Fast forward to now, a few months into the new school administration. Teachers and others report discipline, attendance and morale problems that have left the 840-student school seriously troubled in Rhode Island’s poorest city.

About half a dozen teachers have been out on extended medical leave -- including an Advanced Placement English class -- and the administration has had trouble covering the classes, with officials frequently getting on the loudspeaker to ask teachers to volunteer their time. (Gallo had said earlier this year that she got more than 700 applications for teaching jobs at Central Falls; you'd think she might have a pool to choose from to fill the open spots.)

A new disciplinary program that stressed leniency has failed to rein in dozens of students who caused serious disruptions; kids who come to school or class late, or who have even threatened teachers, received minimal or no punishment, said a number of teachers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Some teachers have reported being assaulted by students.

Teachers have made hundreds of referrals of students for disciplinary measures, but, some teachers said, the administration does little if anything in the way of punishment.

After first denying any problem, school officials have said part of the program would be reviewed. This admission occurred after a meeting with the Central Falls police chief, Capt. Col. Joseph Moran III, who is also head of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association....

Rhode Island’s acclaimed education commissioner, Deborah Gist, told me she had visited the school recently and found the students to be well-behaved and "wanting to learn" but some teachers not prepared to teach their classes.

When I asked about the discipline issue, citing the police chief, she responded that the chief had grown up in Central Falls with some of the teachers and was very close to them. Moran, who attended Central Falls and sent his children there, said the discipline problems about which teachers have complained are real.

Police have arrested a handful of students and at least two teachers have filed assault charges against students, yet school officials just inexplicably removed the police officer that had been assigned to the high school and send her to a middle school, the local station WRNI reported.

Teachers said that the co-principals are not responsive to their problems, and take a more active role in making sure students are behaving when top schools officials visit.

George McLaughlin, who had been a longtime counselor at Central Falls until this year, when he moved, said: “I get at least two calls per week from teachers still at CFHS asking for advice in how to deal with stress, danger (the kids are completely out of control--teachers and students are being attacked verbally and even physically, regularly) and persecution.”

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A plan to tackle extremism in British classrooms

Thank God, or, if you prefer, Allah, that in Michael Gove, we have a Secretary of State for Education who will not continue his predecessor Ed Balls’s policy of pretending that faith schools are all the same. They are not.

Some of them turn out well-educated, well-rounded young people who will strengthen our society; others strive to keep the minds of their charges closed by isolating them from people or ideas that might challenge them. Non-believers queue to get their children into high-performing Anglican or Roman Catholic schools because they have no fear they will be indoctrinated. There are few of them breaking down the doors of fundamentalist Muslim academies or establishments run by extreme Protestant evangelists.

In a sensible world, rather than concentrating on bullying mainstream Christian schools to preach secular values, the Department for Education would be keeping a beady eye on schools that encourage intolerance and worse.

With the UK under constant threat from Islamist violence, one might think extra effort would have been put into scrutinising schools suspected of producing extremists. One would be wrong. The establishment is obsessed with fairness and terrified of allegations of racism, so little is done to protect children from being taught to hate the society they are growing up in. Under Mr Balls’s stewardship, it became possible for a school of under 199 pupils to be inspected by just one person, who can be of the school’s own faith.

It has been left largely to journalists and to think tanks like Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion to study and expose radicalisation in schools and universities.

Last night, Panorama’s John Ware revealed that 5,000 children in more than 40 Saudi Students’ Schools and Clubs in the UK were being taught anti-Semitism, homophobia and other tenets of sharia. Michael Gove promises that his department will extend its remit to ensure it can stamp out such teachings in part-time schools. Mr Gove is the author of Celsius 7/7, a brilliant analysis of how the perverted totalitarian ideology that is Islamism developed out of “a great, historical faith” that has brought spiritual nourishment to billions. Asked to define extremism, he has explained that "you know it when you see it”.

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British education boss sweeps away trendy teaching to focus on traditional subjects

Traditional academic subjects will be put back at the centre of ­learning under radical government plans to be unveiled today. Education Secretary Michael Gove told the Daily Mail he plans to tear up the schools league table system so success in old-fashioned subjects such as science, history or foreign languages is the chief measure of achievement.

The reform is the centrepiece of a wide-ranging education White Paper which aims to toughen school discipline and free teachers from bureaucracy. From January, schools will be judged on pupils’ success in a so-called ‘English Baccalaureate’ made up of English; maths; a science; history or geography; and a modern or ancient language.

Currently, only 16 per cent of students get a grade C or above in all five subjects. But Mr Gove believes the ­focus on the ‘English Bac’ up to the age of 16 will halt the drift to softer subjects at GCSE. ‘We must make sure our children are studying the subjects that really stretch the mind and prepare them for a more competitive world,’ he said.

Labour gave non-academic qualifications – including certificates in ‘sports leadership’ – parity with traditional ­subjects in league tables in 2004. The move helped fuel a catastrophic fall in the number of children taking academic courses as schools pushed weaker pupils into other qualifications, regardless of educational value, to ‘milk’ as many league table points as possible. The latest figures show there has been a astonishing 3,000 per cent rise in the number of pupils doing non-academic qualifications since then.

Mr Gove is expected to unveil further proposals for a major shake-up of the school curriculum within days. Children will study literary classics, ­British prime ministers, historical battles, ‘our island story’ and key scientific concepts, while the curriculum will be drastically simplified and issued to parents so they can hold schools to account.

Further measures include a return to one-off public exams taken at the end of courses instead of tests in ‘bite-size’ modules.

Meanwhile a drive to strengthen classroom discipline will give heads greater powers to restrain violent pupils, search youngsters for mobile phones and put them in detention.

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23 November, 2010

New NAEP data out -- but "fudged"

White-Black math gaps getting worse. And even national educators don’t depict the situation properly!

The National Assessment of Educational Progress just released new data in the web on the testing of the nation’s students in reading and mathematics in 2009. Among other things, the release has this very clear statement from the National Assessment Governing Board about the real desired level of student performance.

That is a very good statement. It agrees very well with data that shows grade 8 NAEP reading and math proficiency rates compare remarkably well to the percentages of students who are on track for college and careers according to EXPLORE test results from Kentucky.

However, the information in the web also includes more, such as this disturbing graph, cut and pasted from one of the web pages with the title added (highlighted in green - title was off screen when the screen shot was taken). Tech Note: Screen shot taken Nobember 20, 2010, of “National Results, 5 of 9, Tab “National Results Grades 4 & 8,” from here.



Note that this says in 2009 only 42 percent of the whites were "Proficient" and only 15 percent of blacks were, for a gap of 27 points. Back in 1990, the gap was only 13 points.

The graph also has the understatement of the century, claiming that the gaps, “have not been reduced.” I guess not. They have GROWN dramatically!

But, there is an even BIGGER problem with this graph. It IGNORES all the additional students who scored better than “Proficient,” at the level NAEP calls “Advanced.” That’s the wrong way to present the data on gaps.

Let’s make that crystal clear. Here is a graph I assembled today using data downloaded from the NAEP Data Explorer. This graph includes ALL students who scored at or above NAEP Proficient on NAEP grade 4 math.



Now we see the real black-white grade 4 math performance gap is 50 minus 15, or 35 points, 8 points higher (about 30 percent worse) than the 27 point difference web page graph owns up to!

The difference is that virtually no blacks score “Advanced,” while about 8 percent of the whites do.

Using the ‘right stuff,’ the gap back in 1990 was only one point higher than the misleading impression created by the NAEP’s graph in the web.

Anyway, the basic message stays the same. The gaps are not only very bad – they are getting worse. So, here are some questions:

Why do educators in Kentucky continue to try to fool us by citing numbers for NAEP “Basic” as though this is a suitable performance target when our own testing data from EXPLORE and even the people who run the NAEP testing program say NO, It ISN’T!

And, why did national educators get their gap depiction wrong, too? Was it just a statistical error, or something more?

Common educators – Let’s stop the spin – NOW! The gaps are VERY serious, and they are getting WORSE! And, our kids deserve to have the situation portrayed accurately.

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Tens of thousands of foreign students to be barred from Britain in bid to cut immigration numbers

Tens of thousands of foreign students will be barred from studying at private colleges to help slash immigration and curb the growing abuse of the system, the Home Secretary will signal today. Theresa May will launch a review of student visas amid concerns that almost half the migrants who come to study in the UK each year are not on degree courses but a range of lesser qualifications such as A-levels and even GCSEs.

Mrs May will question whether they are the "brightest and the best" that the country wants and will make them a key target for cutting numbers after pledging to protect those wanting to study degrees. It comes as separate figures revealed there has been a 40 per cent rise in the number of bogus colleges, most of which offer non-degree or language courses.

The Home Secretary will announce the review as she unveils what the annual cap on migrant workers will be next year. Along with other measures, the cap is expected to limit numbers arriving to around 40,000 and is the first move to meet David Cameron's pledge of bringing overall net migration down from 196,000 to the "tens of thousands".

Yesterday Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, appeared to be concerned about plans to restrict students after he was pictured clutching notes outside 10 Downing Street.

Mr Cable has been the Cabinet's most vocal critic of the various measures to cut immigration and the notes seemed to echo previous concerns that curbing students would damage the country's reputation in the world.

They also appeared to remind colleagues that foreign students bring income to universities and colleges and that changing rules that allow students to look for work after their degree was wrong.

The Government's chief immigration adviser warned last week that any cut in foreign workers will only have a limited impact and that the number of students from outside the EU will have to be halved if the target is to be met.

Ministers have been under pressure from university leaders and some Cabinet members who fear that restrictions on student numbers will damage the UK's reputation as a world-leading centre for education, as well as cutting the lucrative funds brought in by foreign students.

However, around 130,000 foreign students who came in the year to March were not here to study degrees, almost half the near 280,000 non-EU students who arrived. Of those, more than 90,000 attended a private college to study anything from GCSEs to vocational qualifications. Thousands more attended language schools. The rest either attended established further education colleges or schools.

More HERE





British teachers to bring back old-fashioned reading tests

Six-year-olds will be tested on their ability to read words such as ‘cat’, ‘zoo’, and ‘pride’ as part of a return to traditional teaching.

Ministers yesterday gave details of back-to-basics plans to run reading tests after one year of formal schooling. The ten-minute ‘informal tests’ will be based on phonics – where pupils learn the sounds of letters and groups of letters before putting them together.

It is a move away from ‘trendy’ teaching methods which have been blamed on the decline of youngsters’ grasp of the 3Rs.

At present, pupils in England are assessed in Year 2 by their teachers in English, maths and science. Around one in six seven-year-olds and one in five 11-year-olds fail to reach the levels expected of their age group in reading, according to official statistics.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said: ‘We are determined to raise literacy standards in our schools, especially of those not achieving the expected level.’ He said it would be ‘impossible’ for schools to drill pupils to pass the new test.

Some teachers are unconvinced by the move. Martin Johnson, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: ‘There is a huge consensus that reading is best taught using a mixture of methods, but the Government ignores the evidence in favour of its outdated hobby-horses.’

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22 November, 2010

Teachers Unions Not Representative of Teachers’ Changing Views

Education and education reform are hot topics in today’s headlines. Movies like Waiting for “Superman” have put the problems with American education center stage. Everyone seems to be aware that the crisis in public education is growing. Despite record level spending, students from 16 countries are outperforming their American counterparts. To top it all off, 50 percent of teachers in the classroom today will be retiring in the next ten years. This is not the recipe for a well-educated public.

Unfortunately, teachers largely have been pushed aside as education reformers determine how to help America’s students catch up with the rest of the world. Teachers can thank the teacher union leadership for being excluded from the education reform decisions. While American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claims that teachers are being “scapegoated” for the nationwide lack of student achievement, administrators, parents, policymakers, and business leaders are working together to develop innovative strategies to help America’s students catch up with countries like Finland and South Korea.

Ms. Weingarten and her allies at the National Education Association have an arsenal of sound bites that are nothing more than double talk. It’s as if they are saying “we are part of the solution but only if you do it our way.” So who can blame policy makers for tuning out the unions when their prescription for improving public education is more money and less accountability?

The unions have done a masterful job at branding teachers and their unions as essentially the same. This could not be further from the truth. The fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of teachers who are not members of the teacher unions and do not support the unions or their positions.

There is hope for teachers, however. An alternative to the teachers unions called the Association of American Educators is a non-partisan, non-union professional association for educators. This summer the organization randomly surveyed its members from all fifty states to understand the changing sentiments of teachers relating to education reform. The findings show that teachers are indeed warming to reforms - a shocking blow to union-held stances relating to accountability, tenure and compensation.

For instance, the unions generally oppose using student test scores for teacher evaluations even when using a value-added system, which takes into account important student characteristics like special education services, free and reduced lunch status, and other factors out of a teacher’s control. Although our survey finds teachers do not want to be evaluated solely on student test scores, 80 percent of those surveyed supported using a value-added assessment when student test scores are part of teacher evaluation. In fact, AAE members believed that student test scores ranked near the top in evaluating teacher effectiveness, second to only administrative/ faculty review. Notably, years in the system ranked dead last among quantifiers of teacher effectiveness.

With regard to tenure, teachers unions promote it as a crucial means of protection for teachers to be able to perform their jobs. However, AAE’s survey shows that teachers have a different opinion. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed responded that tenure is not necessary for an educator to properly perform his or her job effectively, and the vast majority of respondents – 80 percent – asserted that achieving tenure does not indicate an effective teacher.

Also debunked in the survey is the myth that all teachers believe that they should have a job for life. Seventy-three percent supported a Colorado policy that strips tenure if a teacher is deemed ineffective for two consecutive years. Further, seventy percent disagreed with the statement “Last hired, first fired.”

When it comes to compensation, unions hold the line for a rigid, structured pay scale. AAE teachers showed that 79 percent of them supported educators being paid more to teach in high-needs schools and 80 percent agreed with paying teachers for taking on more responsibilities and additional roles at their schools.

It is this kind of data that demonstrates that teachers unions are out of step with their membership base. In fact, those teachers who think their unions are properly handling their interests have a false sense of security. Thousands of teachers have already left the union and have joined non-union, professional associations that offer many of the benefits they need without the union baggage. The growth of these organizations is the greatest hope that one day the unions will be forced to listen to their members rather than the other way around.

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Charters give education in New Orleans a fresh start

When Hurricane Katrina struck five years ago, it displaced families and destroyed schools. And the storm unwittingly provided a chance to reinvent public education in a failing school district. So was launched the nation's biggest charter school experiment.Today, 70 percent of New Orleans public school students attend a charter school. No other city comes close. (Dallas' rate is 10 percent and growing.) So educators, lawmakers and researchers are watching for results.

One early lesson: The relative freedom of charter schools – they're independently run and exempt from many state education laws – appears to have been key to an overall boost in student performance in New Orleans. But the charter school setup alone did not guarantee success. The best ones have strong leaders, capable teachers and a relentless focus on learning. In other words, freedom in the right hands works.

The results in New Orleans are of high interest to Texas, where the number of charter schools has exploded over the last decade despite state limits on charters. There is talk that the Legislature may raise the cap this session, as many parents, high-dollar education donors and even Hollywood filmmakers embrace the concept.

The New Orleans school system once ranked among the country's worst. And one of the worst schools was Sophie B. Wright Middle. Wright chronically bore the state's lowest rating, academically unacceptable. Just a handful of students passed state exams. Kids got into fights and skipped class. Today, Wright carries a two-star rating out of five, around the state average. Fights are down. Attendance is up.

What changed? Five years ago, Wright became a charter school with its own governing board. Principal Sharon Clark said that autonomy has made all the difference. "You are given the ability to really work with your community and your parents and make decisions that really benefit kids," said Clark, a 43-year-old New Orleans native who came to Wright in 2001. Under the old school system, superintendents came and went along with their pet reading or math programs. Teachers ran short on textbooks and basic supplies.

Wright was one of the few city schools to become a charter before Hurricane Katrina. And it was among the first to reopen after, in January 2006. Clark said she can make swift decisions like never before. She holds up a list of requests from her teachers. One wanted a digital projector, another needed workbooks. Yet another teacher asked for a smaller fifth-period class. Everything teachers asked for, they got within 30 days, Clark said.

As a charter, Wright was able to buy its own school buses, which saved money. And Clark could decide to put middle-schoolers in single-sex classrooms ("fewer distractions," she explains) and do away with D letter grades (to push students to work harder for a C rather than fail).

Wright also enjoys the freedom to not try new things. Of all the reading programs to cycle through under the old school system, Wright instructors preferred one called Success For All, so they kept it.

Some schools or districts favor a lock-step team approach, with teachers teaching the same thing the same way, to ensure consistency. Not at Wright. "Teachers just know that they have to teach," Clark said. "We give you anything and everything you need – the rest is up to you."

Another charter school, New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy – nicknamed Sci Academy – opened two years ago. Benjamin Marcovitz, Sci Academy's 31-year-old principal, said the charter structure makes it easier to customize to student needs. Two weeks into the first school year, instructors realized that most freshmen read only at a fifth-grade level. Over one frenzied weekend, the staff overhauled the English curriculum. Out went novels like Lord of the Flies. In came an extra class on writing and grammar.

Charter schools also have more power to hire and fire teachers. When promising candidates apply to Sci Academy, Marcovitz observes them teaching. He makes suggestions and returns a week later to observe again. It's a lengthy recruiting process, often six to eight weeks. Marcovitz said the most successful teachers work 12 hours a day, six days a week the first year. Teachers post their phone numbers in their classrooms and take calls from students as late as 9:30 p.m.

Sci Academy staff members are mostly in their 20s or early 30s, with degrees from Yale, Harvard, UC-Berkeley and other top universities. Many are veterans of Teach For America, a national program that recruits promising college graduates to teach in poor communities. "We get teachers who buy into this model, who really believe that kids can come in way behind grade level and that they can achieve college success," said Morgan Carter, the school's chief growth officer.

Junior Alexandra Harris said the teachers push students even when they don't want to be pushed. "And they're going to always be there," she said. "Whatever the teachers do, they do it for a reason, for you to succeed."

Before Hurricane Katrina, more than 60 percent of New Orleans public schools were rated unacceptable. After Katrina hit, the state placed the worst campuses into a state system, the Recovery School District. Many of those schools became charters.

The charter schools are doing better on average – state figures show that 13 percent of them rated unacceptable this spring, compared with 65 percent of the Recovery district's traditional schools.

That doesn't mean charter schools are inherently better than traditional schools, experts say. "The truth is there are good charter schools and there are bad charter schools, and there are good traditionally operated schools and ones that are failing," said Shannon Jones Couhig, executive director of the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives, a Tulane University think tank.

Cowen experts say that for many reasons, comparing performance of Recovery charter schools with traditional campuses can be misleading. For instance, many charters formed after Katrina and therefore got to start from scratch.

They also say the autonomy that charters foster does not guarantee success. "It takes strong leadership. It takes somebody who's been in education, who knows what has worked in the past," said Joy Askin, a curriculum coordinator at Sophie B. Wright. "It's not always about, 'Let's just pour a lot of new stuff into the school.' "

SOURCE




Muslim children in Britain being taught Sharia

Children in Britain are being taught brutal Sharia law punishments, including how to hack off a criminal’s hand or foot.

So-called ‘weekend schools’ for Muslim pupils as young as six also teach that the penalty for gay sex is execution and that ‘Zionists’ are plotting to take over the world for the Jews.

One set textbook challenges youngsters to list the ‘reprehensible’ qualities of Jews. Another for six-year-olds asks them to answer what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam. The answer being looked for is ‘hellfire’.

A BBC Panorama investigation, to be screened tonight, identified a network of more than 40 weekend schools teaching around 5,000 children, from age six to 18.

The schools – which offer the hardline Saudi National Curriculum – are run under the umbrella of ‘Saudi Students Clubs and Schools in the UK and Ireland’.

They are not state-funded, and do not use Government buildings. They are able to exploit a loophole which means weekend schools are not inspected by Ofsted.

Last night, experts at the Policy Exchange think-tank warned that similar extremists could seek to exploit the Government’s policy of giving greater freedoms from state control to free schools and academies. They call for the establishment of a due diligence unit to check whether those applying to open the schools have an extremist background. Current checks are largely limited to fraud, criminal convictions and funding.

Education Secretary Michael Gove, who is believed to be supportive of the idea, said he would not tolerate anti-Semitism and homophobia in English schools.

The Panorama investigation identified a book for 15-year-olds being used in the classes which teaches about Sharia law and its punishments. It says: ‘For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence.’

There are diagrams showing children where cuts must be made. One passage says: ‘The specified punishment of the thief is cutting off his right hand at the wrist. Then it is cauterised to prevent him from bleeding to death.’

For acts of ‘sodomy’, children are told that the penalty is death and it states a difference of opinion whether this should be done by stoning, or burning with fire, or throwing over a cliff.

Panorama alleges that a building used for one of the schools, in Ealing, West London, is owned by the Saudi government.

Mr Gove told the programme: ‘I have no desire or wish to intervene in the decisions that the Saudi government makes in its own education system. ‘But I’m clear that we cannot have anti-Semitic material of any kind being used in English schools. Ofsted are doing some work in this area. ‘They’ll be reporting to me shortly about how we can ensure that part-time provision is better registered and better inspected in the future.’

The text books for 15-year-olds revive the so-called ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, which teach that Zionists want to establish world domination for Jews. The Saudi text books instruct pupils: ‘The Jews have tried to deny them (the Protocols) but there are many proofs of their veracity and their origin among the elders of Zion.’

The text books say the ‘main goal’ of the ‘Zionist movement’ is ‘for the Jews to have control over the world and its resources’ which, the book allege, Zionists seek to achieve partly by ‘inciting rancour and rivalry among the great powers so that they fight one another.’

Mr Gove said anyone who cites the Protocols of Zion is ‘indulging in one of the oldest and foulest anti Semitic smears that, that we know of’.

In a written response to the findings, the Saudi ambassador said the schools had nothing to do with the Saudi embassy. It stated: ‘Any tutoring activities that may have taken place among any other group of Muslims in the United Kingdom are absolutely individual to that group and not affiliated to or endorsed by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia.’

Referring to the lesson that tasks children to list the ‘reprehensible qualities of the Jews’, in a letter to the BBC, the Saudi ambassador said it was ‘dangerously deceptive and misleading to address such texts and discuss them out of their overall historical, cultural and linguistic contexts’.

Panorama separately claimed some Muslim private schools have expressed extreme sentiments on their school websites. These include: ‘We need to defend our children from the forces of evil’, and ‘our children are exposed to a culture that is in opposition to almost everything Islam stands for’.

Policy Exchange says Britain’s faith and other schools are increasingly vulnerable to extremist influences. It claims in a report that the Department for Education, Ofsted, education authorities and schools are ‘not equipped’ to meet such challenges. Current checks for extremism are described as ‘piecemeal’.

The report adds: ‘The Government’s policy of opening up the education system to new academies and free schools programmes could be exploited unless urgent measures are taken to counter extremist influence.’

SOURCE



21 November, 2010

Another "new" mathematics for American schools

Odd that standards of mathematical literacy have gone steadily downhill as time-proven methods are abandoned. "New" methods of teaching mathematics are just a way of making education professors feel important and clever. They are in fact neither. Only a third-rater would be an education professor these days

Pay attention to what our children are being taught. Not even simple arithmetic is safe from progressive stupidity.

We moved here in June of 2005, with the first of our four children entering kindergarten in 2007. Like many other conservatives who have been caught sleeping at philosophy's wheel, we stupidly assumed that those persons running the local school district would hold values roughly in line with our own. We could not have been more wrong.

By now our second child has entered kindergarten, and having done our homework, we have since learned that our school board is ideologically homogeneous, far-left, and directly tied to both Gettysburg College and the local chapter of Democracy for America. A relational diagram of the whole matter would use up an entire box of chalk.

Midway through the previous century, the United States had the best public schools in the world; now it ranks near the bottom of developed nations (not because of any conservative initiatives) despite massive infusions of federal cash. Cognizant of this fact, my wife and I have taken a highly proactive approach to the proper education of our children, often broaching various subject matter with them well before the school does. This yielded good results up until my 8-year-old daughter began second-grade arithmetic.

A few of the math worksheets she brought home initially confounded us, making use of "number stories," where math problems were presented in pyramids or in bidirectional horizontal rows. This week, she was informed at school that her parents had taught her math "the old way" and that it was "confusing and a step behind." (I have politely conveyed to the school, in writing, of my extreme displeasure with having my authority challenged.)

As it turns out, our school district is using a controversial math curriculum called Everyday Mathematics, also known as "Reform Math." EM, as Everyday Mathematics is referred to by teachers, was developed by the University of Chicago, and according to their website, it is in use by about three million students nationwide.

What becomes immediately clear is that several extra steps are now necessary to accomplish simple beeline computations. More steps will result in more errors -- only an idiot would claim otherwise. Eventually, EM students are taught four ways to add, five ways to subtract, four ways to multiply, and two ways to divide (traditional long division has been eschewed completely). Rote memorization is de-emphasized, and calculators (as well as estimating) are introduced in grade two.

Here is the basic rationale behind EM, directly from the University of Chicago website: "Research has shown that teaching the standard U.S. algorithms fails with large numbers of children, and that alternative algorithms are often easier for children to understand and learn. For this reason, Everyday Mathematics introduces children to a variety of alternative procedures in addition to the customary algorithms".

Links to or excerpts of said research are not provided -- we are to simply take these statements as fact. EM further claims to "make mathematics accessible to all students" by:

Incorporating individual, partner, and small group activities that make it possible for teachers to provide individualized feedback and assistance.

Encouraging risk-taking by establishing a learning environment that respects multiple problem solving strategies.

Building in multiple exposures to concepts and skills and providing frequent opportunities for review and practice.

Here is what the creators of EM have to say about calculators:

Based on research that has shown calculator use can enhance cognitive gains in the areas of number sense, conceptual development and visualization, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommends the integration of calculators into mathematics programs for all grade levels.

Number sense? While there is such a thing (according to Wikipedia), its definition points more to the use of an abacus (which every grade school classroom should have) than a calculator. That researchers or professional educators could make a statement so meaningless and inconclusive is mortifying.

Naturally, progressives will arrogantly foist this garbage upon their favorite groups of imaginary downtrodden.

Few things could more useless than a system of math instruction concocted by developmental psychologists, and serious questions must be raised about the real effects (and intent) of EM. Human beings have been performing simple math since hunter-gatherers realized they had digits and things that needed to be counted.

Only a starry-eyed progressive fool would attempt improvement upon methods of simple addition and subtraction, which were used by Franklin, Edison, and Einstein. After a dozen hazy summers, perhaps my children will be the only graduates here in Adams County who are able to figure out how many bushels of fruit can be had from twenty thousand acres of trees.

More HERE




Some promising new policies for British schools announced

Two truly radical initiatives were announced by the Government last week that made less of an impact on public discourse than they deserved. Almost lost to view amid the jubilation over The Wedding, and the spectacular vindication of the Eurosceptic cause, these proposals could have as tumultuous an effect on Britain’s future as any political reforms in the past half-century.

The first had such a brief spell in the limelight – before being swept away in a tide of engagement-ring photos – that it may yet have escaped the notice of most of the population. This was Michael Gove’s statement that all schools will be able to apply for academy [charter] status if they affiliate themselves with a school that has been judged to be “outstanding” by Ofsted.

The implications of this seemingly small step are at least as significant as the new emphasis on grammar and spelling to be promised in the White Paper. While initially only outstanding schools could become academies and thus be liberated from local education authority control, now any school will be able to do so provided that it is prepared to join with another that has proved itself to be successful and – most important – competently led.

At a stroke, this permits good schools, and good head teachers, to extend their influence over poorer ones. It makes a reality of what every government has hoped to achieve in education: spreading “best practice” throughout the system, pulling the standards of under-performing schools up to the level of better ones by allowing the best to become active mentors to the others.

In logistical (and political) terms, it will avoid what might have been a damaging effect of the free schools policy. Instead of poor schools having to be seen to fail, in a long, painful process of losing student numbers through parental choice and thus losing funding – with their gradual decline becoming a source of national shame and local outcry – those schools that might have died a lingering death may now save themselves by being adopted by a successful one.

No one can pretend that this solution will be unproblematic. Will the outstanding school actually take over the less good one? Will this oblige it to absorb disruptive pupils or incompetent staff? Or alternatively, might the association be so nominal that it will have little effect on the standards of the poorer school?

But coupled with Mr Gove’s other neglected pronouncement – that education funding is to be handed direct to schools, thus avoiding the overweening political influence of local education authorities – this measure just might help to achieve a stunning improvement in the quality of state education. Of course, such school affiliations will require the sincere desire to improve on the one hand, and a genuine commitment to offer guidance on the other, but these will be the responsibility of heads and teachers: the Gove mechanisms are offering as great an opportunity for national educational improvement as any politician could humanly manage.

Remarkably consistent with this move toward self-reliance and mutual assistance among schools was the second of last week’s policy launches: what has become known, inevitably, as the “John Lewis” model for restructuring public services. Offering an invitation – and even a small pot of start-up money – to public sector staff willing to take over and run the hospital, job centre or whatever in which they are employed, is a move of stunning political bravery.

Not that the concept is all that original in itself. (It has an ancestor, after all, in the co-operative movement.) Labour actually put a tentative, under-publicised toe in the water of mutualism as a formula for more productive and efficient public services, but it lacked the conviction to present the idea with anything like the gusto and evangelical commitment with which Francis Maude is now selling the Tory version.

The basic theory is simple and incontrovertible: staff who are what John Lewis calls “partners” in the enterprise – who share ownership of it and benefit directly when it is doing well – have a stake in its efficiency, productiveness and popularity with clients of a kind that no time-serving employee is likely to possess. This would also have the effect of “localising” the service and making it more responsive: staff who knew and understood the needs of their own community would be free to adapt their approach to suit those specific requirements, rather than simply carrying out impersonal diktats passed down from central government. (This is a consistent government objective: the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, wants to devolve planning power from politicians down to real people in real neighbourhoods.)

Again, there are some obvious risks which the Government, in spite of its eagerness to be un-prescriptive – to go for bottom-up suggestions rather than top-down formulae – will have to guard against. When an earlier Conservative government ordered councils to disband their direct labour forces and take competitive bids for contracted work instead, too many of them simply permitted their labour gangs to form “companies” whose tenders for council contracts were, mysteriously, always successful. So the same old people ended up doing the same old jobs with as little enthusiasm as ever.

If employees are to bid to become owners and managers of a service-providing business, then they must, like the staff of John Lewis, be exposed to real competition in something like a real marketplace. Otherwise, this whole venture will end up as nothing but a species of producer capture. But mention the words “market” and “competition” and you bring a sneer to the lips of Labour/trade union axe-grinders. How can anything as crass as the principles of retailing be applied to areas such as health and social services? Getting access to chemotherapy isn’t like buying cereal, they breathe piously.

Except that, in the terms which we are discussing, it might be better if it was: why shouldn’t medical treatment and social care involve more informed choice and more respect for individual preferences? This is not about “privatisation”. It is about creating an analogous kind of power to the one people are accustomed to exercising as consumers.

There is a theme here. From its welfare and education reforms to a revolution in the running of public services, the Government has a Big Idea which involves personal freedom within the bounds of community responsibility. This is worthy of all the attention we can give it.

SOURCE




British teachers given a few new powers to discipline pupils

Teachers will be given new powers to discipline pupils as part of a government plan to restore order in classrooms. An education white paper being published next week will give school staff the right to confiscate mobile phones, iPods, MP3 players and other electronic gadgets. For the first time, teachers will be able to search pupils for any item they believe troublemakers can use to cause disruption during lessons.

The move follows a series of incidents in which pupils have taken photos and videos of teachers then uploaded compromising images on to the internet. Last year, Peter Harvey, a science teacher, attacked a 14-year-old boy after being goaded by students who covertly filmed the episode on a camera phone.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, warned that the balance of power in schools had shifted in recent years, with teachers “living in fear of breaking the rules while troublemaking students felt the law was on their side”. The reforms, which are designed to tackle bad behaviour, will give staff the power to search pupils for any item, including legal highs, pornography, cigarettes and fireworks.

Previously, teachers could only frisk pupils’ clothes and search bags without consent for weapons, drugs, alcohol and stolen goods. The white paper will also set out plans to:

* Simplify rules on the use of physical force, giving teachers more powers to remove disruptive children from the classroom without fear of legal action;

* Protect teachers from false and malicious allegations made by pupils and parents, giving them anonymity until a case reaches court;

* Give head teachers the power to expel pupils from school without the decision being overturned by an independent appeals panel;

* Allow teachers to impose “same day” detentions, scrapping rules that require schools to give parents a 24-hour warning;

* Introduce rules giving head teachers the ability to punish pupils for bad behaviour outside school.

Mr Gove said teachers “had to be respected again”. “Under the last Government’s approach to discipline, heads and teachers lived in fear of breaking the rules while troublemaking students felt the law was on their side,” he said. “We have to stop treating adults like children and children like adults. “We will ensure that the balance of power in the classroom changes and teachers are back in charge.”

SOURCE



20 November, 2010

Schools that Serve

Ten years ago James Tooley, a professor of education with a doctorate and a World Bank grant to study private schools in a dozen developing countries, took the standard path toward helping the poor: He flew first class and stayed at 5-star hotels.

But something happened in India as he visited private schools and colleges that cater to the privileged. At night, lying on 500-thread-count Egyptian-cotton sheets, he meditated about the "con" that he was now part of: Wealthy Indians enjoy foreign aid because they live in a poor country, the poor fall further behind, and the researchers live richly.

Then Tooley broke the rules. With guilt feelings and some spare time, he actually went into the slums instead of riding past them with his driver. He was surprised to see little handwritten signs announcing the existence of private schools: He thought private schools are for the rich. Guided through alleys and up narrow, dark, dirty staircases, he entered classrooms and found dedicated teachers and students.

Tooley found schools that survive not with government money or international bequests, but through $2-per-month fees paid by rickshaw pullers who scrimp and save to give their children a chance not to pull rickshaws. He went on to visit 50 Indian private schools in poor areas over the next 10 days. Did some foundation make them possible? No, these were for-profit schools created by poor but persevering entrepreneurs.

Tooley was astounded to see high motivation and better results than at the better-funded government schools. He then visited other private schools for the poor in cities and villages throughout India, Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya), and even China. In The Beautiful Tree (Cato, 2009), he describes how he regularly found government schools with better-paid but poorly motivated teachers, and private schools somehow surviving on very little income.

Why did Tooley slog through the mud when he could have hung out in hotel bars with other international researchers? I emailed him and asked. Tooley responded: "I was brought up as an evangelical Christian, baptized at 14, but lost my faith by 16. For the next thirty years I was a searcher. Age 46, I said a prayer again recommitting myself to Jesus. Ups and downs in the faith since then." No surprise: When someone goes beyond the call of duty, it's often because Someone else is calling him—and the path isn't always straight.

Throughout most of The Beautiful Tree Tooley shows rather than tells, but in the interest of space here I'll need to quote his summary: In poor countries "private education forms the majority of provision. In these areas parents have genuine choices of a number of competing private schools within easy reach and are sensitive to the price mechanism (schools close if demand is low, and new schools open to cater to expanded demand)."

Tooley's crucial conclusions: "In these genuine markets, educational entrepreneurs respond to parental needs and requirements. . . . Their quality is higher than that of government schools provided for the poor." And his findings are not merely anecdotal. Governmental officials showed little interest in his findings, but a Templeton Foundation grant allowed him to create research teams that tested 24,000 fourth-graders from a variety of schools in India, China, Nigeria, and Ghana. The result: Children in private schools scored 75 percent better than comparable students in government schools. You'd think this would excite other World Bank researchers—but like Darrow Miller, Hernando de Soto, and William Easterly (see "Don't be a Bepper," WORLD, Jan. 13, 2007), Tooley looks for bottom-up rather than top-down strategies, and that could put a lot of Big Economic Planners out of work.

The title of Tooley's book comes from his sense that parents don't need government officials to tell them what to do: A beautiful tree can grow without supervision from "development experts" who believe that poor children will be educated only if governments, with funding from rich nations, establish free, universal public schooling.

The better way: Poor parents pay teachers directly. Voucher plans "if done in the right way" can help, but that's a vital caveat, because it's easy to end up with good ideas killed via fraud and unintended market distortions. The essential strategy is this: If students don't learn, teachers don't eat.

SOURCE






Alabama Board of Education adopts common English and math standards

Australia too has accepted that there should be common standards for all States but the devil is in the detail. No agreement on actual contents yet

The state Board of Education Thursday adopted English and math standards that Alabama will share with at least 40 other states, allowing the states to compare their students' performance.

After hearing comments from 40 people in the audience -- 18 who supported the initiative and 22 who opposed it -- the board voted 7-2, with members Stephanie Bell and Betty Peters dissenting, to approve a resolution supporting the Common Core State Standards for Alabama's schools.

The initiative was launched more than a year ago by state leaders through the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. It provides consistent standards in English language arts and mathematics, regardless of what state students live in.

"The Common Core State Standards enhance and strengthen Alabama's standards," said Caroline Novak, president of the A-Plus Education Partnership. "It does not dismiss them."

The board has had three work sessions on the issue, and state education officials have held four meetings around the state to get public comment.

The initiative is controversial. Alaska and Texas have opted out because officials there believe it is a step toward a nationalized education system. Many in the board's audience Thursday felt the same way. "We've seen numerous efforts of reform and they are all well-intentioned, but, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions," said Wayne Wood, a retired teacher who spoke at the meeting. "It's a national curriculum. I know it's not being called a national curriculum, but, hey, if it walks like a duck..."

Gov.-elect Robert Bentley asked the board early in the three-hour meeting to postpone the vote until his policy team had a chance to thoroughly study the standards. State Sen. Scott Beeson read Bentley's statement, which said he feels "it is unfair to pass standards such as this when there is an incoming newly elected school board."

In his statement, Bentley said if the board adopted the standards, he would "go on the record opposing this action." "It is a state function and the standards to educate our children should be based on state and local standards that are set by Alabama local school boards and parents and not by the federal government or a consortium of states," his statement read.

Gov. Bob Riley, who is president of the school board but typically attends the meetings only when something controversial or important is on the agenda, voted in favor of the standards Thursday and said they are not an attempt at a federal takeover of education. "This was set up primarily to make sure the federal government could not dictate the curriculum," he said. "There is nothing that says the next governor or the next board can't come in here next year and reverse this decision. I hope they don't, but we don't need to delay this anymore."

When discussion about the standards began several years ago, it was a state-led initiative. However, President Barack Obama got involved last year when he gave states extra points in their applications for federal Race to the Top grant money if they adopted the standards, board member Peters said.

Board member David Byers, who supports the standards, agreed he didn't want the Obama administration getting involved with the state's curriculum. He amended the resolution adopted by the board to add a clause saying the board had the right to revoke the standards at any time.

The standards are meant to keep students in all states on a level playing field, said state Superintendent Joe Morton. Previously, all 50 states had their own sets of standards, and some were weaker than others, making it nearly impossible to compare student achievement in Alabama to other states.

The Common Core State Standards clearly define what students are expected to learn in every grade in English language arts and math. This means if a student in third grade is learning the multiplication tables in Georgia and transfers to Alabama, that student will be learning the same thing here. "It allows for a more seamless transition," Morton said.

A team of educators at the request of the state Department of Education conducted a comparison between the Common Core State Standards and Alabama's Course of Study and found that Alabama's standards address 92 percent of the English language arts national standards and 96 percent of the math. "Quite simply, they are better than what we currently have," Morton said of the Common Core standards.

The standards will go into effect at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year.

SOURCE





Grammar is back in British schools ... and spelling will also score marks under exams shake-up

A-levels and GCSEs are to be toughened up with fewer but harder exams and a crackdown on poor ­grammar and spelling under sweeping reforms being unveiled next week.

In a five-year blueprint for schooling, Education Secretary Michael Gove will signal a return to traditional A-levels and GCSEs, taken at the end of courses.

Teenagers will be able to bypass ‘bite-size’ exams taken throughout the school year amid fears ‘the art of deep thought’ is being lost ­following reforms by Labour.

Candidates for all written GCSEs will be marked down for poor ­grammar, spelling and punctuation, while universities will be given a bigger role in setting questions at A-level and GCSE to protect exams from political meddling.

The reforms will undermine AS-levels, one of Labour’s most ­controversial exam reforms. Taken in the first-year of the sixth-form, they were part of a drive to break down A-level courses into six separately tested modules. Critics claim the trend towards ‘modular’ examining has led to grade inflation and left pupils ill-equipped for ­university study.

In further measures, Mr Gove plans to overhaul the exam league tables system amid evidence that schools are attempting to boost rankings by entering pupils for non-academic courses such as ­‘personal effectiveness’.

Meanwhile a new school curriculum – scheduled for introduction in September 2013 – will give renewed attention to core knowledge and concepts, key events in history and the classics of English literature.

Next week’s White Paper follows claims by Mr Gove that the credibility of the country’s exam system has been weakened by constant change and political interference under Labour. He has been particularly scathing about science GCSEs, which now include questions such as ‘which is healthier – a battered sausage or a grilled fish?’

Moves to restore ­rigour to the system include ­allocating marks in all written GCSEs to spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Between 1992 and 2003, five per cent of marks for most GCSEs were designated for these disciplines. But an overhaul of the exams simply said accuracy in written communication should be incorporated into wider marking. Practice across examiners is said to be inconsistent. Even in English GCSE, only around 13 per cent of marks are awarded for accurate spelling and punctuation.

The White Paper is also expected to commit the Coalition to a significant review of the curriculum at primary and secondary level. The 18-month review will spell out what children should know at each age amid claims the current National Curriculum contains too many vague statements.

Under reforms, schools will be encouraged to teach subjects such as history as stand-alone lessons rather than mixed into theme-based humanities projects.

Mr Gove also plans to scrap a rule limiting headteacher observations of lessons to just three hours a year. Currently teachers must also be given notice of the observation and told which aspects of the lesson will be evaluated.

Ending this will put Mr Gove on a collision course with the unions, but he said: ‘I would like to change the culture so that it is more routine and normal for teachers to be observing and learning from each other.’

The White Paper, expected to be unveiled on Wednesday, also includes measures for discipline, including tougher powers for teachers to restrain unruly pupils.

SOURCE



19 November, 2010

Private vs. state schools and free speech

Much fuss is afoot now about how various schools, especially colleges and universities, are dealing with the airing of controversial topics. Although by my count this isn’t some kind of epidemic, in several schools the administrators have decided they do not want students to air ideas (or invite guest speakers to do so) when the ideas are controversial or a possible source of emotional reaction from some members of the community. So, for example, when students at Bucknell University tried to make a point about mandated affirmative action policies by differentiating the price of certain items for sale on campus, they were told by the administration to desist. Something similar has happened at UC Irvine, presumably all so as to spare offending some members of the college community.

This phenomenon, though not quite new, has been noticed by some news reporters and commentators, for example Fox Business Network’s John Stossel, who have found it paradoxical that some speech is being regulated, even banned, by administrators at institutions that are supposedly committed to the examination of controversial issues. Some administrations have attempted to cope with the problem by creating “free speech zones” on campus, which effectively moves those who present controversial ideas–mostly, it seems, ones held by conservative student groups and their guests (e.g., Anne Coulter)–into special areas on campus, away from the general population, where they aren’t likely to offend people with insulting ideas.

Of course, such ideas could be about anything but mostly they would have to do with certain politically correct issues, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and so forth. Affirmative action policies, when imposed by law, are a favorite target of conservative speakers when they apply the principles of differentiation to some unexpected areas of life, such as pricing goods and services, even though these same principles are deployed under the protection of the law in the treatment of students and faculty at the institution in question. The idea is, “How come you find it offensive when, say, blacks and whites are charged different amounts of money for the same items for sale even though you think they should be treated differently in the admission or promotion process at your institution?”

One matter that’s often overlooked in discussing all this is the difference between public and private institutions. Public institutions are funded by funds confiscated from all taxpayers, while private institutions are not, which can make a difference in what policies are legally justified at them.

A private college, for example, has the right to institute a policy concerning the airing of controversial ideas that its administrators believe might work to facilitate the educational mission there, while a public institution must abide by the principles of the US Constitution. This is like the fact that in your own home you can restrict and ban speech–say by refusing to allow some guest to talk about some subject–whereas you don’t have the authority to do this when someone speaks out in public, say at a city park. Broadly put, the former isn’t under the jurisdiction of the US Constitution whereas the latter is.

When a private college administration deems it wise and prudent to keep discussion of certain topics confined to special places, it may do offense to the spirit of academic freedom and the tradition of open discussion associated with educational institutions but there is nothing in this that violates either the spirit or letter of the American legal system. But if a public university does the same, that same legal system’s principles are being violated. Yes, even there the administration has some discretion but normally it may not decide in ways that do offense to the public philosophy of American law.

So, then, if a private university institutes a policy of keeping speakers on controversial topics away from the general population, at some kind of “free speech” region, this can be justified in the American legal tradition but if a public university does the same it cannot. That fact may shed some light on how the issue of airing offensive ideas at colleges and universities is being dealt with across the nation’s higher educational institutions.

SOURCE






The economy the American curriculum prepares you for

A common argument in favor of American education is that it exposes students to a wide variety of career options. How are kids supposed to decide their course in life if they don't know their choices? Unfortunately, this argument has a big problem: The career options for which the typical American curriculum prepares you are almost completely disconnected from the modern American economy. Indeed, they are almost completely disconnected from any economy - past, present, or future.

Imagine what the American economy would have to look like for the American curriculum to make sense:

* Kids spend at least 10% of their time on art and music. This would make sense if 10% of the workforce were professional artists or musicians.

* Kids spend at least 10% of their time on P.E. This would make sense if 10% of the workforce were professional athletes.

* Kids spend at least 10% of their time on literature and poetry; this would make sense if 10% of kids became novelists, playwrights, or poets.

* Kids spend at least 10% of their time on history and social studies; this would make sense if 10% of kids became historians and social scientists.

* Kids spend at least 5% of their time on foreign languages. On the surface, this seems reasonable; 5% of American jobs arguably require some knowledge of Spanish. But well over 5% of Americans acquire Spanish outside of school. And almost no American jobs use French, the second-most studied foreign language.

* Kids spend at least 5% of their time on natural science; this would make sense if 5% of kids became biologists, chemists, physicists, astronomers, etc.

The best you can say about the American curriculum is that it also includes reading, writing, math, and computers - all of which are important in modern occupations.* But that's not saying much. Schools still spend at least half their time exposing people to knowledge that matters for jobs that virtually no one will ever have. If we really wanted to teach our children about their career options, we wouldn't pretend that poetry and astronomy are major employers. Instead, we'd start with the modern economy and design a curriculum that fits it.

* Even this is exaggerated: The kind of reading, writing, math, and computers you learn in school is only distantly related to the kind most people use on the job.

SOURCE





British government schools slipping behind

Declining numbers of comprehensive school pupils are winning places at university, it was revealed yesterday. That is despite the number of acceptances overall reaching a record high. Figures show how privately-educated youngsters are tightening their grip on top universities after forging ahead in the race for elite A* grades.

The number of places awarded to comprehensive pupils dipped by 0.5 per cent on last year, while acceptances of fee-paying pupils was unchanged. The number from comprehensives winning university places dropped from 120,544 in 2009 to 119,955 this year. The decline came even though they put in 5.8 per cent more applications.

Teenagers from state sixth-form and further education colleges increased their share of places.

The figures suggest that some of the best state pupils may have suffered because their teachers failed to predict the A* grades they would go on to achieve. This is important because universities partly base their offers on the grades predicted by teachers.

Universities offered more places than ever this year after increasing recruitment from overseas.

The figures show more than one in five places at prestigious Russell Group universities went to students from private schools, who make up just seven per cent of pupils.

Many of the 209,253 applicants who missed out this year will try again in 2011, heaping further pressure on admissions.

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18 November, 2010

The Science of Success: Why Parents Should Push Their Kids Less, and Enjoy Them More

"Once you provide the basics, your children's success is largely in their hands, not yours" -- the research shows. "Pushing" them alters nothing

Modern parents see their children as their most important investments. They want their children to succeed in the competitive world of the future - and know that success isn't cheap. Before your kids can succeed in the world of work, they must first succeed in the world of school. Massive parental investment of time and money seems crucial. Without it, won't your children fail in both worlds? Indeed, parenting seems so important that parents appear to face a tragic trade-off: To ensure your children's academic and professional success, you often have to push them so hard that they end up resenting you.

But what makes us so certain that parents' time and money are essential for kids' success? Most people point to the obvious fact that successful parents tend to have successful children. Doesn't this prove the power of upbringing? No. There are always two explanations for family resemblance. One is upbringing. The other is heredity. Is it possible that success runs in families not because successful parents invest more in their kids, but because there are genes for success in school and work?

Unraveling the effects of upbringing and heredity is usually very difficult. But over the last forty years, researchers have made astonishing progress by studying families that adopt, and families with twins. If a child is adopted, then any family resemblance in success is almost surely due to upbringing. Similarly, if identical twins (who shares all of their genes) are more similar than fraternal twins (who share only half of their genes), their extra resemblance is almost surely due to heredity. Researchers have used these twin and adoption methods to figure out why diplomas and incomes run in families. Their conclusions are shocking: Upbringing is much less crucial for success than most of us believe.

Let's start with educational success. In the 1950s, the Holt family set up a charity to help American families adopt disadvantaged Koreans. The adopting families were unusually diverse: Applicants had to be married for at least three years, 25-45 years old, have no more than four children, and have earnings 25% or more above the poverty line. Decades later, economist Bruce Sacerdote tracked down over 1600 of the Korean adoptees to see how much their adopting families influenced their success. The effects were tiny. If a mother had an extra year of education, her Korean adoptee finished five extra weeks of school; if a family had one extra child, its adoptee finished six fewer weeks of school. Richer families and richer neighborhoods made no difference at all. Another study of over two thousand Swedish adoptees found that moms mattered even less, and dads mattered a little more.

If parents matter so little for success in school, why does it run in families? Heredity. When twin researchers compare identical to fraternal twins, they find that identical twins are much more similar in their educational success. One major study looked at about two thousand pairs of American twins who served in World War II, and their children. Suppose you were separated from your identical twin at birth. This veteran twin study implied that if you finished more schooling than four people out of five, the identical twin you never met would typically finish more schooling than three people out of four. The effect of nurture, in contrast, was modest: If you were raised by an unskilled worker instead of a professional or manager, you typically finished one fewer year of school; if you had one extra sibling, you typically finished seven fewer weeks. A big study of Australian twins' education confirmed the power of nature and the limits of nurture. Small, well-educated families boost their kids' schooling by months, not years.

For many parents, admittedly, education is only a means to an end; they push academic success because they think it's the path to financial success. Counter-intuitively, though, the effect of parenting on income is even smaller than the effect of parenting on schooling. In the Korean adoption study, adoptees raised by the richest families earned no more than adoptees raised by the poorest families. Richer neighborhoods didn't help either. The only factor that made even a slight difference was family size: every sibling seemed to cut adult income by 4%. The Swedish adoption study found a slightly larger effect, but still not much: If your dad made 10% more money, you make 1% more when you grow up.

Perhaps most impressively, though, a recent working paper by New York University's David Cesarini uses the Swedish Twin Registry to track the lifetime earnings of over 5000 men born between 1926 and 1958. Cesarini finds that parents have a modest effect on the earnings of men in their early twenties. But after the age of 25, the effect of upbringing on earnings vanishes. When children first become adults, their parents might help them find a good job - or support them so they don't have to work. Before long, however, young adults get on their own two feet - and stay there.

Parents clearly try mightily to help their kids succeed. They buy educational toys, read bedtime stories, pay for expensive preschools, help them with their homework, reward them for good grades, and shame them for bad. They preach the value of hard work and persistence, praise high-earning occupations like doctor and engineer, pressure their kids not to major in poetry, and help them find their first jobs. The surprising lesson of the science of success is that parents' toil bears little fruit. Your kids would have been about as successful in school and work if they'd been raised by a very different family.

This doesn't mean that severe child neglect or abject poverty is harmless. Twin and adoption studies focus on normal families that meet their children's basic needs. Researchers' don't ask, "Would this child have turned out differently if he were raised by wolves?" They ask, "Would this child have turned our differently if he were raised by one of the other families we studied?" When researchers report "no effect of family income on education," this doesn't mean that hungry kids learn as well as kids with full bellies. It means that even the poorest families under observation were good enough to allow their children to reach their potential.

The right lesson to take away from twin and adoption research is that parents can relax without hurting their kids' future. Once you provide the basics, your children's success is largely in their hands, not yours. Of course, if you and your kids enjoy reading bedtime stories, working on school projects, and watching the financial news together, that's wonderful. But if you and your children aren't having fun, the science of success shows that you can safely give yourselves a break.

Pushing kids less isn't just easier for parents; it's usually better for the whole family. Riding your children "for their own good" has little effect on their future success. But it damages one important outcome over which parents have much control: How your kids feel about and remember you. In a word, their appreciation.

Twin and adoption researchers have studied appreciation for decades. Genes play a role; identical twins paint somewhat similar pictures of their parents and home life even when raised apart. But upbringing clearly affects appreciation, too. One recent German twin study asked about 800 adults raised together to describe their families. How accepting were their father and mother, and how well did family members get along? Siblings broadly agreed, but identical twins agreed only modestly more than fraternal twins. Implication: Much of the resemblance stems from nurture, not nature. Furthermore, an early study of 1400 middle-aged and elderly Swedish twins shows that the effect of upbringing on appreciation is very durable. If you make a loving and harmonious family, your children won't merely be grateful at the time. The memories you create for them will likely last a lifetime.

People often fear that the science of success will be misused. Twin and adoption research seem like handy excuses for lazy parents. But scaling back misguided investments isn't "lazy"; it's common sense. If your children's future success is largely beyond your control, riding them "for their own good" is not just wasteful, but cruel. The sentimental view that parents should simply cherish, encourage, and accept their children has science on its side. Modern parents need to calm down and reconceive family time as leisure, not work. Having fun with your children may not prepare them for the future, but there are few more rewarding ways to spend your time.

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Five Muslim boys and white girl, all 12, excluded over Facebook death threats to classmate who supported British troops

A 13-year-old boy who penned an online Remembrance Day tribute to Britain’s fallen soldiers was subjected to a vicious hate campaign by fellow pupils. A gang of 12-year-old pupils made up of five Muslim boys and one non-Muslim girl made death threats to Darius Gill involving knives and knuckle-dusters because of his support for British troops.

One member of the gang also posted a picture of himself holding a rifle and threatened to hijack a plane. The campaign was backed by more pupils belonging to a self-styled ‘Muslim Defence League’ celebrating British deaths in Afghanistan. The abuse was so serious that police are now investigating.

On November 11, Darius – whose father is Asian – wrote on Facebook: ‘RIP to all the lads who never made it home.’ He also posted two pictures showing British troops on Armistice Day. He was then branded ‘racist’ and two of the accused pupils began a flurry of online messages to each other setting out what they were going to do to him.

One wrote to Darius on Facebook criticising him for failing to acknowledge the dead ­Muslim soldiers in the Middle East.

Darius explained that Remembrance Day honoured British troops and pointed out that he was paying tribute to his great-great uncle, who died aged only 17 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

The students attend the 1,250-pupil Sidney Stringer Academy in Coventry. Muslim pupils make up 65 per cent of the school, which caters for children aged 11-18.

The main six pupils, none of whom can be named for legal reasons, have now been suspended and may be expelled over their chilling threats. One of the online messages – which were littered with spelling mistakes – read: ‘Fight on Monday gonna be heavy knuckle dusters and knifes hopefully I don’t die.’

Another pupil added: ‘ill bang [attack] him ma slef [myself] am a terrorist.’ One pupil’s Facebook profile is full of chilling references to Islamic fundamentalism and shows a ­picture of him posing with an AK47 rifle.

He also penned a terrifying poem about hijacking a plane. On November 12, he wrote: ‘You better watch what the **** flies outta ya mouth. Or I’ma hijack a plane and fly it into your house. ‘Burn your apartment with your family tied to the couch. And slit your throat, so when you scream, only blood comes out.’

Other pupils from the Muslim Defence League added comments condemning Darius. Fortunately, Darius’s mother Clare Allington read the comments on her son’s Facebook page on Monday morning – the day of the promised attack – and immediately pulled her son out of school.

Yesterday, Mrs Allington, 42, a mature student from Coventry, said: ‘I logged on and it broke my heart. I was reading all sorts about knuckle-dusters, knives and death. ‘They were planning to attack him at school that day so I rang the school straight away.’

She added that she usually keeps an eye on her son’s posts on Facebook every day but had not done so last weekend. She only read them on Monday. She added: ‘If I hadn’t read the threats and pulled my son out of school he could be dead. ‘They might just be schoolchildren but they are fanatical and dangerous. The threats have to be taken seriously.’

Even yesterday, one of the yobs bragged about being quizzed by police and continued his online threats to attack Darius. He wrote: ‘Im in trouble wiv de police cuz of susspician of threat to Darius ... Im banggin Darius Thursday.’ He goes on to say he wants a one-on-one fight and demands that no one defends Darius.

Yesterday Darius said he was now too frightened to wear a poppy and claims he has been picked on at school because he is not Muslim.

Mrs Allington added: ‘My son wrote supporting the British troops in Afghanistan and also said he was sad so many soldiers had died. ‘The so-called Muslim Defence League, which has been set up in the school by a number of pupils, believe that Darius should join them in hating British soldiers. It’s appalling and extremely upsetting for Darius.’

Sidney Stringer Academy’s principal, Wendy Thomas, said Facebook was an increasing concern for schools. She said the children have been told to remove the comments from the site. She said: ‘Darius is the victim of bullying. All the students involved have told me they did not mean what they said but they will learn a hard lesson from this.

‘Facebook is a big concern for schools and we urge all parents to monitor what their children say on the site. As soon as the school was notified about the comments on Monday we interviewed the pupils. ‘No weapons were found on any of the pupils. We notified the police and they are investigating.’

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1,000 pupils sent home from British schools for assaults on teachers and pupils every day

Almost 1,000 pupils a day are sent home from school for attacking or verbally abusing fellow pupils or staff, it was revealed yesterday. Schools Minister Nick Gibb released figures showing that schools were forced to expel or suspend pupils 182,090 times for abuse or physical assaults in the 2008/09 academic year.

The revelation came as experts said bad behaviour in schools was worse than stated by officials because heads routinely hid classroom troublemakers from Ofsted inspectors. Education specialists said Ofsted reports claiming most behaviour in schools was ‘good’ were ‘not worth the paper they were written on’.

Tom Trust, a former member of the General Teaching Council for England, yesterday told a cross-party group of MPs that he was aware of schools which had managed to ensure Ofsted never saw classes with unruly pupils. The worst pupils were suspended or taught by supply teachers on the days of inspections. Inspectors do not watch lessons taken by supply teachers.

A White Paper being published next week is expected to contain detailed proposals for tackling discipline problems. Schools will be given tougher powers to restrain unruly pupils, frisk youngsters for mobile phones and pornography and punish anti-social behaviour outside school.

Teachers will get greater rights to anonymity if accused by pupils, to guard against false allegations, while a requirement on schools to give 24 hours’ written notice of detentions will be waived, allowing schools to administer the sanction immediately.

Mr Gibb said: ‘It’s time to put teachers back in control of the classroom. We need to strip away the bureaucracy that far too often prevents them from maintaining good behaviour.’

Mr Gibb’s figures show that primary, secondary and special schools expelled or suspended pupils 182,090 times in 2008/09 for assaults and abuse – equivalent to 958 youngsters every school day.

The disclosure comes a day after a report warned that thousands of classroom troublemakers were being prematurely returned to school after committing serious offences.

The Centre for Policy Studies think-tank branded short-term suspensions – typically just a few days – as ‘madness’ and said ‘very little’ could be done with badly behaved children who were removed from school for less than a year.

Whistleblower Katharine Birbalsingh, who was sacked from her role as deputy head teacher for outspoken comments at the Conservative Party conference, yesterday told the education select committee hearing that bad behaviour was ‘common’.

She said: ‘Often you get two or three very badly behaved children but bad behaviour spreads like a cancer.’ Teachers should be held to account for bad behaviour, she added. ‘If a school is in chaos, senior teachers are doing something wrong. We should hold them to account.’

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17 November, 2010

Failure is impossible for high school students! (No, really)

What would school have been like if you never had to worry about getting an F? Students at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Va., are about to find out, the Washington Post reports.

Earlier this year, the school all but eradicated the standard mark for “failure”, instead supplying wayward students with the letter “I” for incomplete. So what does an “I” give you that an “F” doesn’t? Time to redeem yourself, for starters. Students with an “I” on their report card can (literally) learn their lesson and catch up over the year, at which point they will be given a grade for their mastery of the material, just like any other student.

So is this an inspired move to get those marginal students on track and learning, or just another way in which we’re coddling underachieving kids and hobbling the rest? Parents, educators and students are divided.

Mary Mathewson, an English teacher at Potomac High tells the Post that the new standard not only cripples teachers in that it "takes away one of the very few tools [they] have to get kids to learn," but it gives them “an out,” resulting in a system in which “kids are under the impression they can do it whenever they want to, and it's not that big of a deal.”

Pointing out that the A-F grading system has not been thrown out entirely, but rather, redesigned to reach those who might not learn at the same rate as their peers, Fairfax County’s assistant superintendent for instructional services asked the Post, “"If we really want students to know and do the work, why would we give them an F and move on? I think the students who are struggling should not be penalized for not learning at the same rate as their peers."

Alternative grading is nothing new: Potomac High joins good company—some of the nation's highest educational institutions, including the law schools of Stanford University, Yale University, and University of California, Berkeley all employ non-traditional grading systems. Other high schools like the Big Picture high schools in Rhode Island, which focuses on internships, have found that learning goes better when uncomplicated by grades. The measure of their success? Improvement in their standardized achievement scores, most of their seniors going to college, and high college graduation rates. Proponents of this kind of grading method have long argued that letters are arbitrary, overly focused on the right answer instead of the thinking behind it, and have no corollary relationship from school to school—in other words, not “fair” from the get-go.

But will the process of learning for the sake of learning be lost on notoriously gratification-minded high school kids? And what about the value of learning from losing in the first place?

“Americans tend to frame things in terms of contests and wars that must be won or lost," writer John Schwartz says in his New York Times essay, "Lessons Learned in the Losing." "Many challenges, however, are about hanging in there and managing a bad situation. Losing prepares you for the slog that is life. The world doesn’t give us many finish lines, but it does give us the long run.”

While his focus is on high school sports rather than grades, I can't help but think Schwartz has an excellent point here about teaching our children to persevere in the face of challenges, even if it's hard to watch. After all, what are we trying to prepare our kids for in school, if not life?

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Many universities are 'broke' and won't be bailed out -- while top universities may go private, warns British education chief

Failing universities will not be propped up by the Government, leaving them at risk of closure. Many are ‘broke’ and should not be bailed out but allowed to close, Vince Cable said.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Girls’ Schools Association in Manchester yesterday, the Business Secretary added that the rise in tuition fees would force universities to reform and become more competitive.

'We already have a lot of universities that are effectively broke. If they were in the private sector they would have been filing for bankruptcy. Various arrangements have been cobbled together to keep them going, and we can't continue to do that,' he said.

Ministers are thinking carefully about how such events would be managed, Mr Cable said. 'If a bank goes bust, it has got to be allowed to close, not to its depositors, the depositors have got to be protected. The depositors are the students. 'So if somebody signs up for a university degree course and the university then goes bust, those students must have the right to continue their higher education.

Dr Cable also said the tuition fee rise, which prompted a mass student protest last week, was brought in to stop top universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and UCL from going private. But he admitted he could not guarantee that no university will become a private institution in the future.

He said: 'One of the reasons were are doing this is precisely to head off Oxford, Cambridge, London Schools of Economics, University College London and a few others from going private, because if we had not opened up the system in the way we have, they would have had a very strong incentive to do so. 'Whether we shall head them off, I don't know.'

Mr Cable said that the Browne review of student funding, published last month, called for universities to be able to set their own tariffs - which could have meant fees of up to £15,000. The Government rejected this because of concerns about the cost to pupils, particularly those from poorer backgrounds.

Mr Cable, who studied at Cambridge University, said he would 'very much regret it' if the institution opted out of the public funding system, but added he does not think they will, as the new proposals have 'enough in it for them'. He added: 'I find it it difficult somehow to imagine Oxbridge opting out, because they have got all these different colleges, they've got different institutions, how are they going to manage that?

'It's a little bit like bankers who say if you're going to put some kind of tax on us we'll run away to Singapore. 'Universities have been playing this game with us - let us have unlimited caps or we'll privatise.

'I don't believe it. I think what we're proposing is a fair settlement which will provide them with enough income to provide high quality education and which is also fair to the pupils.'

Cambridge University has previously said that reports it is considering going private are 'pure speculation'.

Ministers have announced plans to raise the tuition fee cap to £6,000, with universities able to charge up to £9,000 in 'exceptional circumstances'. MPs are expected to vote on the proposal before the end of the year.

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Australian school issues detention threat for kids seen hugging

What an appalling scale of values! Wrong to express affection? It sounds like "Brave New World"

STUDENTS at a Gold Coast primary school are being warned against hugging a move some parents say is political correctness gone mad. They say children at the William Duncan State School in Nerang are being punished with detention for hugging or touching their friends boys or girls, the Gold Coast Bulletin said.

Father of five, Ross Kouimanis, labelled the decision "an absolute joke". "What on earth are we turning our kids into?" Mr Kouimanis said. "Kids hug all the time. My high school daughter hugs her friends. It's perfectly normal. "It's political correctness gone mad. Banning kids hugging? It's ridiculous."

Mr Kouimanis's daughter Emily was given a warning for hugging her best friend. "My best friend and I confronted the teacher and she said it was a new school rule and some kids have been sent to detention for hugging," Emily said.

Mr Kouimas said the school should be more worried about educating children and said the ban sexualised an innocent gesture. "They are making something so innocent seem dirty or wrong. It's just normal. "It's what kids do, for Christ's sake.

"Hugs not drugs is an international slogan to fight drug abuse where does that fit in with William Duncan's new school policy?"

The Bulletin understands the policy was developed by the school's Parents and Citizens Association and was reviewed each year, with most members approving measures for students to keep their hands, feet and objects to themselves.

Education Queensland South Coast Regional director Glen Hoppner said there was no EQ policy banning hugging in schools. "William Duncan State School has determined that unwanted or unnecessary physical contact, which in some circumstances can include hugging, is inappropriate playground behaviour," Mr Hoppner said. "The school is mindful of protecting their right to not be touched in an unwanted or inappropriate way."

Mr Hoppner said the school principal was "unaware" of students being given detention for hugging.

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16 November, 2010

Percentage of U.S. High School students studying advanced mathematics trails most industrialized nations

According to the first-ever comprehensive study comparing the percentage of U.S. students in the graduating class of 2009 who have advanced skills in math with the percentages of similar high achievers in 56 other countries, only six percent of U. S. students perform at the advanced level in math, as compared to 28 percent of Taiwanese students and more than 20 percent of students in Finland and Korea. Overall, the United States ranks 31st out of 56 countries, falling behind most industrialized nations. The report is available on the web at www.educationnext.org.

The study, sponsored by the journal Education Next and Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, was co-authored by Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University, Paul E. Peterson of Harvard University and Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich. The authors analyzed state-by-state the percentage of students performing at advanced levels. Most states in the U.S. rank closer to developing countries than to developed countries. Thirteen developed countries have more than twice the percentage of advanced students as does the U.S., including Germany, Canada, the Czech Republic, Japan, Finland and Austria.

The lagging U.S. performance is not just explained by its heterogeneous population. The report also compared to other countries U.S. white students and children of parents with college degrees—two groups against which the case of discrimination cannot be made easily. The analysis found that only 8 percent of white students and 10 percent of students from all races with at least one college-educated parent performed at the advanced level. By comparison, 18 countries saw 10 percent of all their students performing at the advanced level. The percentage of high-performing students in each state, as well as the ranking of each state in comparison to other countries, is provided in the accompanying table and figure.

Other findings from the study include:

• Just 4.5 percent of the students in California are performing at the highly accomplished level, a percentage that trails 32 countries and is comparable to the performance of students in Portugal, Italy, Israel, and Turkey.

• The lowest-ranking states—West Virginia, New Mexico and Mississippi—fall behind Serbia and Uruguay.

• The only OECD countries—out of 30—producing a smaller percentage of advanced math students than the U.S. were Spain, Italy, Israel, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Chile and Mexico.

“Public discourse has tended to focus on the need to address low achievement, particularly among disadvantaged students, and bring everyone up to a minimum level of proficiency,” said Peterson. “As great as this need may be, there is no less need to lift more students, no matter their socio-economic background, to high levels of educational accomplishment.”

Some attribute the comparatively small percentages of students performing at the advanced level to the focus of the 2002 law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), on the needs of very low-performing students. However, in mathematics, the percentage performing at an advanced level rose after the passage of the law, although not to internationally competitive levels.

“The incapacity of American schools to bring students up to the highest level of accomplishment in math is much more deep-seated than anything induced by recent federal legislation,” Hanushek pointed out.

The analysis uses the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2005 advanced standard to compare U.S. state performances with performance in other countries. Since U.S. students took both the NAEP 2005 and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006, it was possible to find the score on the PISA that is tantamount to scoring at the advanced level on the NAEP. The PISA is an internationally standardized assessment of student performance in math, science and reading, established by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“Maintaining national productivity depends importantly on developing a highly qualified cadre of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and other professionals,” Woessmann observed.

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British tuition fee protest: 18-year-old student arrested

Police have arrested an 18-year-old college student in connection with the throwing of a fire extinguisher at police from the roof of Conservative Party headquarters.

The man, believed to be the long-haired protester pictured in photographs released by police yesterday, was arrested in Southampton by Scotland Yard officers on Monday night. He is expected to be transferred to London on Tuesday for formal questioning.

The canister landed inches away from a group of police officers 70ft below. One officer admitted had it hit him "somebody would have been visiting my wife and children and saying either I was dead, or very, very seriously injured".

The new pictures emerged as the president of the university lecturers union joined more than 20 other senior academics in controversially supporting the demonstrators who rioted at Millbank Tower last week.

Images of the student, who was wearing a black leather jacket and a scarf, were captured by Sky News. He was seen entering the Milbank Tower building, holding a pink and yellow placard. Having accessed the roof, a similar looking long-haired suspect is seen picking up the extinguisher and throwing it over the roof with his right hand.

A protester standing beside him immediately ran away from the edge of the roof, apparently aware of the gravity of the offence.

The wanted man walked away calmly, before looking up to the skies at a television helicopter, and then wrapping a scarf around his face to help disguise himself. He left the roof area via a stairwell and disappearing into the crowds.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said earlier on Monday: "This is a person the police would be interested in speaking to in connection with the incident."

A total of 57 people have been arrested and bailed after violence erupted during the student fees protests in London last week. Several students were seen holding fire extinguishers on the roof of the Tory HQ during the protests. Jackson Potter, a 23-year-old student, believed to be one of them, was arrested in Cambridge on Friday. The Anglia Ruskin University student was later released on police bail.

Meanwhile, Alan Whitaker, the president of the University and College Union (UCU) and National Executive Committee, signed a statement saying they stand by those who were arrested. "We will not side with those who condemn violence against windows and property but will not condemn or even name the long-term violence of cuts that will scar the lives of hundreds of thousands by denying them access to the education of their choice,” the statement said.

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Australia's proposed national geography syllabus is under heavy fire

Leftists are even managing to inject propaganda into geography!

THE proposed national geography curriculum lacks clarity and quality. NSW geographers are concerned it contains an inadequate focus on physical geography or the study of "capes and bays", which underpins the study of the discipline.

The NSW Board of Studies argues the proposed curriculum will overemphasise social and economic geography at the expense of the study of the physical world. The sample structure for the course suggests students in Years 7-10 take a "cultural/social constructivist" approach.

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority said yesterday the geography paper proposed that students become familiar with the various ways geographers approach their study. By year 10 this would include various "locational, spatial, temporal and cultural approaches".

A spokesman said it was not about cultural relativism, "but simply an acknowledgement that in the real world and throughout history, different people might look at problems of geography in different ways".

In its response to the shape paper of the geography curriculum, which curriculum writers use as the basis for the syllabus, the NSW Board of Studies argues the proposed outline is flawed and fails to provide a sound basis for the development of a quality national course.

The board suggests the various approaches be dropped and says the proposed curriculum "will not match the current quality of the NSW geography curriculum and that geography education in NSW will be compromised and diminished". NSW is the only state that has taught geography as a stand-alone subject in high school over the past 20 or 30 years.

Other states and territories teach geography as part of an integrated social studies course with subjects such as history and economics.

The Board of Studies response notes the status of geography in NSW schools, which is compulsory from Years 7 to 10, is not matched in the other states and territories, implying the existing NSW curriculum is superior. "NSW students will have less geographical understanding at the end of their Year 10 education under the proposed curriculum," it says. "The draft shape paper does not yet have a curriculum structure that provides the basis for a high-quality curriculum for geography."

The geography fraternity in NSW is also concerned about the status of geography in the national curriculum, with the time devoted to the course not stated and suggestions that it will be mandatory only until Year 8.

Kevin Dunn, professor of geography and urban studies at the University of Western Sydney, said yesterday the NSW curriculum was a benchmark other states should reach. "Only with the appropriate amount of mandatory hours can we expect the teaching of geography, at the depth necessary, to ensure that students have a satisfactory level of understanding of environmental sustainability, conservation, population, indigenous cultures and land management," he said. "We need citizens who understand their world, and how the world will be in the future."

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15 November, 2010

Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected

The NYT might be surprised but it's no surprise to IQ researchers

An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.

The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.

Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency. “What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.

The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.

The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.

The search for explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those efforts.

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”

The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.

What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers. The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said.

Other have a different response. The key to narrowing the achievement gap, said Dr. Ferguson, is “really good teaching.”

One large urban school district that has made progress is Baltimore’s, where the dropout rate for African-American boys declined to 4.9 percent during the last academic year, down from 11.9 percent four years earlier. Graduation rates for black boys were also up: 57 percent in 2009-10, compared with 51 percent three years earlier.

Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, said the improvement had little to do with changes at the margins, like lengthening the school day or adding mentors. Rather, Mr. Alonso cited aggressively closing failing schools, knocking on the doors of dropouts’ homes to lure them back and creating real-time alerts — “almost like an electrical charge” — when a student misses several days of school.

“Hispanic kids and African-American kids this year had a lower dropout rate than white kids,” Mr. Alonso said.

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The Lone Star State’s Good Reasons for Going It Alone on Education Standards

Texas Governor Rick Perry was at The Heritage Foundation on Monday to speak on his new book FED UP! Its message is bringing limited, constitutional governance back to Washington and the role that state governments should play in that restoration.

In his speech, the Governor stressed that the election was a clear message to lawmakers in Washington to return to exercising their constitutionally defined powers and that the federal government needs to support the states, not work against them.

One of the areas in which the Governor has demonstrated the kind of state leadership he advocates is education. Texas refuses to sign on to the national standards encouraged by President Obama’s Race to the Top program. National standards would likely standardize mediocrity across the states as well as conflict with the principle that Governor Perry articulated Monday morning: that the best government is that which is closest to the people. The push for national standards represents another area in which the federal government is trying to do a job that should be done by states.

Texas also has another good reason to oppose the suggested “common core” standards, since their Board of Education, under its Perry-appointed Chairman Don McLeroy, recently completed a revision of Texas’s social studies standards. The standards emphasize the American founding, highlight the role of free-market enterprise in American economic success, and institute “Celebrate Freedom Week.”

Media furor over the revised standards focused especially on the alleged removal of Thomas Jefferson from a list of political philosophers, prompting the Huffington Post to call the new standards “propaganda.”

Despite the hysteria, Thomas Jefferson fans can rest assured that the Founder retains his place—actually, places—in a number of different objectives under the new standards. Other revisions include insertion of additional historical figures, organizations, and movements, from The Heritage Foundation and the National Rifle Association to feminist Betty Friedan, labor leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and of course, President Obama. (Only the first few drew the ire of The New York Times, of course.)

As Governor Perry said to Heritage in October, “Our reforms that we’re putting into place that have been fine-tuned for Texas and our very diverse population out there [are] working.” Texas doesn’t need a one-size-fits-all plan from Washington, and its social studies standards are a good case in point. Governor Perry has reaffirmed Texas’s commitment to the principle of federalism in education.

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Teacher, not class size, key to results, says Australian report

GOVERNMENTS waste millions of dollars in education on expensive and ineffectual programs to reduce class sizes. A new report advocates that the money instead be spent improving the standard of teaching.

A report by the Grattan Institute released today aims to refocus the education debate on teacher quality, arguing improving the effectiveness of teachers is the biggest economic reform governments could implement, adding $90 billion to gross domestic product by 2050.

The report says government spending on education increased about 40 per cent over the past decade, much of it spent on reducing class sizes, which has had no effect on improving student or educational standards.

"It is more important for a student to have an effective teacher than to be in a class with a few less students," it says.

"Smaller classes are intuitively appealing. It is easy to imagine that they result in more one-on-one interaction with students, more effective teaching and learning time for each student, and a reduction in the burden of dealing with negative behaviour.

"Unfortunately, the evidence does not support these assertions."

An analysis released this year of the effects of reducing class sizes in the US state of Florida found the program had "little, if any, effect" on learning and behavioural issues such as absenteeism, suspensions and bullying.

But the program was extraordinarily expensive, costing about $US1 million per school per year to reduce class sizes by 2.5 to three students in every year up to Year 8.

The Grattan Institute advocates concentrating resources on lifting the performance of the bottom 10 per cent of teachers to drive improvements in learning, which would be enough to lift Australian students' results to the top tier in international tests.

In the literacy and numeracy tests of 15-year-olds conducted by the OECD, Australia sits in the second tier of nations behind Finland, Hong Kong and Canada. To reach the top tier, Australian students would need to learn at least an extra half-year of curriculum.

The institute's director of school education, Ben Jensen, argues improving teacher effectiveness is the best way of lifting student performance to this level, and increasing the standard of the bottom of 10 per cent of teachers will achieve this.

Dr Jensen nominated five main mechanisms to improve teaching standards: improving the quality of applicants to become teachers; improving the quality of their initial education and training; evaluating and providing feedback to teachers once they're in classrooms; recognising and rewarding effective teachers; and moving on ineffective teachers who are unable to improve.

The last three steps are the most critical development for teachers in Australia.

Dr Jensen said he was not advocating teachers be assessed solely on the basis of their students' results.

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14 November, 2010

True Story: Liberal Teacher Told me to Stop Spreading 'Propaganda' about Liberty

One feature of my classroom that I haven't told you all about before is my Liberty Library. I got this idea from a friend of mine who also teaches in Michigan in a nice district that is a little friendlier than mine to conservative ideas. I decided to give it a try regardless, and purchased a series of short books (30 pages or less) that emphasize themes that I consider to be friendly towards the practice and belief of liberty- books such as The Law, Why Government Is the Problem (Essays in Public Policy), I, Pencil - My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read, and Depressions: Their causes and cure (Politics minibooks). These books challenge students to think differently about the law, government, and economics, and students are free to check them out and read them as they wish.

Last week, a student of mine checked out from my Liberty Library my copy of Moral Basis for Liberty. This book discusses why liberty and freedom are good and desirable things for a society- in my opinion, ideas and thoughts and arguments that shouldn't in any way be controversial or debatable. But apparently having books around for students to read that discuss why liberty and freedom are good is something that other teachers in public schools disagree with, because at our social studies department meeting today, I was confronted by several liberal teachers regarding this book.

After I sat down, several teachers stopped talking with one another and looked to the leader of the group, Mr. Liberal Teacher. He addressed me "Teacher, it has come to our attention that you are spreading your propaganda around the school, giving books to students on subjects that are controversial and debatable."

I was surprised, but of course sympathetic to his argument- I had brought up the same thing last year when he was requiring his students to read The Communist Manifesto and Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara in his World History class. "What book am I passing out that is controversial and debatable?" I asked.

"Something about Moral Basis for Liberty," Liberal Teacher replied, and the other liberal teachers in his group nodded along. "What you do in your classroom is your own business, but you can't press your views on students regarding such issues as freedom and liberty."

This of course stunned me- I had never thought that students freely deciding to read books on liberty and freedom would prompt any sort of confrontation. Oh, I figured some of the more conservative or libertarian books in my library might cause some blowback, but not books that argued that freedom and liberty were moral!

Liberals and Democrats want liberty and freedom too, right? Or perhaps Mr. Liberal Teacher didn't want those things- from what I have heard about his classroom, he is a lot like other liberal teachers, and attempts to intimidate and browbeat and bully his students into agreeing with his liberal worldview, and as such would view critical thinking and the open exchange of ideas and freedom and liberty as a threat to what he is doing.

The educational workplace though is not the proper place to have a debate such as this, and from personal experience I have learned that fighting an open war with liberal teachers is a sure-fire way to get fired, so I simply said "Thank you for your concern" and changed the subject. For now, they were content enough to have simply fired their shots at me and were content with their attempts to intimidate me, but I have to admit, they probably shouldn't have let it go with just that.

They're right to fear me, and fear other conservative teachers like me, who are busy opening the minds of students to the possibility that it is okay to be a conservative or libertarian, that it is moral to want liberty, that freedom is a moral goal in itself, that government should be limited in a free society, that private property rights should be protected and respected, and that government is rarely the solution to the problem but often the problem.

I don't push these views in my classroom, but I make sure that they are available and that they are presented along with liberal and socialist and communist and fascist views, and as my students become more intelligent and wise and better critical thinkers, they are choosing on their own to listen to and follow the conservative views over others.

This liberal teacher should have gone farther in bullying and threatening me, because every year I churn through my classroom hundreds of more good patriots and citizens who someday will vote for a government that believes in the protection of life, liberty, and property.

He is right to fear me, because I'm teaching my students to be like our patriot hero forefathers, the philosopher revolutionaries who dared to challenge the bullies from across the sea and build a free nation, one based on a proposition that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain rights, and that government should be a just government based on the consent of the governed. Liberal Teacher made his points, but in the end, the game will be won by the forces of moral liberty, and I will have done my part to make that so.

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British students winning thousands of pounds in refunds for poor University teaching

University students who complain about the quality of their teaching are winning thousands of pounds in refunds. The financial compensation awarded has so far ranged from a few hundred pounds to £45,000.

And the country’s leading student watchdog has warned that complaints against lecturers and universities are set to rise as the tuition-fee cap increases from £3,290 per year to £9,000.

Student complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), which looks into compensation cases on behalf of students, have doubled since 2005, to more than 1,000 last year.

‘Having looked at the figures, complaints rise as fees rise – that is very likely to happen. That is already a trend we have seen over the past few years,’ said Rob Behrens, the head of the OIA.

The highest amount that the OIA has secured is £45,000, which was awarded to a postgraduate student last year. Some students are calling in their own lawyers to sue universities independently.

A Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday found that universities refunded a total of almost £60,000 to 50 successful claimants last year.

Mr Behrens added: ‘One of the effects of tuition fee rise is that students will act like consumers and will demand more.’

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All British graduates hit by hidden cost of fees

Every graduate will be worse off under the Government’s reforms to university tuition fees than previously thought, according to details released by officials.

Plans put forward by the Coalition will also cost the Treasury billions of pounds more than the original proposals set out by Lord Browne’s review last month, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Under the plans, which are expected to come into force in 2012, universities will be allowed to charge tuition fees of £9,000 a year, almost triple the current rate. Students will not be expected to pay fees while they study, but will receive government loans to cover the cost of their tuition.

Ministers said graduates would start paying back their loans only once they began earning £21,000 a year, with a higher, 3 per cent interest rate coming in for those earning above £41,000.

It had been widely assumed that these thresholds for repayments would rise every year with inflation and salaries, as Lord Browne, the former head of BP, had proposed. However, the Department for Business told the IFS that the thresholds would rise only every five years, meaning that many more graduates than previously thought would be forced to begin repayments sooner as salaries rose.

Professor Lorraine Dearden, from the IFS, said: “All graduates are going to be paying more than under Browne because of the threshold — £21,000 in 2020 in real terms is going to hit a lot more graduates than £21,000 in 2016,” she said.

Ministers hoped that by asking students to pay a higher share of the cost of their degrees, the burden on the taxpayer would be reduced.

Professor Dearden said the Government’s plans meant only about 10 per cent of graduates would pay back the full cost of their loans.

SOURCE



13 November, 2010

More bright-eyed optimism that ignores IQ

And is hence doomed to fail. He fails to ask WHY middle class parents talk more. It's because they have higher IQs and the strongest correlate of IQ is verbal ability. It is their inherited higher IQ that causes middle class children to do better generally, not the side effect of hearing more talk

BRITAIN'S Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has come up with an initiative that might just break the self-perpetuating cycle of educational disadvantage.

A few weeks ago he announced that the government would be setting aside pound stg. 7 billion ($11.3bn) during the course of the current parliament for a program called the pupil premium. Most of it will be spent on free nursery-level education for Britain's poorest children.

The aim is to narrow in the early years the vocabulary gap between the disadvantaged young and everyone else. As Clegg put it: "Children from poor homes hear 616 words spoken an hour on average, compared to 2153 words an hour in richer homes. By the age of three, that amounts to a cumulative gap of 30 million words."

The breadth of vocabulary that middle-class infants are exposed to has long been recognised as a significant factor in preparing them for success at school.

It's not just the sheer number of words or being familiar with an abundance of synonyms. A lot of our history, cultural assumptions and sense of humour are embedded in the mother tongue and can be almost effortlessly assimilated. A broad vocabulary emboldens young minds to extrapolate from the known to new, unfamiliar words and get a sense of what they mean. As well, it introduces the mind to niceties of distinction: for example, the difference between being "pleased", "not displeased" and "not best pleased" (which, for the benefit of younger readers, is a way of saying "not pleased at all").

There is a growing consensus that the most effective way to improve educational outcomes is by concentrating money and attention on the nursery. Recent research into child development at the University of London by Leon Feinstein found that the size of a child's vocabulary at 22 months is a reliable indicator of subsequent performance at school.

Middle-class kids probably aren't any brighter on average than their poorer age-mates Utter rubbish. Herrnstein & Murray exploded that optimism long ago], but their infant minds have usually been more assiduously stimulated when it matters most, early on.

The Spectator's Toby Young is a doting father who, as a columnist, takes a great interest in educational reform. In a recent piece, "Baby talk can close the attainment gap", he reflects in the light of his experience on a campaign just launched in Britain by the National Literacy Trust called Talk to Your Baby.

"You'd be forgiven for thinking it was dreamt up by a Notting Hill yummy mummy . . . It sounds absolutely barmy, the parenting equivalent of talking to plants, but in fact there's plenty of evidence to suggest that talking to children under three has an almost magical effect on their cognitive development and transforms them into more intelligent adults."

Young cites a study by a group of Harvard economists who found that children who've had a good nursery education earn, on average, $20 a week more than their peers by the time they're 27. Apparently that holds true even allowing for all the other usual factors, including social and economic status and the quality of their subsequent schooling.

Coming at the question from the other end, he cites a book by two educationalists at the University of Durham. One of their main findings is that the attainment of middle-class children doesn't vary much according to what school they attend. Generally they tend to do well even in poorly performing schools [Because they have higher IQs]. In a nutshell, a language-rich preschool environment and a domestic setting to match it can inoculate kids against the damage that substandard schools do to their classmates.

Young offers some rather endearing anecdotal evidence. "When my daughter Sasha was around six months old I read her Pride and Prejudice. Sounds pretentious and it is, but that's one of the advantages middle-class children enjoy over working-class children: their parents are willing to risk appearing pretentious if they believe their behaviour will secure their offspring a competitive advantage. And it worked.

"I have a video of Sasha scoring 100 out of 100 in a flash card test before her first birthday. By contrast, I read all three of her brothers Peepo! and none of them started talking until they were two."

Although reading Jane Austen to babes in arms might be taking things a bit far, the first books my generation's parents read us were often quite demanding and designed to captivate the reader as much as the child. I'm thinking of Alice in Wonderland, Gulliver's Travels, The Magic Pudding, the nonsense verse of Ogden Nash and Oscar Wilde's volume of fairy stories. Each of those books has hidden depths and unsettling interludes where things are not as they seem. Each might serve as an introduction to irony.

Young's other point about the role of parental pushiness in securing a competitive advantage for their children is an important one. I noticed it early on, growing up on the raffish outskirts of Bellevue Hill in Sydney.

A lot of the neighbouring blocks of flats were occupied by Jewish immigrants from central Europe and I played and went to primary school with their children. There was scarcely a boy among them who had not settled on a choice of profession, with a modicum of parental nudging, by the time he was six.

Although my parents were people of cultured tastes and ambitious for their only child, my mother's teenage career on John Dease's The Quiz Kids program had given her an aversion to precocious infants and she flatly refused to teach me to read before I went to school. Long before I was literate, most of my playmates could read a little English, speak Yiddish and perhaps another European language, and were beginning Hebrew lessons.

As well, willy-nilly, most learned a musical instrument. While some of them complained of a pressure-cooker existence - and left me feeling like a cheerful underachiever - they had a head start in life that most parents now can only dream about.

My last four columns and this week's have all concentrated on what constitutes a great education and why so few of the rising generation have access to one. I fear it has been rather bleak reading for the most part, which is why I'm ending on a positive note.

Very early intervention to break the cycle of educational disadvantage holds out far more hope - especially for Aboriginal infants and the children of what used to be called the lumpenproletariat - than the public system ever has. It ought to be high on the productivity agendas of both the main parties.

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Closing the Doors to Opportunity

The Obama administration thinks it knows best how to run health care, the banks, and the auto industry, so why not post-secondary education? And the best way to do so in Obamaland is to limit choice, which is exactly what the Department of Education has proposed in new rules affecting student loans.

The ostensible reason for the new "gainful employment" regulations is to curtail predatory practices by fly-by-night, for-profit trade schools that promise lucrative careers but deliver shoddy training. But the way in which the administration is going about solving the problem will cause more harm than good.

In hearings last month, the department heard from both opponents and proponents of the new rules, which would limit access to federally guaranteed loans by institutions whose graduates would end up with higher debts relative to earnings, as calculated by the Department of Education. Under the plan, students would not be allowed to use federal student loans to attend programs whose cost the administration calculates will require more than 8 percent of their estimated future yearly income to repay. And the department would limit eligibility for students to use federal loans at for-profit schools if 65 percent of the former students at those schools had failed to repay the loans in what the government considered a timely manner.

It is the kind of micro-managing and social engineering that the administration favors when it comes to problem-solving in every arena. Whatever the issue, the Obama-ites believe they know better than everyone else what is good for people. In this instance, the group most affected will be non-traditional students, minorities, immigrants and older, returning students who are already in the workforce. And the administration's target is for-profit schools, which the Ivy League graduates in the West Wing clearly disdain.

Many non-traditional students choose for-profit schools to learn a trade rather than attending liberal arts or even community colleges. These schools form an important niche in our post-secondary education system, one, ironically, that has become more important as secondary education has virtually eliminated vocational training as part of its mission. In a world in which we pretend that every high school student is college material, many kids graduate with no academic future and too few skills to earn a living at a trade.

The Obama administration recognizes the problem -- but their solution is to invest in nonprofit community colleges while at the same time demonizing for-profit schools that may offer a better alternative for many students. For-profit schools allow students to choose programs that focus on concrete job skills that also fit their lifestyle, offering online or evening courses or those that don't require attendance over a traditional school year to complete.

Students themselves should be the best judge of whether these programs are worth the investment -- not the federal government. But instead of applying market principles to test success or failure, the Obama administration proposes to gauge the programs' value by how quickly students repay their loans to the government.

The effect will be that many students who need federal loans in order to enroll in programs that will boost their skills and employability will now be restricted in the choices available to them. If a student wants to learn how to repair automobiles -- which, with the proliferation of computer-based systems in most new cars, requires far higher skill levels than in the past -- they'll be out of luck unless their local community college offers the course and at a convenient time. The same holds true for acquiring software and networking skills, learning dental hygiene or medical technology, much less becoming a chef. Indeed, few community colleges offer the breadth and scope of training available in for-profit schools.

The administration should be making it easier, not more difficult, for Americans to receive the training they need and want. And they should let Americans decide for themselves which programs best serve their needs. Instead, they're closing doors to opportunity for those students most in need.

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Scandal of the £2.3m golden goodbyes given to incompetent British teachers

Incompetent teachers have been handed more than £2.3million in 'golden goodbyes' over the last five years, new figures have shown. Many councils have paid tens of thousands of pounds to ensure poorly-performing teachers quit their jobs but few staff have been fired outright for incompetence, an investigation revealed.

Just 273 teachers have lost their jobs in England due to concerns about their performance since 2005, according to an analysis by the Times Educational Supplement. Only 14 have been struck off the teaching register - barred from working in classrooms - in nearly a decade.

The analysis also shows how the chance of a pupil facing a poor-performing teacher is a postcode lottery due to wide variations in practice across the country. In 72 local authorities - almost half the total - not a single teacher was fired for incompetence in the last five years.

The revelations come 15 years after the then Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead made his incendiary claim that 15,000 teachers were incompetent. Commenting on the new findings, Professor Woodhead, of Buckingham University, said: 'This is a tiny percentage of the total workforce. 'It confirms, moreover, what we all know: incompetence pays.

'Incompetent teachers damage children's learning and the reputation of the teaching profession. 'When are those responsible going to face up to the problem?'

The TES figures, obtained from 123 out of 152 English councils under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that 3,253 teachers had been through school competency proceedings due to concerns about their performance in the past five years.

The process involves teachers being monitored closely as they seek to reach targets for improved performance and can result in dismissal.

While some areas put hundreds of teachers through competency procedures over the last five years, such as West Sussex, with 385, some areas, including Hampshire and Somerset, subjected just one to the disciplinary process. Across the country, 273 teachers were fired from their jobs or accepted severance pay and left. A further 550 resigned.

The fate of the other teachers subjected to competency proceedings is unclear. Some improved their performance or retired, while others simply moved schools, including to the independent sector.

One manager at a school in Herefordshire, who saw four teachers through the competency process, said: 'Three of these obtained jobs at private independent schools - which would be better suited to their teaching methods - and one at a further education college.'

The figures also showed that 38 local authorities paid out a total of £2.33million in severance pay and compromise agreements to teachers put on competency procedures. The biggest spender emerged as Darlington, which paid out £196,400. Six other councils - Warrington, Suffolk, Cumbria, Cornwall, Manchester and Worcestershire - each paid out more than £100,000.

In contrast, some councils said they had a policy of not paying out to those accused of incompetence.

Ministers are understood to be drawing up plans to overhaul the system for dealing with poorly-performing teachers.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the system should be overhauled so incompetent teachers can be fired within eight weeks. 'I don't think there is a massive group of dire teachers out there, but there are people who should not be teaching and they should be dealt with as quickly as possible,' he said.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, insisted the competency process was being abused. 'Heads are using it as a blunt instrument for inappropriate reasons,' she said. 'We get many reports that it's just an excuse for bullying.'

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: 'The vast majority of teachers in our schools are highly competent professionals who are committed to providing a good education for our children. 'But where teachers do not meet the standards expected, it is important that heads have the freedoms they need to tackle under-performance.'

SOURCE



12 November, 2010

Survey: One in 10 US children has ADHD

This is about the percentage of kids who have always been "naughty". They were once effectively socialized by corporal punishment instead of being drugged to the eyeballs with drugs that are illegal for adults. The news below is simply news about the breakdown of discipline

A government survey says 1 in 10 US children has ADHD, a sizable increase from a few years earlier that researchers think might be explained by growing awareness and better screening.

ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, makes it hard for children to pay attention and control impulsive behavior. It’s often treated with drugs, behavioral therapy, or both.

The new study found that about two-thirds of the children who have ADHD are on medication. The estimate comes from a survey released yesterday that found an increase in ADHD of about 22 percent from 2003 to the most recent survey, in 2007-08. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention interviewed parents of children ages 4 through 17 in both studies.

In the latest survey, 9.5 percent said a doctor or health care provider had told them their child had ADHD.

Researchers calculate that about 5.4 million children have been diagnosed with ADHD, which suggests that about 1 million more children have the disorder than a few years earlier.

Scientists don’t have clear answers about why there was such a significant increase. The study’s lead author, Susanna Visser of the CDC, suggests greater awareness and stepped-up screening efforts are part of the explanation.

One specialist found it hard to believe that so many children might have ADHD. “It sounds a little high,’’ said Howard Abikoff, director of the Institute for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity and Behavior Disorders at New York University’s Child Study Center.

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Muslim students' female-only swim at GWU makes waves

Colleges strive to create welcoming, inclusive communities for students from every background. But a new effort at George Washington University has scores of critics and supporters abuzz with heated comments that continue to pour in on various blogs and news articles.

At the request of the university's Muslim Students' Association, George Washington began offering a once-weekly, female-only swim hour in March. But it only recently turned into an online debate over issues of religious and sexual discrimination and - though not always explicitly - racism, spurred by an article in the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet.

The Lerner Health and Wellness Center pool closes to men for one of the 20 hours it's open each week, with a tarp blocking the view through the glass door and a female lifeguard on duty. The university declined to comment for this article beyond a two-sentence statement that said its officials are reviewing the closure while they establish a formal recreational swim policy.

A few highlights from Internet comments on The Washington Post's and TBD's recent coverage of the swim hour: "Should a minuscule minority force the overwhelming majority [to] abide by their rules or should it be the other way around?" "Western society should not accommodate to Islam on this point; it is Islam that should change."

And in rebuttal: "Come on, folks. An hour a week - what's the big deal?" "It's not an unreasonable request. 'Women' is like half the population."

Many comments not quoted here could easily be considered racially offensive.

Despite the naysayers, Sisters' Splash, as it's called, is not the only special accommodation that a college has made for Muslim students. George Washington already has foot baths for pre-prayer rituals, and a handful of other institutions - including the University of Michigan-Dearborn and George Mason University - have them as well. In 2008, at the request of female Muslim students, Harvard University ran a one-semester pilot program that reserved six hours a week for female students only at one of its lesser-used gyms, though the program was discontinued after that semester. There's also Gamma Gamma Chi Sorority Inc., an Islamic-based sorority that has five regional chapters, though not all are active.

Shelley Mountjoy, a doctoral student at George Mason who briefly attended George Washington as an undergraduate, doesn't much care what goes on at private colleges. But she takes issue with the foot baths at George Mason and with other religious accommodations at public universities. She is afraid that policies like the female-only swim hour will have a domino effect and spread to other colleges. "I don't want my tuition dollars paying to accommodate somebody's religion," she said. "It's not the entire campus's religion. We don't all have to subscribe to Islamic law."

Because George Washington is a private university, there are no constitutional issues with the swim hour, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Should a similar program start up at a public university, the presence of church-state issues would depend on the many facts of the situation, such as whether access is religion-specific, Khan said.

Mountjoy, who serves on the boards of Atheist Alliance International and the national Secular Student Alliance, is also the founder and president of the Secular Student Alliance chapter at George Mason. She said that although some criticism of the swim hour and other services might stem from a bias against Muslim people, she takes issue with any type of religious accommodation. "I actually think that it's in everybody's best interest to keep religion out of our public schools," she said. "I would react the same if this was a Christian-only swimming hour."

Students say the criticism is mostly coming from off-campus. Shaeera Tariq, a sophomore at George Washington and vice president of the Muslim Students' Association, helped initiate the swim hour. She said nobody really knew about it until the Hatchet article came out - and as it happens, she is a reporter at the paper and she pitched the article to her editor. "It definitely sparked a lot of debate amongst people, but it seems to me there is a definite positive sentiment on campus and people are in favor of it," she said. "We're not closing down the mall or something for an hour. We're just closing down a pool that wasn't used very often in the first place."

John L. Esposito, an Islamic studies professor and founding director of Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said many of the negative reactions undoubtedly stem from an "Islamophobia."

"It's very clear that there's a good chance many of them have a real problem accepting Muslims or Islam, and we've got to deal with that. In a pluralistic society, that form of bigotry and racism - we've dealt with it before and we've got to deal with it now," Esposito said, referring to civil rights struggles. "It seems to me this is a perfectly understandable thing that we should be doing. All of these members of the community pay tuition and so faculty and administrators have to always be open to responding to and accommodating the needs of people."

Esposito cited numerous other ways institutions serve different groups: parking for people with disabilities, campus chapels for various religions, and excusing attendance for students celebrating religious holidays other than the traditionally recognized Christmas or Easter. "If there's a segment of the community that can benefit from an accommodation, you make it when you can," he said. "The fact is, they have rights and you have to accept it."

Zahin Hasan, president of the Muslim Students' Association, said the number of women - Muslim and non-Muslim - who attend the swim hour varies. But the point is that the college is serving more students, better. "What I can't understand is how utilizing an underused service, such as a gym pool, is a bad thing," Hasan said in an e-mail. "Very few people know about the pool, and even fewer use it. The benefits of Sisters' Splash far outweigh the few inconveniences it may present." But, he added, a "great majority" of George Washington students have shown support for the swim hour.

According to a 2005 Gallup report, gender inequality is one of American women's top concerns about "the Muslim or Islamic world." (Notably, many Muslim women perceive the promiscuity, pornography and public indecency portrayed in Hollywood images as mistreatment of women in the Western world, the report says.) It's an issue that is mentioned frequently in online comments about the swim hour. One person wrote, "If Muslim women are too modest to wear ordinary swimsuits when they swim, then maybe they should stop swimming and go see a psychiatrist. Teaching sexual repression is wrong; making women feel that they are bad and wicked merely for having female bodies is wrong." Another wrote, "If because of religious convictions they chose not to exercise that freedom, the rest of society should not validate it by accommodating it."

But the swim hour's proponents - and there seem to be many - point out that about half of the student population can participate. And accusations of racism are not difficult to come by. "We've seen a number of these kinds of programs around the country. I think it goes way beyond Muslim women; I think there are enough women who would be more comfortable swimming in a same-sex environment that it would be of interest to women of all faiths in America," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "There is a cottage industry of Muslim-bashers that look for any opportunity to marginalize American Muslims or to demonize Islam, and any denomination of Islam in our society is going to be targeted by these people."

There is more to the issue than religion, though. Erin E. Buzuvis, an associate professor of law at Western New England College and co-founder and contributor to The Title IX Blog, said it's unclear whether barring men from the pool constitutes a violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law requiring gender equity in educational programs at federally funded schools and colleges. Men can still swim 95% of the time, so they're not completely excluded. And if the program's purpose is to accommodate a religious group, rather than women in general, that could work in the university's favor.

"The university might have a plausible defense that while this would technically be a form of gender discrimination, that they're doing it to accommodate a student's religion," Buzuvis said. "If that weren't an issue, I would say a female-only swim hour would be highly questionable under Title IX."

SOURCE






British tuition fee protests: lecturers back 'magnificent' student rioters

Pretty much as expected from the many far-Leftists -- often Trotskyites -- teaching at British universities

Lecturers at one of the country's leading universities were roundly condemned last night for praising students who rioted at Conservative Party headquarters. Academics at Goldsmiths, University of London, justified the violence by saying it had brought the tuition fees row "media attention across the world".

In a statement branded "irresponsible" by Downing Street, they said they wished to "congratulate staff and students on the magnificent anti-cuts demonstration". It was signed by John Wadsworth, the president of Goldsmiths lecturers' union, and its secretary Des Freedman, a lecturer in communications and cultural studies.

It also emerged that a lecturer from the University of Sussex who was among the protestors is a prominent member of the left-wing socialist group Revolution, which began planning "direct action" weeks ago. Luke Cooper, 26, an assistant tutor in international relations, described Government buildings as "legitimate targets for protest and occupation".

Fifty people who were arrested during Wednesday's riot on Millbank, near the Houses of Parliament, were released on police bail yesterday as officers began the lengthy process of identifying offenders from CCTV and television news footage.

David Cameron called for the "full force of the law" to be brought to bear on hooligans who left 41 police officers injured and smashed up three floors of the building that houses the Tory Party office. Peter Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, called for an attempted murder charge to be brought against a protestor who threw a fire extinguisher from the roof of the building, injuring two officers who he said could have been killed.

But the lecturers from Goldsmiths made no reference to the injuries suffered by police and some students as they gave the protest a glowing report. "Yesterday was a really good natured but equally angry demonstration against the damage that the coalition is doing to higher education," their statement said. "Yes, that got out of hand, but yes, it also got media attention across the world."

The National Union of Students and the academics' body the University and College Union, who organised the 52,000-strong march through London, described the violence at Millbank as "deplorable" and "despicable".

But the Goldsmiths lecturers dismissed the criticism, saying: "We wish to condemn and distance ourselves from the divisive and, in our view, counterproductive statements issued by the UCU and NUS leadership concerning the occupation of the Conservative Party HQ. "The real violence in this situation relates not to a smashed window but to the destructive impact of the cuts and privatisation that will follow if tuition fees are increased."

David Davies, a Conservative MP who is also a special constable, described the statement as "absolutely disgraceful". He said: "Anyone with views like that should not be in a position to educate young people. There needs to be a full investigation."

James Haywood, communication and campaigns officer for Goldsmiths students' union, was one of five of the college's students arrested at the scene after occupying the roof. He said: "I have no regrets. The occupation of Tory HQ was completely justified."

David Graeber, an anthropology lecturer at Goldsmiths who was among the protestors, said he was "very proud" of the students, adding: "They are going to represent us as thugs but really they are the thugs and we are representing civilisation."

Mr Cooper denied being one of the ringleaders of the attack on Millbank, but said: "We want to send a really strong message to this Government that we are not going to let higher education be brutalised. "There are a number of different Government buildings in that part of London and all of them would have been legitimate targets for protest and occupation. There was a lot of anger. There has always been the plan for.direct action after the NUS demo."

Nick Herbert, the minister for policing, told Parliament the Met would "learn lessons" from its failure to station enough officers along the route of the march, which enabled rioters to storm Tory HQ virtually unopposed.

SOURCE



11 November, 2010

Why are America's institutions of higher learning so fearful of debate?

John Stossel

This week, I held a bake sale -- a racist bake sale. I stood in midtown Manhattan shouting, "Cupcakes for sale." My price list read:

Asians -- $1.50

Whites -- $1.00

Blacks/Latinos -- 50 cents

People stared. One yelled, "What is funny to you about people who are less privileged?" A black woman said, angrily, "It's very offensive, very demeaning!" One black man accused me of poisoning the cupcakes.

I understand why people got angry. What I did was hurtful to some. My bake sale mimicked what some conservative college students did at Bucknell University. The students wanted to satirize their school's affirmative action policy, which makes it easier for blacks and Hispanics to get admitted.

I think affirmative action is racism -- and therefore wrong. If a private school like Bucknell wants to have such policies to increase diversity, fine. But government-imposed affirmative action is offensive. Equality before the law means government should treat citizens equally.

But it doesn't. Our racist government says that any school receiving federal tax dollars, even if only in the form of federal aid to students, must comply with affirmative action rules, and some states have enacted their own policies.

Advocates of affirmative action argue it is needed because of historic discrimination. Maybe that was true in 1970, but it's no longer true. Affirmative action is now part of the minority special privilege machine, an indispensable component of which is perpetual victimhood.

All the Bucknell students wanted was a campus discussion about that. Why not? A university is supposed to be a place for open discussion, but some topics are apparently off-limits.

About an hour after the students began their "affirmative action" sale, the associate dean of students shut it down. He said it was because the prices charged were different from those listed on the permissions application. An offer to change the prices was rejected. Then the club's application to hold another sale was rejected. Ironically, the associate dean said it would violate the schools non-discrimination policy! He would authorize a debate on affirmative action, but nothing else.

How ridiculous! Fortunately, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has come to the students' defense. "Using this absurd logic, Bucknell would have to require its College Democrats to say nothing political on campus unless they give equal time to Republican candidates at their events, or its Catholic Campus Ministry to remain silent about abortion unless it holds a debate and invites pro-choice activists to speak," FIRE's Adam Kissel said. "While students are free to host debates, they must not be required to provide a platform for their ideological opponents. Rather, those opponents must be free to spread their own messages and host their own events."

Right. My affirmative action cupcake "event" led to some interesting discussions. One young woman began by criticizing me, "It's absolutely wrong." But after I raised the parallel with college admissions, she said: "No race of people is worth more than another. Or less." But do you believe in affirmative action in colleges? I asked. "I used to," she replied.

Those are the kind discussions students should have.

Affirmative action wasn't the only issue that brought conservative Bucknell students grief. When they tried to protest President Obama's $787 billion "stimulus" spending last year by handing out fake dollar bills, the school stopped them for violating rules against soliciting!

According to FIRE, Bucknell's solicitation policy covers only sales and fundraising, which the students were not engaged in, but the school rejected the students' appeal, saying permission was needed to distribute "anything, from Bibles to other matter." Absurd! The Bucknell administration tells me it stopped the anti-stimulus protest because the students had not registered to use that busy campus space. FIRE disputes that.

"Distributing protest literature is an American free-speech tradition that dates to before the founding of the United States," Kissel said. "Why is Bucknell so afraid of students handing out 'Bibles (or) other matter' that might provide challenging perspectives? Colleges are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas, but Bucknell is betraying this ideal."

It is, indeed. Why are America's institutions of higher learning so fearful?

SOURCE







MA: Boston rethinking small-school experiment

They're just flailing in the dark in Bosdton. They won't admit that their educational theories are all wrong

Boston schools underwent a radical experiment in the past decade: Four large neighborhood high schools were shuttered and replaced with more than a dozen smaller ones.

The thinking was that smaller schools could deliver a better education. A few years into the effort, funded with millions of dollars from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mayor Thomas M. Menino proudly declared it to be “a model for the rest of the country.’’

But now the approach, championed by former superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, appears to have fallen out of favor with the city’s current school chief, Carol R. Johnson. She sees the small schools as a costly venture in an era of declining city revenue, and believes many have yielded lackluster results.

Last month, Johnson proposed shutting down the three high schools at the Hyde Park complex, citing low performance. The recommendation has rekindled a debate over what school size best fosters learning in an urban environment.

The Hyde Park closings follow her 2008 decision to place a small high school at the former South Boston High on academic probation and merge two small high schools in Dorchester.

Backers of small schools say Johnson is giving up too soon and is basing decisions on incomplete data. The Boston experience contrasts sharply with New York City, where school leaders this fall trumpeted a new report declaring the success of their small-school conversions.

Theories abound as to why Boston’s school system has not achieved similar results as New York’s, from poor initial execution to subsequent years of budget cutting.

Meanwhile, defenders of Boston’s small high schools dispute Johnson’s characterization of academic failure and high operating expenses. Johnson, in presenting her Hyde Park closure plan, has not released any data that compare the performance and spending levels of each city high school.

“I don’t think it’s even debatable at this point that urban school systems need small-high school options,’’ said Neil Sullivan, executive director of the Boston Private Industry Council, a public-private partnership between the business community and education establishments that focuses on workforce development. “If we put a returning dropout student in a large high school, they are gone. If we put them in a small school that addresses their circumstances, they stay.’’

Irvin Scott, the School Department’s chief academic officer who oversees high schools, said the small-school conversions have had varying degrees of success and Johnson is committed to small high schools. He defended Johnson’s recommendation to shutter Hyde Park, arguing that the complex does not have at least one academic-standout school like the other three high school complexes.

“The small schools have had a huge impact on climate — more personalization, fewer fights among students — but some have not necessarily realized the academic achievement gains that people hoped for,’’ Scott said.Continued...

Throughout the past decade, urban districts across the country replaced large failing schools with smaller theme-based academies, hoping to strengthen relationships between students and teachers.

In Boston, each of the 12 small schools carved out of the former South Boston, Dorchester, Hyde Park, and West Roxbury high schools serves about 300 or 400 students. Each is built around a different theme, such as public service, the sciences, or communications.

The city still operates several large comprehensive high schools, such as Brighton and East Boston, where enrollment exceeds 1,000 students. It also operates several other small high schools at stand-alone sites.

The last major study on the city’s conversion of large high schools into smaller ones was completed in June 2008 by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in New Jersey, which was commissioned by the Boston Plan for Excellence, an education nonprofit. The report found lackluster MCAS scores at the small schools, but improvements in attendance, fewer suspensions, and better academic performance.

Some small-high school supporters question the study’s conclusion because the authors had only two years worth of MCAS data available for the seven small high schools at the Hyde Park and West Roxbury campuses, which opened in fall 2005.

“What is really kind of heartbreaking to me is the district has to close schools and is doing it without an updated data analysis,’’ said Lili Allen, program director at Jobs for the Future, a Boston organization that works on education issues and oversaw about $25 million in grants from the Gates Foundation, much of which went toward Boston’s small-school effort.

A Globe review of graduation rates and MCAS pass rates on the 10th-grade English and math exams found mixed results among the big and small high schools. A review of per-student spending found that small high schools were not the most costly to run.

The recent New York study, which examined more than 100 small high schools and 20,000 students, is gaining attention among supporters of small schools here. The study, conducted by the independent research group MDRC and believed to be the largest ever, found that New York’s small high schools had notably higher graduation rates than its other high schools.

Gordon Berlin, president of MDRC, said that because his organization’s study focused only on New York he could not draw conclusions about Boston’s experience. But he said there was a lack of data nationwide to assess the overall impact of replacing large high schools with smaller entities.

The Gates Foundation has stopped funding small-school efforts like those in Boston, finding it more effective to target spending on such projects as teacher training and national academic standards.

“Have small schools wildly changed the equation? We would say it’s somewhat mixed, and our funding strategy reflects that,’’ said Christopher Williams, a Gates Foundation spokesman, who nevertheless noted the foundation was pleased with New York’s results.

During the previous decade, Payzant, determined to fix Boston’s ailing high schools, pushed aggressively in opening the smaller schools, according to some people involved in the conversions. He opened each school largely by dividing up the current staff and students in the buildings. He also started the schools with all grade levels instead of phasing in the grades, in what became known as the “big bang theory.’’

By contrast, New York hired new teachers, enrolled new students, and gradually added grades over the course of a few years. That enabled New York to create a new academic culture from day one, the opposite of Boston’s strategy.

“It was like building a boat while you are sailing it, but we figured it out, said Linda Lipkin, founding director of curriculum, assessment, and placement at Social Justice Academy, one of three schools that replaced the old Hyde Park High.

The other two are the Community Academy of Science and Health and The Engineering School.

Johnson’s recommendation on Oct. 6 to shutter the Hyde Park building stunned the three schools, which were expecting to consolidate back into a single school.

Amid protests by students, staff, and parents, Johnson decided to keep the Community Academy of Science and Health open. She plans to relocate the school, however.

On one recent afternoon, students and staff members from the two schools still slated for closure gathered around several tables in the library, where garbage bags covered bookcases because the school has no librarian. They defended their test scores and spoke of years of budget cutting.

At The Engineering School, where a third of the approximately 330 students have severe special needs, teachers said splitting those students apart next year could be traumatic for them. “It’s very hard for our students,’’ said Trudy Brennan, a special education teacher. “They are asking questions every day.’’

Although the clocks and public address system don’t work and many computers are broken, the building itself appeared to be in good condition. Sun poured through tall windows in the hallways, which were well kept.

“They are pushing us to the wayside,’’ said Nathanael Kelly, 17, an Engineering School senior. “Our school has made significant strides. The potential in our school is not being fully realized.’’

SOURCE






UK: Violence at Tory HQ overshadows student fees protest

I obviously don't agree with the violence but the Liberal-infuenced plans are an abomination. Saddling students with debt for 30 years in simply unconsciencable. There would have been no rally without such oppressive plans. One can only hope for a major rethink

There have been violent scenes as tens of thousands of people protested against plans to treble tuition fees and cut university funding in England. Demonstrators stormed a building in Westminster housing the Conservative Party headquarters, smashed windows and got on to the roof. Outside, a crowd of thousands surged as placards and banners were set on fire and missiles were thrown.

Student leaders condemned the violence as "despicable". They say about 50,000 people took part in a march through Westminster earlier.

This siege of Millbank Tower was a violent break-away from what had been a noisy but good-natured march.

As demonstrators crowded around the building, some masked and hooded, the mood began to turn ugly. Missiles began flying towards the large plate glass windows, with only a thin line of police, with metal truncheons raised, guarding the building's entrance. Outnumbered and overwhelmed, they were slowly but relentlessly hemmed against the front of the building.

As protesters surged, a succession of windows were smashed and then demonstrators flooded into the building entrance. Security guards scattered and the handful of police inside were completely overrun. A few yards away, in surreal calm, guests carried on eating in the adjacent Pizza Express.

Inside the building, demonstrators wearing police hats danced on tables. A protester ripped a security camera from the ceiling and danced in triumph, slogans were spray-painted on walls.

The level of anger and the swiftness of the violence seemed to have caught everyone by surprise. According to Scotland Yard, 14 people have been injured, including seven police officers. No-one was seriously hurt.

The vast majority of demonstrators had been peaceful, a statement said, but "a small minority" had damaged property. At one point, a fire extinguisher was reported to have been thrown from the roof.

London Mayor Boris Johnson said: "I am appalled that a small minority have today shamefully abused their right to protest. "This is intolerable and all those involved will be pursued and they will face the full force of the law. "The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has assured me that there will be a vigorous post-incident investigation."

One of the protesters who got on to the roof was Manchester student Emily Parks. "It shows how angry people are," she told BBC News. "Why is our education being cut? Why are tuition fees going up here when in other parts people have free education? People have felt the need to take matters into their own hands."

President of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter: "This was not part of our plan"

Conservative Party chairman Baroness Warsi was inside the building while the protest was taking place. She said police had responded "in the circumstances that they felt best. "This was clearly a protest where people had a legitimate right to protest on issues that they felt very strongly, and it is a shame that a small minority of those protesters ruined it for the rest of them."

Demonstrators were also cleared from outside the Liberal Democrat headquarters, where a car window has been smashed.

Elsewhere, the massive rally had passed off peacefully. Hundreds of coachloads of students and lecturers had travelled to London from across England for the demonstration in Whitehall, with 2,000 students also travelling from Wales.

The NUS is threatening to try to unseat Liberal Democrat MPs who go back on pre-election pledges they made to oppose any rise in tuition fees.

Higher education funding is being cut by 40% - with teaching grants being all but wiped out except for science and maths. The government expects the costs of teaching other courses to be funded by tuition fees. It proposes that tuition fees should rise from 2012.

The plan is for a lower cap at £6,000, with universities able to charge up to £9,000 - triple the current cap - in "exceptional circumstances". Ministers insist their plans offer a "fair deal for students".

Earlier on Wednesday, at Question Time in the Commons, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had a fiery exchange with Labour's Harriet Harman over fees. He was accused of hypocrisy, because the Liberal Democrats opposed tuition fees in the election run-up. But he said Labour had made U-turns itself over fees, which it brought in in 1997, and said the party had no clear alternative policy.

Ms Harman said Nick Clegg was "going along with a Tory plan - to shove the cost of higher education on to students and their families".

Twice, Mr Clegg sidestepped her request that he specify the size of the cut to university teaching grants - a figure she said was 80%.

Universities Minister David Willetts said the new system would be fairer than the present one, offering more help to the poorest students.

Students would not have to pay anything "up-front" and as graduates, would only have to pay back their tuition fee loans once they were earning £21,000 or more.

Among the crowds at the rally in London were about 400 students from Oxford. Oxford University Student Union President David Barclay said: "This is the day a generation of politicians learn that though they might forget their promises, students won't.

SOURCE



10 November, 2010

British Liberal Party implements money-grabbing student loan scheme

Crippling 30-year graduate debt trap will see parents still paying instalments as their children go to university. That should be an effective bar to a university education for all but the rich, who don't need loans. A strange outcome for a party that is allegedly on the side of the poor.

I entered the workforce with an advanced degree and no debt. My son will enter the workforce with an advanced degree and no debt. How sad that few British university students can look forward to that -- JR

Graduates on modest incomes face an effective tax rate of 45 per cent and crippling debts for most of their working lives, a Money Mail investigation has discovered. Radical reforms to the level of tuition fees and the way loans are repaid will leave many in debt until their mid-50s - by which time they'll be wrestling with putting their own children through university.

Tuition fees are set to rise to as much as £9,000 a year while living costs can be up to £8,210 a year, according to the NatWest Student Living Survey. That's £17,210 a year or £51,630 over three years. The maximum government loan is likely to be £43,500.

Debts to the government will be reclaimed by deducting 9 per cent from any salary above a £21,000 threshold, but interest will be added to the debt. This will range from the retail prices index (RPI) to RPI plus 3 percentage points, with higher earners paying the most.

For those on modest and middle incomes, the amount of interest is likely to be greater than the amount they repay, meaning the debt will balloon through their life until, after 30 years, it is written off by the government.

We asked data analyst Moneyfacts to look at two scenarios that could encompass millions of graduates in essential occupations such as teaching and nursing. In the first case, we assumed someone started work owing £43,500 earning £21,000 a year and receiving a 3 per cent pay rise each year. After 30 years, they would have paid £33,217, but, because of the interest, they would still owe £73,659, which would be written off.

If their pay rose by a more generous 5 per cent a year, they would repay £64,239, but still owe £26,406. And these calculations assume 2 per cent RPI; today it's 4.6 per cent.

To make life tougher, any graduate earning more than £21,000 a year would be losing 45p in every £1 they earned above this threshold. This is made up of basic-rate income tax at 20 per cent, National Insurance contributions of 12 per cent, having 9 per cent stripped to pay for their student loan, and another 4 per cent taken by their employer as a pension contribution.

Research for Money Mail by the Chartered Institute of Taxation shows a graduate earning £22,000 will lose a total of £6,029 - 27 per cent of their total pay. It would reduce their take-home pay to £1,330 a month.

Someone earning £26,000 will have £7,829 deducted - equal to 30 per cent of their takehome pay. For those on £30,000, their take-home pay is reduced by £9,629 or 32 per cent.

'We risk creating a generation of students who will never be able to pay their way out of debt,' says Chris Tapp, of debt charity Credit Action. 'They are going to be lumbered with a lifetime of borrowing. The danger of student loans rising is that other more expensive credit may get put to one side.

'This is just the start of a cycle of problems. Parents may be so worried about funding their child's education that they borrow to help them out.'

Students graduating from 2017 will face the full brunt of the Coalition's reforms to tax, pensions and student funding. From next April, National Insurance rises from 11 per cent to 12 per cent. Then a new national pension scheme will strip further money from their income.

From October 2012, anyone aged 21 or over who is employed for more than three months and who earns more than £7,475 will have 0.8 per cent of their income taken as a pension contribution. This will increase to 4 per cent by 2017.

Their situation will be exacerbated by cuts to student loans for better- off graduates, which will force them to borrow more from banks.

James Daley, editor of Which? Money, says: 'If you are going to be saddled with huge debts, you need to be financially equipped to deal with that and most graduates are not. Otherwise they are going to start off poor and end up poor.'

SOURCE





Teacher who lost her voice trying to make herself heard in a noisy British classroom wins £150,000 payout

A teacher has been awarded £150,000 after she lost her voice trying to make herself heard in the classroom. Joyce Walters damaged her vocal cords straining to raise her volume above the clamour coming from a nearby playground. As a result she was forced to quit her job as an English teacher.

The 50-year-old says she now struggles to speak on the phone and suffers a sore throat and hoarseness when she raises her voice in noisy bars.

Mrs Walters, who taught for 12 years, won a total of £156,000 in out-of-court settlements from her council after claiming she could never teach again. It is one of the largest payouts of its kind and an example of the growing compensation culture among injured and sacked teachers, which costs the taxpayer more than £20 million a year. Last year another teacher was awarded £173,595 for dislocating an ankle during playground duty. In comparison, an injured war veteran could expect a maximum of £34,100 for a similar injury.

Education campaigners say the rise is the result of councils opting to settle out-of-court, rather than challenging claims. Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘This is a frightening trend that should be tackled head-on. ‘Local authorities need to get a grip. There are too many instances were they surrender too easily to claims that may seem frivolous.’

Mother-of-two Mrs Walters, from Ickenham in Middlesex, taught English to foreign students at nearby Harlington Adult Education Centre, housed at Harlington Community School, between September 2005 and July 2006. She gave lessons in a classroom next to a roofed courtyard where 11- 18-year-olds played during lunchtimes and breaks.

After a doctor diagnosed non-cancerous vocal cord nodules, she missed the 2006/2007 academic year. Despite repeated pleas, she was assigned the same classroom when she returned the following September and had to quit three months later.

Mrs Walters, who is married to a former policeman, took Hillingdon Council, which runs the school, to an employment tribunal and was awarded an £11,000 out-of-court settlement in October 2009. She also filed a personal injury claim against the council, which won her an out-of-court settlement of £145,000 last July.

Mrs Walters, who had months of speech therapy following her voice loss, yesterday defended her payout, saying her injuries had a devastating effect on her life. ‘Teaching was my calling, I adored the classroom and miss it so much, but the problems with my voice make it impossible for me to ever go back,’ she said. ‘I have to think twice about day-to-day things, like speaking on the phone.’

Joanne Jefferies, a specialist in workplace injuries at law firm Irwin Mitchell who represented Mrs Walters, added: ‘Despite attempts to raise her concerns with her employer, she was ignored and it has resulted in this terrible, life-altering injury. ‘To make matters worse, she is still awaiting assurances that something has been done to prevent others suffering.

Yesterday, Jean Palmer of Hillingdon Council said: ‘After almost three years, the council felt that it was in the best interests of Mrs Walters, the council and taxpayers to settle the claims.’

SOURCE





Great shortage of male teachers in Australia

CHILDREN face going through school without ever having a male teacher because of falling numbers of men in primary schools. Male teacher numbers in Government primary schools have dropped below 20 per cent for the first time in a decade as classrooms become female-dominated.

Catholic primary schools across the state have even lower proportions of men, with only about 15 per cent of teachers from kindergarten to Year 6 being male.

Teacher of eight years Scott Carroll said there was a stigma attached to men who worked with children: "Primary teaching is traditionally associated with females - perceptions need to change."

Principal of Mary MacKillop Primary School at Penrith South, Anne Corrigan, said men brought different perspectives to a school. "I like guys in my school, role models are important," Ms Corrigan said.

Data released by the NSW Government shows classrooms in public primary schools have lost 609 male teachers since 2000. The decline showed an election commitment by state Labor seven years ago to "work to increase the number of male teachers, especially in primary schools" had failed. With just 4695 men in the public primary system, there are children who have never been taught by a man.

Parents have said that, because of the high level of single-parent families in many areas, it is important young children are taught by male as well as female teachers. Many principals agree, telling The Daily Telegraph it is critical that more men work in primary schools.

NSW education chiefs argue that gender is not the most important factor in seeking suitable applicants. A Government spokeswoman said: "There is no definitive research that students, learn better from a particular gender - it is the quality of the teacher."

Low social status, poor wages and fear of being labelled a paedophile were identified as factors in men shunning primary teaching.

The Australian Catholic University said the presence or absence of male teachers had "major implications for the culture of schools".

The NSW Government offers up to 300 teaching scholarships each year using "male teacher role models".

SOURCE



9 November, 2010

Failure to educate: The Boston school system is churning out illiterate students whose only skills are to pass predictable standard tests

I DID not attend a graduation ceremony in 25 years as a Boston public high school teacher. This was my silent protest against a skillfully choreographed mockery of an authentic education — a charade by adults who, knowingly or unwittingly, played games with other people’s children.

I knew that most of my students who walked across the stage, amidst the cheers, whistles, camera flashes, and shout-outs from parents, family, and friends, were not functionally literate. They were unable to perform the minimum skills necessary to negotiate society: reading the local newspapers, filling out a job application, or following basic written instructions; even fewer had achieved empowering literacy enabling them to closely read, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate text.

However, they were all college bound — the ultimate goal of our school’s vision statement — clutching knapsacks stuffed with our symbols of academic success: multiple college acceptances, a high school diploma; an official transcript indicating they had passed the MCAS test and had met all graduation requirements; several glowing letters of recommendation from teachers and guidance counselors; and one compelling personal statement, their college essay.

They walked across the stage into a world that was unaware of the truth that scorched my soul — the truth that became clear the first day I entered West Roxbury High School in 1979 (my first assignment as a provisional 12th grade English teacher): the young men and women I was responsible for coaching the last leg of their academic journey could not write a complete sentence, a cohesive paragraph, or a well-developed essay on a given topic. I remember my pain and anger at this revelation and my struggle to reconcile the reality before me with my own high school experience, which had enabled me to negotiate the world of words — oral and written — independently, with relative ease and confidence.

For the ensuing 30-plus years, I witnessed how the system churned out academically unprepared students who lacked the skills needed to negotiate the rigors of serious scholarship, or those skills necessary to move in and up the corporate world.

We instituted tests and assessments, such as the MCAS, that required little exercise in critical thinking, for which most of the students were carefully coached to “pass.’’ Teachers, instructors, and administrators made the test the curriculum, taught to the test, drilled for the test, coached for the test, taught strategies to take the test, and gave generous rewards (pizza parties) for passing the test. Students practiced, studied for, and passed the test — but remained illiterate.

I also bear witness to my students’ ability to acquire a passing grade for mediocre work. A’s and B’s were given simply for passing in assignments (quality not a factor), for behaving well in class, for regular attendance, for completing homework assignments that were given a check mark but never read.

In addition, I have been a victim of the subtle and overt pressure exerted by students, parents, administrators, guidance counselors, coaches, and colleagues to give undeserving students passing grades, especially at graduation time, when the “walk across the stage’’ frenzy is at its peak.

When all else failed, there were strategies for churning out seemingly academically prepared students. These were the ways around the official requirements: loopholes such as MCAS waivers; returning or deftly transferring students to Special Needs Programs — a practice usually initiated by concerned parents who wanted to avoid meeting the regular education requirements or to gain access to “testing accommodations’’; and, Credit Recovery, the computer program that enabled the stragglers, those who were left behind, to catch up to the frontrunners in the Race to the Stage. Students were allowed to take Credit Recovery as a substitute for the course they failed, and by passing with a C, recover their credits.

Nevertheless, this past June, in the final year of my teaching career, I chose to attend my first graduation at the urgings of my students — the ones whose desire to learn, to become better readers and writers, and whose unrelenting hard work earned them a spot on the graduation list — and the admonition of a close friend who warned that my refusal to attend was an act of selfishness, of not thinking about my students who deserved the honor and respect signified by my presence.

At the ceremony I chose to be happy, in spite of the gnawing realization that nothing had changed in 32 years. We had continued playing games with other people’s children.

SOURCE







Out-of-control government schools in Britain

To my everlasting shame, I left a teaching job because I was scared of a child. Although he was only 13, Ralph was a well-built boy who was known for taking an irrational dislike to new teachers. Unfortunately, he displayed a greater antagonism towards me than to any of the other five supply teachers at his West Yorkshire school.

Retreating to the back of the class during lessons, he’d proclaim my failings to the other pupils — ‘Mr Carroll stinks of s***’; ‘Sir’s a virgin’; ‘Don’t listen to him. He’s only a supply teacher — he don’t know nothing.’

If I told him to be quiet, he spoke louder; if I ignored him, he laughed. I wished I could send him out, but the head had made it clear that once the pupils were in a classroom, we had to do our best to keep them there.

So I was left with no choice but to endure Ralph’s taunts as I struggled to stop the other pupils chatting and play-fighting. Until, one day, he walked out of the class during a lesson, closely followed by one of his mates. I found them both sitting in the ­corridor outside. As I approached, Ralph jumped to his feet. A vein throbbed in his temple. ‘I’m gonna break your f***ing jaw, you posh c***!’ he shouted, drawing his arm back to swing at me with a clenched fist.

I reacted on pure instinct, immediately raising my arms up to chest height with my palms facing outward. Submissive. Accommodating. ‘All right, all right, I’m going,’ I said, backing into the classroom, hands still in the same position.

As I sat down on the edge of a table, I realised I was shaking. Outside, I could hear Ralph still ranting about smashing my face.

Not many things intimidate me. I’ve been a teacher for four years — and I’ve been threatened and sworn at more times than I can count. But at that moment, for the first time, I believed a pupil could, and would, carry out his threat.

Just a few months earlier, I’d been living in Somerset, forging a successful career as an English teacher in a good state secondary school. I was 27, and I’d already started my slow climb up the hierarchy. Apart from a constant deluge of paperwork and implausible government targets, I enjoyed my work — yet I was uncomfortably aware that some teachers were less fortunate.

One former colleague had been ‘held hostage’ in front of his class by two boys from Year 11 — what used to be the fifth form — brandishing a very real-looking fake gun. Another had a door slammed shut in her face so violently that the glass window shattered over her. And I’d been shocked to discover that almost half of all England’s newly qualified teachers are now leaving the profession within five years.

What was it really like to teach in a school at the bottom of the league tables, I wondered? Before settling down in a decent job, I decided to find out for myself. I set myself the limit of a year: in that time, I’d travel to areas all over England to find work as a supply teacher. A week after making this decision, I handed in a letter of resignation to my headteacher.

My first job was at a technology ­college which had only just avoided closure after a series of visits from Ofsted education inspectors.

Before entering my new classroom, I peeked through a small window in the door. Students were sprawled across the tables, leaning from the open ­windows and throwing missiles at each other. I took a deep breath and walked in. ‘Morning, Year 10,’ I hollered over the din. ‘Time to sit down, please.’

Chairs were flung about, snatches of insults occasionally broke free of the hubbub, and no one appeared to have heard me. By the time I managed to get them all seated, seven minutes of the lesson had been wasted. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘My name is Mr ­Carroll. Today, we’re going to be working on...."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a heavily made-up girl lean over and snatch something from an adjoining desk. Her neighbour immediately exploded. ‘For f***’s sake, Michaela!’ she yelled. ‘Give it back, you bitch!’

More yelling, more chairs overturned as they fought over the stolen object. I tried to make the girls return to their seats, but they knew as well as I did that I couldn’t force them to obey me.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘We need to... ‘No one’s listening to you,’ one lad told me politely.

So I decided to assign them a task: Write a letter to your headteacher, persuading him to get rid of school uniform. The best approach, I thought, would be to urge the pupils on individually. I started with the front row. ‘Right, girls,’ I said. ‘What I need you to do is....'

‘I’m doing it!’ erupted one of them, Tracey. ‘God! Just f*** off, will you?’ ‘I can’t have you talking to me like that,’ I said calmly. ‘Please go and stand outside, and I’ll be out in a minute to discuss this with you.’ She clapped her hands, hoorayed, rushed out of the door — and vanished.

Soon after that, a fight erupted between two 16-year-olds outside the room, and the entire class rushed out to chant encouragement. Another five minutes were wasted.

Once they were all back inside, a dark-haired lad suddenly leapt across his table and began stabbing another boy in the back of the hand with a straightened paperclip, drawing blood.

Five minutes before the end of the lesson, the class unanimously decided to pack up and walk out, despite my protestations. Total teaching: zero.

At lunchtime, the other teachers and I twice had to surround groups of fighting children in the playground to stop an explosion of violence.

Our only weapons were words. The kids were aware that if we so much as laid a hand on them, we could be reported for assault.

I then moved to a secondary school in Birmingham where I witnessed a pupil throwing a water bomb that exploded on a table. He scarpered, but I managed to catch his companion in crime — a thickly built 16-year-old called Ben. When I confronted him, he thrust his face inches from mine. ‘Who the f*** are you talking to?’ he spat out. We held each other’s stares. A crowd grew around us, avid to see the stand-off between the new teacher and the school bully.

After a few tense moments, Ben gave a mocking chuckle and walked off. As I removed my jacket, I noticed two large sweat stains on my shirt.

The lessons at this school weren’t lessons at all: instead, I spent most of the time removing tables and chairs from the hands of teenagers and placing them back on the floor. Usually, I ‘taught’ from the door rather than the whiteboard — if I didn’t bar the way, the kids simply got up and left.

Assaults were common. One boy strode out of the classroom only to return a minute later with a long plank of wood with which he intended to ‘batter’ a girl. Fortunately, he was physically restrained by another pupil.

There were many evenings when I felt shell-shocked, not so much at the quantity of bad behaviour, which has probably always existed in the worst-performing schools. No, what struck me forcibly as I travelled from one chaotic school to another is that it’s the nature of the bad behaviour which is driving teachers away.

They’re up against behaviour that’s become personal, aggressive and vicious, dealing with outbursts that can’t be glossed over or laughed about later in the staff-room. Yet, at the same time, fewer pupils than ever are being excluded from school. Why? Because the Labour government brought in tough financial penalties for schools that use this much-needed last resort.

Chucking money at failing schools, I soon realised, made very little ­difference. One school near Chesterfield in Derbyshire, for example, was brand new, with state-of-the-art equipment and resources — yet a large percentage of its students were persistently vile to the staff and cruel to each other.

There was one boy who spent an entire computer studies lesson doing a porn search on a school computer until he found one ­picture that had escaped the school’s filter: a close-up of a large pair of breasts. Hitting the full-screen key, he shouted over to a quiet girl, ‘Hey! Bet you wish you had these, ya flat bitch!’

I lost count of the number of times a teenager shouted — no, screamed — in my face.

For me, though, the lowest point of the year was my confrontation with Ralph, the 13-year-old bully who threatened to break my jaw.

I’d had no choice but to back away when he faced me down, but the head’s response was to set up a meeting with Ralph and me. When the boy was asked why he’d threatened me, he said: ‘Because he’s a f***ing div. I hate him.’

He reluctantly promised he’d never threaten an adult again, but he refused to apologise. There was no punishment. As he walked out the door, he called over his shoulder: ‘Posh c***.’

Later that day, I resigned, telling the head that I couldn’t work in an environment where this kind of thing was allowed to happen. The head told me he understood, and offered to write me a reference...

More HERE





BritGov goes to war with the teaching unions: Will allow heads to decide salary levels

Ministers are heading for a showdown with teachers over their pay deal and plans to rank schools by staff qualifications and sickness rates. The Coalition could break up national deals on teachers’ pay, allowing heads to dictate salary levels and severely weakening the power of the unions.

The plans emerged yesterday in a five-year blueprint issued by Education Secretary Michael Gove’s department. Parents will be given a wealth of extra information on school performance, including the standards of education attained by teaching staff and how often they go off sick.

New-look school league tables will tell parents what proportion of staff have only basic qualifications and how many have education degrees, masters or doctorates.

Levels of pay at each school will also be laid bare, but the information on pay and qualifications is likely to be set out in a range of bands so it cannot be pinpointed to individual teachers.

The initiatives will infuriate teaching unions who guard national pay bargaining rights closely and are staunchly opposed to league tables. They say regular negotiations to fix a nationwide level of pay for teachers are essential, but yesterday’s blueprint says head teachers should be handed ‘flexibility’.

The Coalition will ‘develop proposals on pay and conditions’ beginning next spring, with a predicted implementation date of September 2012. Reforms are expected to include a plan to abandon fixed pay scales to allow heads to pay premiums for the best teachers or those in neglected subjects such as science and maths.

In a further move, parents will be given extra information about how their children are doing at school, including new ‘readiness to progress’ measures at five and 11. For five-year-olds, this measure is expected to be linked to their achievements against the so-called ‘nappy curriculum’, which has come under fire for requiring formal learning too soon.

The Coalition has said the framework will be reformed by September 2012 to make it ‘less bureaucratic’.

The assessment for 11-year-olds will show parents whether or not their children have basic command of the three Rs.

Further developments include a new ‘school choice’ measure allowing parents to gauge the extent of choice in their area.

Parents would also be able to find out what proportion of children at prospective schools are entitled to free school meals and have special educational needs.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT union, said: ‘These proposals demonstrate the deep-rooted contempt this Coalition Government has for teachers. ‘The negative attitudes which are clearly underpinning this proposal will leave a nasty taste in the mouth of a hard-working and dedicated profession.’ She added: ‘To focus on sickness absence in this way merely gives the green light to employers to harass and pressurise sick teachers back into work or force them out of the profession.’

Leading businesses yesterday accused schools of creating a generation ‘who struggle to read, write or do basic maths’. Executives from supermarkets and the food industry warned that school leavers had such a poor grasp of the three Rs that they cannot be trusted with basic elements of business. A poll found that 85 per cent of food industry executives said teenagers who came to them for employment lacked basic numeracy.

SOURCE



8 November, 2010

Why rejection is good for you

This is of course completely contrary to the "no child must fail" gospel of most Leftist educators. I certainly had a lot of my academic journal articles rejected during my research career but I would simply revise them if I could see something reasonable in the referee comments and either way just send the articles on to another journal. In the end about 90% of them did get into print. I gather that many academics are so demoralized by a rejection that they never resubmit their writings. Very foolish -- JR

Last week, Anna Wintour, editor of U.S. Vogue, made a startling ­admission. Talking to a group of young, aspiring ­fashion writers at a ­conference in New York, the most powerful woman in the magazine world revealed she was once sacked by Harper’s Bazaar.

What’s more, she said it was one of the best things that had ever happened to her. ‘I worked for American Harper’s Bazaar .... they fired me. I recommend that you all get fired, it’s a great learning experience,’ she said.

It was a surprising confession from the notoriously frosty editor — and a heart­ening piece of career advice to hear at a time when many people are losing their jobs. The quote was picked up on websites and papers around the world, with people adding their own examples of famous ­people who had done well despite, or often because of, early rejection.

J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter after being sacked as a secretary for ­‘day­dreaming’. She then got rejected by not one, not two, but 12 publishers before the chairman of Bloomsbury brought home the Potter manuscript for his ­daughter Alice to read.

Madonna started her musical career after being sacked from Dunkin’ Donuts for squirting sauce at customers. Her first band, The Breakfast Club, was dropped by their record label, so she decided to go solo. The rest, as they say, is history.

Almost every record label in the country turned down The Beatles; Walt Disney was fired because he lacked imagination — the list goes on.

It seems that sometimes being rejected is the best thing that can happen to you in life, a phenomenon that is being dubbed the Power of No. ‘Rejection can concentrate the mind wonderfully,’ says psychotherapist Phillip Hodson, from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. ‘It shows you that the world can’t be taken for granted and that you have to fight for what you want. ‘It can make you more determined to prove your abilities, it sharpens your ­competitiveness and gives you an ­incentive to prove people wrong.’

And not only does rejection help you learn a lesson and quicken your resolve, it’s a sign that you are living life to the full and pushing ­yourself, according to a new game taking the U.S. by storm.

Rejection Therapy was created by Jason Comely to overcome the social anxiety that kept him from having the relationships and success he craved. He challenged himself to spend a year trying to be rejected by someone every single day and as part of the game smiled at strangers, asked women out on dates and arranged work meetings — things he would have been too scared to do before.

After a year, Jason concluded it was harder to be rejected than he expected and that if he hadn’t played the game he would have missed out on countless opportunities to meet new people and expand his life. His therapy card game has become the latest self-help hit in the U.S., encouraging people to open themselves up to possible rejection.

The cards suggest things such as requesting a discount when you buy something, asking for a pay rise or approaching someone to ask if you can join their table in a restaurant. Your day is not successful unless ­someone has rejected you, either by not smiling back or by saying ‘No’.

In her new book Switched On, Sahar Hashemi, the woman who started ­the Coffee Republic chain, agrees with Jason’s philosophy. She argues being rejected is just part and parcel of life and that we have to stop fearing it in order to live up to our potential.

‘I’ve written about notching up the “Nos”, which is the idea that in life you need to expect rejection,’ she says. ‘When we tried to start up Coffee Republic, we were turned down by 19 bank managers. I was told we were a nation of tea drinkers and no one was going to want to spend more than 60p for a cup of coffee or use silly names such as skinny lattes.

‘It was demoralising and there were times I wanted to jump out of the window, but I became more determined. I was brought up to believe that persistence was the key to success and that nothing worth having comes easily.

‘I also received nine rejections from book publishers before I got a deal. The trick is to see rejection as not a big thing, to get used to it, to expect it. It’s vital to ­realise it is par for the course. It simply ­represents one person’s opinion.’

So if rejection is just part of life and can do us good, why does it hurt so much? ‘Rejection can hurt more than the event itself ever justifies, because it brings back all past rejections and makes us feel ­abandoned and ­useless,’ says Phillip Hodson.

‘So when your boss says you’re superfluous to requirements, what you hear is: “You’re useless and nobody will ever want you.” But while rejection at work can hurt, nothing can compare to the physical pain of personal rejection. How can being dumped or ignored at a party be good for us?

Psychotherapist and relationship expert Christine Webber, author of Too Young To Get Old, says: ‘Being rejected on a ­personal level is one of the worst pains people can go through. ‘We all want to be loved and when ­someone withdraws that love you can feel bereft; it is like a bereavement and you go into shock. ‘As hard as it is to believe at the time, you do get over it — and often are stronger for it. A lot of people triumph after a break-up and go on to be much happier.’

What’s more, being rejected is often not as bad as you think and it takes away the fear of future rejection. And no matter how much it hurts, rejection is better than the alternative, which is to try to live ­without putting yourself out there.

‘Fear of rejection is often a person’s number one anxiety, so much so that some people try to guarantee it won’t ever ­happen to them,’ adds Christine. ‘People might try to avoid relationships or professional challenges entirely. This is a solution of a kind, but does tend to lead to an isolated life. Interactions in life are what most people live for.’

‘Rejection can be a sign that there are lessons to be learnt,’ says Phillip. ‘You have to ask why you are being rejected and look honestly at how you can make yourself more attractive to other people. ‘If you’re talking to people at parties about the pain in your leg, you’re going to get rejected.’

Likewise, if you keep getting turned down for jobs, ask yourself if there’s something better you could be doing in your ­interviews, such as the way you dress — but then ask the bigger question of whether you are going for the right kind of job. If the answer is still yes, then keep persevering. If not, try something new.

Before starting her business, Sahar Hashemi was a lawyer who was constantly turned down for jobs. ‘I lost count of how many ­interviews I went to for a job as an in-house lawyer. I kept getting turned down and couldn’t understand why. Now I ­realise it was because I was wholly unsuited to the job,’ she laughs.

And if she had got one of those law jobs, she could well be in a nine-to-five career instead of having built a company with a turnover of £30 million a year. ‘The worst thing you can do is to be too scared to put your head above the parapet and go for what you want,’ she says. ‘That is more depressing than any rejection could ever be.’

SOURCE






Academic progress stagnant despite more teacher hires

Another example of more expenditure not working. It is more realistic education policies that are needed -- e.g. more phonics, more discipline

Nearly 1,000 full-time teaching positions were added at Iowa's public schools during a five-year period when improving students' academic skills was heavily emphasized. Yet students' academic achievement saw little growth during that time, according to data from state reading and math tests and national exams such as the ACT. In addition, enrollment in Iowa's public schools fell by 9,108 students.

State data for the five-year period show increased percentages of students from poor families or with limited English-speaking skills.

Iowa education officials largely attribute the increase in the number of teachers to efforts to bolster student achievement and meet federal mandates. In addition, the state provided more than $60 million to districts for preschool, although the exact number of teachers hired is unknown.

The additional teaching positions have kept students' academic performance from slipping, Iowa educators say. "Those students need more support, so they can get caught up to and perform as well as their peers," said Kevin Fangman, interim director of the Iowa Department of Education. "At the same time, our achievement overall in the past five years has gone up. It hasn't gone up a lot, but it has gone up. And that is a positive for us as a state."

The Des Moines Register analysis looked at changes in the number of full-time and part-time teaching positions in Iowa's public school districts between the 2004-05 school year and 2009-10. Specifically, the analysis found:

• Iowa added 982 full-time teaching positions, bringing the statewide total to 34,643. Statewide, the number of full-time teachers increased 2.9 percent. At the same time, 414 part-time teaching positions were eliminated.

• Four of Iowa's fastest-growing districts - Ankeny, Johnston, Southeast Polk and Waukee - added a combined 451 full-time teaching positions to address an enrollment increase of almost 5,900 students. That amounts to one new teacher for every 13 new students.

• Five of Iowa's eight largest urban districts - Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Sioux City and Waterloo - added a combined 256 full-time teachers. Those districts, whose total enrollments fell by 2,811 students, hired one full-time teacher for every 11 students they lost.

• Davenport was the only urban district in Iowa to cut full-time teaching positions while losing students.

• Dubuque and Iowa City, the state's other two largest districts, gained a combined 1,232 students, a 6 percent increase. In response, the districts added 194 full-time teaching positions.

• As enrollments fell in Iowa's small, rural districts, cuts in teaching positions were minimal. For example, the Seymour school district lost 104 students, or 31 percent of its enrollment, and cut three of 29 full-time teaching positions. However, those districts have less wiggle room to make reductions because they have to meet state requirements on course offerings and teacher certification.

As the number of teaching positions increased in Iowa, student achievement stayed stagnant. A quarter of Iowa's 1,427 public schools last school year fell short of federal student achievement goals on reading and math tests. In addition, a record 356 schools landed on the state's "in need of assistance" list.

The percentage of fourth-graders at grade level in state math and reading tests declined almost 1 percentage point between 2004-05 and 2009-10, while 11th-graders lost the same amount of ground in math. About 80 percent of fourth- and 11th-grade students performed at grade level. Eleventh-graders saw a slight improvement in reading, with the percentage at grade level increasing nearly 3 points to 79 percent.

Eighth-graders made gains of about 2 percentage points in reading and math. Nearly 74 percent performed at grade level in reading in 2009-10; 76 percent were at trade level in math. In addition, 30 percent of Iowa high school students who took the ACT met the benchmark scores to show they were prepared to pass college classes. The average composite score for the Class of 2010 was 22.2, down from 22.4 the previous year.

High school graduation rates were also stagnant with nearly 87.2 percent of the class of 2009 graduating; 88.8 percent from the class of 2008 graduated. "(Schools) haven't seen the kinds of improvements we had all hoped for," said Marguerite Roza, senior economic and data adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

SOURCE






Australia: Thou shall not teach humanism -- says Victorian Labor party government

EDUCATION Minister Bronwyn Pike has ducked a potential backlash from the powerful Christian lobby by rejecting a proposal to allow humanism to be taught in primary schools during time allocated for religious education.

The Humanist Society of Victoria, which wants to teach an ethics-based curriculum, is planning a legal challenge, saying that the current system indirectly discriminates against non-religious children, causing "hurt, humiliation and pain and suffering" to them when they opt out of religious education classes.

Children in two-thirds of Victorian state primary schools are taught Christian scripture by volunteers, even though the Education Act says state schools must be secular and "not promote any particular religious practice, denomination or sect".

Parents must sign forms if they want their children to be excluded from "special religious instruction" classes, 96 per cent of which teach Christianity, with the remaining 4 per cent covered by the Jewish, Buddhist and Baha'i faiths.

Children who do not attend these sessions are not allowed to be taught anything their classmates might miss out on during this time, so they are often put in another room where they read or play on computers.

The Education Act has a special exemption from its secular roots to allow religious education.

But Ms Pike skewered an attempt last year by the Humanist Society of Victoria to have its "humanist applied ethics" curriculum approved for teaching during the religion period. The course, designed to be taught from prep to year 6, covered subjects such as the art of living, the environment, philosophy, science and world citizenship.

Ms Pike declared that humanism's "world-view philosophy [sic] cannot be defined as a religion", and that the Humanist Society was "not registered as a religious organisation" and therefore could not "provide instruction in government schools". There is, however, no official registration of religions in Australia.

The man responsible for accrediting non-Christian religious teachers, RMIT professor Desmond Cahill, head of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, said, "We'd consider humanism as a religion since it has an ethical standpoint."

Ms Pike refused to answer The Sunday Age's questions about whether she had been targeted by the Christian lobby.

The Greens candidate in Ms Pike's threatened seat of Melbourne, Brian Walters, told The Sunday Age governments should not use their power to "privilege or promote any one religion or non-religion in our schools" and said children should not be segregated on the basis of faith.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has obtained legal advice that children who are excluded from scripture classes are being indirectly discriminated against.

Religious education arguably breaches equal opportunity law, the advice says, and causes "hurt, humiliation and pain and suffering" to children who opt out as they are "isolated from the rest of the class … with little to do". It suggests aggrieved parents take action in the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and possibly VCAT.

Humanist Society of Victoria president Stephen Stuart said the society was collecting testimony from parents in an attempt to mount a "convincing class action with hundreds of names".

SOURCE



7 November, 2010

British schools regulator praises Islamic schools which oppose Western lifestyle

And they're not backing down

Ofsted and the Charity Commission are today accused of "whitewashing" hardline Islamic schools which are helping to radicalise a new generation of young British Muslims. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that the education watchdog has published positive reports praising Muslim schools for their contribution to community cohesion — even in the case of a school which openly states that Muslims “oppose the lifestyle of the West”.

The Ofsted inspector responsible for many of the reports, Michele Messaoudi, has been accused of having links to radical Islamist organisations. This newspaper can reveal that another recent Ofsted inspector, Akram Khan-Cheema, is the chief executive of a radical Muslim educational foundation, IBERR.

Its website describes Islamic schools as “one of the most important factors which protect Muslim children from the onslaught of Euro-centrism, homosexuality, racism, and secular traditions”.

Ofsted has also passed the inspection of dozens of Muslim schools to a new private “faith schools watchdog”, the Bridge Schools Inspectorate, which is co-controlled by Islamic schools’ own lobbying and trade body, the Association of Muslim Schools. The Bridge Schools Inspectorate allows Muslim head teachers to inspect each other’s schools.

Among the schools directly inspected by Ofsted was the Madani Girls’ School, a private Islamic school in London’s East End. Its Ofsted report, written by Mrs Messaoudi, said it made pupils “aware of their future role as proactive young British Muslim women” and left them “well-prepared for life in a multicultural society”.

However, the Madani Girls’ School’s own website openly states: “If we oppose the lifestyle of the West, then it does not seem sensible that the teachers and the system which represents that lifestyle should educate our children.” It says that under western education “our children will distance themselves from Islam until there is nothing left but their beautiful names”.

Last month, this newspaper revealed how girls at the school were being forced to wear the Islamic veil, a fact that was not mentioned in its 2008 Ofsted report. The Madani School declined to comment last night.

Ofsted also inspected the Tawhid Boys’ School in Hackney, north London. Its Ofsted report, written by Mrs Messaoudi, said the curriculum was “good … broad and balanced in Key Stages 2 and 3”. However, the school’s prospectus says that the curriculum is kept strictly “within the bounds of Sharia [Islamic law].” Its art syllabus bans pupils from drawing human beings, animals and objects that Islam deems “unlawful”. The school did not return calls.

Mrs Messaoudi also wrote the Ofsted report cited by Ed Balls, the then schools secretary, as “clearing” schools run by supporters of the racist, extremist sect Hizb ut Tahrir. The schools, the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation establishments in Haringey, north London, and Slough, Berks, received more than £113,000 of public funding and became the subject of national controversy after being exposed in The Sunday Telegraph.

One of the Foundation’s trustees, Farah Ahmed, who is also headmistress of the Slough school, wrote a chapter in a Hizb ut Tahrir pamphlet attacking the National Curriculum for its “systematic indoctrination” of Muslim children “to build model British citizens”. She criticised “attempts to integrate Muslim children” into British society as an effort “to produce new generations that reject Islam”.

She described English as “one of the most damaging subjects” a school can teach and attacked fairy tales, saying that these “reflect secular and immoral beliefs that contradict the viewpoint of Islam”. She also attacked the “obvious dangers” of Shakespeare, including “Romeo and Juliet, which advocates disobeying parents and premarital relations”. Mrs Messaoudi’s Ofsted report on the Haringey school said it was “satisfactory.”

However, an earlier Ofsted report by a different inspector, only seven months before, had described the school as “inadequate” and had said “more could be done to promote cultural tolerance and harmony”.

The Charity Commission also investigated the school after The Sunday Telegraph articles. It ruled that there were no concerns over the public funding, saying that since the main Hizb ut Tahrir trustee, Yusra Hamilton, had resigned, it was “not necessary for the commission to examine further the impact of her being a trustee”.

However, Mrs Hamilton only resigned after being exposed in this newspaper, and was a trustee of the schools at the time the public money was paid. She continues to work with children as a volunteer at the Haringey school.

Mrs Ahmed has confirmed that she was a member of Hizb ut Tahrir, and refused to deny that she still shared its views.

“This report is deeply intellectually dishonest,” said Hannah Stuart, of the Centre for Social Cohesion think-tank, which has closely investigated Hizb ut Tahrir. “You can clearly see that they knew exactly what went on, yet bent over backwards to cover their own backs.”

The Charity Commission said last night that it had found “no evidence that Hizb ut-Tahrir ideology was being taught at or brought into the school”.

Mrs Messaoudi has written a book published by the Islamic Foundation, Britain’s foremost centre of Islamist intellectual thought.

According to the website of the hardline Islamist “Global Peace and Unity” (GPU) conference, both she and Mr Khan-Cheema were judges for its education awards held last week. GPU is organised by the Islam Channel, a digital TV station which hosts a number of fundamentalist and extremist presenters. A number of extremists spoke at the GPU event, though moderates also appeared, and items glorifying terrorism were on open sale there. Mrs Messaoudi was also listed as a judge for the 2008 GPU awards.

Mrs Messaoudi declined to comment last night. However, Ofsted, speaking on behalf of Mrs Messaoudi and Mr Khan-Cheema, said they were both “experienced professionals and we have no reason to doubt their ability in conducting inspections”.

It said Mrs Messaoudi’s clearing of the Shakhsiyah school was in a report “specifically designed as a follow-up to ensure that the school had undertaken the improvements required as a result of our first inspection”.

Nord Anglia Education, which employed Mr Khan-Cheema on contract to Ofsted, declined to comment.

Sources said Mrs Messaoudi had criticised some Muslim schools for Ofsted and her judgments of the Madani School were not wholly uncritical. Ofsted said its inspections generally were “thorough, rigorous and methodical”.

Many Muslim schools, however, are not inspected by Ofsted at all. Within the past two years, the watchdog has passed the scrutiny of many private “faith” schools to the Bridge Schools Inspectorate, a joint venture between the Christian Schools’ Trust and the Association of Muslim Schools.

Unlike “mainline” Ofsted inspections, which are carried out entirely by professional inspectors, BSI inspections of Muslim schools are often done by a team of three which always includes one head teacher of another Muslim school.

The BSI report into Bury Park Educational Institute, a mixed but gender-segregated Muslim secondary in Luton, claims that “the quality of education is good” even though the report itself admits that girls at the school get less teaching than boys.

“Some aspects of National Curriculum subjects are in a few respects currently less for the girls than for the boys,” it says, and there is not yet “full, equal access to National Curriculum subjects” between girls and boys.

Girls, says the report, are sometimes denied the opportunity for PE, “which they say they miss”. There is no suggestion that Bury Park teaches separatist views or opposition to British society.

One of the BSI inspectors who wrote the report into Bury Park, Ibrahim Hewitt, is chairman of the controversial charity Interpal, which is banned in the United States having been accused of supporting the terrorist group Hamas.

Interpal insists that it does not support Hamas and the Charity Commission has cleared Interpal. Mr Hewitt is also a headmaster of a Muslim school in Leicester and a senior member of the ruling “shura”, or executive committee, of the Association of Muslim Schools.

Mohammed Mukadam, a spokesman for BSI and also chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools, said: “All our inspections are led by former HMIs [professional inspectors]. "The conflict of interest argument would be valid if our head teachers were leading the inspections, but there is no conflict of interest. Our schools tell us that BSI inspections are much more rigorous than Ofsted’s.”

On behalf of the AMS, he admitted: “There are some schools which are actively opposed to certain British values. But a new generation of schools is coming in with a better understanding of the British context.”

Ms Stuart, of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “A whole generation is being brought up to at the very least suspect, and perhaps even despise, the society they will have to live in. This is deeply worrying for the future of community cohesion. “By whitewashing these schools, Ofsted and the Charity Commission are being negligent in their responsibility to protect children in their formative years.”

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Students at a US university are being offered a course in the pop singer Lady Gaga‏

Mathieu Deflem, a sociology professor at the University of South Carolina, is adding a course title "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame".

The synopsis for the course reads: "The central objective is to unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga".

Prof Deflem, 48, who has met the singer, real name Stefani Germanotta, on a number of occasions, said: "We're going to look at Lady Gaga as a social event. Other people say that Gaga's the new Madonna. I see it more like there's people who have this very individual thing. Frank Zappa had it. Prince had it. Miles Davis had it. Jimi Hendrix had it. And Lady Gaga has it."

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Australia: Single-sex classes gain momentum as schools opt to segregate

EDUCATION experts say the trend of single-sex classrooms for young students is gaining momentum and works, but the State Government has left the matter up to principals as the debate heats up in primary schools.

Parents at Milton State School are rallying against a proposal to segregate students into gender-specific classes next year – a program that has been on trial in other state schools for some time.

But the State Government keeps no centralised data as to how many schools across the state are trialling the program, nor its success in those schools.

Opposition education spokesman Bruce Flegg yesterday called on the Government to monitor the scheme more closely and move away from such an "ad hoc" approach.

Education Queensland defended the dearth of centralised data, saying decisions about same-sex classes were best made at a local level.

Single-sex classes are being run at Miami State School on the Gold Coast, Earnshaw State College at Banyo and Victoria Point State School. In all of these schools, parents have the option to keep children in mixed-gender classes.

Victoria Point State School has had single-sex classes for about 10 years. Its principal, Lex Bowden, said same-sex classes consistently achieved better academically. "We also get (fewer) problems with behaviour," he said.

Griffith University education expert Alan Edwards said single-sex classrooms had gained in popularity recently across Australia and the US. "The theory about boys and girls learning differently has gained momentum," he said. He said feedback, generally, was positive.

Miami State School has also had boys-only classes for three years. Next year, principal Anthony Green is considering adding a 4/5 boys-only class.

SOURCE



6 November, 2010

SCOTUS debates tax credit for religious schools

Deciphering the constitutional principle that government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’’ is almost always a guarantee of a divided Supreme Court.

And so it was again yesterday as the justices reviewed an Arizona program that lets taxpayers send part of their state taxes to organizations that provide millions of dollars in scholarships to private religious schools.

The court’s liberal members sharply questioned whether the program is just a way for the state to provide tax money to religious schools and noted that it almost certainly would be unconstitutional if the contributions came directly from the state.

Conservatives indicated that the program offers just a different version of the widely accepted practice of providing tax breaks for people who make charitable contributions.

The Obama administration weighed in on the side of Arizona and argued that taxpayers challenging the program do not have the right to bring the lawsuit. So absolute was the government on the latter point that it seemed to take the nation’s former top appellate lawyer — now Justice Elena Kagan — by surprise.

Kagan told her former deputy, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, that he was advancing a “silly and fictional’’ interpretation of the court’s past decisions on what taxpayers must prove before they can challenge a government spending decision.

For 13 years, Arizona has allowed residents to send up to $500 of what they owe the state in income taxes — $1,000 for a married couple — to a private “student tuition organization.’’

The organizations, which get about $55 million a year, provide scholarships to private schools. The organizations are allowed to limit scholarships to students at private religious schools.

Some taxpayers sued, saying the structure effectively forces parents who want the scholarships to send their children to religious schools.

Katyal told the justices that lower courts should not have let the taxpayer suit go forward. Because they did not participate in the program, he said, “not a cent, not a fraction of a cent’’ of their money went into any religious school’s coffers.

Taxpayers generally are not allowed to sue over government spending. But the court in Flast vs. Cohen in 1968 made an exception for spending alleged to violate the Establishment Clause. “Isn’t the underlying premise of Flast vs. Cohen that the Establishment Clause will be unenforceable unless we recognize taxpayer standing?’’ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked.

Katyal said no, adding that he does not think any taxpayer had the right to challenge the Arizona program. But whether the money involved is even state money is the heart of the argument.

Paul Bender, who represented residents challenging the program, said it is different from a more traditional charitable donation, where the donor receives a tax deduction. “When a taxpayer makes a charitable deduction, that charitable deduction is made from the taxpayer’s money,’’ he said. But the money at stake here is raised by the state income tax and owed to the state.

Some justices said they were not sure about such a distinction. “I must say, I have some difficulty that any money that the government doesn’t take from me is still the government’s money,’’ Justice Anthony Kennedy said.

The court already has ruled that parents may use government vouchers to send children to private secular and religious schools, and some conservative justices argued that Arizona’s program is no different.

But Bender said the difference is that with vouchers, the state gives money to parents, and they make the choice. In Arizona, he said, the money goes to the tuition organizations, some of which make it available to parents only if they send their children to religious schools.

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Dumbing down in Arizona

It's all over but the post-mortems as the politicos and pundits do their endless thing after every election, analyzing and re-analyzing the entrails to explain the results and predict the future.

Despite all the hoopla as the returns poured in, a far more important, and formative, election was held here in Arkansas weeks ago -- part of a disturbing national trend. It took place on Thursday, October 14, on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Last week's midterms may determine the country's course for the next a couple of years, but this vote could shape a couple of generations.

Because in this referendum, the faculty of the university's college of arts and sciences decided to hollow out its curriculum. By a 2-to-1 vote -- 75 to 37 -- the faculty agreed with the administration to cut the core requirements for undergraduate students from 66 credit hours to only 35, or just about in half.

Why? To assure that the university will grant more degrees. Never mind whether the degree will be worth as much in the future; what counts is the degree itself, the paper credential, the sheer number of college graduates in the state, not how well they're educated. A degree is a degree, right? Who'll know the difference?

What matters isn't the quality of the education a student may receive, but the number of diplomas granted. Because the more degrees per capita, the more economic development. The statistics and graphs and pie charts and PowerPoints all say so. The more degrees, the higher per capita income. Correlation is causation!

So let's churn out more degrees and the state will prosper. This theory is also known as ignorance is bliss. There are few things more frightening, as Goethe noted, than ignorance in action. Unless it is assuring that future generations will be more ignorant still.

The news story that reported the faculty's vote noted that the university's core curriculum "is known for being thorough and extensive." Make that was known. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni may have put the University of Arkansas on its A list when it came to course requirements, along with schools like Baylor, the University of Texas and the City University of New York.

To the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Fayetteville, William Schwab, the old curriculum was "bloated." And had to be cut down to size.

So now, for example, physics and biology majors may not need to have a foreign language. Why, sure. Why should students in the sciences need a foreign language any more than students in the humanities -- literature, say, or history -- need to know anything about biology?

Under the new regime, each department can designate its own required courses. The common core of courses that all students of the arts and sciences at the university once shared will be split up and dealt out among the different departments, like the spoils of war.

Jose Ortega y Gasset saw all this coming long ago -- in "The Revolt of the Masses" (1930) -- when he called it "the barbarism of specialization." The phenomenon will be well known to anyone who was ever buttonholed by some specialist so well trained in his own field that he considers his ideas about all other subjects authoritative. For example, the financier who knows how the country should be run, the politician who considers himself an intellectual, the doctor who knows everything about everything. ... The barbarian as specialist is a familiar enough type. They're everywhere.

To quote Ortega, whose words from the last century still resound so powerfully in ours, if only anyone were listening:

"The specialist 'knows' very well his own tiny corner of the universe; he is radically ignorant of all the rest. ... For previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought under either of those two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter his specialty; but neither is he ignorant because he is a 'scientist,' and 'knows' very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line. And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitudes of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency...."

No one is more of a specialist today than the educantist who is bent on reducing the widest spheres of knowledge to his own narrow limits and obscure vocabulary. The barbarians of specialization are no longer at the gates; they're in the citadel. They're even in charge of administering it. And their will must not be defied. To quote the dean's statement after the faculty vote: "It's behind us now. We can move forward in creating a new core." No doubt a specialized one.

Yet there were members of the faculty who stood fast in defense of the old requirements. The university's mathematics department passed a resolution against this mutilation of the university's core requirements. And then there were the valiant Thirty-Seven who voted against it at this meeting of the faculty. One thinks of Cavafy's poem:

Honor to those who in their lives are committed and guard their Thermopylae. Never stirring from duty; just and upright in all their deeds, but with pity and compassion, too . . . always speaking the truth, but without rancor for those who lie. And they merit greater honor when they foresee (as many do foresee) that Ephialtes will finally appear, and in the end the Medes will go through.

Despite those who defended their academic honor to the end, the barbarians have broken through once more, as they have again and again at universities across the country that have chosen to engage not in education but deconstruction, and for whom the old standards with their height and breadth are but outdated impediments.

For these bureaucrats, the task of the new, improved university is to issue more and more degrees, and so produce more and more ranks of learned ignoramuses, certified specialists in their own tiny, cramped, isolated, thought-proof compartments, certain that they know best. If you seek them, just look in the administrative offices.

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British schools given the right to fire anti-immigration teachers

Headteachers will be given new powers to sack teachers who are members of the BNP or other 'extremist' groups. The previous government ruled out banning BNP members from teaching after an independent inquiry decided it would be 'disproportionate'.

But Michael Gove, the education secretary, said he couldn't see how membership of the far-right party 'can co-exist with shaping young minds'. His decision to overturn the existing rules follows the case of a BNP activist who used a school laptop to post comments describing some immigrants as 'filth'.

Adam Walker, a teacher at a school in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, wrote on an online forum that Britain was a 'dumping ground for the filth of the third world'. But he was cleared of racial and religious intolerance by a disciplinary panel in June.

Mr Gove told The Guardian: 'I don't believe that membership of the BNP is compatible with being a teacher. 'One of the things I plan to do is to allow headteachers and governing bodies the power and confidence to be able to dismiss teachers engaging in extremist activity. 'I would extend that to membership of other groups which have an extremist tenor.'

The move was welcomed by the NASUWT teaching union. General Secrertary Chris Keates said: 'I hope this is something Michael Gove takes forward as quickly as possible. 'It is an important part of safeguarding the interests of young people.'

SOURCE



5 November, 2010

Arizona Civil Rights Initiative Passes; NAS Hails Victory

Yesterday Arizonans approved a ballot initiative that prohibits racial preferences in the state’s public institutions, including public colleges and universities. The Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (AzCRI), known as Proposition 107, passed with 60% of the vote.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) counts the passage of Proposition 107 as a significant victory in the fight for merit-based higher education.

“Once again,” noted Stephen H. Balch, chairman of the NAS, “the American people have demonstrated they understand that basic fairness and good education require individuals to be treated as individuals rather than as the representatives of artificially defined identity groups. Higher education in Arizona will be strengthened through the restoration of this principle.”

Earlier this year, NAS submitted an official argument in favor of Prop. 107 which all Arizona citizens received.

The argument called on voters to reaffirm the “basic ideal” that all men are created equal, pointing out that “It is as students that our young men and women come to full knowledge of America’s heritage of rights and freedoms. By making higher education a color- and gender-coded experience, this comprehension is undermined.”

Proposition 107 is the latest among similar initiatives which have already been approved in California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska.

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Failing British schools to be turned into academies (charters) under new government plans aimed at tackling low attainment

Thousands of under-performing schools will be forcibly converted into independent academies in a crackdown unveiled by ministers today. Education Secretary Michael Gove urged town halls to relinquish control of persistently weak schools and hand them over to outside sponsors. Councils should identify hitlists of the worst schools in their area where 'students have been poorly served for years', he said.

If authorities fail to act, Mr Gove will use new powers to impose academy status on under-achieving schools himself.

In a speech to council chiefs today, Mr Gove revealed that schools judged 'satisfactory' by education watchdog Ofsted were in danger of being targeted - as well as those deemed to be failing. Thousands of primary and secondary schools could eventually be included in the crackdown.

The measures are certain to infuriate classroom unions who see the academies programme as an assault on state education.

The initiative, spelled out at a conference in Manchester, marks a dramatic acceleration of Mr Gove's academies revolution. The part-private schools, introduced by Labour and embraced by the Tories, are funded by the state but operate outside council control.

They are run by sponsors - private companies, church groups, charities, universities or philanthropists - who are granted powers to set the schools' curriculum, staff pay and academic calendar.

Mr Gove has already allowed schools judged 'outstanding' by Ofsted to convert into academies and benefit from the greater freedoms. They effectively sponsor themselves. And the Education Secretary has signalled that he wants all schools to eventually become academies, either through choice or coercion. Some 350 are already open in England.

Speaking to delegates at the National Conference of Directors of Children's and Adult Services in Manchester, Mr Gove said: 'I would like local authorities to consider more schools for academy status where both attainment and pupil progression are low and where schools lack the capacity to improve themselves.'

Councils should also target schools which Ofsted has branded inadequate or merely satisfactory, Mr Gove said. Ofsted considers 29 per cent of primaries to be satisfactory and three per cent inadequate, and 31 per cent of secondaries to be satisfactory, with six per cent inadequate. It means nearly a third of England's 20,000 schools are judged not to be providing a 'good' education.

Officials stressed yesterday the crackdown would only target satisfactory schools if their leadership was judged to be weak or they showed little capacity to improve.

A White Paper due to be published later this month will set out the measures that will be used to assess whether a school is under-performing. But Mr Gove said: 'These should be regarded as guidelines, not rigid criteria. 'Where schools fall outside these benchmarks but local authorities consider that schools would still benefit from the involvement of sponsors I would encourage local authorities to make proposals for the conversion of those schools [into academies].' Labour had defined under-performance too narrowly, according to Mr Gove.

The previous Government ran a similar scheme with intervention targeted at secondary schools where fewer than 30 per cent of pupils gained five A* to C grades at GCSE, including the three Rs.

Mr Gove said primary schools should also be involved and added: 'Too many under-performing schools that were above the minimum threshold we inherited have not received sufficient attention and support.' Some achieved apparently respectable results but were failing to do well enough given the ability of their pupils, he warned.

Mr Gove said he would use his own powers to force academy status on weak schools if local authorities fail to intervene. Under the Coalition's Academies Act, he can make an Academy Order to force a failing school to become an academy under new leadership.

'I will be ready to use this power in the months ahead where I judge that academy status is in the best interests of an eligible school and its pupils, and where it has not been possible to reach agreement on a way ahead with the local authority or the school or both,' he told the conference.

'Of course, I would hope that I do not need to use these powers extensively as I fully expect local authorities to use their own extensive intervention powers to bring about change in poorly performing schools that are failing to improve.'

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British middle class to be charged much more for their university degrees

Given the horror figures below, many families might seek loans from a non-government source. "Only dummies need apply" seems to be the weird message

The middle classes on moderate incomes will be hardest hit by the most radical shake-up of university funding for a generation, ministers admitted. Overall, three out of four university leavers will be worse off than at present following the move to allow institutions to charge up to £9,000 a year for courses.

Successful graduates will be penalised most by the introduction of variable interest rates on the loans they take out to pay the fees. A university leaver with debts of £30,000 and an annual salary of £45,000 will have to pay back about £2,160 a year for about 30 years. Someone earning £25,000 will have to pay £360 a year for the same debts because a lower interest rate will be applied.

"Middle earning graduates will pay a lot more for their degrees over their lifetimes, and that will worry people," said Ian Mulheirn of the Social Market Foundation think tank. "They will face significant debt for the first time."

The Government yesterday confirmed that middle earners would pay the price for a series of "progressive" measures to help youngsters from deprived backgrounds. To avert a rebellion by Liberal Democrat ministers over the rise in university fees, the Coalition agreed to pay for thousands of scholarships and bursaries for pupils from deprived backgrounds.

Under the new rules, maintenance grants will be available for students from low and middle-income families. For those with a household income of less than £25,000, the grant will be £3,250 a year. Smaller grants will be paid up to an income of £42,600, after which only loans will be available.

While well-off parents will be able to protect their children by paying fees up front, middle income families will suffer, according to the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies. "It is hard to justify why students from households with incomes of £42,600 should face larger debts than all other students doing similar priced courses," said the IFS. Student groups have estimated that some graduates could be left with debts of up to £70,000 once loans for living costs are taken into account.

David Willetts, the Universities Minister, said: "The Government is committed to the progressive nature of the repayment system. "Our student support system is currently one of the most generous in the world. We will make it more progressive."

But critics pointed out that middle earners would pay the price for these "progressive" measures. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, admitted that the Government would not stop millionaire parents from protecting their children from paying off student loans altogether.

He even suggested that poorer students could "work on a building site for a year" in order to raise the funds to pay off their student loans up front. "In a free society you can't force people to take out a loan," he added.

Gareth Thomas, the shadow universities minister, asked Mr Willetts why the children of "teachers, police officers and engineers" were being hit when the wealthy could afford to pay off their fees up front.

"Does he recognise how unfair the system will seem to those on middle incomes who work just as hard to get their children to university," he said. "Isn't the real truth a tragedy for a whole generation of young people?"

The University and College Union, which represents lecturers, said that graduates on the national average salary would end up with tax bills nearly 20 per cent higher than those who did not go to university.

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said: "The Coalition is introducing a learning tax that will saddle the next generation of professionals with years of lost revenue. The message this sends is that in the UK we now penalise aspiration rather than encourage it.

"Mums and dads who just want their children to have better opportunities than they did will see this for what it is – a stealth tax on learning and aspiration.”

Legislation will be put before Parliament within weeks to raise the top amount which universities can charge for tuition fees from its current level of £3,290.

In his recent review of higher education funding, Lord Browne of Madingley, the former head of BP, suggested that universities should be permitted to charge unlimited fees.

But the Government rejected this in favour of allowing universities to set a new top limit of £6,000, with elite institutions allowed to charge up to £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”.

Following the announcement in last month’s spending review that higher education funding would be cut by nearly £3billion a year, university chiefs said that they would be put out of business unless they charge at least £7,000.

SOURCE



4 November, 2010

Quinnipiac U thinks it can fight racism by being racist

Under the false flag of good intentions, Leftists encourage racism -- as they always have done. Even Karl Marx was a virulent racist

An Argus volunteer sent me an article from the student newspaper The Quinnipiac Chronicle, “Lahey Wants Black Diversity Director.” The article refers to Quinnipiac University President John Lahey and describes a meeting two weeks ago of the Student Government Association in which Lahey outlined his preferences for a new hire.

According to the Chronicle, Lahey said this person should be a “high quality African-American.” Matt Busekroos, who wrote the article, told me he attended the meeting in person and recorded, but did not transcribe, what was said.

Busekroos quotes Lahey saying, “We could fill that position tomorrow if we wanted to but we very much want, now that we have a Hispanic in the case of the chief diversity officer, an African-American for that particular position.”

And, “Even though there are more diverse, different groups that the [associate director of student diversity programming] works with, we think having that person be an African-American is very important to concluding that search.”

The position is for an “associate director of student diversity programming.” The title alone should give us pause. Student diversity programming? Besides sounding like a creepy effort to “program” students, it’s a title that needs some explaining. The responsibilities of the position are listed on the university’s website:

* Provides leadership and direction in the development, coordination, and support of student programs that promote diversity and cultural awareness

* Advise the Campus Multicultural Programming Board

* Liaison to campus multicultural student organizations

* Coordinate the ALANA-I mentor program

* Serve as a resource for all students and staff in the area of diversity awareness

ALANA-I stands for Asian, Latino, African, Native American, and international, and the mentor program is supposed to help “new students of color and international students” adapt to college life. No rationale is provided for segmenting minority students off into their own programs, nor is it clear why the associate director of student diversity programming could not be Asian, Native American, or of European origin. Latino, it appears, is already covered by Diane Ariza who was recently hired as the chief diversity officer.

For many college administrators, the ideal university is a giant support system for the chief diversity officer (see “What Does a Chief Diversity Officer Actually Do?”), and this position is intended to augment that network. Is an associate director of student diversity programming really necessary? Is funding that position a good investment of families’ tuition dollars and donors’ gifts? From the job description, it appears to be one of those posts used to extend the politically correct kingdom and to divvy students up by identity group.

I know of one woman (another Argus volunteer) at a large university in the South who has been pigeonholed into “diversity” roles specifically because of her race. She sought to escape the toxic environment of racial labeling by changing departments, but was told by her supervisor that there would be some difficulty “finding a black woman to replace you.” She recalled, “There I was,just one person sitting there, but she was seeing a group.” That’s the mistake Quinnipiac is making—failing to see the individual person.

University officials did not deny the declarations by President Lahey quoted in the Chronicle, and Vice President for Public Affairs Lynn Bushnell emailed me the same “diversity” boilerplate she sent Busekroos. She wrote, “We are taking steps to increase diversity among the staff, particularly at the most senior levels. There are several recently created positions that should enable us to make further strides in this area.”

Quinnipiac, it appears, has shamelessly built racial preferences into its hiring. And it may not be just for this position. The Chronicle suggests that Ariza may have been selected because she is Hispanic: “On Tuesday, Ariza told the Chronicle she wants to believe she was hired ‘not because I was Latina, but that I was the most skilled.’ ‘And if I happen to be Latina,’ she said, ‘then good for everybody.’”

But racial preferences aren’t good for everybody. What if the candidate happens to be white? Clearly President Lahey is holding out, waiting to fill the position with a person of a particular race, and refusing to consider others.

This stands in open violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. What emboldened the president of a prestigious university to flagrantly flout the law?

We saw a similar case of indiscretion a few weeks ago at Brooklyn College, where a faculty member urged other faculty by email to “correct the lily-white imbalances” on the dean’s search committees. In that case, the faculty member let her guard down because she felt safe to do so—because academe has incubated an atmosphere in which on-the-sly racial preferences and quiet evasions of the law have become comfortable. That’s why President Lahey expected a warm reception to his endeavors to hire only an African-American, and it’s why Vice President Bushnell backed him up.

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Some efforts being made to ensure that teachers can teach

Standing at the edge of a pond surrounded by her class of fourth-graders, Jasmine Zeppa filled a bucket with brown water and lectured her pupils on the science of observing and recording data. Many of the children seemed more interested in nearby geese, a passing jogger and the crunchy leaves underfoot.

Zeppa's own professor from St. Catherine University stood nearby and recorded video of it all.

"I think it went as well as it possibly could have, given her experience," the professor, Susan Gibbs Goetz, said. Her snap review: The 25-year-old Zeppa could have done a better job holding the students' attention, but did well building on past lessons.

Zeppa is among the first class of aspiring teachers who are getting ready for new, more demanding requirements to receive their teacher license. A new licensing system is being tested in 19 states that includes filming student teachers in their classroom and evaluating the video, also candidates must show they can prepare a lesson, tailor it to different levels of students and present it effectively.

Most states only require that would-be teachers pass their class work and a written test. Supporters of the new system say the Teacher Performance Assessment program is a significant improvement, while others are a little more cautious in their praise, warning that it's not guaranteed it will lead to more successful teachers.

The assessments also place responsibility for grading the would-be teachers with teams of outside evaluators who have no stake in the result. Currently, the teachers-in-training are evaluated by their colleges, which want their students to get their teaching licenses.

"It's a big shift that the whole country is going through," said Misty Sato, a University of Minnesota education professor who is helping adapt the assessments for Minnesota. "It's going from 'What has your candidate experienced?' to what your candidate can do."

Minnesota is scheduled to be the first state to adopt the new system when it implements it in 2012. Four other states —Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington — plan to implement it within five years. Fourteen more states are running pilots.

The teacher assessment program is a joint project by a consortium made up of Stanford University, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Sharon P. Robinson, president of the AACTE, an umbrella group for schools that specialize in training teachers, said the assessment will mean better teachers — and ultimately more successful students.

The assessment was developed at Stanford's Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity. Ray Pecheone, the center's executive director, said more than 12,000 teaching candidates have gone through it in four years of testing in California.

California and Arizona are the only states that currently require performance testing to license teachers. Two of California's three different performance tests use video review. The third California test and the one in Arizona requires evaluators to sit in the classrooms and observe the teachers-in-training.

Pecheone said once more states adopt the program the consortium plans to track the performance of teachers who did well on the assessment to see if their students performed better on standardized tests than those of other teachers. He said the specifics of the follow-up study haven't been decided, but he said it would make extensive use of sampling.

Karen Balmer, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Teaching, said the assessments will mean more accountability for teaching colleges. For the first time, she said, her agency will have independent data that shows how well those schools are preparing students. Those that consistently produce low-performing graduates could be ordered by the state to improve their programs.

Balmer said the student teachers will pay some of the cost of the new program — probably around the $70 they now pay for the written test in Minnesota. At least initially, students will take both tests, but Balmer said the state may consider dropping the written test in the future.

Students that bomb the assessments would likely be required to retake them. If they do not test again, some teachers could still get a Minnesota teaching license if their college determines there were special circumstances — such as if the student was ill — and recommends licensure, Balmer said.

Tom Dooher, president of the Minnesota's teachers' union said the group supported it because of its emphasis on developing real-world teaching skills. "This is what education reform should look like, for practitioners by practitioners," he said.

Others are taking a wait-and-see attitude about the program.

Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the nonpartisan National Council on Teacher Quality, said she would support any test that could predict who will be a good teacher, but she's not sure performance assessments are it. Too often, she said, the passing scores on such assessments are set so low that nearly everyone passes and the weakest teachers aren't held back.

"The track record of these kinds of assessments actually being able to separate wheat from chaff is not so persuasive," Jacobs said.

SOURCE





British Liberal Party leader faces student leader's anger at £9,000 cap on tuition fees

Nick Clegg faced the wrath of students today after his pre-election promise to end tuition fees was brutally exposed by a coalition plan to hike them as high as £9,000-a-year.

Furious student leaders met with the Deputy Prime Minister to discuss the Government announcement which revealed an almost three-fold increase in the current £3,290-a-year limit for the cost of courses.

Mr Clegg, who earlier appeared stony-faced in the House of Commons when Universities Minister David Willetts told MPs of the changes, was accused of a plot to 'blow up education' by one students' union leader.

The changes - which will come into effect in 2012 will see the fee threshold moved to £6,000 with some institutions able to charge £9,000 in 'exceptional circumstances'. This is a three-fold increase on the current limit of £3,290-a-year and means fees for a three-year course could hit £27,000. Students could face total debts of £40,000 once living costs are included.

The universities wanting to charge more than £6,000 will be subject to 'fair access conditions' and have to show they are improving access for disadvantaged students.

The Lib Dems fought the election promising to scrap tuition fees and have succeeded in blocking plans to allow elite universities to charge unlimited amounts.

Labour leader Ed Miliband accused the Government of 'destroying trust in politics' by breaking various pledges, including on university funding. He claimed it was a 'Government of broken promises' on fees, VAT and child benefit. 'That is what they meant by Broken Britain,' he said at PMQs. 'The Prime Minister used to say he wanted to restore trust. All he is doing, day by day, is destroying trust in politics.'

Mr Cameron retorted that Labour had 'completely broken their word' on the Browne report on university funding, which the previous government had commissioned.

He insisted Lib Dem ministers had 'all taken, frankly, some courageous and difficult decisions.' 'I think every single person in this House of Commons wants strong universities that are well funded, that have greater independence and we want to make sure that people from the poorest homes can go to the best universities in our country,' he said.

'That is what the proposals are going to achieve. They grew from a decision made by the last government to set up the Browne report and what a pity that opportunism has overtaken principle.'

Mr Willetts earlier told the Commons that the Government wanted to see universities offering scholarships to targeted students, making their first year free.

Institutions charging over the £6,000 threshold would face sanctions if they did not do enough for poorer pupils, with a proportion of their extra income diverted into outreach activities.

The Minister insisted the proposals were a 'good deal for universities and for students'.

'These proposals offer a thriving future for universities, with extra freedoms and less bureaucracy, and they ensure value for money and real choice for learners,' he said.

Today's plans will see students begin to repay their loans at 9 per cent of their income at a real rate of interest when they earn £21,000 - up from £15,000.

Outstanding loans will be written off after 30 years but those who want to pay off theirs early will be hit with a financial penalty in a victory for the Lib Dems.

Tory ministers were thought to oppose moves that would hit middle-class parents who help their children but the concession was made to their coalition partners.

Mr Willetts said: 'The Government is committed to the progressive nature of the repayment system.

'It is therefore important that those on the highest incomes post graduation are not able unfairly to buy themselves out of this progressive system by paying off their loans early.

'We will consult on potential early repayment mechanisms - similar to those paid by people who pre-pay their mortgages. These mechanisms would need to ensure that graduates on modest incomes who strive to pay off their loans early through regular payments are not penalised.'

SOURCE



3 November, 2010

MA: Charter students double in a decade

The number of children in Massachusetts charter schools has more than doubled over the past decade as parents, worried about the quality of their children’s education, have increasingly sought alternatives to traditional public schools.

Charter school enrollment climbed to 27,484 this year, up from 12,518 in 2000, according to data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The Globe examined enrollment trends in more than 380 school districts across the state.

“I was ready to leave the city," said Bill Choukas of Dorchester, recalling his unhappiness with the public schools when his son John was assigned to a kindergarten in a neighborhood he considered unsafe. Then his oldest child was accepted into a charter school, and his view began to change.

Now he has three children at Boston Collegiate Charter and one at Neighborhood House Charter, both in Dorchester. He loves the discipline, the uniforms, and what he sees as a good education.

Choukas is following in the footsteps of many other parents, even as some school officials and teachers unions complain that charter schools drain tax dollars from other public schools and that charter schools push out less capable students.

“What upsets my members the most is when people say charter schools are doing a better job," said Paul Toner, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

The schools pull a different demographic of parent and student, he added. “Charter schools, whether intentionally or not, pull away the most motivated students and parents," and that removes role models in the traditional schools, he said.

The charter schools deny those assertions. “What affluent parents always had, now everyday parents have: choice, choice, choice," said Kevin Andrews, president of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association and headmaster of the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester.

Driving the whole movement are parents who are “tired of sending their kids to terrible schools," he said.

As the number of Massachusetts students in charter schools has doubled over the last decade, the number of schools has also grown. It stands at 63, up from 40 a decade ago, part of a national phenomenon. The number of students in charters across the country has nearly tripled over the past 10 years, to nearly 1.7 million children, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Dennis Shirley, a professor at the Boston College Lynch School of Education, described it as a push-pull situation: Parents are disenchanted with public schools while at the same time they are attracted by the test scores they see at a number of high-achieving charter schools.

Beth Toma moved her two girls to South Shore Charter School in Norwell after her older daughter had a “horrendous experience" with a Weymouth elementary school teacher.

“That was the turning point," said Toma, who helps runs the school library. Weymouth schools were much cooler to having parents volunteer in the classroom, she said, while at the charter she has helped run reading discussions.

Amanda, her older daughter, decided to return to Weymouth High because the larger school offered more in the way of sports and club activities. However, Faith, a seventh-grader, “loves the school."

Charter schools are public schools, funded with public tax dollars, which operate under fewer regulatory restrictions and are usually independent of school districts. Most do not have teachers unions. Admittance may be determined by lottery. Many supporters see charter schools as laboratories for educational innovation.

About 10 charter schools in Massachusetts have fewer than 200 students, and only five have more than 1,000, including the largest, Sabis International in Springfield, with about 1,600.

The growth in charter schools is set against a backdrop of changing enrollments throughout the state’s public schools.

Statewide, about 170 school districts have more children than a decade ago, while more than 200 districts have lost students, state enrollment figures show.

Overall, there are 960,000 public school students, including the charter school students. But charter school students now make up a larger percentage of the statewide enrollment total — about 2.8 percent of that total — than they did 10 years ago.

Charter schools have been operating in Massachusetts since the mid-1990s, and many of the schools boast high MCAS scores and college entrance rates, but are still controversial with some school officials and public teachers unions. A major concern is financial; when students leave for a charter, state education dollars go with them, and that can have a substantial impact. For example, Boston expects to lose about $50 million next year.

The state has used various funding formulas to compensate public schools. A new formula this year reimburses public schools for several years for the students they have lost to charter schools.

The change in reimbursement was part of a major education law signed by Governor Deval Patrick this year that could also allow doubling the number of charter schools in the state’s lowest-performing districts.

The new reimbursement formula has quieted debate, officials said, but there is still dissent. “You can’t make up that money, even though the state does provide a gradual adjustment," said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

Nevertheless, parents are still flocking to charters. Thomas Connors of Hyde Park has had two daughters at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter in Hyde Park, and both have done well. He likes the progress reports that parents get every two weeks on everything from homework to class participation.

“People are really seeking options for quality education for their children and they increasingly see charter schools as a good option," said Susan Thompson, executive director of the Academy of the Pacific Rim, which has grown from 185 students in 2000 to nearly 500.

The school year at the academy is 190 days — 10 days longer than the state requirement — and the day for middle-schoolers lasts from 7:45 to 4:15 p.m. Classes in Mandarin start in seventh grade, and 16 or 17 children each year go to an exchange school in China, some staying for three months.

If there is still antagonism between public schools and charters, there are also signs that they can work together. The Neighborhood House Charter and the Boston public schools system have a partnership, in which Neighborhood House teachers work with teachers from the Harbor Middle School on math instruction.

“The goal is to learn successful practices, wherever they are," said Carol Johnson, Boston school superintendent.

SOURCE





British Universities to be forced to meet quota of underprivileged students

Universities will be forced to meet a quota of students from less well off backgrounds or face being stripped of hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding. Elite institutions including Oxford and Cambridge are to be ordered to increase the number of pupils they accept from state schools by around 300 a year.

More youngsters from less well off regions and from low-income families will also have to be taken on, along with increased levels of ethnic minority students.

Those who fail to meet “benchmarks” set by the Office for Fair Access will forfeit up to a third of the funding they receive in the form of higher tuition fees to be paid by students from 2012. The money would be used to fund schemes designed to recruit more teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Top universities are expected to resist the plans, to be outlined by David Willetts, the Universities Minister, in a Commons statement today.

They were drawn up during hours of wrangling between the Coalition partners amid fears that up to half of the Liberal Democrat MPs could rebel against the decision to nearly treble tuition fees from their current level of £3,290. All of the party’s 57 MPs signed a pledge before the general election to scrap tuition fees altogether.

However, after last month’s announcement that the higher education budget would be slashed by nearly £3 billion as part of the Government’s austerity drive, universities warned that they would not be able to compete internationally without being able to charge significantly higher fees. A review of higher education led by Lord Browne of Madingley, the former head of BP, suggested that the charging cap be scrapped altogether.

Mr Willetts is expected to reject this, and set a new ceiling of between £6,000 and £9,000.

Some universities, including most of the former polytechnics, are likely to charge less £6,000, allowing them to compete for students who do not want to be saddled with major debts. Any institution charging more than £6,000 will have to abide by the quotas which are already set annually by the Office for Fair Access, but which the elite universities in particular often fail to meet.

Last year, Oxford, which has an overall student population of more than 20,000, was ordered to take an extra 270 state school pupils every year for five years – an increase of 4.25 per cent. However, numbers actually fell by 1.5 per cent. Out of an intake of 3,200 pupils in 2009, 1,456 were from state schools and only one was from a black Caribbean background

Universities will be free to decide how to improve participation levels, for example by holding more open days for sixth formers from state schools, or by introducing mentoring schemes. Those who miss their targets will be stripped of a proportion of their funding, and will be required by law to use the money to fund outreach schemes.

In the past, the heads of the elite universities have resisted political pressure to institute “social engineering” in higher education, saying that problem is caused by failures in the system at primary school age.

But a source said: “The Government is allowing universities to charge significantly higher fees – in return, we hope that they appreciate their responsibility to improve social mobility. “The universities are not being given a licence to charge whatever they want. “We want to ensure that the doors to every university are open to children from low income backgrounds wherever they come from.”

Universities will be required to meet benchmarks relating to the numbers of students they accept from three separate groups – relating to low income areas of the country, schools with below average numbers of pupils going on to higher education, and those from deprived families.

A senior Liberal Democrat source said that Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, was confident that his MPs would be won round by the plans, amid reports that as many as 30 had been considering rebelling. The source added: “No one is suggesting that this won’t be easy but what we have been able to do to ensure that low income students are not adversely affected is so significant that we are expecting far more abstentions than votes against.”

Mr Willetts is also expected to announce that graduates will be required to repay student loans on their tuition fees at a rate which will be set at three percentage points above inflation.

A study by the National Union of Students yesterday found that nearly eight out of 10 young people would be put off going to university if fees were raised to £10,000. Aaron Porter, the president of the NUS, said: "Tripling tuition fees would mean thousands of students being put off going to university with students who do go forced to take the bullet for university heads more concerned with lining their pockets than improving education."

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College union, added: "England faces the frightening prospect of becoming the most expensive country in the world in which to study at a public university.”

SOURCE





British government declares war on degrees without prospects as university fees are set to hit £9,000 a year

Ministers today declare war on pointless degrees as they prepare to allow universities to charge fees of up to £9,000 a year. Universities Minister David Willetts has vowed to weed out poor quality courses which do little or nothing to improve students’ job prospects.

He wants to rate degrees by the employment rates and salaries of graduates, handing parents and prospective students a mass of information with which to judge their value.

Mr Willetts told the Daily Mail he also wants the best degrees to be given ‘kite marks’ by professional associations as an indication that they are rated highly by employers. Weaker courses would be forced to improve or wither on the vine.

The move comes in tandem with a hugely controversial increase in the cap on university fees, which will be announced to MPs today after last-minute wrangling between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

Rumours were swirling around Westminster that at least one junior Lib Dem member of the government would resign in protest. The Lib Dems, who fought the election promising to scrap tuition fees, have succeeded in blocking plans to allow elite universities to charge unlimited amounts. Instead they will be able to levy fees of up to £9,000 a year, a three-fold increase on the current limit £3,290 a year, from 2012.

Fees for a three-year course could total £27,000 and students could find themselves saddled with £40,000 debts once living costs are included.

Those universities that want to charge more than £6,000 will be subject to ‘fair access conditions’ and will have to demonstrate they are improving access for disadvantaged students, leaving the Government open to charges of social engineering.

The issue of redemption penalties for those who want to pay off loans early is thought to be unresolved. The Lib Dems favour a large penalty to prevent students who go into well-paid jobs benefiting by paying off their debts in a lump sum, but Tory ministers are thought to oppose moves that would hit middle-class parents who help their children.

With graduate unemployment at its highest level in nearly two decades, Mr Willetts said it was vital that parents and students were given better information about whether courses were good value for money in terms of employment rates and salaries.

He also plans to make university admissions body Ucas provide clear information on the standard of teaching, library and IT facilities, weekly contact hours with lecturers, and the cost of halls of residence.

Mr Willetts said: ‘This will give students and their parents the information they really need and value, about everything from the amount of time they’re actually going to get taught to what their job chances and salaries are likely to be. ‘At last, students will be able to see the courses that can get the jobs they aspire to and those that do not perform well.’

Increasing numbers of students have opted for fashionable new courses at the expense of traditional subjects over the last decade. But more than 21,000 who graduated last year were still without work six months later, and 55,000 ended up in stop-gap jobs such as bar work.

Today ministers are expected to announce a public consultation, led by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, into their proposed ‘information revolution’ in the university sector.

SOURCE



2 November, 2010

Outrage at banning spelling tests

Lazy teachers don't want to teach

The documentary “Waiting for Superman,” is yet another call for K-12 school reform aimed at closing the gap between academic achievers and non-achievers and promoting what an assistant superintendent in my school district once oxymoronically labeled “mass excellence.”

The problem is that school reformers are not really serious about raising the bar. After all, they continue to dumb-down education – adopting the slogan from the Chris Farley movie Tommy Boy, “If At First You Don’t Succeed, Lower the Standard” – while claiming to be smarting up. How one can do higher-order thinking in math, social studies, or any other discipline while clueless about lower-order knowledge and skills remains a mystery to those of us who are not in tune with the latest best practices in K-12.

The latest example of dumbing-down while pretending to be smarting up is the trend toward eliminating spelling tests. The evidence I report here comes from a couple local school districts in the St. Louis area. (Stay tuned for this development in your own district if it has not already occurred.) In a September 18 St Louis Post-Dispatch article by Aisha Sultan, “Coming to the Defense of Spelling Tests,” the writer notes that two of the largest, best school districts in Missouri – Parkway and Rockwood – “have completely phased out spelling tests from their elementary school language arts curricula.”

Asked by astounded parents how this could be so, the Parkway coordinator for elementary communication arts replied that “we were developing a lot of Friday morning spellers.” Likewise, the Rockwood coordinator said “we’re really trying to work on self-regulation,” that is, getting children to develop their own strategies for becoming good spellers.

The districts say they will continue to teach lessons about spelling and may even hold students accountable for spelling certain words correctly, but spelling is a skill that will be embedded in student writing routines. The bottom line is that educators say spelling tests are not authentic assessments.

On the surface this sounds reasonable, but let’s understand what is actually going on:

1. Many kids cannot spell (due to dyslexia, or laziness because they do not read, or because they are just plain stupid, or whatever), and it is true that no amount of spelling tests are going to get them to spell. But many kids can spell or at least could spell, and spelling tests undoubtedly work to help many of the latter through the important function they perform in terms of drill, reinforcement, and motivation to learn to spell.

It certainly worked for me in my own schooling! Am I alone? Any number of experts have pointed out the utility of drill and practice as a pedagogical method, most recently those cited in the September 19th New York Times Sunday Magazine article “Drill, Baby, Drill.”

However, given the reigning orthodoxy in K-12, since some kids cannot do well on spelling tests, then no kids should be allowed to take spelling tests. It is about self-esteem, avoiding failure, some learning styles (e.g., inability to memorize) not being served by such tests, etc., but is rationalized as “inauthentic assessment” in the pretentious jargon of the profession.

I do not give a darn about authentic/schmentic assessment. Use whatever assessments you want, but at the end of the day I want to see progress. Show me that “authentic” assessments do anything to improve spelling. You can bet that the educators behind this fad will not be able to demonstrate such. I spoke to a Parkway high school English teacher who shared my skepticism. So the question remains, what harm do spelling tests do that they need to be banned?

This is just another case of K-12 progressive educators devaluing the basics, putting down spelling tests (because in truth they don’t care if kids can spell) just as they put down computation skills (because they don’t care if kids have automaticity with math facts), rationalizing all the while that schools should focus on developing (sniff, sniff) “higher order skills.”

Part of this is ego on the part of K-8 educators – they now consider it beneath them as “professionals” to get their hands dirty administering spelling tests (and multiplication table exercises) – but mostly it is something more damning: it is not so much that the reformers don’t care about these skills but rather they do not have enough faith in kids to succeed at mastering them. The dark secret the reformers will not admit is that the basics are hard and they have thrown in the towel on things like spelling.

This is what is going on in Parkway and Rockwood, and throughout much of the country. The banning of spelling tests is a metaphor for a much larger phenomenon. The bottom – the lowest achievers – are now setting the standard and defining school routines.

At the same time, the reformers claim every kid is a potential genius – Superman – even if they cannot spell “its” vs. “it’s,” “their” vs. “there,” or “Superman” vs. “Souperman.” In our pursuit of mass excellence, we continue to throw the baby out with the bathwater, abandoning traditional if imperfect practices in favor of new unproven ones. Meanwhile, it takes a layperson to point out what PLCs (“professional learning communities”) seem unable to grasp – in the words of the Post-Dispatch writer and parent, “killing the weekly spelling test is more likely to worsen the problem than improve it.”

SOURCE





Most British parents find school admissions stressful

Getting your kid into a safe school can be a nightmare in Britain

Parents believe England's school admissions system is an unfair and confusing process, with many admitting they will go to any lengths to secure a favoured place for their child, a poll suggests today.

Six in 10 parents (60 per cent) say they found it, or are finding it stressful not knowing if their youngster will get a place at their preferred school. And nearly one in four (24 per cent) admit they feel the whole application procedure is confusing and overwhelming.

The poll, conducted by the parenting website Netmums, comes as parents across England submit their secondary school application forms. The deadline for many areas was yesterday.

The findings show that parents are concerned about the choice of school in their area, with over half (53 per cent) saying there is a big difference between their preferred school and the others in their area - enough for them to feel it really mattered, or matters which one they get a place at.

A breakdown reveals this is true of parents of children of all ages, with 56 per cent of parents with children of secondary school saying there was a difference, along with 57 per cent of those with pre-schoolers and 54 per cent of those with primary age youngsters.

More than four in 10 (44 per cent) of all the parents questioned said their child was worried they would be split up from their friends, while a similar proportion (39 per cent) found it difficult to understand why they might not get a place in the school they wanted to go to.

Nearly one in four parents (24 per cent) did not think their local admissions system was fair, with one in six (15 per cent) saying all areas should be moved to a "lottery system". Under this process children's names are effectively picked out of a hat and allocated schools.

Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of Netmums, said: "Applying for a secondary school is both terrifying and stressful - as a parent you know that this decision will impact on not only your child's education but also on their friendship circle, social life, extra curricular activities and sense of self."

The poll found that the distance from school process is still most commonly used to allocate places, but not everyone is in favour of it. More than one in four (26 per cent) of the parents polled said they felt this method is unfair because it can cause house prices to rise in the area, which would leave only better-off families able to afford it.

But the process of selecting pupils based on ability, used by many grammar schools, is also unpopular, with a third (34 per cent) saying it is wrong that some state schools use entrance exams, because children that are privately tutored have a better chance.

The survey also asked parents the lengths they are willing to go to in order to obtain a place at a good school. Nearly six in 10 (57 per cent) said they would be willing to move house, while nearly half (43 per cent) simply said they would do "whatever it takes".

Just under one in 10 (9 per cent) said they would lie about where they live, over one in five (22 per cent) said they would go to church just to get their child into a good school, and over one in 10 (11 per cent) said they would give a cash donation to their preferred school to increase the chance of their child being accepted.

Parents of younger children are more likely to go to any lengths with 43 per cent of those with pre-schoolers and 44 per cent of those with primary age children saying they will do whatever it takes, compared to 39 per cent of those with secondary age youngsters.

If their child does not get a preferred place, more than one in four parents (27 per cent) said they would fight the decision "all the way", while almost seven in 10 (68 per cent) said they would appeal. Just one in five (21 per cent) said they would accept the decision.

Ms Freegard added: "It is possible to affect the outcome of the often-convoluted admissions process by moving house and/or by paying for home tutors to school your child through exams. Unfortunately this means the system often favours middle class parents, leaving others without those means at their disposal feeling powerless and sidelined."

The poll questioned 1,565 parents in October.

SOURCE





Britain: School bullying coverup now before a tribunal

Carol Hill, 61, who dragged four boys away from Chloe David, seven, after discovering they had tied her to a chain-link fence and whipped her with a skipping rope was sacked after disclosing the event to the girl's mother.

Deborah Crabb, headmistress at Great Tey Primary School, Colchester, Essex, wrote to Claire and Scott David claiming their daughter had been 'hurt in a skipping rope incident'.

Carol, who was suspended for breaching pupil confidentiality after she told Claire how the injuries occurred, claims she was made a 'scapegoat' and sacked as part of a 'cover up'.

She appeared at an employment tribunal in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, today where she alleged unfair dismissal against the school. Before the hearing Carol said: 'I just want my job back because I haven’t done anything wrong. I love the job and I love the school.'

Headmistress Mrs Crabb sent a letter to Chloe’s parents Claire, 29, and Scott, 33, a steel worker, from Chappell, Essex, explaining she had been hurt in an ‘incident’. But Carol told Claire the details of the bullying and abuse later the same day at Beaver Scouts where they volunteered together.

Carol, who earned £6.20-an-hour as a dinner lady, was called into Mrs Crabb’s office a week after the incident and suspended for breaching confidentiality.

She was dismissed from her post for gross misconduct in September 2009 after she appeared before a disciplinary hearing chaired by a panel of three governors. An internal appeal against the dismissal was thrown out in November 2009 despite former education minister Ed Balls writing a letter demanding an investigation.

Carol has lost over a stone in weight since her dismissal and is suffering from stress induced high blood pressure.

She claims unfair dismissal because her rights have been infringed under article 10 of the European Convention, the right to freedom of expression. Carol also claims she wasn’t given sufficient notice before her dismissal.

Mrs Crabb told the tribunal that the school has received 80 hate mail letters, 150 emails and 'numerous' phone calls following the incident. She said: 'I remember seeing the school secretary literally shaking when one email was received from an unknown sender.'

More HERE



1 November, 2010

Feds blink in standoff with Christian colleges

Religious schools now expecting to be protected from political influence of Education Department

The federal government apparently has blinked in a standoff with private Christian colleges over a proposal that would bring the schools under the regulation of the political powers in their states.

Colorado Christian University President Bill Armstrong has told WND that the rules proposed by the Education Department are the "greatest threat to academic freedom in our lifetime."

Obama's Department of Education – where Secretary Arne Duncan appointed a longtime homosexual activist who was part of the violent Act Up organization to head his "safe schools" office – has recommended that all colleges be required to have a state license. Critics say the license could enable the government to have a say in curriculum, graduation requirements and other issues.

An analysis by Shapri D. LoMaglio of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities said the feds wanted to require colleges to "have a document of state approval … to operate an educational program."

Joining Armstrong in his alarm over the plans were former Colorado state Sen. Hank Brown, who has served as president of the University of Colorado system, as well as prominent columnists Cal Thomas and Jay Ambrose.

Now Armstrong has confirmed for WND that the new rules have been published. But there were dozens of changes in the nearly 900 pages of fine print that appear to provide for an exemption for religious colleges from the government oversight.

"The rules published today contain 82 changes from the original proposal, including 'concessions' to colleges and universities, adopted in response to adverse congressional and public comment," he said in an e-mail. "Schools will be able to continue using their own definition of 'credit hour' when awarding academic credit and 'religious and tribal institutions' will be exempted from state oversight … according to a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education," he said.

Armstrong told WND he's not ready to declare victory until he has an opportunity to analyze the hundreds of pages of new instructions. But it appears that the plans will offer the relief that private, and especially Christian schools, would need.

He had raised concerns about political influence on school operations as significant as classroom instruction. For example, a pro-abortion state official theoretically could have required a Christian school to teach "safe sex" to continue operating. Or the government could have demanded that the theory of evolution be taught as fact.

"The religious exemption could be of tremendous significance to Colorado Christian University and other faith-based schools. But it's too soon to 'declare victory' because, as always, 'the devil is in the details.' It will take a while to sift through this massive document and understand exactly what has happened. However, one thing is sure – more control over students, faculty, staff and the nation’s colleges and universities. What a pity!" Armstrong said.

"Fortunately, the rule is 'final' in name only. Congress retains power to overturn the department's action, if it wishes to do so. In recent weeks, I have spoken to three members of the Senate Committee which has jurisdiction over the Department of Education, along with Senate and House staffers. They're as upset as we are about what's going on," he said.

According to the Chronicle, the Education Department experienced "heavy pressure" from colleges on some of the issues at stake.

Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, told the Chronicle that is seems the federal agency "tried to address some of the concerns that have been raised." He, too, however, noted that colleges are reserving judgment pending the examination of the hundreds of thousands of words. "Everybody in D.C. knows that the devil is in the details," he told the Chronicle. "They haven't provided any."

School officials earlier said colleges already have to qualify to operate by meeting the requirements of the various relatively independent education councils.

Thomas, in a column for Tribune Media Services, warned the rules could have had a major impact. "If imposing outside agendas – from textbook content to course selection – is supposedly bad when conservatives do it (mostly in reaction to the liberal assault on any ideas that conflict with theirs), why is it not equally onerous when liberals push for state control and the dictation of course content at private colleges and universities?" Thomas questioned.

Further, Ambrose, a longtime editor with Scripps Howard News Service, said the proposal's possible impacts "are enormous, including a frightening assault on academic freedom as crucial decisions are transferred from faculty and administrators to bureaucrats and legislative bosses who just might use weapons of mass authority to demolish instruction of a kind they don't like."

"What strikes me (and Armstrong, too) is that the move is more of the same," Ambrose continued. "The Obama administration does not much trust liberty. If something out there sneezes, regulate it. Surround it with endless pages of rules, blankets and blankets of rules, enough rules to smother the slightest hope of autonomy. Do more if necessary. Take over things. Take over health care. Take over the auto industry. Take over financial institutions. Government knows all. Government should do all. Government, we praise thee!"

SOURCE






Britain's top government schools will now be allowed to expand

The best state schools will be allowed to expand to meet demand for pupil places for the first time, it can be disclosed. Under plans being drawn up by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, primary and secondary schools will be freed from limits imposed by councils and be able to take on more students. Top-performing schools will be allowed to accept a greater number of students, and gain tens of thousands of pounds extra funding.

Successful schools are likely to get bigger, as more pupils flood in, while poor-performing schools could see numbers decline sharply and be forced to close. Complex admissions procedures will also be simplified to make them less bureaucratic and easier to understand for parents.

The news came as applications closed for places at secondary schools for next September in many parts of England and Wales. Tens of thousands of children are likely to miss out on their first-choice school because the best are oversubscribed. An estimated 100,000 children did not get into their first-choice school last year.

A report published today by the admissions watchdog said hundreds of families were complaining over schools’ admissions rules. Ian Craig, the adjudicator who runs the complaints process, said there were nearly 400 objections to admissions decisions last year.

The new plans to allow the best schools to take more pupils will form part of an education White Paper to be published later this month. Normally, the number of pupils that state schools can take is set by local authorities and can be exceeded only in exceptional circumstances. However, there is concern in Whitehall that councils are limiting the success and size of popular schools to stop them draining pupils from inferior schools nearby.

Under the new plans, top schools will be to be allowed to convert to academy status so they can scrap their fixed admission numbers and take more pupils, as long as there is physical room for them. This will earn the schools tens of thousands of pounds of extra funding and, say ministers, allow more children to benefit from a good education.

Mr Gove hopes the move will force councils to address quickly why poorer schools are failing. However, it could cause tension with Liberal Democrats if poorer-performing schools suffer. “The key problem is that there aren’t enough good school places,” a government source said. “That’s why we’re letting schools expand to meet demand. Good schools will grow, while those that aren’t performing will have to improve.”

Mr Gove wants to simplify the 86-page admissions code, which was toughened up under Labour to stop parents lying about their address or church attendance to secure places for their children. Officials say it can be made simpler without being watered down.

SOURCE





Australia: A secretive and dishonest education bureaucracy

The NSW Board of Studies risks becoming a law unto itself. Unwilling to take full responsibility for errors, such as last week's mistake in a history exam, it seeks to shoot the messenger. Taking its lead from the state government, the Board has a history of trying to dodge blame and discredit its critics.

The Board dismissed an error it made in an ancient history paper by saying it would have little impact on students. The error related to a multiple choice question worth “only” one mark. As any HSC student will tell you, every mark is crucial when competing for a university place. The error also related to another question worth seven marks - something the Board was slow to acknowledge.

Many teachers and academics are reluctant to publicly criticise the Board, fearing a backlash.

Teachers employed to mark HSC papers at the end of the year make no secret of the generous boost this work provides in their pay packets. The Board consults academics.

Last year, the NSW Ombudsman slammed the Board. The Board was forced to release raw HSC results it spent thousands of dollars trying to keep secret, after the Ombudsman criticised its lack of transparency in how exam results are scaled.

The Ombudsman’s final report was scathing, uncovering a culture of secrecy within the Office of the Board of Studies. It said the Board, under its previous manager, had treated a former HSC student as "the enemy", using "'a defensive and overly fastidious tone and approach" in the crossfire of letters to the student.

The extreme, and often questionable, lengths the Board took to protect the integrity of the HSC marking process from public scrutiny was well documented. The Board advised the student that three sets of documents he requested either did not exist or could not be produced when in fact they did exist and could be produced.
The Board gave the student the false impression that a decision had been reviewed by two different officers, when the same person had reviewed the decision twice.

By the time the Ombudsman’s Office had completed its investigation the Board had spent $51,000 on legal costs.

The Board is well motivated when it comes to ferociously protecting students from any anxiety during the HSC exams. But its protectiveness over students and the integrity of the HSC itself, is being used as a shield against all criticism.

After a report of an HSC timetable glitch – which resulted in students sitting the same examination on two different days - the Board was up in arms during a previous year. The reason being, that the report may have upset students sitting the exams. The timetable had raised legitimate concerns from teachers about the potential for cheating. The Board’s outrage also followed the reporting of a politically volatile Work Choices question in an exam paper. The Board wanted to distance itself from any political controversy in the lead up to the 2007 federal election.

The Board of Studies needs to lose its glass jaw. The Ombudsman’s report made it clear that it should focus more on transparency and less on trying to silence its critics.

SOURCE






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


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


The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray